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Feb. 15, 2025 - The Charlie Kirk Show
01:13:10
THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 73 — Does Flying Stink Now? MAHA Day 1? LOTR = Gay?

Charlie, Andrew, Tyler, and Blake discuss all the most important topics as the Trump admin enters its third week, including:   -Is the cultural vibe shifting against tattoos? -Should the government ban playing loud music on buses and trains? -Okay, once and for all: Are the Lord of the Rings movies gay?Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey everybody, happy Saturday.
It is Thought Crime Saturday.
We had a conversation about Pete Davidson.
Is Lord of the Rings actually homoerotic?
We discussed playing music on airplanes and finally, why does Blake love Red Dye 40?
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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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Okay, everybody.
It is Thought Crime Thursday, and we are here live with Blake, Andrew, and Jack.
Did I get that right?
I always say that before I can see.
Oh, no, Tyler.
There's no Jack.
Jack is in Ukraine.
Is that right?
Jack has enlisted to be a fighting force soldier of Zelensky.
Is that correct?
He's front lines.
Yeah.
Front lines?
They get drafted, man.
Yeah, he got drafted.
He was the first drafted.
Yeah.
Mitch McConnell.
They got a letter where they said anyone who has a Polish last name in the United States has to go fight in Ukraine for their old...
Poland used to own that whole area.
Mitch McConnell letterhead and everything.
It's crazy.
I wouldn't have answered that.
It's really crazy.
It's one of those things Doge found.
It's actually a law that they have to do this if we fight in Eastern Europe.
You get drafted if you're Polish.
It's crazy.
So we have a series of topics today.
That are unusual.
One of them is about someone I don't really know.
I think he dated Kim Kardashian.
Blake!
Introduced us to our first topic.
That's part of the joy.
That's why I thought it'd be fun to drop this on you.
So there is this person named Pete Davidson.
He is famous for...
He must be famous for some kind of reason.
I've never quite understood what it was.
I think he's allegedly a comedian, but I don't know any jokes he's told or anything.
But just trust us.
Just trust me, Charlie.
He is famous for some reason.
Anyway, he's also very ghastly looking because he famously would be covered in a million gazillion tattoos.
He was basically the prototypical modern millennial by being tatted up from neck to ankle.
And a kind of strange story to have happen in the first three weeks of the Trump administration is he went and he got all or almost all of his tattoos removed.
Which, I don't know if you guys are aware, because I don't think any of us here have tattoos, but it's actually a pretty involved process to do this.
He apparently had to spend about $250,000, and they basically have to burn it off.
Like, they systematically burn your skin, and then it has to grow back.
So, this is a pretty intense thing for him to do, but he actually did burn it off and, you know, did a kind of gay-looking photo shoot there.
But we won't dwell upon that.
What we're dwelling upon is, this is happening in the first month of the Trump administration, and it's also happening while we're having all of the DEI rollbacks.
We've moved on from just Walmart and Target to Disney is canceling DEI. Goldman Sachs, a major investment bank, they're canceling their DEI. Is there a vibe shift, and can we detect it from such things?
And also, is it good?
I feel like MAGA was becoming, if anything, there was a lot of tattoos in MAGA, so maybe we're just doing a switcheroo on that one.
Anyway, I think it's an interesting topic.
Charlie, do you want to chime in?
How about I start with this?
I'm trying to learn.
How about I start with this?
Pete Davidson, his dad famously died in 9-11.
He was like a New York kid, Staten Island.
His dad died.
So that's kind of his origin story.
I think he's quintessential daddy issues kind of millennial guy.
So then he becomes a comedian.
He was on SNL. Dated Kim Kardashian.
Apparently the deal with Pete Davidson, and I don't understand the fame thing either, but he's dated a lot of really attractive women.
So apparently he's got some game.
I don't understand what the game is.
There's rumors about that.
But then he is, to Blake's point, he's probably the most surprising person that you would see reform his life in such a way.
So I don't know if he had some really good alpha dad and he's kind of reconnecting with that energy that he, you know, obviously with his dad's tragic death in 9-11 kind of fell away from it and he just had a really long rebellious period.
But he is...
He's got something.
He's got something because he's able to have the success that he had.
He's produced and directed movies and I think co-wrote them.
So it is a very telling cultural marker.
I don't know if you can extrapolate too much from it, but good for him.
I tend to think tattoos like the ones he had were pretty heinous and ugly and tacky.
I would love to know what the people in the chat think.
What do you guys think about...
Tattoos in general, we do, to Blake's point, a lot of people in the MAGA world and conservative movement have a lot of tattoos.
It's a military thing.
But Pete Davidson was definitely next level.
Next level tattoos.
Tyler, Mormons aren't allowed to get tattoos.
And the Bible does prohibit tattoos, just saying.
Yeah, I mean, I think every Bible does prohibit it.
Yeah, every, I think most, like, orthodoxy is against.
Yeah.
Although then we did go through the phase where we were celebrating Hegseth for having his deus volt tattoo and all of that.
I feel like people are less schizo on the tattoo topic, depending on whether they think it feels cool and rebellious or just trashy.
I feel like if you're in the military, you get away with it, first of all.
I mean, yeah, Leviticus 1928. You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves.
But isn't that saying for the dead?
No.
Or tattoo yourself.
Or tattoo yourself.
Yeah.
But again, there's a lot of things in the Old Testament that we don't necessarily bring forward to the New Testament, like women's head coverings.
I don't know.
There's a bunch of stuff.
What?
You want to read those comments, Blake?
I was going to say while we read those.
Some do.
Some do.
I think it's a maturity thing, too.
I could be wrong about this.
I don't know if Pete Davidson...
Pete Davidson, his whole brand is known as being immature.
And I think that maybe...
You talk about vibe shift with all this stuff.
I think that there are a lot of people...
And I've known a lot of people who've had tattoos removed.
I have a lot of friends.
It's a very millennial-centric thing.
I actually think this is part of the swing back with Gen Z.
Gen Z is a lot less edgy about this stuff.
I kind of, I've always equated to people.
The millennial thing is kind of like hippie.
Is Gen Z less edgy or, If someone told me Gen Z can't get tattoos because they're so scared of needles because they're scared of everything so they can't handle the tattoo process I would probably believe them because it seems like Gen Z is scared of its own shadow.
Like those phone apps, you know, that can track people?
Yep.
I think you can agree, like an older millennial kid would be angry if their parent was, you know, putting a tracker on their phone to know exactly where they were at all times.
Apparently it's the opposite now, where Zoomers are uncomfortable, Gen Zers are uncomfortable, if they can't have the app on their phone so their parents know where they are at all times.
Yeah.
They need that comfort.
It's like swap.
And so maybe they're also just scared of needle pricks.
They're scared of...
They're scared of driving.
They're scared of...
I just think it's been like a swing back, and Gen Z is just a lot more almost traditional in a lot of different ways.
He's young millennial, though, to be fair.
To be fair.
He's young millennial.
He's the exact same age as Charlie Kirk, basically.
He's like a month younger than you, Charlie.
I'm a month older, yeah.
That's right.
That's crazy.
Can we put the picture up for anyone who's gay or a woman?
Is this considered a good-looking man?
I would like someone to instruct me.
I'm so fascinated.
What does the chat think?
