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Nov. 29, 2024 - The Charlie Kirk Show
36:03
Is the Electoral College DEI? + Other Questions at the University of Pittsburgh with Vivek Ramaswamy

Enjoy another episode of Charlie's college encounters with Vivek Ramaswamy, where they navigate questions about the electoral college, war in the Middle East, climate change, and more.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello.
I have a disagreement with you guys.
I believe that the Electoral College is unjust and should be abolished.
And, Mr. Ramaswamy, I believe, since you ran for president, I would like to hear from you first.
Sure.
So, I think this is a common...
I know this is near and dear to Charlie's heart.
Oh, okay.
Let's start with that.
I think that is a great question, Esther.
I like that.
Let's start with that so I make sure I'm responding to the question.
What is the definition of justice?
Okay, so we talk a lot about like DEI programs and that sort of thing and people being, you know, unjustly put into these like positions.
I believe that the Electoral College is DEI for the Republican Party where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the presidency because of the Electoral College because it empowers rural states more by giving them the electoral votes.
Do you believe that the Senate is unjust?
I believe the Senate needs to exist.
Okay, so because that's the whole principle is that we don't just live in a direct democracy.
We live in a constitutional republic.
And that means a few things.
First is it means that we are really a union of states.
We're not just a random assemblage of geographic land masses called states that we call a union.
That means something where part of it is direct representative democracy.
But part of it is also making sure that states actually have a relative say in the process.
That's how you get the Senate versus the House to balance it out.
Same thing with respect to the history of the Electoral College.
This is about making sure that we're being thoughtful about the step of who's actually the U.S. president while channeling the Democratic will through the manner enshrined in our Constitution.
And here's the biggest difference between a republic and a democracy.
This is relevant to a lot of young people.
In a constitutional republic, it's not just about what you get.
In a democracy, you get a vote.
You think about what does it mean to be a citizen about what you get.
In a constitutional republic, it's also about what you give.
It's about your civic duty to your country.
And I think that part of what our founding fathers envisioned is we had voters who actually knew something about their country.
You know, every legal immigrant who comes to this country has to pass a civics test before they can vote.
Well, frankly, the sad truth is most voters would fail that if they took it today.
That would make our founding fathers roll over in their graves.
And so I think that we've got to get beyond this idea that we're some kind of direct democracy.
We're actually a republic where people have responsibilities and states actually have some level of distributed say to make sure that two cities in New York and California don't govern who actually leads the entire United States of America.
And I will push back.
Look at the current battleground states.
The blackest state in the country is getting a lot of attention because of the Electoral College, Georgia.
One of the most black states in the country, North Carolina, is getting a lot of attention.
Atlanta is one of the biggest metro areas in the country.
It would get attention whether or not they had the 16 electoral college votes.
The Republican Party has a cushion.
They have states like Wyoming that nobody lives in.
Well, let's be consistent.
It's three electoral votes.
First of all, 700,000 Americans live there, so let's not talk down to our fellow citizens.
Okay, but why does their vote, right?
Why does their vote go farther than mine, who's from Texas?
Hold on a second.
Rhode Island and Hawaii are small, and that helps Democrats, right?
Yeah, I think that's bad too.
Okay, got it.
But it doesn't just help Republicans.
What it does is it requires candidates, as Vivek aptly put it, to have a preference on states.
We are not a national project first and foremost.
We are a collection of sovereign states that come together as a national project.
And the founders wanted a decentralized way of doing elections.
And I think it's actually a really good thing that this state, which is incredibly diverse, Very difficult to be able to win will determine the entire election.
I think Pennsylvania is a great picture of the country, and you guys get a lot of attention because of it.
Now, you say, in Texas, well, in Texas, it actually might become a battleground state one day.
The thing about the Electoral College is that certain battleground states rise and certain fall.
Ohio used to be a battleground state.
Now Arizona's a battleground state.
Georgia never used to be a battleground state.
Now it is.
Florida used to be.
And so what the Electoral College does is it forces candidates to go into places outside of the coastal corridor and win over voters of the people that actually make the country work, such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan.
It doesn't answer the question, though, why somebody's vote in somewhere like Wyoming, which has three votes for 70,000 people versus Texas's- 700,000.
