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May 16, 2025 - The Charlie Kirk Show
36:50
Andy Biggs for Governor of Arizona!
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Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here, live from the Bitcoin.com studio.
Big news, we have endorsed Andy Biggs for governor of Arizona.
The entire Turning Point Action machinery is getting behind the true conservative endorsed by President Trump.
Andy Biggs, the election is still a way out, but we are planting the flag, and I make the case as to why Andy Biggs will be a phenomenal governor, a great candidate, and why we need to unite behind Andy Biggs to be governor of State 48. Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
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Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
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We're going to break some news here today.
We're really excited as we're broadcasting live in State 48 here in the beautiful state of Arizona.
We are going to make our endorsement official for the governor's race.
We have to win back the governor's mansion here in Arizona, and we are fully endorsing my friend, Andy Biggs.
Andy, we are behind you 100%, and we're excited to make you the next governor of the state of Arizona.
Thanks, Charlie.
You know, you are the leader in the conservative movement today around the country, and to have your endorsement and your team's endorsement, that means so much.
It's incredible.
We're going to win this thing, Charlie.
There's not a doubt in my mind.
Yes, and so tell us why you're running, and this is an incredible opportunity because this state voted for President Trump more so than any other battleground state.
We are increasingly a red state, but we have a Democrat governor.
We have a Democrat secretary of state.
We have a Democrat attorney general.
We have two Democrat senators.
And it all starts with getting you as governor.
Yeah, I think so.
We're on the cusp of turning this state red again.
And it has to go red again because if you think of everything from the border security problem that we had under this current governor, first thing she did, Charlie, was disband the Border Security Task Force, which has led to higher crime.
We're the gateway to fentanyl in the country.
Something like 50%.
50% of all fentanyl coming into the country comes through Arizona.
We've got to stop that.
So Trump's done a great job on the border.
We still have a problem there.
This governor has actually hindered the economic growth that we should be having.
Arizona's a great state, and there are businesses that want to come here and locate here.
She has not worked on deregulation.
She's not worked on creating energy.
She's not worked on making sure we had the water resources or the other infrastructure we need.
You know, that stuff has got to be taken care of.
Education.
I mean, how come our NAEP scores keep going down, but we keep spending more money on education in Arizona?
We need bang for the buck there.
And then I guess, ultimately, the prototypical thing for her is she has vetoed more bills than ever.
And here's one.
The election integrity bill.
We want to know who wins our election on election evening, right?
Not three weeks later.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Why is that so hard?
And she vetoed that.
We are the mockery of the country when it comes to counting our votes.
And so it was just a matter of doing it quicker.
As Florida does it, you must have all your votes in by a certain amount of time.
You must.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And that's what our bill was modeled on Florida.
I have to tell you, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania members of Congress tell me sometimes, they say, we're grateful for Arizona.
The first time I heard it, I said, why is that?
And they said, because you make our elections look like they're run smoothly.
You guys are a disaster.
We're an embarrassment.
So these are things that we can take care of, Charlie, and we can do it the first time.
The first week that I'm elected, because I know how the place runs.
I served in the state legislature.
I know how that place runs.
I worked with two different governors.
I know how the executive branch works here in Arizona.
I wrote budgets for the state.
I know how you budget for the state.
I didn't even know all that background.
So you've worked in the cap as well, obviously being a fighter in D.C. Yeah, absolutely right.
So I wrote many state budgets.
And it's not hard if you actually...
Get into it and dig.
But we haven't had anybody that wants to do that.
And that's what we've got to do.
And if we do that, I think we're going to turn the state red again.
We could turn it into the Florida West.
Absolutely.
In fact, I told Byron Donalds.
I called him up when he announced, and I had already announced, and I said, Byron, you know what's going to happen about 90 days after we're elected?
And he said, no.
And I said, You're going to see a couple of red dots leaving you.
And he says, what's that?
And I said, that's our taillights.
Arizona's taillights as we go past you as the most conservative, productive state in the country.
There is such untapped potential here in this state.
And the people that are moving to Arizona are actually very Republican, very conservative.
And also, you are endorsed by President Donald Trump.
You are Trump-endorsed for this race.
Everyone needs to know that.
