Ask Charlie Anything 188: The End of the Boy Scouts? Non-Compete Clauses? The Kashmir Question?
Charlie and Blake field questions from Charlie Kirk Exclusive subscribers, including: -What do they think of the Boy Scouts changing their name to be "inclusive"? -Is banning non-compete clauses pro-capitalist, or an infringement on economic freedom? -The question you've all been waiting for: What is Charlie's opinion on the Kashmir question?Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Join The People's Convention00:02:59
Hey everybody, Ask Me Anything episode non-competes.
What do we think about them?
The death of the Boy Scouts and more.
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Very important.
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Here we go.
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Disguised DEI As IDEA00:02:25
Let's start with an email question.
Some people are working and they can't do a live question, but only members.
And if you are a member, you get to listen to all of our episodes advertiser-free.
You can ask us questions, and we have a building community, and you can see the exclusive Charlie Kirk op-ed on members.charliekirk.com.
This is from Kimberly.
Charlie, I cannot call in today because I had to work.
I work for a very wealth corporation.
I'm not going to say what corporation it is.
They have disguised DEI as IDEA.
Have you heard this yet?
It's now inclusion, diversity, equity, acceptance.
Ooh, they're always changing.
We should do a tweet about that.
There's one company rebranded it as like IED, like the freaking bombs that interact.
Yeah, IED.
Incendiary explosive devices.
Improvised.
Improvised explosive.
So Idea.
We should do a tweet about how they're rebranding the Venom.
My question is, what are your thoughts and riffs on President Trump's recent comments and his address on anti-Semitism?
To me, he's just the same or worse, calling for all anti-Semitic people's death.
It makes me teary and angry and in disbelief, and I now struggle to fully support him.
Fully against First Amendment rights.
I've let two or three things go, knowing he's the only one that can realistically turn things around, so on and so forth.
Really, when you have time to listen to this whole podcast, these things grieve me, so on and so forth.
Okay.
I might not have caught that.
Did you?
I feel like I've been looking for it since we saw this question.
The problem is Google is useless now.
And if you search like Trump anti-Semitic speech, you just get Biden's speech because Google only shows you recent news stories.
So I am still looking for this, but I don't feel like I've heard Trump say that, but I must say it's in like the zone of potential things that I could imagine Trump saying.
He just said like, these anti-Semites, they're bad people.
They got to go.
He could say something.
Yeah, I mean, but I just, the anti-Semitic bill, I don't think he embraced or endorsed in particular.
I don't think so.
Yeah.
It's definitely Congress that's going really wacky here.
We haven't even talked about it, but there was some bill, I think, in the Senate.
I think maybe Marcia Blackburn put it in, but I can't remember who exactly.
But they said, like, anyone who protests Israel too aggressively on campus, they will be exiled to Gaza.
Which, while funny, is that's a little cringe.
Yeah, kind of loopy.
I agree.
Scouting And Authentic Self00:15:18
I mean, I agree.
I think we're both concerned.
Like, we've taken a pretty consistent line, and I think a lot of the Trump supporting right has taken a consistent line of you can protest, you can say what you want on campus.
You know, if the rules let you, you can even set up an encampment.
But once that you're breaking the rules or trespassing or attacking people or intimidating, you know, doing real violence, yeah, you're breaking the law, and we're going to shut it down.
And we should be in favor of maximum speech and minimal crime.
And the left is always, they're the ones who invert this.
They're the ones who say that when we riot, it's speech, but when you speech, it's violence, and you're not allowed to do that because it intimidated people.
And the way to stand against that is to actually be very robust.
Pro-speech, anti-violence.
And they're the ones who love violence.
So put them in very morally clear in that way.
And the bill is a trash bill.
Let's just be honest.
It's a terrible bill.
Okay, let's go to two of our good supporter friends, Caleb and Michelle.
They are here to ask us the question live on air.
Caleb and Michelle, what is on your mind?
On your mind.
Good to see you.
I had this weird dream last night that you and Erica came over to our house for supper, and it was weird because Erica didn't say anything, and about every six to 12 minutes, you got up and left the room.
Oh, wow.
Well, me getting up a lot to make phone calls would be probably accurate, right?
So I don't sit still well, but that's funny.
So what's on your mind, guys?
With the Boy Scouts of America continuing their decline and transition into inclusivity, and I know you're an Eagle Scout.
What's your take on the Christian scouting group Trail Life and their focus on fathers raising boys to be men of character?
I love Trail Life, and so I want to make sure I plug them.
This is a competitor to the Boy Scouts.
But we did not actually cover the Boy Scout issue here on the program.
So I want to dive into that.
So glad you brought this up, Caleb.