Fisherman85 says he got a tattoo when he was 23. He was drunk and he had $50 burning a hole in his pocket.
LOL. I think that does accurately represent the thought process that goes into permanently marking your body.
Much of the time, like, yeah, I'm definitely going to want this, like, the name of this girl I've been dating for two weeks on my skin forever.
That will not be something I regret.
I actually have a good story about this.
We had staff leading into 2020. They all went out one night, and they got inside their lip tattoos that said MAGA. And then, obviously, we know what happened in 2020, so we had no choice but to spend four years of fighting back because their tattoos...
And they were told that those tattoos would fade on their inside of their lip.
It did not fade.
It did not fade.
So they've got permanent magas.
Were they just sitting there like, ooh, for like an hour while they did this?
They must have had a really great night.
I don't know.
I wasn't there.
So they must have had a really great night, but there was like four or five of them.
And then...
Okay, the real Arthur Blake, who is not me, he says the photo is gay.
So, I trust him.
I think he's probably got a good evaluation of that.
He looks like he's strung out, Oklahoma stoner chick.
I probably would trust her, too.
Too skinny, because what are you looking at?
Because the sun doesn't hit it.
I think the comments are not feeling very positive about Mr. Pete Davidson.
Pete Davidson?
Yeah.
Can we take the picture down?
You asked for them to put it back up.
I want to note that.
You asked for them to put it back up.
I did not.
Charlie asked for it.
Oh, whatever.
Someone did.
The point is, it wasn't me who asked it to go back up.
Alright.
That's fine.
You asked the question, though, Andrew, about what's the allure of him to, like, he gets, like, really attractive.
I think he's, like...
Yeah, he's dated, like, a bunch of models, right?
I could be wrong about this, but wasn't he branded the rebound guy?
He was always the guy that was picking up girls.
I just kind of semi-remember this.
He was always picking up famous girls right after they break up.
Am I wrong about that?
I don't know if anyone else heard that.
I think a lot of women that are famous, they like to date people who are funny.
I think he's on the...
On the funny, attractive scale, obviously less attractive probably to most people.
But he's funny.
So he's dated Madeline Klein, who's apparently somebody.
Some Chase Sue wonders.
I don't know any of these people.
This is hilarious.
He dated Ariana Grande.
He dated Emily Ratajkowski, whatever her name is.
She's kind of famous for being famous.
Kim Kardashian.
Phoebe Denever.
Don't know who that is.
Oh, I recognize her face, though.
She's some actress.
Kaya Gerber.
I don't know.
It's like a lot of famous...
Kate Beckinsale?
He dated Kate Beckinsale?
Yeah, who's like super old.
Yeah, Cassie David.
I don't know who that is.
Anyways, they're all like obviously noteworthy people to some extent.
So he's got some game.
But he's like, the celebs like to date effeminate men, says Crimson Blackard.
I kind of think that's right.
You know, this does circle back, though, to our most important topic, which is whether Lord of the Rings is gay or not.
Because did you know that the cast of the Fellowship, the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring, to commemorate being...
In the movie, they all got some shared tattoo that's something from Tolkien.
And they all got the tattoo.
I watched Lord of the Rings this weekend, and Tyler ruined it for me.
I have to just be honest.
You agree with him now?
You gave into this?
No, I don't.
You see it now.
I don't agree.
I'm saying that he ruined it.
I always used to look at it as brotherly love.
Frodo and Sam, there's some very long gazes.
It's so brotherly love.
You guys are giving in to the propaganda.
No, no, no.
The propaganda wants you to think every time.
Tyler gets in your head about this, and then all of a sudden you can't unsee it.
I'm not even saying it's right.
I'm saying you kind of infer it.
And, geez, Frodo doesn't look at women that way.
This is Peter Jackson's fault.
Doesn't look at the woman in the woods that way.
Doesn't look at Liv Tyler that way.
That's right.
I think you can infer that Frodo knew his place.
And then you really start wondering, like, Mary, Pippen, Sam, and Frodo are all sharing a room.
You really start thinking about things you shouldn't be thinking about.
This is like a three-week vlog, like, what conversation we've had.
And it's going to keep going until I win this conversation.
And you've got to wonder, like, what are they actually doing in Rivendell?
What are they really doing in Rivendell?
Because you look at it through kind of the modern woke lens.
Yeah.
And I'm not saying Tyler's right, but it half ruined the movie for me.
What are they really doing in Rivendell?
Why is Gandalf going down there like a weirdo?
They're playing music and they're singing their elfish songs in their elfish language and there's nothing gay about it.
No, what's Gandalf really going down there for?
It's like his little Thailand.
This is like creepy stuff.
Is Gandalf the Epstein wizard of Middle Earth?
Yes, he is!
That's his Thailand.
Ryan wants us to throw this up.
Let's throw it up.
There it is.
I'm telling you...
Once you see it through the Tyler lens, it's not that he's right.
It's just you can't unsee it and it kind of ruins the film.
I want to make this point that we didn't make a few weeks ago.
It's not just that.
I think Peter Jackson had this weird homoerotic approach to this because the elves are all super gay.
They're all super gay.
Orlando Bloom looks like Pete Davidson.
He's got Pete Davidson vibes to him, which is like...
Yes, yes.
And we talked about all the orcs.
There's no women orcs.
There's no female.
There's a lot of gay.
What do they do that's gay?
What do the orcs do that's gay?
There's no girls.
There's no women.
Is the military gay?
Is Pete Hegseth's goal to make combat really gay?
Is that the goal, Tyler?
The story itself...
The story itself is not necessarily homoerotic, but there's, like, gazes that are, like, half a second, two seconds too long, and then, like, the whole, like, Sam, I'm so glad I have you with me.
It's, like, completely unnecessary extra lines of dialogue.
I'm sorry, I, like, I rewatched it, and it's such a good movie, and it's so amazing, but if you kind of go back to watch a movie 20 years ago through modern, ultra, like, let's just say, Gay lens of film.
You see some things there.
Boy, if that was made in 2025, it would be Brokeback Mountain.
It would be awful.
This reminds me of what happened with Abraham Lincoln, right?
So he had this really close friendship with a guy named Joshua Fry Speed.
And this is before he was president, like well before.
I sent the old-timey image of Joshua Fryspeed.
But there was, in 1926, a biography of Lincoln by Carl Sandburg alluded to the early relationship Lincoln and his friend Joshua Fryspeed as having a streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets.
And that kind of reminds me of a really good description of Frodo and Stanwise.
That's Ian McClellan.
That's Gandalf.
Yeah, Gandalf is gay.
I forgot Ian McClellan is gay.
That's Ian McClellan.
Yeah.
See?
Yeah, but, like, I also call it, like, this is, you know, we're changing history here.
I mean, I can guarantee you that maybe the movie's a little bit, like, homoerotic, but, like, the books and the original intent.
It says Grand Marshal.
He's the Grand Marshal of the gay parade.
Yeah, but that's modern, you know, that's not the way the books were written.
That's not the original intent.
Oh, jeez.
I know.
When you accept this framing, you are giving in to the gay industrial complex.
I will say, I never thought it at all my entire life.
And then Tyler mentions it and it half ruins it.
If you let them do it, if you let them get away with it, they're going to make George Washington gay.
They're going to make Jesus gay.