700,000 versus Texas's 38 for 30 million.
That doesn't make any sense.
Well, that's actually proportional, though, because- No, it's not.
It is proportional because, okay, then would you get rid of Wyoming as statehood?
To be consistent, should Wyoming exist as a state?
Absolutely.
But their vote should be the same as mine.
So I got a solution to this.
Apology Electoral College.
Well, it's not the one that I made.
It's the solution that our founding fathers made, which is that if we don't like that in the United States of America, we got a way to change it.
It's a constitutional amendment.
So you agree with me?
I don't agree with you because I wouldn't vote for it.
But if your view is that this is anti-democratic, there's a way to change it.
If three quarters of people in this country wanted to change it, that would change in an instant.
And so there's a mechanism to go through it.
So just like the gentleman earlier who was founding a movement, there could be a movement that says we want a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college, but they haven't managed to convince enough people in this country that it's worth it.
And the reason why is there was actually a justification for it.
It turns out that most people, when they think about it, actually do land where Charlie and I do on a popular vote basis across the country.
That wouldn't be a weighted vote, by the way.
So you're talking about actually overturning it through the constitutional amendment.
Then Wyoming doesn't actually get more votes.
You're talking about just three quarters of the overall states and three quarters of the vote in Congress, which is proportional representation.
So there's a way to fix it that our founding fathers...
I mean, these guys were geniuses.
They had built that into the system.
I agree.
I love my country.
I'm a patriot.
Yeah, if you convince your citizens, then maybe that will be true 50 years from now.
But we don't believe that majoritarian ways of doing elections is the best way.
Why not?
Well, because we're not an up-or-down majoritarian democracy.
We're a decentralized country of states first.
And I'll keep on saying that.
That sovereign states matter.
That's what makes us different than France and Germany and Belgium and the United Kingdom.
Is that we're a bottom-up form of government, not a top-down form of government.
Germany also has strong state governments.
Not as much.
Actually, during COVID, when edicts were done in Germany, it was straight from the centralized government.
No, it's like they did not have provinces.
Like, Bavaria did not have a different COVID policy than, you know, Berlin.
They didn't have...
In America, COVID was a great example of why we have decentralized states.
States were able to make different decisions.
California lost their mind.
I don't disagree with you on this.
I love our country.
What I'm saying is...
You haven't addressed why somebody in Wyoming should matter more on the electoral college basis than me in Texas.
It makes no sense.
I reject the framing.
One person, one vote.
No, it's never been that way, though.
Not in presidential elections.
Okay.
No, it's not.
One person, one vote is a majoritarian democracy.
Okay.
Instead, it's the states get appropriated.
But you haven't told me why that's better.
You've told me that- I'm attempting to.
As I said, we're a bottom-up government, not a top-down government.
It decentralizes power.
It also requires leaders, as I've said, to hear the needs, wants, and concerns.
We're not going to agree here, and that's fine.
So I'll give you an image.
Unfortunately, I can't show you the image right now, but you can look it up.
Somebody made this image of what the electoral map could look like if the Electoral College was abolished.
You would have two blue dots, one around New York, And one around the west coast of California.
The entire rest of the map of the United States of America...
I'm from Texas.
I can assure you there would be several blue blots there.
But I'm saying that in theory, you could have an election where it would just be those two blue blots and the rest of the entire map is red, and you would still have an outcome where you would have a blue president of the United States.
Yes.
And it could be in reverse too.
And so the answer is that would feel unjust for a lot of those other states that deserve to actually be respected as states in the union.
We have the Senate and the House for the same reason that we have the Electoral College.
We need to balance the way in which those sovereign states are still a part of the union.
I know you may not find that persuasive.
That's the reason.
But if you convince other people across the country, you'd be able to overturn it in a constitutional amendment.
It's just that that hasn't happened in the first 240 years of our constitutional founding.
Thank you very much.
Hi, Mr. Rumswami.
Hi, Mr. Kirk.
So, my name is Brandon.
Oh, boy.
There's a lot of folk back there.
They don't like you very much.
We'll find out.
My main disagreement with you guys, at least in my opinion, would be I think you guys are a bit of isolationists.
Would you call yourselves isolationists?