So really a big fan of Trail Life and want to talk about them more in the future as well.
So let's talk about what happened with Boy Scouts.
So yes, by background, I'm an Eagle Scout.
Oh, you are an Eagle Scout?
Yeah, I thought that was one thing I had over you.
No, no, sorry.
What was your Eagle Scout project?
I planted a hosta garden at like a Lutheran school.
So that's like a legitimate because you know some of these are like super fake now, right?
Yeah.
Like I cleaned up a park in an afternoon.
Yeah, yeah.
I think mine took two days.
It should be something that you know it's not just the time.
It's like something where you really build or you nerd.
Yeah, yeah.
Like now, it is a permanent change.
Yes, no, that's exactly right.
It's not just like, you know, it could be undone, right, by a bunch of litterers.
So, so you're an Eagle Scout, so this is a perfect discussion.
Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
That's our Boy Scout.
Was that the oath or the motto?
That is the Scout Law.
That's the Scout Law.
Got it.
Help other people at all times to get myself physically strong, strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.
I don't know if even they have that anymore.
You got to have that word straight in there these days, but they're not going to like that one.
So what was the news?
The Boy Scouts change their name.
Scouting America now, because they don't, they let girls in now.
I'm not sure the full scope of it, but I think at this point, girls can basically do everything in scouts and become Eagle Scouts and everything like that.
This is so the Boy Scouts of America is still running SEO ads, and it still has Boy Scouts of America on their website.
They formally changed their name, I think, March next year.
They've like pre-announced it, basically.
And I got to be very honest with you, this is a tragedy, a huge one.
I kind of stopped following this closely after like 2017 or 2018 is when they first started letting girls in.
And I had a friend of mine who has been involved in scouting quite heavily.
He was saying, he was defending it, saying this is why they need to do it.
And I was saying, I can just tell the direction this is headed.
It's going to end really badly.
And frankly, everything I warned was going to play out, I feel has played out.
I think the biggest thing that stands out to me, like a reason that the Boy Scouts as it was, was such a great thing.
It wasn't even so much like, oh, the political angle of it being, you know, kind of civic Christianity or anything.
It was that it was a 100% positive thing that was an all-male space, for lack of a better term.
Very pro-American.
Very pro-American.
All that stuff is great.
But it's like an organization that is fun, that teaches useful skills and is for boys.
There's kind of, there was nothing left in America that is, as they say, like a male space.
And males like having spaces.
But no, they're necessary.
This is very important.
So sociological data will show that if you have 15 men that are trying to climb a rope, they act a certain way.
And it's actually the best way because they don't really care if they fall.
If you introduce a single female, their behavior completely changes.
Exactly.
And military units that go.
Yes.
So all of a sudden they're afraid to fail, right?
They want to impress the girl.
They start like, you know, they stop really caring about like group excellence and more about like individual superiority.
Yeah, they all compete with each other.
Exactly.
Whereas if it's just 15 boys, they're still competing, but it's a different dynamic.
They're actually more like encouraging of one another.
It's more like building up the least of these.
Yeah, and it's like, you know, even in debates, for example, it's like if you introduce someone who gets like, you know, women are a little more easily offended by things.
And then like you change the rules to be more civil.
And like male debate spaces are like really aggro.
It's just men need spaces to be men.
Well, boys need spaces to develop into men.
Yes.
And that's what, and I, I mean, scouting enriched my life.
I love scouting.
I love it.
I'm afraid it was amazing.
So I want to keep going into this next segment because we're both Eagle Scouts and like Boy Scout Camp was amazing and all the merit badge process.
Like the actual way it used to be, it's a great American thing.
Okay, let's play cut 164.
It's the Boy Scouts of America CEO announcing the name change, 164.
Sends this really strong message to everyone in America that they can come to this program.
They can bring their authentic self.
They can be who they are.
And they will be welcomed here.
The argument that I make with the people that say, well, I always like Boy Scouts of America or BSA.
Why do we have to change?
Go, you know, membership is at historic lows.
Right.
Part of my job is to reduce all the barriers I possibly can for people to accept us as an organization and to join.
What a weak statement.
So why do you think membership is low, pal?
It's because of all the scandals, first of all.
Number two, it's bad leadership.
Number three, it's because you guys have been watering down what it means to be part of Boy Scouts.
All right.
So Blake, some of my best memories and most formative experiences were in the Boy Scouts.
Summer Boy Scout camp.
You just spend a week at it getting together.
Where was yours?
In like Minnesota or something?
It was near Yankton, South Dakota.
Lewis and Clark Scout Camp was the main one.
Is that a big one?
It was pretty large.
Maybe I would go back today and be like, oh, this is tiny, but it felt huge when I was a kid.
