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March 25, 2024 - The Charlie Kirk Show
36:13
Ask Charlie Anything 181: Lessons from Gladiator? Charitable Giving Guidelines? Vice President Rubio?

Charlie and Blake answer questions from Charlie Kirk Exclusive subscribers, including:   -What are the lessons of Russell Crowe's classic film Gladiator? -How should you decide where to donate your money? -Would Marco Rubio be a good VP pick?Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Charlie Kirk Show Intro 00:08:33
Okay, everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show, we don't ask me anything, but with our co-pilot, Mr. Blake, does some very impressive history knowledge here.
And we take your questions, those of you that are members, at members.charliekirk.com.
That is members.charliekirk.com.
The Charlie Kirk exclusive.
You guys can listen to all of our episodes advertiser-free at members.charliekirk.com.
That is members.charliekirk.com.
You got to check it out right now.
It's really great.
You guys can ask us questions, be part of our community.
So check it out.
Members.charliekirk.com.
Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
That is freedom at charliekirk.com.
Subscribe to our podcast.
Open up your podcast application and type in Charlie Kirk Show and get involved with the most important organization in America, tpusa.com.
That is tpusa.com.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country.
He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
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Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.
Okay, let's get to Karen, who is the first question here.
Reminder, if you are a member at members.charliekirk.com, you can ask us questions this hour.
Karen, what is your question?
We have two candidates who just won central committee positions, and we are working hard to elect Mark Cargile for Congress and Nick Wilson for State Assembly.
Do your turning point chapters table on campus for voter registration?
Would that interfere with your C3 status?
No, we register voters all the time.
We also have Turning Point Action that does it as well.
But doing nonpartisan voter registration is perfectly fine for a 501c3 to do.
And we do it on campuses all the time.
So we'd love to get you connected.
We'd love to network with you and also connect you with our Turning Point Action team as well.
And God bless you for staying involved, staying engaged.
We need activists and patriots like you.
God bless you.
I listen to you every single day.
Never miss an episode.
Wow, that's pretty amazing.
You and me both, Karen.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, because Blake, you do quality control, right?
Exactly.
So Karen, you and Blake listens through just in case I said something totally wacky or wrong.
Blake listens to it on like two times speed.
And so you guys make fast friends.
So God bless you, Karen.
And Karen, I want to thank you for being a member.
Means a lot.
And so, Karen, offline, if you just email us, freedom at charliekirk.com, we can connect you to the team and make sure that we're all synced up there.
Okay?
Thank you.
Awesome.
Love you guys.
All right.
Karen, thank you.
And so now we have Caleb, who is a supporter.
I think it is my favorite Caleb, but it could be another Caleb.
And by the way, everyone, submit your questions in the QA box, and we need more questions.
So do that.
Caleb, what's on your mind?
Thank you, Charlie.
Hey, so this week I just watched Gladiator with Russell Crowe all the way through for the first time.
And I know you're a fan of the movie.
Yes.
And I was wondering, what do you think are the important life lessons of that movie?
And what modern-day parallels do you see with our current cultural and political environment?
That's a great question.
Blake is chomping at the bit.
I will start, which is: great rulers can raise bad sons.
Definitely.
And that's, you know, it's not the most accurate movie, and yet that is the part that is 100% from history.
Marcus Aurelius, great emperor.
Joaquin Phoenix.
Walking Phoenix.
Commodus, a terrible emperor.
And that was, they had 100 years where they adopted their successor so they could pick a great emperor.
He violated that triumph.
He broke the rule.
And they, you know, we might still have a Roman Empire today if he had to do it.
So, Caleb, great question.
Blake, let's take some time and explain the context.
So there was something called Pax Romano, five great emperors.
I only know one of them.
What were all five?
Five.
It was Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.
By the way, just so everyone's clear, Blake can name every Roman emperor.
It's pretty.
Even the really dumb ones.
I know Pertinax and all that.
No, it's out of question.
But so talk about the context, though, of the movie Gladiator, because it's the last of the five.
Marcus Aurelius also ends up being a Stoic philosopher, the author of Stoicism, Meditations.