President Donald Trump has endorsed you, and we're honored to second that.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Yeah, President Trump, I mean...
He and I have a great relationship.
I like to say, you know, it's one thing to have his endorsements, but it's another thing to, you know, have a personal relationship with a guy.
I mean, we're talking about we've golfed together, we've dined together.
For years you've had his back.
Yes, that's right.
Through the impeachments, through January 6th, you never wavered throughout all of that.
That's right.
In fact, I got investigated for standing with him.
No, I know.
The January 6th thing, they came after you pretty hard, and you never, ever wavered.
Ever.
Well, there was no need to waver.
He was in the right.
And, I mean, the Ukraine thing was a disaster, that bogus impeachment over that phone call.
I mean, Charlie, that was bogus.
But our colleagues, a lot of our colleagues, they kind of fled him.
But the reality is there were a lot of us there standing with him.
Late Nancy Pelosi impeachment.
And then the Mueller investigation.
I think it was one of the first ones.
I think it was me and Louie Gohmert that stood up and said, Mueller is compromised.
He should not be doing this.
And we had our own party saying, we want to do this investigation.
I'm like, that's bizarre.
Now Mueller ended up...
Not finding anything, which we knew he wouldn't.
So let's just focus again.
We're 100% behind Andy.
It's a ways out from the election.
We're doing this early to set the tone, to be very clear.
And we're going to be doing an event, by the way, together at the Arizona Biltmore, which kind of has some legend in Arizona politics.
We're doing that May 31st.
Everyone should come by.
It's at 2 p.m. at the Arizona Biltmore Resort.
That is two weeks, kind of an announcement.
Bigs for governor.
You're going to be working the state all summer.
I imagine.
You've already working your tail off.
Please, tell us.
Yeah, no, Charlie, you're right.
I've been all over the state.
We have 15 huge counties.
I was in one county, and I said, remind me how big our county is.
This county is as big as New Jersey.
So we have massive counties here, and I've been through the majority of those.
In fact, one of the counties I went to said, nobody comes to our county.
And I said, well, I am.
Was it Cochise or what was it?
It was actually Graham.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
Graham's kind of out of the way because you don't have a freeway to it.
That's lesser appreciated.
Yeah.
But that all adds up.
Going to all those counties add up.
Yeah.
I mean, the people are great.
They've been incredibly supportive, gracious, and welcoming.
And they all want this state to succeed, too.
I mean, so you've got the mineral counties.
You've got places that we should be doing.
Yes.
There's so much potential in this state.
By the way, we need more desal plants.
We need to build more, maybe even another nuclear plant.
But the AI revolution could be powered here in Arizona, the intellectual capital of this state.
And you represent the East Valley, Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Queen Creek.
Is that right?
That's right.
Santan Valley.
Yeah.
And so there is so much.
The best of America lives in the East Valley of Phoenix.
I believe that.
It's a family state.
Talk about that.
This is one of the most family-friendly states in the country.
We want to make it even more so.
Yeah, I mean, so everything from educational choice to support parents as they raise their children.
You want to have good, solid communities.
And we have some places that have fallen in hard times, I think because bad leadership.
Either on the local level or at the state level from our governor.
But you want to make sure that they're safe and can get out and have fun and play and grow as families.
But you also want to make sure that their jobs are there.
And Arizona could grow.
I mean, when you start talking about it, I've talked with the folks at TSMC when I went to Taiwan, met with those folks.
There is so much we can do there, Charlie, and you're right.
If we make sure our power grid is strong, provides reliable and dispersible energy, we're going to be able to welcome in the data centers.
And AI data, that's going to provide incredible jobs.
We have the employee infrastructure here.
When you start telling them that we have over 30,000 engineering students at ASU, you talk to these businesses, they're like, really?
They had no idea.
So we can get on this bus.
And build this state and provide these great jobs and then protect, you know, you've got to protect the water and the range management that we have to deal.
So forest has got to be taken care of.
This is a biodiverse state that people don't recognize.
You go 90 miles north of here to Payson, you think you're in Colorado.
I mean, you have incredible forest.
You have the Grand Canyon.
Right?
I think we have four national parks in this state.