So I found out the one I went to was called Camp Napawon, and they shut down.
And it's just so sad.
It was 400 years, 400 years, 400 acres of Rolling Forest.
That's awesome.
I've wanted to revisit it so much.
And it was his Napawon Adventure Base where memories are made.
And it literally, you go to their website, closing statement.
This was back a couple years ago.
They're like, yeah, sorry, difficult decision, not enough demand.
Boys aren't in Boy Scouting anymore.
Yeah.
And I don't know.
Maybe Lewis and Clark is like that.
I'd have to check.
I'd have to follow up even like the scout troop that I was in was an amazing troop.
It had over 100 Eagle Scouts by the time that I graduated.
We had our own scout house.
Like we owned a residential house in Sioux Falls that was just for our scout troop.
Amazing stuff.
Yours is still available.
It's still open.
Alrighty, that's amazing.
But I guess the scouting is less amazing now.
It's just too bad.
And it's a very classic case of a few phenomena, which is like, one, a sort of right-coded organization, as they would say.
Like, scouting was not overtly conservative.
It wasn't Republican.
It wasn't like an arm of any church or anything.
But it was an organization that appealed to those people.
And we have many cases, and this is a really bad one, of an organization like that sort of treating its natural supporters like crap to try to win the approval or support of people who innately dislike them and are not on their side.
So they're told by all these people, yeah, you guys have to become really pro-gay and pro-BLM and pro-all of these things.
And if you do that, you'll thrive.
And so they did that.
They burned the bridge with all of their old supporters.
The Mormons left.
They left.
A lot of form of their own thing.
They did their own thing.
And then were these people there to join?
No, they didn't actually care.
They didn't want to do that stuff.
Yeah, all they care about is to be parasitic forces to destroy what already is.
There's a great tweet.
You've probably seen it before from the guy Iowa Hawk on Twitter where it's like leftism 101.
You know, take an organization, kill it, and then wear it as a skin and be like, oh, this is Boy Scouts.
Yeah, the skin suit.
Yeah, it's like we control it, even though it's completely terrible.
And I went on Tucker's program.
You were probably there when I went when I'd got a show, and I was the guest he had on as an Eagle Scout bashing women into Boy Scouts.
And we could find that segment.
I basically said, this is the end of Boy Scouting.
Like, as soon as you allow women into Boy Scouts, it is the end of it.
By the way, you have Girl Scouts of America.
Yeah.
But the Girl Scouts never was as popular as Boy Scouts.
It's different, I will say, is that Girl Scouts, it's very focused kind of on women's empowerment.
And so like, that's why the Girl Scout cookies are such a thing, because they want to push entrepreneurship, be a girl business owner.
That's fine, but let's be honest.
We need like strong men in a society and Boy Scouts.
How many presidents came out of Boy Scouting?
I know Eisenhower.
Gerald Ford was a Eagle Scout, I believe.
Okay, I know there were several out of Boy Scouting, like astronauts.
I know there were a ton of astronauts, like limitless governors and senators, CEOs.
We can get a list of the most famous Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts.
And for those that don't know, in Boy Scouting, oh, Mikey McCoy is also an Eagle Scout, too.
We got three Eagles.
You know, what are the chances of that?
I'm looking up famous Eagle Scouts.
Do we have any more?
Do we have more Eagle Scouts around here?
You're another Eagle Scout?
Is that Dallin?
Is that Dallin?
That's awesome.
That's four Eagle Scouts in the office.
That's why this place is so well run and clean.
I'll just stop it.
I'll just stop there.
Is that only four in the office?
That's actually super impressive.
You know, I think it's like less than 1% of 1% of people that enter Scouts actually end up becoming 1 or 2% of scouts, I think.
Yeah.
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Okay, I want to get to our next question here, but just those that are not in Scouting know that there is a huge emphasis in scouting on acting ethically.
If I were to say the biggest thing, it was that you must be a good person before everything else.
Exactly.
Would you agree that it's like really almost beat into you?
It is ingrained into you.
Like you must tell the truth that you being a good person is the most important thing to being a successful person, yes.
The scouts law that we just recited, right?
And from the Eagle Scout project to the way that you conduct yourself.
And I asked the question.
You know what's not in the scout law?
Nice.
It never says a scout is nice.
No, it never says a scout is nice.
I like that.
That's true.
It does say it's just cheerful.
Cheerful?
Kind.
Those are similar, but they are not nice.
I love that.
And someone says here, Rex Tillerson killed the Boy Scouts of America.
That's interesting.
Didn't he run the Boy Scouts of America?
Did he?
I know Secretary of Senator Trump.