But kind of talk about the context of that, because, you know, everyone knows about it as like the fights of Maximus.
But there's this incredible, at least the beginning part of the movie is.
Exactly, exactly.
And so the opening of the film, for anyone who hasn't seen it or doesn't remember, Marcus Aurelius is this old emperor, he's a true philosopher king in the movies in real life.
Theorize, yes.
You know, he wrote his meditations in private.
They're a great work.
One of my favorite books.
Yes, it's an amazing book that he didn't even write for popular consumption, yet it's lived on to today.
And he's everything an emperor should be.
He leads from the front.
He takes his army on campaign to protect the empire.
And that's what an emperor should do.
He could live in Rome in these palaces.
He could have a thousand wives.
He rules a quarter of the known world, as the movie mentions at the start.
But he is the man who goes to the front, who takes leadership roles, does everything you need to do.
But in the movie, they present him as realizing Commodus is bad and tries to disinherit him and just gets murdered.
But in real life, it just seems he wanted his son to take over for him.
And that's a weakness many great people.
Isn't there, though, some truth that his death was misreported back to the capital, right?
I can't recall the specifics on that in real life.
I think there was something about how he was sick, and then somebody came in back and said he died, but he didn't.
But then Commodus began a really big slip for the Roman Empire, right?
Exactly.
He was a terrible emperor.
He was terrible.
He was a huge narcissist and megalomaniac.
He tried to rename Rome after himself.
I think he called it like Colonia Commodia or something like that.
And he did, in fact, fight in the gladiatorial arenas.
The fights were rigged.
He would.
So that's part of the movie is true.
That part of the movie is true.
He wasn't killed in the arena.
He was strangled to death by a wrestler, actually, in the baths.
Kind of really.
Yes.
That's how he actually died.
And he reigned for about 10 years, I believe.
But he was very much this huge narcissist.
And he started this slide where after he dies, there's no good successor to him.
And we just get this military dictatorship version of Rome where the emperor of Rome is just whoever's the best fighter.
He gets killed all of the time.
And it almost destroys the empire.
It's only saved by Diocletian and Constantine 100 years later.
All right, Blake, Roman emperors.
Let's go.
You got to close the laptop.
All right, here we go.
All right.
Peer-reviewed.
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galpa, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, the list Lucius Verus is a co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius.
Marcus Aurelius, Commodus.
He goes down, and then after Commodus, I believe, is Pertinax, Didius Julianus.
Uh-huh.
And then Septimius Severus.
Yep.
And I get a bit muggled here.
I think it's Geta and Caracalla, our co-emperors.
Geta gets murdered by Caracalla.
Then I think it's, is it Macrinus?
Then Elagobalis.
You're missing one, but it's like a fake one.
Is it Diaduminian?
Diaduminian.
And then Elagobalis goes down.
And then after this, it becomes a big old mess.
We have a thing called the Third Century Crisis, and there's like all these usurpers, huge disaster.
But I think after Elagobalis, is it Gordian the first?
Gordian the second.
Maximus one.
Oh, Maximus.
Oh, there's Maximus.
Maximinus Daya.
Roman Emperors and History 00:09:44
Yes.
Yeah, Maximinus or something.
Maximinus Thrax.
Maximinus Thrax.
Then, oh, Maximinus Thrax.
Oh, there's Severus Alexander.
I forgot Severus Alexander, too.
Crap.
Okay, I'm forgetting people now.
Hey, that's impressive, though.
Give it up for Blake, everybody.
All right.
I just think it's wild.
I just, it's like a spectacle.
It's like, it's just like going to, it's like going to a show and you pay money.
But before we move on from Gladiator, just a few things besides the big one, which is, yeah, great men can raise bad sons.
I guess a very big thing.
Embrace tradition.
Embrace tradition.
I think the merits of having leaders who are capable in the things that they oversee, that Maximus is a great general, but he's also a capable fighter.
Like you understand every level of what you do.
Yes.
That's what actually makes for the best leaders.
The best CEOs are not going to be these corporate raider types who take over or these management consultants.