I would not.
Would you, Charlie?
We're America first, not America only.
So, could you elaborate on that position?
I was about to.
Okay, sorry.
We're America first, but not America only.
And here's what that means.
I'm not an interventionist.
I think our foreign policy should reflect whatever best advances America's interests.
Now, I'll just summarize this in a punchline because we've got a lot of questions to get to.
Is it in America's interest to provide protection and security guarantees to allies?
It often is.
But I have one rule of thumb.
You've got to ask them to pay for it.
At least their fair share.
I'm against the nanny state domestically, but I've got to be consistent.
I'm against the nanny state internationally, too.
And I'll give you NATO as one example of that, all right?
Most of the countries in NATO do not pay for the minimum amount they've already agreed to pay in the Treaty of NATO, 2% of their GDP on military expense for their own national defense.
They're not doing it today.
Germany is arbitraging the United States of America.
And I think that's wrong.
And I think that Uncle Sam has become Uncle Sucker.
Uncle Sucker no more.
And you know what?
That's not just for the money.
People think I say this for the money.
The money matters.
We have $34 trillion in national debt.
It's going to fall on your generation's shoulder, heavier than that backpack you're wearing by the time you grow up.
I appreciate that.
So it's already heavy.
You're feeling the burden of it.
But it's not just for the money.
Other nations are more likely to start wars when they don't bear the full cost of those wars.
It's a concept that you call moral hazard in economics where you don't bear the full burden of the risks that you take.
So it's not just your taxpayer money.
It's not even me and Charlie would be long gone before most of you, okay?
It's your future money and your future national debt, but it's not just that.
It's more likely to drag you into a war because some other country doesn't have the incentive to bear the cost if the United States is subsidizing it.
That's my answer.
I'm America first.
I'm not an isolationist, but I do think that those who we support should pay their fair share, and that's not too much to ask.
Okay, so I would say it's very interesting that you say that because I am personally an interventionist.
I believe in the idea that we are the city on the hill, we're the beacon, we're also the world police, and in that role we should maintain a world that has Here's what I'll
say, a lot of Republicans Might agree with you, Charlie, and I don't.
I understand.
I understand, yeah.
Dick Cheney definitely agrees with you.
No, but really, I'm just curious.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, parts of Syria, Ukraine, do you think those are successes?
So I would say it would depend on how you grade a success, but I would say particularly Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is the key failing point.
Although Iraq is somewhat stable, it's kind of a moderate case.
It's controlled by Iraq.
Yeah, so it's moderate, right?
But for Afghanistan, that's the real failure.
And that's where I think the Biden administration really failed, and that that exit strategy was not operated poorly.
We shouldn't have left in the first place.
We should have made sure that the government was ready and willing to actually be able to take care of the people.
Let's see if we can agree on something.
If you had to choose, and you don't, but if you had to choose, should the American border matter more than wars abroad?
I would say it should matter as equal.
It should equal.
Really?
Yeah.
You think that our border should matter as much as something happening overseas?
I think our status as a world power, as the superpower of the world, is not just that we have borders here domestically, but we have borders abroad that are, I guess you could say, more ephemeral or whatever.
They are still—our border with Russia, for example, with NATO, that is still a border that we should be paying attention— We are.
I just believe that Germany needs to be paying more.
100%.
Yes, yes, yes.
So that's where I agree.
We probably want to go to the next question.
We could go all day on this.
We're pulling in.
We love this topic.
But I love you.
I mean, I had hope for you, Vivek.
But, like, I'm a Democrat personally, but, like, and I'm sorry, you know, whatever.
But I'm Catholic, and, you know, it's whatever.
But basically, I just think that you were so good.
Your foreign policy is what turned me off.
But I will say, as someone who is an interventionist, you have found your home.
The Democrat Party is the party of reckless war and invading foreign lands.
Hey, you know what?
And turning the back on the American people.
So you're right.
Hey, look, I'll take it.
He's a lot more honest than a lot of politicians.
No, no, no.
I'm not saying it sarcastically.
I mean, you're at home.
It's honest.
I'll be realistic.
I'm not going to lie.
Our party thinks Iraq was a mistake, Libya was a mistake, Syria was a mistake, Afghanistan was a mistake.