Gates ran it.
Not Bill Gates.
Robert Gates.
Did Tillerson do it?
But I know that they were slammed with a bunch of lawsuits because of the sexual abuse stuff.
I know that was the case.
I know that they had floods and floods of lawsuits, but they have ruined scouts.
And it is honestly one of the no-spin, no BS tragedies because it has proven to produce very good people.
And now where do young men go to get developed?
I guess the organization that Caleb mentioned.
Okay, I mean, you just get things like they join like jiu-jitsu gyms and stuff.
Like those are the places they go to get like male companionship, which is good.
Yeah, it's fine.
But it's not what's great about Boy Scouts is like everything fit together.
It was skills and it was like a positive male space and it promoted kind of traditional values without having to be like sectarian, so to speak.
It was just everything about it was good.
So of course it had to be killed.
Yeah, and just to add on to that, there's a system too.
The Boy Scouts had a system that worked and they decided to destroy it.
That's what the left does.
Okay, let's get to the next question here.
It is Lisi, who is a member.
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Okay, Lisi, thank you for being a member.
What is on your mind?
Thank you so much, Charlie.
My question is, what are your thoughts on the recent confirmation and announcement of the Department of Labor salary threshold increases and the FTC ban on non-compete agreements?
And how do we combat that?
It's a wonderful question.
Thank you, Lisi.
I'm going to hand this off to Mr. Blake because you actually flagged this.
I asked the question, and you can, is this even legal?
Can the federal government ban contractual agreements between employers and employees?
I've definitely sensed that it seems like an overreach for the FTC to come out and say, like, oh, we've decided this is illegal now.
It is a huge reach to just say, oh, like Congress created this and we just realized this interpreting the law or this is within the scope of what the FTC does.
I did ask a pretty prominent leader in like the tech space what the impact of this would be.
And what I will say is he didn't seem to think it would be that bad.
And I can see an argument for this.
Coercive Non-Compete Agreements00:06:30
He pointed out that non-competes like in tech, for example, are very much a way of entrenching the big competitor, like the big established players because they say like, oh, you can't leave and start your own company ever.
It varies from place to place how legitimate that would be.
But by its very nature, non-competes favor entrenched actors.
They're already banned in some states.
But how would they even get the idea that they can get between private contract law?
Well, I mean, we have the Commerce Clause, which is the most elastic clause in the U.S. Constitution.
So if you have any company that does any business between more than one state, the government can basically do whatever they want.
Like all of the civil rights acts are justified by the Commerce Clause.
You know, they can do things like ban you from raising chickens, like growing wheat on your own farm to feed your own chickens because in some tangential way, that would involve interstate commerce.
So if you think of it that way, they can probably ban non-compete contracts for a large company.
I think a lot of people are freaking out about this.
I suspect it could easily get tossed out.
I don't know if it would necessarily be a bad thing if it became law or like the worst thing in the world if it became law.
I don't like it as an employer.
I mean, you should be able to come to an agreement with your employees, right?
Well, okay, but it's like clearly it's like a relatively coercive agreement.
Like you can never leave and do your own company if you work for us, which is a lot of how this works.
Like a lot of non-competes say, you cannot work in this industry if you leave this company.
That's kind of a dark demand to me.
But two thoughts on this.
Number one is that they do agree to it, right?
So, but you might say, well, they will.
Okay, but like by that standard, let's do an extreme example.
Should we allow like a boss to say like, you have to sleep with me at this job or you can't work here?
That's an agreement.
Well, no, you would probably quit, right?
Well, but what if you need to work this job or you'll be homeless or it's paired with a non-compete so you can't work in the same industry?
That sounds awfully Marxist, right?
I know.
It's like, you must have the job so you're coercive to it.
Think of it the other way, like saying you can't like leave and compete somewhere else.
Let's play this out because I'm less concerned about non-competes.
What about NDAs?
Blake, you could agree NDAs shouldn't be obliterated.
Yeah, I mean, probably not.
I mean, that's a lot less restrictive and coercive than I think.
Or how about non-disparagements?
I think that makes sense because that is a contract related to your conduct with this employer.
Yes.
Whereas a non-compete is essentially saying you, it's a coercive impact on your ability to work somewhere else, to leave and do work with another company.
Right, but they signed it voluntarily.
I hear what you're saying.
Yes, but again.
Is the FTC going to just shorten the horizon on it or just get rid of them altogether?
I think their idea is to essentially ban them entirely.
I haven't read the exact details of it.
But I think you can already cover this.
A lot of the justification for it is like, oh, they would take your tech and then leave and steal it.
But there are other ways to restrict that.
You know, you have trademark copyright patent law.
All of those things exist already.