Often the very best CEOs are the ones who like came up through the ranks of the company, who understand how every fast of it works.
In the book Good to Great, it actually shows that outside celebrity CEOs are not as good as the people that have actually done the work in the company.
This is one of the reasons that family businesses can be so competitive and successful.
Imagine you're just groomed to be the heir of this company from 15.
Okay, Kirk fans, I need you to stop and pay attention to this.
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We got to get to Dominic.
Dominic, thank you for being a member.
What is on your mind?
Welcome to the program.
Dominic.
Hello?
Yes, Dominic, how are you?
Thank you for being a member.
What's on your mind?
So, I wanted to ask, you came to my campus yesterday at UNLV.
Thank you very much.
And I wanted to ask, as a person who's on this campus and sees all the stuff that's going on, it's very hard to get, you know, be conservative and all that.
I was wondering, what is the alternative?
Like, if you're a parent and you want your kids to get like college education, what's the alternative?
Great, great question, Dominic.
So I think what you said is what is the alternative instead of sending your kid to college?
Is that right?
Yes.
So look, there's a lot of alternatives.
If you need to go to college, try to go to the least woke college that you can.
You know, Hillsdale College is one of our favorites.
Trade or technical school, there are 11 million current job openings in America that do not require a college degree and they pay well.
That's not my number.
That's from Mike Rowe, who came on the show.
And that kind of closing the skills gap and closing the trades gap is something we're very, very passionate about here on the Charlie Kirk show.
And so in addition, you can become as well studied, as wise, and as educated on any topic you want in this country, as long as you have a smartphone and an internet connection.
So that's what I would say there.
Blake, you went to Dartmouth.
What would you like to add to that?
I would say I think sometimes I think we can oversell the anti-college thing just in the sense that right now, college is important to access a lot of elite professions straight up from professional licensing.
You can't be a doctor.
And I acknowledge that in the book.
And we need elites.
You need people who are successful in professions who make money.
That is just the building blocks of a powerful movement.
So I wouldn't say, what I would say is what's important is reject anything about, you know, you need college just for socialization or for connection or just going for your four-year quasi-vacation that's debt finance.
The majority of students are in that category.
And that's the issue.
Certainly a lot of them are.
And what you have to do is you have to realize that college is a means to an end.
If you treat it that way, if you focus on, pick a major that is in something you want to do, that you can monetize.
And for all of that sort of, oh, I can understand the world or whatever, you can do that on the side.
And if you go in with that attitude and try to save as much money as you can, don't focus on prestige.
Focus on the credential, getting the degree.
You know, what do they call the person who graduated from the 100th ranked med school in America?
A doctor.
I don't even know if there are 100, but you don't need to worry about this prestige stuff.
Don't worry about acculturation.
Worry about success.
If you're going to penetrate elite society, there's a good reason to do that as long as you can prevent yourself from becoming woke.
But just going to go study sociology or whatever, probably not the best option for you.
Okay, Matthew, thank you for being a member.
What's on your mind?
Hey, Charlie, thank you so much.
Can you guys hear me okay?
I can.
Yes.
Thank you.
The floor is yours.
I had an amazing time at the Dream Church conference, by the way, a few weeks ago.
That was good.
Incredible.
And I'm a big fan of what you guys are doing.
And we've hosted, I'm sorry, I actually just sprinted to my computer because I heard you say my name, but I'm a little out of breath, but I apologize.
But we want to book you.
I love your message.
I love what you guys are doing.
It's so amazing.
I went to your last two big conferences you had as well.
And we're hosting an event with about 2,000 people in Nashville.
And I just want to know how we can book you to speak at that event.
Yeah, just, well, thank you.
If we can make it work, we'll try our best.
Go to free, just you want to email me directly, freedom at charliekirk.com.
While you catch your breath, I am curious.
What did you like best about the conference, the dream conference?
And where are you at church or where are you in ministry?
I'm curious.
So what I love most is at the end of the third night when everybody marched up that massive mountain and I was the first person to go all the way up to the top of the mountain.