We're able to have a serious conversation because you're actually honest about it.
A lot of Republicans and Democrats try to pretend otherwise, and I appreciate the honesty.
Yeah, I think that's the main problem with politics.
Lack of honesty.
Thank you.
We love you guys.
We love you guys.
Thank you, man.
Hey, you said you disagree or you think the climate change agenda is a hoax.
I'd like to hear more about that and why.
Yeah, so there's...
Let me give you several different questions to answer because sometimes the media just mix them all up into one.
Question number one, are global surface temperatures going up?
Answer, yes.
Yes.
Number two, is that due to man-made causes less clear?
Which man-made causes is due to carbon dioxide?
Far from certain.
I can explain why.
It's only.04% of the atmosphere.
There's actually stronger arguments for H2O having more of a greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide.
But the most important question is the one that nobody's talking about.
Are we sure or do we have any evidence that those rising temperatures are bad for human beings?
Yes.
And the answer to that is no.
Dry areas are getting dry.
Wet areas are getting wet.
Let me ask you a quick question about the polar ice caps melting.
True or false?
The Antarctic ice coverage has gone up in the last hundred years.
False.
It's just a blatant factual.
I wrote an entire book about this coming out next week.
Antarctic ice coverage.
As you've seen polar ice caps melting in the Arctic, you've actually seen expansion of Antarctic ice coverage.
Now, here's a further fact.
Do more people die of cold temperatures or warm ones?
Cold temperatures.
Okay, how many more people die of cold temperatures than warm ones?
I can't tell you, but I know it's more cold temperatures.
It's about eight times as many people.
So for every one person who dies of a warm temperature, eight times as many people die of a cold temperature.
Is there more green surface area covering the earth today than there was a hundred years ago?
More or less today?
Less.
False.
There's actually more green surface area.
It's not even close.
I don't expect you to know all this because I write a book.
It's coming out next week.
I've researched this stuff.
I don't expect you to know this off the top of your head.
But the reason why is it was actually predictable.
Carbon dioxide is plant food.
And plants tend to grow in warmer atmospheres than in cooler ones.
So 40 years ago we used to teach kids in the country that deforestation was a main problem.
The reason that's disappeared is that we're not seeing deforestation as a problem.
We're seeing a greening effect from the planet.
And the thing they used to worry about 50 years ago back then was that we were actually going to die of an ice age because more human beings have died of ice ages than they've died from warm temperatures ever.
We're currently in an ice age.
Well, the reality is more people are dying as a consequence of that, so why on earth are we worried if global surface temperatures go up one degree over the next century?
That's really where the climate change agenda ends up being a hoax.
Here's another reason it's a hoax.
The very people who are most opposed to fossil fuels in the United States are also among those who are the biggest opponents to nuclear energy, the greatest form of carbon-free energy production known to mankind.
The very people who, like BlackRock, who have called for emissions caps in the United States at companies like Chevron are perfectly fine supporting greater emissions in places like China at companies like PetroChina.
When you're talking about actual global warming, it has no net effect if you burn it in the United States versus China.
China has burned more coal last year than they ever have in their history.
Well, we burned less coal than we ever did in our history.
So that's a hoax.
And who benefits from this hoax?
It's the CCP. China's laughing at us at every step of the way.
So you're saying we're not running out of fossil fuels?
I'm saying that we're not running out of fossil fuels.
Not even close.
We only discovered like 10% of fossil fuels.
And that's why the argument against fossil fuels in the 80s used to be that we're running out.
Now you don't actually hear that from popular science anymore because they realize they're actually finding more fossil fuels.
Now it's actually global warming has become the justification.
Let me just say a word about this.
We've got two questions on this.
So what's going on?
If they say it was ice age, now it's warming.
Before they said it's running out.
Now it's not that we're running out.
It's climate change.
What the heck's going on?
I think this has become a substitute for a modern religion.
I think at a moment where we stop believing in our country and believing in God, we start believing in this new climate God instead.
And, you know, every religion has this tradition of wearing a hair shirt or flogging yourself.
This is the modern secular version of flogging ourselves and apologizing for our success in the West while China's laughing at us every at every step of the way, catching up.