Let's take the example for the Google self-driving cars in Uber.
Remember?
That turned into this huge.
I don't know if you remember that massive lawsuit with capital indictments.
Yes.
Yeah.
But he was under non-compete and he just broke it.
And then it turned into this huge thing.
I guess how do you then enforce it just through trademark?
Because a lot of the trademarks sometimes is the person.
That's true.
Because you're trademarking a person.
They've been there for a decade.
You're pouring into them.
And then they just leave and go to.
So I guess.
You see what I'm saying?
You almost become an asset of the company at that point.
Yeah, I guess I'm just, I'm always wary of anything that's justified.
I'm like, oh, it's a contract.
Yet the impact of it is to give enormous power to what are already the entrenched established actors.
Like, there are a ton of contracts that we don't allow.
And then to say, like, oh, this thing is protected by like the sanctity of contract.
And it's the one that says, oh, if you work for this company, you can never leave and still work in the same field.
Like the amount of power that gives to someone.
And like, yeah, they agree to it, but they're the entrenched actor.
And so you get a cyclical thing where like, oh, you can only work at this one monopolistic company if you're in this field.
And the reason that they're the ones who are the monopoly in this field is because they force everyone who works for them to sign a contract that they can never form a competitor.
Yeah, Google or like, okay, if I work at Salesforce.
Oh, yeah, or any company or like, let's say an AI company.
And you're like, I work at this AI company and I sign a contract that I can never leave and work at a different AI company or start my own AI company.
And to say like you can't sign, like to say that you can sign a contract that restricts your future freedom of action that sharp of a hole.
I think some nuance is important.
Let's say that you buy a company and you're purchasing the assets and the essentially the contracts.
Can't you do a non-compete with the CEO so that the CEO doesn't leave and compete against the company just lost?
That might still be allowed as part of that.
That's okay.
That would, I think, be reasonable.
You give the CEO 50 million bucks and he's going to go turn around and compete against it.
That would be reasonable, I think.
And I think that might still be allowed in the FTCs.
I'd have to double charge.
All right, well, then it's not as like making a non-compete as part of like a purchase agreement or something large like that, as opposed to a condition of employment is that you just can't leave.
It feels very dark to me to say that that level.
Ryan says C-levels were not part of this.
That's what I'm thinking.
Because I mean, at least from, I mean, just here locally in Phoenix, there was a huge non-compete lawsuit with restaurants.
A huge restaurant tour got his whole thing bought and like, you can't do any new restaurants.
He's like, eh, I am.
And he went and did restaurants.
And they paid him like hundreds of millions of dollars for his restaurants.
And so you could see where that tension is.
Yeah, I feel like at the least, like getting rid of non-competes doesn't kill businesses.
And they still have a lot of startups in California without them, despite California being a horrible state in a million other ways for business.
So probably not the end of the world to get rid of them.
I understand why people would oppose them.
I also understand or would oppose the ban.
But I don't think it necessarily should be a knee-jerk thing.
I think you can make a pro-capitalism, pro-free market argument for restricting them.
That said, I do think Congress should pass a law rather than Lena Khan coming out and just saying, I'm going to blow this up.
I mean, I just don't trust the administrative state because they're going to go after NDAs.
Avoiding Kashmir Intervention00:05:41
Not at all.
Yeah, they're going to go after NDAs next.
Yeah.
And NDAs, I think, should be protected, without a doubt.
Would you agree?
Yeah, I think so.
You think so?
Well, it's all silly now where we get this song and dance where you'll have an NDA and then someone will come out and say, like, I want to say something, but I can't because of the NDA.
And they do that stupid PR assault to force them to waive the NDA.
And it's like, well, why do the NDAs exist then?
Yeah, I guess, but they're still not breaking it.
They would do that with Weinstein.
I think Weinstein was like pressured into waiving all of his NDAs or something.
Did he?
I don't know if he did.
Someone did.
So you've had celebrities be pressured into doing it.
It's all like BS.
Members.charliekirk.com.
That's members.charliekirk.com.
Let me, let's get to Vasant, who I'm glad I have my partner here, Blake, to help me through this because I do not know how to answer.
I know very little about this.
Vasant, thank you for being a member.
What's on your mind?
Hi.
Can you hear me?
Yes, I can.
Thank you for being a member.
Yeah, hi.
I really like what you do.
And your podcasts are very informative.
So I just wanted to start with that.
So I had a question regarding your stance on the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir.
Obviously, this is an issue that's been debated.
And obviously, this has been an issue that has been brought up by many senators and congressmen and congresswomen in America.
Obviously, with me, this is a very important issue to me because my ancestors were actually driven out of their homes in Jammu and Kashmir and they were victims of Islamist settler colonization.