And my vision that God gave me was I need to start hosting these events again.
Used to host events with 500 people plus in 2021.
And I felt him speak to me.
And it was just, I can't even explain.
And I sat outside that outside area for three or four hours and just listened to, I think his name is Sean Wright worship and sing for the first hour or so.
And then after that, just hung around for the last two hours.
I've never had that strong of... a spiritual just connection.
I can't even explain it.
It was so impactful.
And even just listening to all the songs and all the pastors, it was incredible.
I grew up going to church.
My mom and parents, everybody, we all grew up, grew up growing, you know, going to church on the East Coast over in New Jersey, the country part of New Jersey.
But being in a whole new area and seeing that campus, I mean, I can ramble on about it for a long time, but it was incredible.
And my hat's off to you.
And I have so much respect for it.
And I stayed the entire time.
And I can't thank you enough for bringing so much awareness to that because I'm 26 years old and I dropped out of school.
I was going to Rutgers business school and it was very hard to find other people like yourself that stood up against, you know, the mainstream of going to college and everything.
And that's why I've followed you so much for the last eight years and you're bringing so much awareness to where people need it.
I mean, I believe that our country is spiritually dead.
And the fact that you packed the room with over 6,000 people or whatever it was at a conference that just praised God and brought in some incredibly courageous pastors, it was incredible.
Well, thank you, man.
That means a lot, Matthew.
And God bless.
Please email me.
We'd happy to follow up and, you know, would connect with you.
So thanks for being a member, man.
God bless.
Yes, sir.
Thank you, sir.
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Jared, please unmute yourself.
Thank you for the support.
Jared, what's on your mind?
Hey, Charlie, first I wanted to say thank you so much for the podcast.
I have chronic Lyme disease and last year I was bedridden and couldn't speak.
And your podcast helped me get through it.
So super grateful for you and all that you do.
Yeah, I'm so sorry to hear that.
Lyme can be very dehabilitating.
I pray for some recovery or some ability for you to manage those symptoms.
But God bless you, Jared.
We'll be praying for you.
What's on your mind?
Thanks.
Two quick ones.
I live in Buffalo, New York.
And don't ask me why, but what would be your suggestion as far as, say, I had $500 to donate?
What would be your suggestion to donate?
Obviously, Turning Point USA being one of them.
Yeah, I mean, I love Turning Point.
Here's my best advice to you.
And this is, I learned this from the great Dennis Prager, which is: I wouldn't give that $500 to one group.
I would split that up.
And I want you to make a list of any nonprofit or place that sells services that has blessed you to give back.
And so, for example, you know, there's these sport blog websites that I go to for Oregon Dutt football recruiting.
And they say, you know, here's our PayPal account.
I try to give five bucks, you know, just because I'm using their service all the time.
I want to always try to make sure that I'm just not getting something for free.
So it could be a nonprofit.
It could be a podcast.
It could be something like that.
And I mean, there's so many great groups out there.
I, for one, try to make sure that a significant portion of our family's donation, Eric and I donation, goes towards pro-life ministries.
So we make sure that a portion of our tithe is always going towards pro-life.
So Pre-Born is one that I highly recommend.
We have preborn.org.
I think we have a promo code or something, don't we, guys?
Preborn.com.
And they're a partner of us with us on our program, Jared.
So check it out.
It's pre-born.com.
And so, Jared, I want to just say this, and we could talk offline if you email me.
I don't know if you've tried it.
I had a friend who's been able to really manage his Lyme disease symptoms using hyperbaric oxygen.
So I just feel called to tell you that.
I don't know if you've tried it or not, or anyone's told you that.
But anyway, we could dialogue offline if you want to email me on that.
Yeah, definitely.
One more quick second.
Did you hear Rubio?
That's what he said on Glenn Beck about being VP.
He was on Glenn Beck yesterday and Glenn Beck asked him about it and he said, well, no, no one's contacting me.
He said, but anyone should be honored to be VP, which got me thinking like most people are like, no, not at all.
I'm focusing on my senate seat.
So what would be your thoughts on Rubio and that, what he said?