We have down south in Tucson.
We have incredible beauty in this state.
I love it.
It's home.
But again, why are the Democrats running this state?
We have to stop it.
We have to end it.
We're going to talk about that in the next break.
I also need to ask you about the big, beautiful bill because that is some breaking news.
The website, though, is Biggs4Arizona.com.
B-I-G-G-S 4Arizona.com.
Chipping some money.
President Donald Trump has endorsed Andy Biggs for governor of Arizona, and you guys should give him all of your support.
Breaking news here, we're endorsing Andy Biggs for governor.
We're just following President Trump's endorsement.
The conservative running for governor here in Arizona, it's still a ways away.
We're still like, what, 15 months out?
But we're setting the tone early.
Biggsforarizona.com.
That is Biggsforarizona.com.
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We are here with Andy Biggs, the next governor of the great state of Arizona.
Still a ways out.
It's going to be a long campaign season, Andy.
Yeah, it is.
But you know what?
We've got to run through it, run through the tape.
Totally.
And get through it and win.
The breaking news is that the big, beautiful bill has failed in the Budget Committee.
I was just talking with my good friend here, Andy Biggs, soon to be Governor Andy Biggs of the state.
We're actually talking about I-11 and our good friend Mike Ingram.
We've got to build a highway from Phoenix to Las Vegas, but we'll talk about that at another time.
Very important.
We need a highway from Phoenix to Vegas.
But let's talk about the big, beautiful bill.
So you are in the House right now.
You're going to serve out your entire term while also running for governor.
This bill failed.
Is that a surprise to you?
Yes and no.
I mean, I knew the bill might be in trouble, but that there was enough votes to actually kill it in committee surprised me.
They're going to have to redo it and bring it back up, and no doubt working this weekend to try to get rid of some of the warts.
It's a big, beautiful bill.
There's a lot of beautiful stuff in it, Charlie, but it's got a few...
Warts and unsightly blemishes on the face of that beautiful bill.
Again, I support the President completely.
I support the White House.
I was just texting with the White House staff today.
I'd be like, hey, what's going on?
This is kind of disorienting.
I want to get my marching orders.
And they were really quick to respond.
But for my liking and for yours, this does not cut spending enough.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah, I think that's fair to say.
And then most of that spending reductions, Charlie, are taking place in the last two years of that 10-year cycle.
And as our experience tells us, they're just not going to cut.
They're not going to realize them.
Yeah, they're not going to get those cuts.
So explain to me that in the budget vote that just failed, was this as the president submitted it, or did Congress change what the president submitted?
The framework was largely there, but they changed the details.
So the way to think of it is you put a work requirement on able-bodied adults who are receiving benefits, right?
None of that kicks in until after President Trump's out of office.
And that's a $360 billion savings over 10 years, but it needs to be spread out over the whole 10 years.
And because, as you know, after President Trump's out of office, a new president or a new Congress could come in and just wipe that out and kill that savings.
Yeah, and so while, everybody, this is a little bit of a shocking news item.
This is not our last chance.
I mean, we could do votes forever.
I mean, what we did, 25 speaker votes.
Something like that, Charlie.
You had to go there, did you?
No, that's good.
I mean, look, Andy, he's a principled guy.
That's why we need him as governor.
No, but I'm saying, though, that we could do more.
Absolutely.
And we've got to get people back into the room and say, hey, we have to have real cuts and not just future projected, hope so promising cuts.
Because, as Steve Bannon would say, the bond markets get a vote, too.
And if we are going to ignore the fiscal apocalypse, the looming national debt and deficit, then what good are we doing here?
I'm with you all the way.
And we get back to, does it have to be a big, beautiful bill?
The tax package that's in there is pretty good.
Because it extends everything from the Tax Good Jobs Act.
But it also gives you the no tax on tips, no tax on seniors, no tax on overtime, those types of things.
I can't remember if there's a fourth one in there.
How about if you just did that bill first?
What would it look like if you did that bill?
I totally agree.
In fact, I was always a two-bill guy.
Again, I'm not in charge, and the president knows far more than I do, and I support whatever he decides.
But in my kind of elementary wisdom, I said that why don't we get a win the first 100 days on border and then do tax over the summer?