And when I see politicians like Elon Omer and many other U.S. politicians saying that India is illegally occupying the land and saying that the U.S. should encourage for the, you know, the encouragement of the freedom of demonstration and the free will for Kashmiris, it really hits a nerve with me.
So I wanted to know what is the conservative talking point on this conflict and what should what stand should the U.S. take?
And you personally, I know you don't know too much about this conflict, but I want to know what your take on this conflict is and obviously who you think the land rightfully belongs to.
Thank you for your support and for that question.
So I first, I'm going to let Blake just take some time and walk through exactly what we're talking about here.
It is not a everyday American topic, but it's a very important one geopolitically.
So Blake, educate the audience on that.
Okay, so he's talking about, and feel free to correct me if he's still here if I screw anything up, because I'm certainly not an expert on it.
So Jammu and Kashmir, they're a region in the northern Indian subcontinent.
It's a disputed region between India and Pakistan.
So it's kind of, it's, like I said, far north, kind of near the Himalayas.
It's basically split between them.
So about half that territory is currently administered by Pakistan and about half is administered by India.
It fits into the wider conflict because there are people in Kashmir who want to be independent.
There are people who would like to be part of Pakistan, people who would like to be part of India.
It's become a little more fraught recently because I think it had a special legal status in India where other Hindu Indians in the rest of the country couldn't buy land there, I believe.
And they've recently revised that so that they're able to move there and it's a more normal part of India.
Lots of drama.
What I would say, my personal kind of take on it is, is a person can have whatever opinion they want on it.
I definitely, in the grand scheme of things, like India more than I like Pakistan for a lot of reasons that I think are understandable.
I think obvious.
Yeah, and obvious.
So by disposition, India is an exciting country.
India is an exciting country.
It's going well.
I don't know if thriving democracy is like exciting.
Yeah, it's exciting.
They're growing and they're prospering and they're kind of moving in a more pro-U.S. way.
So I like them overall.
That said, on the specifics of the Kashmir question, I think this is a classic case of a question the U.S. should not be getting too involved in because it is literally on the other side of the planet.
And there are people who care a lot more about it than we ever will.
And it's just, it's not crucial to U.S. security.
And I think the last 40 years of U.S. history have shown us the perils of repeatedly getting invested in territorial disputes on the far side of the planet.
Like even, you know, like with Russia-Ukraine.
We've never said there is not a right or wrong side in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
I think we're sympathetic towards Ukrainians, that they're being invaded.
And Putin should not have invaded.
Putin should not have invaded.
But I would just say it is not a thing that America should be getting invested in to a massive degree.
It gets us, you get embroiled in other people's troubles.
It gets very morally fraught.
You just get involved in too much stuff.
That's my advice.
Just to be clear, if the State Department allows India to defend itself, India will probably be very successful.
Yeah, India, I think, is a country.
India is capable of taking care of itself.
Yes.
And we should be friends with great military, but they could if they wanted to.
We should be friendly with them.
We should continue to cultivate our friendly status with them because I do agree they're more sympathetic than Pakistan.
But I don't think that America should be investing its diplomatic weight in one side of a question that is probably relatively intractable.
Thank you for your support.
Churches Going Woke00:03:17
Really appreciate it.
Members.charliekirk.com.
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Another important component is Pakistan allegedly was supposed to help us with a war in terror, but then they were safe harboring Osama bin Laden.
And then they maybe sold him out.
Like that's one of the conspiracies is they, that, you know, all of the story of how we found him is fake and Pakistan just said, yeah, there he is.
They play habzies.
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All right, let's go to Daniel.
Daniel, thank you for being a member.
What is on your mind?
Yes.
Knowing that Gen X and the boomer generation tends to get most collective at churches.
If you had a chance to speak at a conference for thousands of church leaders, what topic would you speak on?
Well, thank you.
I would talk about their need to speak about what's happening in the country and why they should be biblical in their approach and be unafraid of being called political.
That's what I would say.
So I think church leaders need to speak out.
They need to be morally clear in these confusing times, resist tyranny, and defend liberty.
That is what I would say, definitely.
So you have a conference in mind, Daniel?
For the first time in a long time, I'm going to the Willow Creek one as an attendee, not as a speaker, but I would curious on what, if you were a speaker there, what would you be speaking on?
Interestingly, I'm so glad you mentioned that.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.
I would passively attend Willow Creek Community Church.
And when Bill Heibels was still there, they have their global leadership conference or their summit, which I think is what you're talking about.
They have gone very woke, Daniel, as I'm sure you know.
And I'm glad you're going, by the way.