They have a word for this in China.
It's called baitsuo.
It doesn't apply to you and I, but it refers to literally progressive left white people in the United States.
And they use it to laugh at us.
And I do think that that's exactly what this climate change agenda is all about.
Thank you, my man.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Hey, guys.
So I'm a grad student here getting my master's in security intelligence to work in DC and finance and stuff like that.
So I have a question for you guys.
So across many of the sectors, I've noticed a lot of an increase in cyber attacks from nation states and other groups responsible of transnational crime.
How can the Trump administration help assist with that?
Because it's attacking our infrastructure of our hospitals, it's attacking our banking system, our ATM machines.
So I'd like to know, what do you think the good strategy is in mind for that and your guys personal thoughts on that?
I'll go quick on this so we can get another question.
Yeah, so we're really good at offensive cyber.
We're really bad at defensive cyber protection.
So the answer is actually we need greater training in the United States of America of people who actually have the talents required to power greater cybersecurity.
We're not doing that today.
When it relates to AI, so much focus on investing in new algorithms, not enough in actually applying AI. More of that focus in college education.
You've got to do a master's program.
Hopefully that's part of it right here at UPIT. It's a talent gap in the United States, and I think we can fix it.
Thank you, man.
Cool.
Yep.
Hi, guys.
I hope you guys are doing well.
So, yeah.
My question is that in today's political climate, do you guys believe that anyone can actually be truly centrist today?
In today's – centrist, like exactly like 50-50.
See, I don't like the word centrist.
I'll tell you why.
It assumes that there's two poles, that there's a left over here, there's a right over here, it's one axis, and then there's some middle.
I just don't think the political spectrum works that way, actually.
Just think about the things we talked about.
Foreign wars.
There's a bipartisan consensus in favor of him.
There's a bipartisan consensus against him.
Effects of mega money in politics.
There's one way.
There's the other way.
So I don't think it's just this, like, left, right, and then there's centrist.
I also think that centrism can be a fake kind of siren song where I don't want to unite just the people in front of the 30-yard line on each side and bring them in the middle, hold hands, and sing Kumbaya.
We want to unite.
I know Donald Trump wants this.
He wants to unite the whole country.
And I think that includes people who we deeply disagree with.
So I think what we have to embrace more of in the country is not pretending like we all agree on this narrow band of questions and ignore everybody else.
We disagree like hell, but we're still citizens of the same nation at the end of it.
What if they're not agreeing on one thing, but it's like you have the same amount of viewpoints that are economically left and economically right, and the same thing with social views.
You have just the same amount, like 50-50 amount.
What would you classify yourself then as, like, if you were having those viewpoints?
You know, I'm independent-minded, pro-American, free-thinking.
I mean, that's what our founding fathers were.
And I'm fine.
I mean, I think it's kind of cool.
If you're 18 or 19 or 20 years old and don't want to call yourself a Republican or Democrat, that's great.
Use your time to be unshackled.
I voted Libertarian in my first election when I was about 19 years old.
I was, you know, back in 2004. So do you think it's worth voting for a third-party candidate, then?
So I've...
I believe in pragmatism at this point in time.
If you're voting to make a point for yourself, that's one thing.
If you're voting to actually make for a better country, make the choice between the two candidates on the ballot.
Pick the one who you think is going to be better at sealing the border, growing the economy, staying out of World War III, and reviving national pride in this country.
Whoever you think that's going to be, vote for them and have a good sense of who that's going to be.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Jeez Louise.
Try to talk right into the mic, please.
All righty.
Hey, Charlie.
How's your tea, first of all?
My tea?
Yes.
That's good.
Thank you.
All right.
So, first of all, I'd like to ask why you're spending your time debating college students instead of people who have similar media training or experience to you.
I mean...
It's already been asked.
Are you a voter?
I am.
Yeah.
We're talking to voters in the key state of Pennsylvania.
Should we not do that?
I mean, I'm fine with you doing that.
It just seems a little bit asymmetric.
Well, we want to win the election, right?
So do a lot of conservatives come to this campus?
Not really.
Well, that's why we're here.
Okay?
All right.
So if you want to talk about something else, you've both had conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on your podcast.