To Blake's point, that's why I brought up Lincoln.
So he had a...
Like, he has four kids.
He was in a long relationship with his wife.
What was her name?
Mary Todd or whatever.
And he had a history of having romantic relationships with other women before that.
I'm not sure they were physical.
But the point is, everybody thought he was heterosexual his whole life.
And then we get to, like, 2020, and all of a sudden he's gay.
So I do want to, like, make space for the fact that men can have...
Intimate, non-sexual, very heterosexual relationships.
And I think before the gay agenda took over modern pop culture, nobody would have thought differently about it.
Stop it, Ryan.
One of our producers keeps putting in very inappropriate pictures.
Anyways, what it's worth.
We have to make space for the fact that...
Well, I mean, this is a real conversation, though, and this does tie back to Pete Davidson, because...
You know, his like this, you know, growing up fatherless thing, obviously no fault of his own.
His dad died in 9-11, whatever.
But like this entire feminization of males, I think the feminization of males in general has made it impossible for guys to have like those old school, you know, guy best friends because people look at you and question if you're gay.
So when you create a world in which that's so prevalent, I think it's harder to be.
It's hard to have a best buddy.
Actually, I've talked about this recently with friends.
It's actually hard in general for men to get together and do anything.
Kind of the old school days, it was like men used to get together and do bowling leagues and poker nights and da-da-da-da.
Those things happen, but I don't think they're nearly as prevalent as they were many years ago.
And I think this is all part and parcel to, again, Hollywood, everything, just pushing the gay agenda, which may or may not have started with Lord of the Rings.
I totally agree.
I don't know if this is going to help my case or hurt it, depending on, but I'll never forget when I went to Italy.
And, okay, so it's apparently going to hurt it based on Blake's reaction to Italy.
But I remember going in Italy and there would be men holding hands, walking down the street, just holding hands.
And they were, I asked, I was like, are they gay?
And they're like, no, no, no, they're straight as an arrow.
Like, that's just men in Italy.
They'll just hold, like, if they feel close to another man, they'll just hold each other's hands.
I'm just saying what I saw.
Yeah, that's what I think.
That's what I think when I think of Italy.
All I'm saying is through a 2025 lens, you watch the movie 20 years later, and it's just you can't help but think because we look at all of that stuff as homoerotic and gay.
Thanks for ruining a childhood favorite, Tyler.
Really appreciate it.
Oh, no, no.
He completely wrecked it.
Well, I mean, it was...
Somebody had planted that in my mind, but this is how it happened for me.
I watched during COVID, I downloaded all the trilogies that existed because there was like...
So every night, I would just start watching one of the trilogies.
I watched literally every movie that had a trilogy.
And I downloaded Lord of the Rings.
I started watching.
I was like, man, this is really gay.
I can't watch this.
And I, like, shut up.
I downloaded all three.
I paid for all three movies.
And I only watched, like, the first half of the first one.
Now, thanks to Andrew's, like, Italy is super straight thing, I'm looking up Liberace to make sure he was, in fact, Italian.
And yes, he was Italian.
And he put a big candelabra on his piano.
And he insisted he was straight his whole life.
And then he, well...
He died of a condition not associated with that.
Well, I'm just telling you what I saw.
And men in Italy walked down the street together holding each other's hand.
And if you watch the movie closely, near the beginning at Bilbo Baggins' 110th or 111th birthday, Sam was really nervous to go up and talk to the ladies or the woman, so he needed like an extra thing of beer and had to be thrown into it.
That's really straight.
That's straight.
Gays are great at talking to women.
Because they have, like, women brain.
Wait, hold on.
Not always.
A lot of...
What?
Why would a gay dude be nervous about talking to women?
What's he worried is going to happen?
A lot of dudes are...
That's so cliche, it's a shtick they use in the movie, that men are nervous of talking to women.
Only a certain subset of men are nervous talking to women.
Not nervous to talk to Marion Pippen.
Hey, I will tell you that if you go watch Top Gun, the original...
Like, go watch that for homoerotic.
You're gonna make Top Gun gay for Charlie now, too?
You're gonna ruin Top Gun for all of us?
I mean, Top Gun is objectively homoerotic.
Andrew, you are putting this conversation in the danger zone.
You are on a highway to the danger zone right now.
This is not good.
I'm telling you.
There is a reason why there's a lot of rumors flowing around about the lead in that film, Tom Cruise.
I'm just saying that...
What else are you going to ruin for me?
Top Gun, the original 1980s Top Gun is the most homoerotic movie ever created.
It's a fact.
You're just going to come in every week.
It's going to be one of you guys is going to assert another movie is gay.
You're going to be like...
I mean, Star Wars is gay.
The Godfather, it was really kind of like, it wasn't really the five families, it was kind of like a gay conclave that was running inner Italian mafia.
You're gonna be like, the good, the bad, and the ugly, gay.
You're gonna...
No, no, no.
Citizen Kane.
It's not under every rock.
No, it's not under every rock.
Rosebud was not actually his sled growing up.
Rosebud was a secret lover that he had during college.
Charlie, don't look up the slang term.
Don't look up slang terms for that word.
Just that's all I'm going to say.
Clarence.
Ah, man.
You can't touch.
You cannot touch.
It's a wonderful life, okay?
You cannot touch.
Okay, hold on.
I mean, Top Gun is like, this is not me breaking news.
Everybody knows Top Gun's homo rock.
No, I just Googled it.
I've never thought of it that way.
He's right.
He's right.
It's gay.
You're going to say that Red Dawn is gay because...
Look at this.
Look at this.
Charlie Sheen and what's-his-name, they, like, are holding each other on that bench after, like, getting shot at the end.
Look at this.
Esquire magazine.
The Top Gun volleyball scene is not homoerotic.
That's the new one.
It is homosexual.
That's the new one.
No, that's the original one.
That's the new one.
Both of them have volleyball scenes.
Oh.
Yeah.
I forgot there was an original volleyball one.
I thought there was only the new one.
Yeah.
No, they brought it back because it was so popular in the first one.
Yeah, well.
I googled the gayest movies that aren't explicitly gay and also on there is Wizard of Oz.
That's a different one where whether that movie is gay or not, gay people are obsessed with Wizard of Oz because gay men love Judy Garland, I guess.
The more you know.
I also think that there's that connection, the same connection with Lord of the Rings as you have the small people.
If you look up gay icons, I think Judy Garland is literally the first result.
It's kind of strange.
Oh man, this is getting way too deep into the lore.
We should probably hit the evac button to the next topic.
It'll turn out everything is gay.
This is why people pay the big bucks.
Hold on.
This is top...
Number 10, Macho Blockbusters with Hidden Homoeroticism.
Number 10 is Ravenous from 1999. I've never heard of that.
300 is number 9. Number 8, Top Gun, 1986. No!
What are you talking about?
300?
Come on.
Yeah, well, because it's all these dudes running around.
Yeah, it's called, like, dudes who are, like, murdering other dudes.
Yeah.
Alright, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy's Revenge from 1985. Tango and Cash, 1989. X-Men First Class, 2011. Yeah, X-Men's kind of gay.
We're corrupting the audience.
Yoma 63. I feel like I'm being corrupted.
I never saw gayness in Top Gun.
You guys are destroying our audience.