Great question, Jared.
Of all the U.S. senators that have like celebrity status, I know him the least.
I have met him once.
We always knew little Marco was going to get on a shot.
However, I have a thought crime here.
I think that Marco Rubio is a better choice than some of the other establishment picks.
Marco has gravitated more on the populist angle economically.
He's been very based on stuff.
He's legitimately socially conservative.
He's legitimately pro-life.
He's been good on the trans stuff.
He would be able to help us.
I know that people don't like to hear this, but he'd be able to help us raise money.
And donors love Marco Rubio.
Love Marco Rubio.
So that would be an ability to help really kind of fill up that gap.
And I just, I think it would be fine.
I obviously prefer JD Vance over that.
But if you said, hey, Marco Rubio or Tim Scott, I would pick Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio or Elise Defonic, I'd pick Marco Rubio.
Do you agree with me on that?
I feel pretty similarly.
Okay.
Again, I'm not like a cheerleader for it, but it's just I don't hate it as much.
Well, I guess I would ask: what is a big reason people dislike Rubio?
I feel like the amnesty stuff.
There's a bit of that.
The Gang of Eight.
Remember, he was like the leader on Gang of Eight.
He was there.
That's fine.
And he kind of did arrogantly and smugly, like, I'm going to get an amnesty deal done.
Yeah.
And he did, he has been decent on Ukraine.
I just checked because I wasn't sure.
I think he might have been pro-support earlier, but he's followed the drift of the party overall on that.
That's not bad.
If anything, maybe you could have the concern that Rubio is a little too swayed by maybe his donors.
I know that's always been a concern with him.
I guess one of the most boring takes on him, he is really politically popular.
He cruised to reelection twice in a state that, you know, at least hold on.
He would have to leave Florida.
He would.
Oh, you're right.
It's that Florida thing again.
So Trump, buy a house in Wyoming or something.
No, Trump is not going to be.
He won't.
He won't.
So that actually is annoying.
So, just can you explain that?
12th Amendment, you cannot have elections.
Electoral votes of Florida would all go.
What it is, the reason it is, is every elector makes two votes.
They make a vote for president and for vice president.
And under the constitutional rules, an elector cannot cast two votes for two people from the same state.
And so that is how it functions.
In theory, it could still happen.
Like you could have, they're unable to elect a vice president, and so it would go to the Congress and they would do you can get weird shenanigans to make it happen, but it's an unnecessary obstacle you don't want to deal with.
And in the past, we've worked around it.
Notably, Dick Cheney was totally a Texas resident when he was on George W. Bush's ticket.
But how do they work around it?
He was from, he'd represented Wyoming in Congress.
He had ties there.
So he just relocated to Wyoming.
Okay, so you redomicize it.
So he's redominis.
It's harder if you're an office holder.
Yes, it's way harder.
But Trump, I don't think all of a sudden he'll be like, yeah, I'm going to get a condo in Jackson Hole.
Exactly, exactly.
And he's not going to go back to New York, that's for sure.
I believe he was in New York during the last election, but he's fully relocated to Florida now.
Yeah, it's sort of annoying.
Florida's been such a great state for us that we have all of these great rising stars there who are all great vice presidential material, but we can't use them.
That's so funny.
It is a funny thing.
But I think if you were going to pick a more establishment person, and if Trump really wants to go for his, I want a more diverse ticket because I think it will help me, Rubio's not a bad choice.
I think that I agree.
I think there's worse choices than Rubio.
Okay, Josiah.
Yes.
What is on your mind?
All right.
I listened to you in 2019 and I've listened to every episode since then, just because you're the first person that articulated that it's okay to work 100 plus hours a week and just like make stuff happen.
So, kind of on the topic about college, I was wondering what did it take besides just like knowledge to actually start Turning Point USA?
Because you could have a bunch of knowledge, but like have like lack wisdom to actually apply it in the day-to-day world.
Yeah, that is a great question, Josiah.
So you have to be willing to take risk and you have to be willing to be willing to step out in a place where there could be a loss.