Charlie, you've had him at Turning Point Action.
Alex is great.
Yeah, Alex is great.
Okay.
So I have a couple of things that Alex has explicitly stated that he's believed.
That's going to be a waste of our time.
I'm not going to agree with everything he's ever said.
Okay, I'd like you to at least hear some of these.
He's a divinely inspired prophet in a battle against the literal devil, the evidence for which is that he knows when he wakes up on time.
I don't agree with that.
Can I just ask you a question?
Do you believe in talking to people who disagree with you or not?
I believe in talking to people who disagree with you.
You seem to think that he's enough of a, you know, paragon for the conservative cause to have him at your conference.
Hold on a second.
Alex Jones has been right about major issues for the last 20 years.
Jeffrey Epstein being number one.
For ten years, Alex Jones was saying that there is a child sex trafficking ring being run to an island in the Caribbean with very shady actors and people call them a conspiracy theorist.
Was Jeffrey Epstein a correct story that Alex Jones broke?
He didn't break it first.
Well, no.
He was way ahead of the curve.
Alex Jones was on the Jeffrey Epstein story for a decade.
Was he ahead of the curve with Sandy Hook?
No, I think that was the worst mistake of his career.
He also said so, by the way.
By the way, I'm not a defender of everything he's ever done.
Vivek, you've said that you've been sympathetic towards him about the Sandy Hook lawsuit and that he was being, quote, set up.
I actually challenged him on it.
The first time we sat down, I never met the guy who was in Texas.
I've listened to your debate.
You do not challenge him.
Actually, people should listen to the podcast I held with him.
The first time I ever met him, we're in Texas.
I said, what was going on with that?
He actually was surprised.
I expected him to be defensive.
He said, that was a big mistake I made.
Have you listened to his show after?
Because he's gone back on that.
He's still to this day claiming that it was a false flag.
When he visits Pittsburgh, ask him a question.
Yeah.
Okay?
All right.
I just believe, and I just think this is so important in our country right now more than ever.
If we have a chance of having a country left, we can't be a country that says, okay, here's people who have views that are far outside of what I disagree with, so I'm not going to talk to them.
It's part of what your first question was also, why is Charlie here?
We believe in open dialogue and open discourse.
I think that's how we're going to save the country.
And back when I was 18, this used to be a country where we could disagree like hell and still get together at the dinner table at the end of it.
That's America.
That's the essence of this country.
And I think I speak for all of us here when I say we hope to bring that back.
So bring that spirit back.
Disagree with us.
We'll take the next question.
I just got a quick question.
What are both of your stances on the legalization of marijuana and psychedelics?
I'm against it.
I don't know, Vivek's.
Yeah, so look, I think that right now, I think the federal drug enforcement agenda, I think, has been far overreaching.
And they've used it as a vehicle to advance other agendas.
Here's the next step I think we need.
Veterans access.
Let's just start with this as a next step.
Veterans who suffer from PTSD, I believe, do need access to ketamine, psilocybin, and ayahuasca, which should be reclassified in their scheduling for veterans with PTSD. I think that's a great next step to take.
I think that that is far better than the outcomes that we otherwise allow for veterans to suffer from addiction to fentanyl and worse, and I think that's a good next step in this conversation.
That's where I land.
Why are you so against the recreational use of it, though?
I mean, I haven't made that my top issue, right?
I mean, so against it.
But do I think that it has demonstrably poor effects in places like you could look at Seattle, you could look at Portland, even look at a city like Portland, thought this was a great idea?
Well, tried and practiced, didn't turn out to be such a great idea because there's deep structural issues for why actually people are turning to drugs that correlate with, I think, a lot of other behaviors that even cities like Portland have realized haven't gone well for them.
Okay.
So that's where I land on it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, nice meeting you guys.
I'm, like, not a Democrat.
I'm Green Party.
But anyways, do you support what Donald Trump says?
Or do you support what Israel is doing in Gaza right now?
Yes.
But they're killing a bunch of people and they're not going to achieve their goals.
By doing what they're doing in Gaza, they will be turning more people towards Hamas.
They're essentially making the Gazans hate them even more.
Well, they're engaged in a war because what happened on October 7th?