Ben Hur, 1959. I can see that.
Fight Club, 1999. What do you think about Fight Club?
Fight Club's kind of gay, yeah.
Yeah, Fight Club.
I have not actually seen the Fight Club movie.
I think I'm the only person born in my year to have not seen it.
That's a perfect example of a movie that was directed at men, that men, like, boys were supposed to like, that had severe gay undertones, for sure.
Yeah, I read the book.
Where is a gay undertone?
Because they need, like...
That's just like what a gang is.
I don't know if I agree with this at all.
No, there's a...
I actually...
Because I got into that after I was reading...
Because we were talking about gay movies because this is how this came up.
And I got to Lord of the Rings.
This was one of the ones...
The Reddit threads I read was all about how Fight Club has all these...
It's tons of undertones throughout.
And it was like planting in boys' minds all in the 2000s or 90s or whenever it came out.
Ah, man.
We've probably ruined everybody's night here.
DJT2020 suggests that just all acting in fiction is gay, which was kind of what the...
That is like the true classical take on it.
The ancient Romans considered actors the equivalent of prostitutes, basically.
Maybe we need to bring that back.
Well, I mean, if we go far enough back to the Greeks, it was only male actors, right?
So...
That would probably attract a certain type of male even back then.
Oh dear.
Alright.
Alright, yeah.
We need to hit the eject button.
Alright, do you guys want to...
First we'll do an ad, but do you guys want to talk about banning things on the subway?
That'll be fun.
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Okay, Blake, take us further.
All right, so on the right, we're all used to making fun of France because it's France.
But, base alert is coming in.
France, the French Assembly, has just passed a bill.
And it is going to ban repeat incivilities on public transport.
And so they're cracking down on uncivil behavior on the nation's buses and trains, which include, as possible examples, listening to music without using headphones, carrying on a phone conversation on speakerphone rather than sticking it up to your ear so people can't hear the other end of it.
In fact, they might even...
I've seen different interpretations.
I think in one version they're even suggesting it could just ban having a phone conversation if you're on the train rather than on a platform or something.
Also, they're going to ban putting your feet onto the seat opposite you when you have a four-pack like that.
And they're also going to ban handing out tracks to people on the subway platform, like the Jehovah's Witnesses manuals and stuff.
And so France is cracking down on annoying behavior on the train.
So, do we have strong thoughts about this, everybody?
Does America need the authoritarian crackdown on people listening to music without headphones?
And why is the answer yes?
I have thoughts.
Charlie, you have thoughts.
Yeah, Andrew, you go first.
No, I want to hear the argument as to why the government should be involved in this.
Okay, so...
I'm not saying that the government should be involved in it, which public transport makes it a bigger issue, right?
But I will tell you that I am very in favor of getting rid of, like, people listening to speakers or, you know, movies without headphones on planes, which is a private company.
So I have run into this a lot, where people just start talking on phones and they start playing clips from social media and I'll be sitting right next to them and I'm just like, what's happening?
Were you raised in a barn?
I find this completely rude.
I don't know why this is something that needs to be even discussed.
You should know better.
You're, you know, a grown adult that is apparently capable enough to buy a plane ticket.
Please turn that off.
Put some headphones in.
Whatever you gotta do.
So I'm pro-direction.
And by the way...
As modern conservatives, we are in favor of using government power when it suits the common good.
I think sometimes we can get ourselves caught in an ideological trap about freedom.
It's just like all freedom is good.
Well, I don't want to put poison in my hamburgers at McDonald's.
So I don't know.
There is a role for this.
I don't know that I have an answer as far as public transport, but I will say at the very minimum...
It is extraordinarily rude, and these people deserve to be mocked, scorned, and heaped abuse on publicly.
So I go for a lot of walks, and I take my kids for walks, especially the more newborn ones, and I never use headphones.
I just listen to my audiobooks just straight out of the phone.
So should that be regulated if I'm going for a walk on a sidewalk or I'm walking around?
First of all, I don't like the headphones.
Number two, I think ear pods are actually really dangerous and bad for you.
That's a whole separate topic and different issue.
But I guess on an airplane, I suppose.
But hold on.
If you also have headphones in, then how does it affect you if somebody else doesn't have headphones in?
So, Blake, what is your argument here?
So, I don't know if any of you guys have been regular bus riders.
But when I was in...
I was in D.C. I would actually take the public bus up to Union Station.
I would take it to the Pentagon and then get on the train.
And the answer for why it would affect you even if you have headphones is, Charlie, you would be amazed at how loud some people play music or carry on their phone conversations on their phone.
So if you really want to be honest, I think this is a real thing.
The reason it might be a good idea to actually have a government...
To be allowed to crack down on something like that is someone who listens very loudly to music on their phone or on some other device on a bus on a train is actually a probably big red flashing warning sign that they have some antisocial tendency that's going to explode.
They're going to stab you.
Yeah, exactly.
It's sort of...
It's like broken windows theory applied to the guy who's going to shove someone in front of a subway train.
There are people who will play loud music on a subway, basically, so it's like they're waiting for someone to ask them to turn it down so they can snap at them.
Or it's a way of asserting dominance over other people by making things unpleasant for them.
For Charlie's case, I think if you're outdoors, if you're walking on the sidewalk...
I don't think that matters as much because, I mean, you can have a literal outdoor concert in the park.
You can put on a play in the park.
And so you listening to an audiobook is hardly as bad as any of those things.
So if you're just out on the sidewalk, I think it's fine.
But we definitely have a pattern of people being extremely loud in the enclosed space of public transport.
And yes, we have video of it.
How about...
It looks like we have a couple...
Watching a movie at full volume on a plane.
Let's play 195. Okay, that's outrageous.
Alright, you won me over.
Yeah, but you know what this is?
I think we can pull it down.
So loud.
So loud.
He's just staring back at him.
No, it's fine.
It's just hilarious.
No, it's not fine.
Don't wuss out.
So here's what this is.
And actually, Apple has fixed this.
So if you're a couple on a plane, because I've run into this with my wife, where one of us has to put one headphone in, and the other puts the other headphone in, so you can both watch the same thing as you're sitting next to each other on a flight.
Now Apple lets you connect two different Bluetooth...
Bluetooth headphone devices.
It's an innovation that I appreciate.
So that I kind of understand, but there's no excuse.
But here's what I think.
If you've got a 90-10 issue, that 90% of normal Americans would agree that it's extraordinarily rude to watch a phone on full volume in the plane while people are trying to sleep or have conversations or whatever, you should be able to regulate that.
I have no problem with that.
And here's the thing.
If you're not going to do that, if they're free to do that and we don't pass the law, then we should be free to approach that person and if it gets violent, to have no liability on us.
No.
I think as long as you can walk...
In public spaces, then I'm good.
I like LucasMP47 who says, Riding the bus, I loved it when people had private phone conversations on speakerphone.
I would chime in and make them very uncomfortable.
I'm going to tell you, listen, I get so annoyed because when I get on a plane, I like to sleep the entire time.
I try to go to sleep before it takes off and wake up when literally the plane's landing.
That's the best way to fly because I hate just sitting there amongst myself because I'm a pacer and I need to walk around and talk and do all that stuff.
It is so annoying when people are loud in any kind of way.
But what about people that smell?
I'm telling you, the smell issue...