Otherwise, there's no point in creating a business.
And you have to obviously be bold in what you do.
But this is what I tell people.
If you're trying to start your first business, it has to be the only thing you do.
Period.
It cannot be a side hustle.
It cannot be a hobby.
I have like a million things going on now.
I have now grown into the blessing of diversification.
There was no podcast.
Is it your greatest strength?
Yeah, diversity is now my greatest strength.
When I first started Turning Point, there was no podcast.
There was no radio.
There was really no public speaking.
There was really only two things.
There's little public speaking.
It was just Turning Point and cable news hits.
And cable news hits helped me build the idea of Turning Point.
And it was like pathological 120 hours a week of just raising money, of traveling the country, of trying to scrap to get Turning Point popular.
And so that's what I tell new entrepreneurs and starters.
You have to like quit everything you do.
And it helps.
I mean, again, I'm so happy that I'm married and have a kid.
I could not start Turning Point with the life I have now.
It's impossible.
Like I traveled 330 days.
And that's a reason to be aggressive when you're young.
Yes, you absorb a failure.
Can if turning point had bombed, you could have been, oh, that's too bad.
Go get a job.
Because the downside's like, whatever.
I could go, you know, work somewhere.
And it just so happened it caught on thanks to the glory of God.
And it was just, it required this insane drive.
And that's the final thing I'll say, Josiah, is you have to kind of be maniacal to start something from nothing at a young age.
I'm going to intrude here.
This is, I was talking about Charlie to another person.
Oh, is that right?
And I was just describing what I think of him as a boss.
And I just said, if this was the 1800s, Charlie would be one of those guys who just moves to Texas and takes over Texas in a span of 10 years.
He's always a go-getter.
He's the guy who, you know, if there is a news story, if it's like, oh, Congress is doing a thing I don't like, instead of just moping, he's like, what are we going to do about this?
I'm going to text all of these people.
That is true.
Do it.
Make the ask.
One of the biggest things, you have agency as a person.
And of all the people I know, Charlie is one of the most agentic.
He has very high personal agency.
He's like, why can't I change the world?
Well, that's very sweet, Blake.
Thank you.
And I don't know if I'd conquer Texas, but maybe West Texas.
Maybe like Midland.
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So let's get to another question here while we have time.
This one is freedom at charliekirk.com.
This one's for you, Blake.
Actually, super impressed by Blake's knowledge.
How did you learn all of this?
Did you learn it in college?
History especially.
I love history, but Blake blows me away.
That is Dale from Iowa.
So I did study history in college.
I would probably not recommend this to people, to be honest.
You were a history major?
I was a history major.
I thought I was going to go to law school.
And the tip: if you're going to go to law school, don't major in pre-law.
They do this scam.
All you need to do, the only thing they care about is your GPA and your LSAT score.
So I was like, okay, I'm going to max out my GPA by studying a subject I'm good at.
And then I'll go to law school.
And then I noticed all the lawyers that I knew wanted to jump out of buildings.
And so I relatively late, I did the LSAT.
I did applications.
You did well, I'm sure.
I had good options.
I had very good schools I could have gone to.
But I just thought, am I going to be 70 and be happy that I chose to be a lawyer?
And maybe I could have.
I know some lawyers who have done some exciting stuff, but I just, I wasn't ready to commit to it.
So I did a journalism path instead.
But as for how I know it stuff, it's just, there's really no substitute for just loving it and reading a ton of it.
It's not a thing you can easily digest.
You have a passion for it.
You just have to have a passion for it and you really marinate in it.
And there is, you know, it's always uncool these days to say, like, oh, kids, they shouldn't memorize facts.
They should learn how to.
No, no, no, no.
Memorization is the significant thing.
Memorization is, that is how you understand the world.
And it's how you understand when people are lying to you.
Defecting from False Claims 00:04:51
They come out and they say, oh, America's a nation of immigrants or whatever.
And if you know enough stuff, you're able to actually assess that claim honestly.
And you can understand where it comes from and also what's misleading about it.
And the bedrock for that is just you've got to know things.