Yes, but Hamas was an organization that was brought up by Netanyahu.
Netanyahu personally funded Hamas.
No, it's not.
Hamas is a terrorist organization voted by the people of Gaza.
Gaza was controlled by Israel until, I think, 2004 or 2005?
2005. Yeah, okay, thank you.
2005. And so Hamas was not funded by Netanyahu.
I see no evidence.
If that's correct, I'll...
I mean, New York Times even has, like, stuff on it, but...
Yeah, I'm sure they're right.
Netanyahu has said that he funds Hamas as, like, a counterbalance against...
Let's try to find a common ground here.
Do you agree that the Jewish people have a right to a homeland?
Oh, yes, of course.
Okay, great.
No, that's a big deal.
Because Hamas doesn't believe that.
Yeah, but I don't agree with Hamas.
I'm just...
No, no, no, I know, but what I'm saying though is that we must start from first principles on the Israel question.
Number one, that the Jewish people have a right to a homeland.
Yes.
Number two, what is Israel?
I mean, it's a country.
I know, but that's important.
Does it include Judea-Samaria?
Does it include the Golan Heights?
Does it include Gaza?
I'm not putting you on the spot here because I don't expect you to know the geopolitics of it.
Those are the two first principle questions.
Do the Jews have a right to their ancestral homeland, yes or no?
And then number two, what is that homeland and what are the borders that define it?
Those are the only two important questions that explain the Israel conflict.
Vivek, do you want to chip in?
Yeah, look, I think that...
I look at this from an American perspective.
And if what happened on October 7th happened in our country, I think we would defend, I would not want any other country telling us in the United States of America what we can or cannot do.
It's not been consistent.
I think Israel is a sovereign nation that has a right and a responsibility to defend its sovereignty to the fullest.
One of the beauties of Israel is they actually have diverse debates.
You look at their own government, they have a lot of divisions just like we do here.
But it's up to us to allow Israel to self-determine its own right course of action without meddling.
That's what we're seeing happen there through open debate in a democratic country, and that's what I support.
I mean, we're responding to both points.
Like, the Jews have a right to their own country, but when they create Israel, they should not have driven out the Palestinians who were originally living there.
They should have made a nation living side-by-side with them.
I'm responding to the point about October 7th.
Like, it was bad, and Hamas is a terrorist organization, but Israel, what they're doing to the Palestinians is what made Hamas so powerful.
And Netanyahu personally have...
He has supported Hamas against the Palestinian Authority as a counterbalance.
Yeah, we're not going to agree.
Thank you very much.
Yep.
I mean, free Palestine.
Okay.
Yeah.
So I agree with you all that, like, we have a lack of open discourse and debate in our society.
That's a real big problem, especially with, like, misinformation plaguing our social media, right?
Sorry about that.
So my question is, do you really believe, right, like, that the best way to have this open discourse with voters, like you said, in response to one else's question, is in a format like this, you know, where, you know, us college students don't have the time to be prepared or have as much time to prepare on these topics.
Therefore, we aren't able to have, like, rigorous intellectual discussion with you, especially when, in the end, when you aren't defending your arguments against the best versions of your opposition's arguments, we have no reason to, like, believe that your case is true.
So I'll tell you, it's all of the above.
I'm having a debate with John Bolton at another college campus, and he's a Republican but has different views than me on foreign policy.
We do rallies with—these guys fill up audiences of tens of thousands of people who talk to people who agree with us.
I went to places like Harvard and Yale, not exactly bastions of conservatism.
I'll tell you, I got a better education because I was surrounded by people who challenged my own views.
And I think that's missing on college campuses today.
And so our hope, I know Charlie's hope, he's doing a great job of it traveling the country, is to make sure college is too expensive already.
But you might as well at least get your money's worth by having your views challenged.
And so is that good for the country?
You're darn right it is, especially ahead of an election.
We need to talk to each other more in the country.
And you know what?
I'm not letting you off the hook so easily.
We're also here because we expect more of you.
We expect more.
We should expect more of each other.
It's not that, oh, I'm this college student.
I don't really understand everything.
No.
You actually have your parents.
Can I ask a follow-up, please?
And so that I think is a good thing, and we want to challenge each other to be the best version of ourselves.