You should go there and be salt and light and be influenced, meet as many people as you can.
So I'm super thrilled you're going.
But they have gone very, very woke, and they did for quite some time.
And that's honestly one of the reasons why I think that church fell apart.
And Willow Creek is largely responsible for the corporatization of the modern American church.
They were through their global leadership summit, they kind of presented this model: like, hey, go borrow a bunch of money, get huge buildings, try to get as many people as possible, you know, dilute the gospel message.
I think it did a lot of damage.
So, Daniel, God bless you, man, and send me an email how it goes at that Global Leadership Summit.
Really appreciate that.
Members.charliekirk.com.
How about this one?
Charlie, I can't join the call today, but I listen to every single episode.
Only Blake, I think, and Andrew can say that you listen to every equality control them all, right?
Daisy takes some of them, but I guess this person listens to more than you.
It's quite possible.
Improving Poll Data00:09:29
Huge conversation happening right now about celebrities going to the Met Gala and showing off their wealth while everyday Americans can't pay for their groceries.
While a conservative, I can see the issue of, quote, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
Where should we stand?
Well, so look, I don't think as a conservative, it should be a contradiction.
You have to just be very clear, first and foremost, that that is the perfect image of the modern left and the super rich oligarchs and the government-dependent poor.
That is their coalition: super-rich oligarchs and the government-dependent poor.
Tickets were $75,000 a piece, is what I'm told to the Met Gala, $75,000 apiece.
Now, not everyone had to pay, but some were invited, and some people did indeed pay.
But this is important: the American middle class is being destroyed.
According to Zillow.com, it required to buy a home about $75,000 a year when Donald Trump ended his presidency.
I'm approximating.
Now it's over $120,000 to $130,000 a year to purchase a home.
Everything is more expensive, and the middle class is being destroyed largely because of how much money we're printing.
You have a thought on that, Blake?
I think it's immoral for rich people to be rich and to do things, but I would say Tucker has talked about this too.
It's sort of from a prudential point of view, which is if you're going to live it up, you should be aware of what the state of your country is and how it will appear to people.
And if you have extreme, lavish, over-the-top displays, opulence, displays of wealth in a country that has a sense of being in decay, that will, the public is going to take a jaundiced eye towards that.
They're going to not like it.
People can be proud.
Like in a more healthy society, people are kind of like, they enjoy the lives of like the rich and famous and they, you know, they'll be okay with it.
But if their sense is like, these people are living great and laughing at us.
And yeah, and they're just getting really rich at my expense, they're going, that's how you get this like pre-revolutionary ferment where people want to burn it all down.
And we don't want to burn it all down.
That's the important thing.
And also, I think we have to be honest.
Like, how are some of the, how is the wealth gravitating upwards?
And it's not in natural ways.
It is artificial government intervention that's happened.
For sure.
And that makes it worse too.
It's sort of, that's why Teddy Roosevelt was a great president.
It was that he could look at an America that was fabulously wealthy and getting wealthier, but say, if we don't curb excesses, there will be like a revolution in America.
And we don't want that because America is a great country.
And I think you want to have that attitude with your wealthy people, that they should think we can live well, but we have some obligations towards the country.
And some of that can be as simple as at least some of the wealth should be very publicly directed.
And I think one thing that stinks with our rich people is like their charitable endeavors are often kind of uninspiring.
Like, you know, you just feed $500 million into this left-wing activist group that then erects encampments in your cities.
Andrew Carnegie spent a billion dollars building libraries, and they're all so beautiful that, you know, 80% of them are still standing today.
And they're city halls.
My city hall in Sioux Falls when I was growing up was a Carnegie library that they converted.
And I think you'd want wealthy people to put a lot of cash into beautifying things that the public can appreciate.
And I think America feels really great when we're able to see that, when you have the most beautiful things in your society are open to the public, accessible to the public.
Yeah, and in addition to that, that's why I have so much respect for Elon Musk, is that Elon Musk has deployed a huge portion of his net worth for something that is not just Met Gala, you know, opulence, right?
Again, I have no problem with if you earned your money, spend it how you want, but be very careful about the message it sends to people if they're struggling and then they're in pain when you are doing nothing to save them.
And Elon Musk buying Twitter and liberating it has been one of the great charitable moral goods.
Like he's not making money off.
Yeah, I mean, it's he might in the future, by the way.
Yeah.
But it's a huge moral good for humanity.
Massive.
Massive.
Okay, everybody, let's get to the next member question here.
Shelly, you do a great job responding to questions of presenting your points, Charlie, to liberal college kids.
But I noticed that some of them are also pretty good at debating you.
I agree.
The question is: are you seeing changes for the better in students on campus where you have visited these past few years?