Well, you know, there were so many ways to do it.
The president wanted a big, beautiful bill.
And that's fine.
I get the mentality of it.
I get it.
Yeah, and I told him, I said, I actually support a big, beautiful bill if we use the leverage right to get everybody on.
I mean, so you have the salt states, right?
I mean, you've got a group of people there.
This is a huge thing.
Yeah, this is the state and local tax.
And they want other Americans to subsidize their high property taxes to the tune of about 250.
That $250 billion over 10 years was too little for them.
They wanted more.
We've got to keep SALTA.
But it's not even the high taxes.
We're subsidizing their bloated government programs indirectly.
So we're subsidizing the California Pension Fund because they can't get their fiscal act together.
That's exactly right.
It's an indirect subsidy to Democrat policies.
Totally correct.
I think the fact we got rid of SALTA during the first Trump cuts shocked me.
And I think we've got to keep SALT out of the way.
I think the SALT, state and local deduction, I know that blue state people lose their mind.
I'm sorry, guys.
But is it state and local or is it property taxes?
It's both.
I thought so, yes.
But the bottom line is, the offer, it was in the bill.
It was in this bill, Charlie, giving up to $30,000 deduction.
That would have cost us $250 billion plus.
But then people want to write off their property taxes.
I say no.
Property taxes also, unlike Chicago, they're funding all the public sector teacher unions.
The federal government should not give you any sort of alleviation.
Your local government should exist separate from the federal government budget.
Continue.
No, no, you're right.
I mean, that's what I call the restoration of federalism that Trump is actually getting into.
And he's doing a great job, and you see it all over what he's doing by cutting down the size of the federal government.
So there's just some other issues that I hope we work through.
Andy Biggs is going to come back.
We're 100% behind him.
Biggsforarizona.com.
We've got a big event coming up in two weeks.
Andy, keep fighting for what's right.
Thank you.
Thank you, Charlie.
Charlie Kirk here.
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Joining us now is Dr. Thomas West, professor of politics at Hillsdale College, and just an overall phenomenal person.
Dr. West, welcome to the program.
Thank you for taking the time.
Yeah, happy to be here, Charlie.
So you are an expert, I would say, on how the founders would view certain issues, how they would view political matters.
How would the founders interpret the idea of birthright citizenship in its current form in this country?
The founders, of course, would have been happy with birthright citizenship for children of citizens.
And, of course, that's primarily what...
What birthright citizenship meant to them.
In today's world, there's this new idea, especially being promoted on the left, that birthright ought to apply to children who are not children of citizens, and in fact, who are citizens of other countries.
And even, of course, in the case of illegal.
So all of that.
But from the point of view of the founders, citizenship had a very distinct meaning.
You had to be a member of the society to be a citizen.
And what that meant was you are one of the people who makes, who agrees to and abides by the social compact.
What is that?
That is the social compact is the agreement among a group of individuals who decide we're going to be fellow citizens together.
Once that compact is formed, it's an agreement binding.
On the existing citizens to obey the law, but at the same time to enjoy the privileges of the law.
And that, of course, is very different from from what we're used to now, where citizenship has come to mean something like access to benefits and not too much.
We don't hear too much anymore about duties, things like.
Serving in the military, perhaps, in time of war.
But that's the basic outline.
And so for them, if you're somebody who wants to join an existing social compact, that's something that ought to be done only when there's consent on both sides.
The basic principle of the founding, all men are created equal, meant...
That you have a right to liberty, and that that right to liberty then expresses itself when you form a compact, when you agree with others to become part of a government.
And that means that once the government is formed, it has a right to liberty in regard to the rest of the world.
It gets to decide on its own policies.
So from then on...
Any relationship with non-citizens has to be based on either the voluntary consent, as in the case of immigration policy that permits immigration, or non-consent, in which case we close the borders or perhaps even go to war in the extreme case.
But that's what it means to be a citizen and to have a right to liberty.
Enforced and implemented by government.
And so we're far off that mark that the founders set and that they believed in.
Why would you say, I want to reiterate this because you understand natural rights very well, why was birthright citizenship or is birthright citizenship a denial of both natural rights of both citizens and non-citizens?