That's worse.
It's worse to me.
I've been in this situation one time where literally this woman who probably hadn't bathed in it seemed like weeks sat down next to me with a cat that was in a bag that was right next to me.
They literally sat her right next to me and I thought I was going to die.
It was like a four hour flight.
It was the worst smell I've ever smelled in my entire life.
You're stuck.
It's like terrorism.
It's civic terrorism, not unlike what we've seen here in Maricopa County.
So would you say the cat was out of the bag?
It was.
I couldn't tell if it was the cat or the woman or a combination of both, but I'm telling you, it was like pig pen, like you could almost see it in the air.
And to me, that's just like, and that's the same conversation that they were talking about.
People are overweight, they're splitting over, spilling over.
We had the other ones with feet, people like putting their bare feet out.
I discovered today.
Play the ball.
Can we do that as B-roll?
The person shaving their feet calluses?
Oh, I saw one of those pictures.
Oh my...
I'm sorry, but you're off the plane and you get handcuffed when we get to the next destination if we're over halfway.
Gitmo.
That's beyond the pale.
That is...
You have no common courtesy.
That person should be put on a no-fly list.
Well, I found out today that there are airlines that if you pull out your bear dogs, they will kick you off.
They'll permanently ban you from the airline.
I support this.
Delta and Spirit.
And I actually hate Delta.
Spirit will ban you for that?
I can't believe it.
I can't believe it.
Spirit will ban you for anything?
Spirit encourages you to fight with people.
I'm surprised that they ban you for having to feed out.
Charlie, Charlie, I want to check my thought process here with, you know, back with your libertarian-leaning early days.
I think that this is completely, this makes complete sense.
Like, we are, we do not need to be afraid to use power when we have an overwhelmingly, like, positive 90-10 issue.
Yeah, maybe there's some, like, doctrinaire conservative ideas that we're maybe crossing the line here, but, like...
This is just common courtesy.
We talk about this, like, you know, with bullying, how, like, you know, we argued back and forth whether or not bullying had some upsides because it's become such a feminized, like, weak culture.
Like, I feel like this person needs to be bullied.
This person, like, with the shaving their foot on the plane obviously has had a lack of bullying in their life.
Got it.
Point received.
Internalized.
Thank you.
Got it.
The thing about bullying is...
If you, when you can bully someone doing something, you're able to do through sheer social sanction.
You're able to do something through sheer social sanction instead of needing a law to do it.
So it's less punitive than when you need the state to come in.
Wait, you were just arguing with me, Blake.
I put in the chat like a few weeks ago, I said that part of the reason why society's so screwed up is because we've targeted bullying.
No, but people have like a bad warped idea of what a bully is because they watch too many movies.
And so they just watch things where they think a bully is like a guy who would just stuff someone in a locker and then they decided that's based and we need more of it.
No, no.
We need social...
Punishment of genuinely bad behavior instead of what we have now, which is social punishment of actually pro-social behavior.
Nowadays, you mainly get bullied if you call the cops on someone who...
You would get bullied and lose your job if you tried to argue against someone doing that, at least if they fell into one of 18 discrete protected categories on the lib hierarchy.
By the way, while we're doing thought crimes related to airports, you know what we really need a jihad against?
What's that?
People abusing the wheelchairs.
Do you guys know about this?
So a ton of airports will basically, if you're not mobile or not, you know, limited mobility, they'll basically, they'll provide you a wheelchair and they'll wheel you priority through security and you can get on your own plane early as like a priority access.
Okay, hold on.
And people abuse the crap out of this and I've seen it.
They totally do.
Once you start looking for it.
You see it everywhere.
You will see people wheeled up to the security line.
They'll pop up, limber as ever, scamper through, and you'll see a family.
You'll see three or four people.
You'll see two generations of a family all in the freaking wheelchairs.
No, and every dog you see on the airplane, too, is not like a service dog.
It's just somebody who's like, I'm going to call it a service dog, and I got my service license or whatever you have to do, certification.
I can't stand that because I... It's all a con because everybody's too...
This is why I think we need to bring back bullying and social policing and all the things because there was a time and place where some a-hole tried to bring their dog on a plane that like...
The guy would have looked over to the dog and been like, sorry, I'm not going to put up with that.
Now, listen, I like dogs as much as the next guy, but it's just gotten out of hand.
It's gotten out of hand.
Put the dog down in the...
Can't they do that?
They do that with horses.
I know they ship horses overseas, and they have a cargo bin for the horse.
You can literally put a horse on a 747. They have a place to put it if you're trying to ship your horse overseas.
I think that's what we need to do with dogs most of the time.
This whole thing where your dog gets like...
Beware, you know, underneath the seat in front of you.
It's crazy.
Because some of these people bring in, like, Labradors.
And I was on one plane where there was a Rottweiler.
Luckily, it was not in my three-seat row.
It was, like, across the aisle.
But there was a Rottweiler down on the bottom of the seat.
So, that's my rant.
Yeah, no, they have cracked down on that, though.
They've really limited, because it got so crazy out of control with so many dogs.
Now you can only have certain ones in a certain way, and they have to have way more justification.
They can't just have whatever it was.
What about on the subway?
What about public transit?
Do you know this?
I haven't taken a subway in long enough that I don't even know.
I think it's like a free-for-all on a lot of these.
Wait, so hold on.
I was distracted.
The subways and the trains.
The big issue isn't...
The subways, I think, are more packed, and I think they have more rules in the big cities.
The real issue that most of our listeners probably have to encounter are the useless light rail that they've been putting in all these cities.
They have trolleys and light rails that nobody uses except for homeless people.
It was really great.
They had one in Norfolk, Virginia, where it was only two stops.
And it was originally free.
And then they had...
Some of the campaigners were like, you guys, please add a fee to ride this.
Because otherwise, it was just 100%.
It was just a roving homeless shelter.
No, they just sit on the train.
It just goes around the city all day long in most of the cities.
And they're just doing drugs, peeing in the corner of the...
Like, legit.
Like, defecating and peeing on the trains.
And, of course, like, they have dogs and animals and, you know, there's all sorts of craziness happening.
Fights, people stealing stuff from people.
So nobody wants to ride it.
So they spend literally, like, tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars installing these things on all the cities.
It's such a farce.
And nobody actually manages it.
It's not managed because nobody rides it and nobody cares.
It's terrible.
Eric1986 says, we used to have dogs and baggage under the plane.
Thank you, Eric1986.
That's what I thought.
I remember that from movies and stuff.
Before we forget it, we have a special question for Charlie if he has any inside information.
Ruron donated $10 and asked, when do you think Brent Bozell will be confirmed by the Senate so Carrie Lake can finally be confirmed as director of Voice of America?
I don't know if we have any inside lore on that.
I definitely know Democrats have decided...
Two months?
Two months.
All right.
That's not so bad, but Democrats are definitely going maximal clogging of everything.
What do you think the passage rate's going to be now after cash, Charlie?
Do you think most are going to fly through?
Who do you think is the next big battle?
Yeah, I think so.
I think there will be a fight for some of these undersecretaries in the Department of Defense.
I don't think it'll be a big fight, but...
I think that even though they got Hegseth in, there are some people that are against the neoconservative dogma that might be a fight.
There's been some rumbling about people like Bridge Colby, who's amazing, by the way, and some of those other ones.