Do you see college students becoming more and more open, more and more conservatives with results, yes?
We've been saying we've got to just keep repeating.
The data is actually really improving and we are doing really well.
But Blake, I think this is important that you visit a lot of these college campuses.
Some of the students are far better informed than your average 50-year-old.
Would that be fair?
Yeah, I think when they get really involved and really invested, they have the time.
And yeah, they're shockingly well informed.
They don't have to pay a mortgage.
Yeah.
And so we have to be on our feet a little nimble on every possible topic.
We have to be ready.
And some of them are just obviously like they're political operatives.
We had a guy with the Biden campaign, I believe, Washington.
And he was really like bombarding us with some stuff.
That was some back and forth.
Yes.
But also, it's not just that college students are getting more conservative.
It's that they're getting more openly conservative.
Like when you were doing your table at Washington, we had quite a group of guys who were just like directly standing against the anti-FIFA goons.
We've seen that trend.
And like, you know, they'll, for lack of a better term, dialogue with them as opposed to, they won't just stand in their way or scream at them.
They'll kind of like ridicule them or make ideological points.
And you just, I don't feel think people were brave enough to do that in 2019, 2020.
There was more of a fever over the country that made that feel dangerous.
And it still is somewhat dangerous, but people are standing up for themselves a lot more.
And I like that.
I agree.
And yes, some of the college students are super informed.
And so, by the way, some people say, oh, Charlie, you just go and debate college.
First of all, I'll debate anybody.
I've debated PhDs.
I've debated, you know, professors and politicians.
But your average college kid sometimes actually is more into it than an adult.
They have more time and they have more energy at times.
Okay, let's go to the next question here.
Let's go to Charlie Newmember here since 25 years, a legal alien with a fairly big business in Great America.
I live and breathe it every day, really worried about America.
Would be a lot cheaper and closer for me for my family to move to Russia, but I picked up to America for all the reasons you're fighting for every day.
Question, with all the polling data and predictions for the electoral votes with the Nebraska issue, will it get changed?
I've said before we feel very good about Nebraska.
Ask me in like end of June.
What did the polling look like?
Blake, this can be a great question for you.
What did the polling look like in 2020 compared to where it is now?
So that's a great question.
Donald Trump in May of 2020 was really in a hole.
He was really down and he came back towards the end.
I'm furious.
I'm looking at it now.
So just as an example, a legal alien.
I'm sorry.
But yes.
I'm just looking now at the Real Clear Politics average, for example, for Wisconsin in 2020.
And the Real Clear average when we were going into election day was that Biden was up 6.7 points.
There were individual polls.
Reuters had him up 10.
New York Times had him up 11.
CNBC had him up eight.
And the final result, officially, was that Biden won it by 0.7.
So it was off by six points in Trump's favor.
Still allegedly lost, but huge polling error.
So now if we check, let me check RCP, Wisconsin.
Chris Trump up average.
Blah, blah, blah.
Sorry, I got to look this crap up.
It shows Trump up like four points in Wisconsin.
0.5 points.
Wisconsin on the average, up five in Arizona.
Now, I want to be clear, though.
There's a chance, this is where I struggle.
Trump almost always overperforms the polls, but have the polls been getting better?
They have.
And that's important.
And they're sampling rules more.
You know what I'm saying?
And a concern I have, very often, I think conservatives have learned to be combative towards polls.
And the attitude you'll see is they'll believe the polls are like a form of propaganda.
Like they're structured to like, oh, they want to send the message.
Like, for example, they'll rig the poll so it looks like Biden's way up to demoralize us.
And then now maybe they're swinging our way because they want us overconfident.
There's a lot of different polling outfits.
My belief is most pollsters who are not like affiliated with a campaign, because there are polls like that, but most normal polls that you're going to see reported in the news, they are trying to get it right.
They want to be accurate because that is what their professional reputation is staked on.
There are fake polls at times, though.
There are fake polls, and polling error is real.
But I do believe that they consider it embarrassing that they whiffed so bad in 2020 in many states.
Are they overcorrect?
And they could be overcorrect.
However, a new Quinny Piak poll shows Biden up six in Wisconsin.
Exactly.
And they are a liberal-leaning pollster on average, I believe.
But it shows it too close to call if the third-party candidates are included.
So it's all over the place.
This race is a hard one to poll.
Let's forget, let's just kind of forget all the polling.
I think it's fair to say they're most worried that Trump is going to get hot and hotter and hotter closer to the election.
He finishes really well.
Yes.
And he finished well in 16.
He finished well in 20.
Meaning he just gets on message, and those last two weeks, it's like this theory that they just can't contain.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening and God bless.
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