You should know who the U.S. presidents are.
What did they do?
What was the country like in the past?
And this is just something that builds up over the course of your life.
I find every year I just kind of add a new thing to my repertoire.
So early on, I knew U.S. history.
Then I added Rome, which I still think about every day, of course.
Every day.
And then you expand.
You add Russia.
You add Spain.
You add the Middle Ages.
And I'm just always finding new stuff that appeals to me.
I just read a history of Texas, a history of Mexico.
Yeah, and it's important to understand it's not just about remembering facts, but also trends, what people do, outliers, what people are doing.
What people's lives were like.
Yes.
What failed?
It's a study in humanity, is really what it is.
All right, great question.
We're going to take two from some of you that are members.
Okay, they want to remain anonymous, but they are members.
Okay, regarding the spending bill, help me understand why can't Speaker Johnson shut down the government for all essential services, everything except essential services, military veteran, Medicare, Social Security.
Well, he can.
It just wouldn't be, it wouldn't be politically prudent this close to an election.
I'm not sure he could at this point.
Even why?
The way I like to frame it, and I was telling you this morning, is you're not really led by what the overall Republican majority thinks.
The person with the most power among all the Republicans right now is basically the third most liberal member because you're thinking that's the number of people who need to defect, and we get Speaker Hakeem Jeffries.
And so if there are three Republicans who just categorically say, I will not defund the government ever, period, I have promised not to do this.
I think it is bad.
And I am willing to help the Democrats to make sure that doesn't happen, then we can't shut down the government because they will defect.
Yes.
And you just need that part of unity.
This is why small majorities are bad and why it's really bad to intentionally shrink your majority by kicking out.
By kicking out George Santos and having Kevin McCarthy resigned.
He's an embarrassment.
He's a criminal.
Okay, granted, but we have a majority of three seats or whatever it is now.
And so you have to, you know, politics is the art of the possible.
You want to exist in the realm of reality.
And that's why we should have done it last fall.
They were all exhausted from that speaker fight.
They wouldn't want to do it again.
We had a bigger majority then.
Just do the shutdown fight then.
Now it's people are going to defect.
It's closer to an election.
We're up in the polls, so chaos is bad for us.
You don't want to do stuff that, I guess, for lack of a better term, messes up a politically advantageous situation.
And those are all the obstacles to making it happen.
And I wish Speaker Johnson was able to do this and wanted to do it, but I don't think the situation's there now.
This one says, what are your take on chemtrails?
All that's happening over.
Also, any thoughts regarding the upcoming eclipse and hitting meetings about it?
I don't want to get into the chemtrails stuff because I don't have any strong opinions on it.
But the eclipse, you're like traveling to go to the train.
Charlie, I am, well, I'll still work, but I will be in the city of Austin, Texas to gaze upon the eclipse, which I have to be there because as we all know, when the sun is covered up by the moon, it causes a demonic magical resonance and the end is nigh and it allows Satan to penetrate the real world.
And only, you know, divine warriors will be able to drive him back into the abyss and save our existence.
More seriously, it's just an astronomical phenomenon.
I don't want to say it's once in a lifetime, but there are not a lot of these.
This will be the only eclipse in the U.S. for decades.
And I like to always try to live a life of wonder to see things that are rare and unusual and that I can hopefully remember fondly.
And it's an excuse to hang out with my friends in Austin.
So this last question here, Brian said, Charlie, love being a member.
You said you were going to post on TikTok.
How's that going?
It's funny.
We just got, did you see this?
We just got a notice.
We posted one of my campus videos.
It was going viral on TikTok.
Ryan did on a fan page.
It says, we violated their hate speech and hateful behavior clause.
Oh, no.
We're going to have to ban TikTok now.
TikTok is enriched by various backgrounds.
What is my violation?
I said that blacks are 13% of the population and they commit 55% of the murders.
That is unfortunate.
That's unfortunately true.
We would like to fix that.
Yes.
In fact, we have ideas.
Yeah.
Fathers in the home, things of that nature.
And so according to TikTok, that is hate speech.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening and God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com
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