Right.
It's a denial of the rights of citizens.
Because of their inherent right to liberty, which is expressing itself in the form of a compact that makes its own rules for itself.
So when the Constitution says "we the people" of the United States, that's characteristic of the founders' way of thinking.
Government is only for the people who are part of the compact, no one else.
And so if anyone else in the world wants to join...
Then there has to be consent.
But why is it a violation of the rights of non-citizens to be told all of a sudden your children are citizens?
And that's because citizenship from the point of view of the founders is supposed to be based on consent both ways.
So if you happen to be here in America and have a child, say a tourist or something like that.
Who doesn't want to have it, you know, who didn't intend to make their kids into Americans.
All of a sudden, they're Americans.
And all of a sudden, then they're subject to the draft, subject to paying income tax for life, subject to any kind of claim that the United States government has a right to make on anyone who is a citizen.
And that's a denial of their right to liberty, right?
They were just, their attitude, their point, what their attitude might have been, I just came here to visit.
Not to find my kids all of a sudden stuck in this position of having all kinds of duties to America throughout their lives.
And that's why that's a violation of their rights as well.
That's why, from the point of view of the founders, it has to be consent both ways.
The citizens have to consent to the newcomers, and the newcomers have to consent to be part of America.
And we've so lost sight of that that it's really almost impossible any longer to discuss this topic without people getting confused about, I don't know, the rights of the whole world to welfare or health care or whatever it is that we have to offer here, better jobs, a better police force.
The whole concept of citizenship would exclude all of that.
The idea is that everyone else in the world is supposed to take care of themselves.
That's what citizenship means, both for us and for other nations.
Of course.
I mean, it's so self-evident that if you deprive other countries the ability to be self-reliant and to take individual responsibility, they will weaken.
And then you only actually further subsidize.
The decline of both their country and your own.
So there was, let's just say, a looming question some would have about citizenship, and some would argue that the 14th Amendment partly set that straight.
From the text of the 14th Amendment, I know that you're not a legal scholar, but you are a great historian.
What would you say about the 14th Amendment and how it connects to this idea of birthright citizenship?
Do you think the intent of the 14th Amendment and the way the founders viewed the structure of our government should apply to somebody on birth tourism?
No.
The 14th Amendment was written by people who were fully conscious of the principles of the founding and who quoted them all the time in the congressional debates.
This is common knowledge among scholars of that period.
So the idea that birthright citizenship should include the children of non-citizens was explicitly ruled out in the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which preceded the 14th Amendment by two years.
In the 66 Act, they explicitly said that the rights that they were listing in the law...
Did not apply to foreigners, which meant children of foreigners.
And when the 14th Amendment was written, instead of explicitly saying it doesn't apply to foreigners, they used the phrase that citizens had to be born here and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
And so subject to the jurisdiction from the point of view of those people who made the 14th Amendment was meant to be more or less equivalent to not subject to the jurisdiction of the US, meant subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign power.
So any citizen of another nation would automatically have been excluded from the 14th Amendment definition of citizenship.
And for a long time, that was understood in the legal community, in the courts, when it came to Questions arose of like, is so-and-so a citizen?
Quite a lot of time had to pass after the 14th Amendment before people began to introduce into it the much more strained and artificial reading, which I think is incorrect, that we are now living with.
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In closing here, Dr. West, the intent of the founders is lost on so many of our political leaders.
You teach a phenomenal course at Hillsdale College.
Inform our audience about your scholarship.
And the work that you do at Hillsdale College and primarily the work you've done on online courses to try to educate the masses on the founders' view of natural rights and the structure of the U.S. Constitution.
Yes, we've done a whole series of video courses at the college here.
I've been involved in a few of them.
I highly recommend those courses for people who are interested in this question.
My take on the founding, I think I would say, is not only a response to the leftist critique that the founders didn't really believe in equality.
We hear a lot about that.
And I'm almost a little bit tired of that debate.
It's so obvious that they did care.
But the other more interesting debate is a critique coming from the right.
The founders are too interested in liberty and equality and therefore prepare the way for what we have now in 20th, 21st century liberalism.
That's what my focus has been on.