Yeah.
So yeah, basically, my stance is that, like, in order to engage with you in a fruitful discussion, which I think is important, right, for our society, that I should at least be given, like, for example, not me personally, but, like, me as in college students, should be given, like, an equal amount of time to prepare and be, like, prepared for this engagement, right?
Like, your whole job is, like, knowing about these things and researching them.
We have classes to study for, right?
So for example, why don't you – to engage with voters.
I agree that you maybe engage with intellectual experts somewhere else, but engage with college students on a more even playing field.
Reach out to, for example, colleges debate teams.
They're political organizations because I was never reached out to personally, and I'm the captain of the Seumers debate team.
And I believe that we do have responsibility to know better, right?
And I would have liked the opportunity to engage with you in a more deeper, meaningful way and maybe a more structured debate format.
So I think like in the future, it would be more fruitful for everyone if you reach out to those organizations.
It's a good point, but would you agree at least having this is better than not speaking at all?
Yeah, but I don't think those are the two options.
You have many more options, and you have many more resources.
You can do a lot more, and I think the only reason you do stuff like this is for the soundboard.
Thanks so much.
Last question coming up.
Make it a disagreement and make it good.
Disagreement and make it good.
Hi guys, thank you for coming today.
So my question is, you know, I feel like a lot of topics that are discussed today are very tired.
Not that they're unimportant, but a lot of key issues go neglected, especially in politics.
So my question is regarding the health of the nation.
RFK's slogan recently is make America healthy again.
We have poisoned essentially our population with processed foods and seed oils in the rise.
Cancer cases are on the rise.
This is no secret.
But the issue is that starvation was an issue decades ago, and now it's not an issue, but at what cost?
So processed foods, and we can grow food very rapidly, but at what cost?
We're poisoning our nation.
My question is, how do you sustainably make the country healthy again?
Yes, I agree.
We're going to end in a disagreement.
End the lobbying.
That's the number one answer.
If you've been an elected official, you should not be able to be a lobbyist for at least 10 years after you've left elected office.
We're going to help the health of this country.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I will say, I will direct you last evening, actually, before I took a red-eye flight.
We had RFK for an hour and a half event.
I encourage you to watch that.
All about the Maha agenda.
So, thank you.
Let's take a solid disagreement and then we've got to roll.
Is this a disagreement?
Yes, sir.
So the state of Alaska has had since 1976 its Alaska Permanent Fund.
Yeah, which is essentially a UBI.
Since Alaska's UBI has been so progressive and so able to provide over $1,800 to every Alaskan citizen annually, as well as providing extra funding for roads, for education, for infrastructure around the state, would you be in support of a measure similar to that using the United States' advanced economic resources to would you be in support of a measure similar to that using the United States' advanced economic resources to provide the No, and you know that's a natural resource-based UBI. I do, yeah.
It's oil-based.
Got it.
So, which I always find interesting.
No, no, I principally am against UBI. What are your thoughts about that?
I'm against it, too.
I think it's—what I find interesting about it is at least it's outside of the box.
It forces people to think.
It hasn't— America First-like character to it.
And it's been widely supported by the Alaskan people.
To say that actually, you'd rather give it to Americans than give it to some Ukrainian bureaucrat or something like that.
But I think part of the reason I'm against it is we need to revive a culture of self-determination and hard work in this country.
Right, and oil production in Alaska is based on Alaskan citizens' work.
It's returning some of their money back to them.
Which is very different from a national context of universal basic income.
It's not, because we've been using the same United States' domestic national resources and returning some of that profit to its citizens.
Here's what I'll say in closing, and that wasn't really even a disagreement.
It was an idea.
We're going to stay for one more disagreement, then we've got to go.
It is an interesting idea, but it increases dependence on the state, and I do think that that dependence is something that has actually been bad for the psychology of countless workers across the country.
It moves people's tax money back to them.
Wouldn't you agree that's a benefit?
Well, no, it's not a refund.
It's extracting value from a separate pool and giving it to citizens.
Right.
You're right.
It is popular.
A separate pool that the people fund through their labor.
Well, not everybody in Alaska works in the oil rigs.
That's true.
Right.
Reward the people who do.
Exactly.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
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