So keep an eye on that.
They have very important jobs in the Department of Defense.
And then Cash should be the really big one, the last big one.
And I think he's going to sail through.
But Tulsi and Bobby were the big, big, big ones.
Tulsi, Bobby, Hegseth were the true changemakers.
It's incredible.
Charlie, hold on.
What do you think the proper solution is for public transit?
So I think you agree on the plane, but what do you think about public transit and headphone listening, dogs, all the different ways people can game it?
I'm with the French on this.
I think they're right.
Wow.
So if anybody has...
Any doubts that Charlie is no longer libertarian-leaning from, like, 2018?
Yeah, but it's not a libertarian.
Also, it affects other people.
Yeah, it's the non-aggression principle, which is you can do whatever you want to do as long as it doesn't harm somebody else.
So, definitionally, if you're listening to a movie on a plane, you're harming somebody else.
No one's saying you can't listen to the movie.
You just have to do it in a way that doesn't impact the livelihood or...
The journey, in that case, of the people around you.
The true libertarian viewpoint here is, again, create institutions where you don't have to be crammed on top of each other.
This is also a reminder with airports and airplanes.
Airplanes used to be a lot more spacious.
The advent of the consolidation of all the airlines, I believe, has led to more cramped, less luxurious travel.
I wish I would have lived in a time period when travel was luxurious.
When it was like, you dressed up.
I think travel is still luxurious if you are a rich person who pays a lot of money to do it.
No, you cannot look at an airline today, like a plane, and see it.
There's no one that dresses up intentionally for the flight.
And this is the other thing.
Well, this goes back to the tattoo thing.
People just don't dress up in general.
You used to dress up to go outside a lot of the time.
You look at a clip of men out in the street in 1925, and they will be much better.
Much better dressed than today.
Oh, yeah.
But people like you.
It was like a thing to be seen.
It was like such a place.
And then the airlines treated you so much better, too.
I mean, think about all of the stewardesses.
It was like an entire cultural revolution that happened in America.
And they've gone so far away from that that I think just the lower quality of our airlines and the consolidation and making money.
You know what's an interesting thing?
I can't remember if we did a thought crime on this or not, but typically and traditionally, the dogma is that mass deregulation raises the quality.
Airlines is the opposite, actually.
Ted Kennedy led a mass deregulation crusade of the airlines in the 1980s, and it resulted in worse air travel, more delays, a worse experience.
And not even better prices.
That's the thing, is that there was kind of an advent of cheaper airfare, and now that window has closed through mass consolidation and mass regulation.
And look, that's probably Pan Am, which my grandfather actually helped run Pan Am way back in the day.
And look, I mean, that was before Teddy Kennedy decided to just wreck it all.
And if you ask anybody over the age of 60, do they look fondly back on how airfare used to be?
I mean, just airlines used to be.
I mean, it's like they're talking about Narnia.
Sorry, Charlie.
I'm going to call you on this one.
They actually did get cheaper.
No, but what Charlie's saying is the prices have come back up because of consolidation.
Well, prices, I mean, they go up and down.
And also, like, gas has gotten more expensive, of course.
So, no, this is a good point, Blake.
So, let me ask somebody a question here.
So, would you rather pay, let's just say, $700 for a ticket for that experience?
Or $300 for the current experience?
That's a legitimate question.
From LA to New York.
I would pay $1,000 to not have some cat on me.
How much do you make in a year, Charlie?
Foot scrapings.
Of course I have the money.
I don't spend money on stupid stuff.
I'm just saying, even in early days of the career, I would put money towards...
Look at this.
That's Blake Airlines out there.
He's very supportive of this.
That's out of control.
That is Blake.
That's actually a live...
That was a video of Blake on his way back from the inauguration.
The great achievement of America is that we provided prosperity to all, not to an ennobled few, not to an elite few.
We are the country of the Model T. We are the country of the washing machine.
Blake, time out.
Blake is paid by Spirit Airlines.
Confirmed.
No, but Charlie's point is really good because the consolidation, the monopolization that came through deregulation, and this is the same with the big banks, has created an inferior product.
When you have more airlines, you can have Blake's option.
Like, a lot more spirits.
And you can have a lot more, you know, Pan Ams.
I think the truth is...
And we don't have...
Now we have all the same airline music.
We're going to show up for this because we're going to make it happen.
The number one thing that's made air travel worse is not airline deregulation.
It's the TSA. That is by far the worst part of flying, is you have to get in your cattle car line to go through security.
I disagree.
I mean, it's not the worst part.
That sucks.
I think I'm being targeted.
I think I'm being targeted by the government.
Every time I go through, the body scanner says I have something.
I'm carrying something in my croft region.
Stop doing that.
I'm not.
I'm never doing it.
And they have to pat me down literally with the back of their hand on my croft.
Are you trying to humble brag?
The metal detectors say there's a huge mass around that region.
Charlie's laughing, but he knows.
I'm being picked out and bullied by the government.
I'm not telling you.
Every time I go through.
He's been on the Tulsi Gabbard list for a while.
So, hold on.
The safe skies list.
Hey, put up B-roll 211. Okay?
Like, this...
I think that...
This is not what we're talking about.
No, but Blake, you're wrong.
It is not that TSA has made it less luxurious or worse.
We've done this to ourselves.
And this is a little...
Fashion evolution, I think, is key.
Like, we used to have some standards.
People used to, and now you go on airlines, and it's like you're sitting next to somebody in their frickin' PJs, watching a phone with the speaker on, no headphones, and they smell, and they got wheeled in on a wheelchair that they didn't need.
I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous.
Like, the whole experience is ridiculous.
And so, like, you know, food sucks, and you had an expired Diet Coke.
And you get coffee that is indistinguishable from jet fuel, and you might get peanuts.
And, like, my favorite, I mean, again, I have millions of miles of flying, right?
Million mile club in America, two million miles in America, a million with United, a million with Delta.
And I always loved when I was flying American where they would act as if, Mr. Kirk, thank you so much for being concierge key and for being a two million mile flyer.
Would you like a cheese tray?
Yeah.
Yes, thank you.
Very much appreciated.
I actually would cherish the cheese tray.
Yes.
Because in this sea of scum, I would have a slice of cheddar cheese.
Do you have the tray in your home?
Savor.
Savor, not save.
Savor.
And then I would get my Jet Fuel coffee.
My Jet Fuel coffee.
And I thought that was the greatest thing ever.
And then I look at this Pan Am experience.
Grow back up.
We've been propagandized to believe.
I mean, look at this.
It's like prison food.
Blake thought that this was a bad part of America.
No, Charlie's right.
It's like prison food.
You're like a prisoner on a plane.
The crazier part that we haven't even touched on, they can keep you trapped in that plane for like seven hours or something.
Like if I've been one time, it was like one time.
Some light goes on in the bathroom and you can't get off the...
I was on one flight one time.
It's only happened to me one time where they had no food on the plane.
And something happened.
We got stuck on the tarmac for, like, legit seven hours.
Like, it was like a seven-hour situation.
Trump's got to change that regulation.
It's not an act of Congress.
They should do maximum three-hour waits.
Then you've got to go back to the gate.
But to your point, Charlie, like, real food.
It's like a prison.