And what I've been trying to show is that's not true.
The founders themselves were much more conservative than almost anybody today who goes under the name of conservative.
I'm going to keep you for another segment, Dr. West.
That is so interesting to me.
I'm going to keep that for another segment because I'm so glad you said it that way.
That was one of the great insights I've gathered from your work, because I'm told by professors and from activists on campuses, not Hillsdale, the founders were a bunch of liberals.
They were small-L liberals that were simply enlightenment, but your scholarship shows no.
Actually, they were far more conservative than you would ever give them credit for.
Dr. West, please tell us more about the founders, because I am told that they were liberals.
The common view on these campuses is that they were...
They were trying to change the structure of British governance and the declaration was fundamentally a small-l liberal statement.
What is your contention and what would you like to share with the audience?
I think the mistake that a lot of conservatives make is they hear the words equality and liberty and they just assume they have the same idea about that that people today do when they have Transform those terms into something very different from the founding.
You can just take the case of immigration itself, for example.
For the founders, the character of the people was fundamental to the future of a free country.
They didn't believe in anything goes.
They believed you had to have a people that had enough character, enough self-restraint, but also self-assertion, like courage, virtues like courage.
Vigilance, forthrightness.
They thought only that kind of a people would survive, would be able to maintain a free country.
And so immigration, right?
So they talked about this.
Well, where do we want our immigrants from?
And the answer predominantly was we need European immigrants.
We want people who are going to be able to assimilate, not just in the sense of being able to mouth the slogans, you know, all men are created equal, which is the way it's often discussed today.
But rather like people who had the right kind of character and the right kind of moral orientation to be serious and earnest citizens.
And you could say one of the ways in which you also see this element in the founding is their preoccupation with education, like moral education.
There had to be, from their point of view, a citizen body that understood virtues like justice, moderation, courage.
Topics that are discussed in several of the state constitutions as essential to a free country.
Conservatives today are often unaware of those kinds of features of the founding, and yet they were fundamentally, they were central from the point of view of the founders themselves.
And third example, you can take the family from the point of view of the founders.
The family was fundamental.
Family didn't mean gay rights and gay marriage.
It meant you want men and women to get together, marry, stay married, and raise responsible children.
They thought of that as a central feature, again, of a free society.
And we've just forgotten that.
We think today that the founders believed you could just do whatever you wanted to in regard to sex and reproduction.
And that element, again, that conservative element, we would call it today, of the founders, has been largely forgotten.
And just two minutes remaining, Dr. West, why do you think it's been forgotten?
Has it been an intentional omission, or has it just been gross negligence?
No, it's intentional.
The reason why people don't understand the founding anymore starts with...
The attack that began about 150 years ago on the founders, very explicitly during the early progressive era, starting in the 1880s.
And that attack became radicalized and deepened in the 1960s and 70s.
So their argument was, what the founders were doing was fundamentally racist, sexist, and homophobic, and therefore...
It should be rejected altogether.
That's on the one hand.
But on the other hand, they also made the argument of we can take over their terms.
We can use their language, the language of liberty, equality, freedom, constitutionalism, and turn that to our purposes.
And so those phrases have come to mean almost the exact opposite in many cases.
Of what people thought they meant in the founding.
And that was intentional.
They want us to think that what equality means is making everybody the same, giving everybody the same income, homogenizing the population, cutting down on people who have excellence, getting away from meritocracy, getting away from aspiring to excellence and strength.
That was, from the point of view of the founders, what liberty was for.
Full development of the human virtues and qualities that make man great when he is at his peak.
And now today, we've substituted for that in the same name, the name of equality and liberty, this other ideal, the ideal of making everybody the same, pushing us down into a kind of morass of mediocrity, and turning that into a definition of what virtue is and freedom.
And so, you know, that's unfortunate that...
That we no longer understand this, but it was.
No, it's part of an agenda that led to that change.
I totally agree.
And I think we need to be able to oppose that today.
Dr. West, phenomenal work.
Thank you for your impact on my life.
Everyone can learn more from Dr. West at charlieforhillsdale.com.
That's charlieforhillsdale.com.
Thank you, Dr. West.
Thanks.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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