Like, if you're stuck on a plane even for four or five hours and they're serving you, like, that dog food that they serve you now, it is terrible.
It is terrible.
And the other thing is, this is a real thought-crimey thing that we really haven't gotten to.
If you travel in foreign countries, they still take pride in the people that they hire.
You're just saying that in other countries, they hire hot chicks.
They do.
All the flight attendants.
That was the old Pan Am way.
That was the old way.
No, I like that.
I'm okay with that.
We can use DEI to re-engine...
Getting rid of DEI to re-engineer that.
By the way, the average flight attendant could be in Lord of the Rings.
Yes, the average flight attendant is definitely...
On that Peter Jackson looks Gandalf-y.
Some of them are Gandalf-y.
Some of them are very Gandalf-y.
Long beards and they're women.
Some of these hobbits are still fixing their feet in the aisle.
Here's my advice on how we fix air travel.
It's very simple and everyone loves it.
You charge 25% more and you get rid of middle seats.
And you make the whole cabin first class.
Yes.
A whole first class airline.
Yes.
But that's JSX. And it works really well.
And JSX is very profitable.
And they sell out.
And it's all regional out here west.
If you'll know JSX, it's amazing.
You can fly from Scottsdale to Vegas or Scottsdale to LA. And yeah, you'd have to charge like 33% more.
I think there's a huge market for that.
And then by the way, if you want to go be treated like a piece of cattle to go fly from Phoenix to Tampa.
Vaya con Dios.
Fine.
Great.
You can take the bus.
That's what it's become.
It's a bus.
And it's an insult.
Because you fly on these other European airlines or, you know, fly LL and all of a sudden they have, like, pride and they love their airline.
It's like a representation.
Just think about it.
Think about if you're from Europe.
Or the Middle East.
And you're flying something called American Airlines.
American Airlines.
So it has the name of our country.
By the way, you fly the Emirates.
You fly Turkish Airlines.
You fly, you know, Qatar Airways.
They have, like, pride in their nation.
And they're all thin.
And they're cut.
And they know what's going on.
And they love their country.
And they're a representation.
And you fly American Airlines.
And it is the sloppiest, slovenly, nobody cares.
The flight attendants won't even look you in the eye.
It's like they're annoyed that you're there.
I think it's a bad representation of the country.
It totally is.
And if you've been to the airport in Qatar or Dubai, in Doha...
Doha?
Yeah, Doha.
I'm wondering about Charlie's math here because he was saying you can get JSX for 30% more.
I'm looking it up right now.
Scottsdale to Dallas, JSX, $360.
I can get a flight.
I could go up to Phoenix Sky Harbor and I could fly.
Round trip to Dallas and back, $55.
$55?
$55.
I'm sorry.
I don't care if the experience sucks.
Frontier and Spirit.
What airline?
Frontier and Spirit.
Oh, hold on.
That's not an airline.
No, no, no, no, no.
That's Amtrak in the air.
Charlie, if you don't think it's amazing...
If you're flying Spirit, you might leave that week.
Charlie, if you don't think it's amazing that I can get into an aluminum tube, accelerate it to 700 miles an hour, or whatever they go, 500 miles an hour, and go to Dallas and do it all again to come back...
For $55?
You're dodging Charlie's argument.
You are anti-American.
No, Charlie's argument.
This is what the Wright brothers died for.
He's about American Airlines.
Blake doesn't understand.
Spirit Airlines charges you for more than one bag.
So you only get one carry-on.
The second one is another $50.
If you have a carry-on bag, it's $100.
They charge you for water.
How many carry-ons do you need?
They charge you for water.
Don't get water!
I think they charge you for a backpack.
You can't even bring in like...
How many plies of toilet paper?
You can't spare a square.
No, they charge you for everything.
You can't spare a square.
And by the way, the clientele of Spirit Airlines...
Is middle class?
I was straight up molested on Spirit Airlines.
No.
I'm telling you, this is back in the early days of Turning Point.
Charlie remembers this.
We would book everybody on Spirit.
We were cost-saving all the time until we realized how unsafe it was probably on that flight.
I got on this flight.
It was like a midnight flight to Chicago.
I got on this flight.
I'm in middle seat.
This woman sits down next to me who's drunker than any drunk person I've ever seen on an airline.
She should not have been flying.
They should not have let her on the plane.
Somehow gets on the plane.
I'm in a jacket because you can't check anything, right?
Because it's spirit.
So I'm literally wearing like a winter coat to Chicago.
I wake up and this woman has her arms wrapped around me.
And like cuddling me the entire place.
And now you're married?
I was married at the time.
I woke up and I had to push her off me.
This was like Spirit.
She's like, ah.
This is the type of ride that you have to selectively choose on Spirit.
Charlie's point about American Airlines is that there's a representation issue that we have here.
And it's not just American.
It's all the big airlines.
And we have no standards whatsoever.
and you go from riding you know the beautiful airport in qatar in doha that's literally like backlit marble counters when they check your passport to america and it's like literally they like give you the bird when you walk on and like put out a cigarette that is Why are you here?
First class, like, they're still pretty ground.
Yeah, but you're not stuck in one place seated the whole time.
Listen, I have not heard an idea like this much in a long time.
We need to make American air travel great again.
All right?
None of it, like, there's got to be some, we've got to brain this whole industry in.
And by the way...
The amount of flights that I've flown in the last year that have been delayed because of mechanical failure or because of some light went on and they've got to process the paperwork and they've got to bring so-and-so in from this other outside hangar, and then it's like two and a half hours later, you're sitting there waiting for the flight to take off, and you don't even know if it's going to take off, and you're like wrestling with do I try and book on another airline?
I'm sick of this.
We've got to have some standards here, and Charlie's absolutely right.
This needs to be remedied.
I think Trump would get behind this, Charlie.
I think Trump would totally agree with all of these.
I hope so, too, because I think he gets it.
He's the guy who's saying our airports need to be a better representation.
He owned an airline.
He had Trump air for a while.
He literally had Trump air.
But to your point...
I mean, the most recent foreign flight I think I took was on Korean Air.
And these women were, like, on top of it.
They were making sure you had everything you needed, when you needed it.
I mean, it was a little bit robotic, but it was impressive.
And American Airlines or Delta or whatever's flying abroad, we need to be better representations of the American culture.
Well, that's the problem, too, is everyone internationally already thinks we're slobs and disgusting, and then they fly on United or American, and then they're like, oh yeah, this is exactly what I expect.
And I always feel that way, too.
I'm always kind of embarrassed when I get to an American airport after international travel, because I'm like, if I showed up here, if I spent all that money to come to California in my head...
And I show up to LAX, which is literally a third world country.
It's basically like going to...
It's a disgusting thing.
Oh, yeah.
I'll never forget one of the funniest moments of my life was Charlie Kirk at...
LAX. We had a crazy Uber situation, and we got hijacked at an Uber.
It was crazy.
But it's like a third-world country.
I'm embarrassed that we have these awful airlines.
We show up.
The airports are awful.
It's horribly run.
And then you step outside, like in California, for example, and that's their first impression of America is the ghetto of California, which is disgusting.
We have to fix all of it.
And a lot of countries work really hard where it's like your first impression is at the airport.
It's on the plane.
It's stepping outside of the airport.
And if we don't fix that, I mean, it's not going to help.
So why not now?
You know, this whole renaissance on architecture, why not also focus on air travel?
Well, we have to demand change when we have power.
And I'm just saying, vibe shift starts with us.
I'll never forget, Charlie, you remember when Tucker did this, when he went to Hungary?
And he was like, the architecture was so beautiful.
And that started this, I would say, kind of renaissance within conservative intellectual circles saying, yeah, you know what, you're right.
We need to get our architecture game back on.
And I think this is going to filter through where we demand excellence out of our own countrymen and our own industries again.
I think it's a good thing.
It's a positive conversation.
I endorse.
Alright, we've got about ten minutes here.
Do you want to, Blake, tell us why America's super healthy?
What we're going to do is, I think our fun conversation could be, so RFK Jr. got through today.
He's now HHS Secretary, so I thought we could discuss what should our actual top priorities be?
For making America healthy again, because I thought that could spark a good debate, because I'm always in disagreement with everyone about what our health issues are.
And to commemorate RFK getting confirmed, maybe you've seen me waving this Hiroshima carp mug around, I brought in, over the holidays...
The 7-Up Company, whoever makes them.
I think they're made by Dr. Pepper.
Anyway, they made a Shirley Temple-flavored 7-Up variety.
And there is no way that this soda is going to be legal under RFK's regime because I think the second most common ingredient in it is Red 40. So I'm going to crack this one open to celebrate it.
It stains everything I put it in.
Wait, Red 40's in that?
Red something.
Let me see.
I just bought that.
This last week for the Super Bowl for my kids.
Red 40 is all over this.
It's going to stain the crap out of this mug.
It's great.
Strong recommend.
How is this different than you being a crackhead?
You're putting poison into your body.
I guess you're for legalizing all drugs for kids.
It's great stuff.
It's very delicious.
I recommend it.
I was pulling up all the Red 40. And this is the thing.
So, RFK has to...
This is the scalp that RFK has to get in the first month in order to be successful is Red 40. I really believe that.
If he knocks out Red 40...
Didn't we already do that?
What?
Hold on.
Didn't we already do something with Red 40?
I don't think it's...
No, I think we just talked about it.
Biden did something.
Yeah, at the end of Biden's term, he tried to, like, take it.
So, wait.
Now we have to protect?
Red 40. He's drinking it right now.
Literally, he went and just got that 7-Up, and he's literally drinking it.
Red 40 is still around.
Red 40 is all over this one.
Red 40, asthma, allergies, cancer, brain damage, attention deficit, hyperactivity, it's all been linked.
Red 40 is probably the base.
But if RFK actually gets this thing done...
No, I agree, Tyler.
So, Blake, why don't you uninterruptedly tell us why America is so sick, so lethargic, so suicidal, so overweight, so anxious, so depressed?
You don't think it's any of the Maha stuff.
So the burden is on you because the data is objective.
All those things are happening.
Why?
Honestly, if I had to guess, if you were to say, pick one big thing that's like driving huge across-the-board declines in health outcomes.
If I had to guess, I think it would turn out to be plastics.
I think...
That's super Maha!
But it's not nearly as trendy to worry about plastics as it is to worry about...
No, that's insanely Maha!
No, but the thing about it is Maha is way more obsessed with the vaccines, with the secret cheat codes in the food and all of that.
And I actually think the boring answer is the fact that plastic is totally omnipresent in everything.
Way more...
It's almost despair-inducing, because what are you going to do?
Are we going to get rid of plastic?
Probably not.
We use it for everything.
And when you look at plastics, plastics leach into everything.
Microplastics get into your bloodstream.
And we don't know exactly what it does, but we do know that there is some impact of plastics in your blood on certain hormonal processes.
So over time, it's screwing up some of our hormones.
And the effects of...
Plastic stuff are epigenetic.
They actually basically alter your gene expression in your body.
And that can stack one generation after another.
So you get 10% messed up by the plastics.
That 10% is inherited by your kids.
You get another 10%.
And that could easily explain why so many things we see are accelerating.
They're continuing over time.
The reason I would always criticize people who say...
I totally agree with that.
A lot of the stuff that people blame on causing autism, for example, it doesn't necessarily make sense because it should be like a light switch where we did this and then it doubled overnight.
Whereas stuff like allergies, stuff like autism, it's that it's just going up every single year on a pretty linear basis.
And for something like that to be happening, I think you need some sort of constant environmental factor that's shoving itself in.
And so it's probably not like seed oils where it's just...
Or, you know, this or that shot that people have decided is to blame.
So, I think it's pretty interesting.
I think the best use of RFK is if we were to just go all out on let's fund as much study of this as we possibly can.
Let's produce as much science as we possibly can.
As opposed to what I think a lot of people are tempted to do where they basically want to impulsively ban certain things or People want money for this or that thing.
There are people who are going to want to use Maha to just mean you can use Medicare or Medicaid to pay for homeopathic medicine.
I think that would be a mistake.
I don't think we should use taxpayer dollars to buy flavored water for people, but it could happen.
I am a big homeopathy, but I think you should pay for it yourself.
I'm a believer that there's a lot more in the natural world that could help you than drugs.
But Blake, one of the...
The guiding principles of Maha is that there is an invisible environmental toxin that is doing something we don't quite know what.
So you're kind of in the thesis then with the plastic thing.
I'm surprised.
You're kind of within the genre that there is an invisible force that is doing something to us.
We don't quite know what, but we have to figure out what that is.
That is kind of the core premise of Maha.
Yeah, I'm not 100% alien to it.
There's kind of...
What I always worry about is there's a line that is attributed to G.K. Chesterton.
He didn't literally say it, but we'll get behind it.
Where it's like, an atheist isn't someone who believes in nothing.
It's a person who believes in anything.
Once you become an atheist, you'll just believe in anything.
And I worry that that is something that can happen with the health stuff in general.
It's like...
COVID happened.
It was really disgraceful.
All the health experts acquitted themselves very badly for the most part.
And some people have reacted to that by going, they lied to us about that, so they're lying about everything, and I don't trust the doctors.
The only person I can trust is, you know, this weird guy I found on the internet, and all of that.
I would encourage people to be more skeptical of that than they often are because I think it can lead to unfortunate outcomes.
But I do think it's very real.
People are right to look at the way things are and say, this isn't normal.
Like, kids...
They actually are not way less active today than they were 20 years ago, yet they are fatter than they were 20 years ago.
They are more depressed than they were 20 years ago.
They are exhibiting weird medical problems.
We were looking at that article just today that the rate of kind of precocious cancers, people getting cancer under 50 years old, went way, way up between 1990 and 2019. And if you're looking, what's the obvious change that happens between 1990 and 2019?
I'm not sure there is one, and people are just freaking out about it, and I think they're right to do that, but I think the correct focus should be increase our level of knowledge as much as possible, as opposed to playing whack-a-mole where we decide, oh, actually, Red 40 is the thing that's going to kill all of us, so ban it immediately.
I mean, if they want to, I'm sure they will, but I don't think it's going to be the kill shot that makes us all healthy.
I got a dash.
Everybody, rumble.cloud.
Check it out right now.
Thank you guys.
Wonderful episode.
One of the best ones we've had in recent memory.
Till next week, keep on committing thought crimes.
Talk to you soon.
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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