Cancel culture is bad, but does that mean anything goes with your taxpayer dollars? Of course not. Mikey, Andrew, and Hillsdale’s David Azerrad discuss what separates “cancel culture” from proper limits on taxpayer spending. Jordan Harmon from Angel Studios discusses Charlie's spiritual impact on the country both before and after his assassination. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Alright, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
I'm Andrew Colvid, executive producer of this fine show, joined by Mikey McCoy, chief of staff to everything.
Yeah, yeah.
We we um so one of the things that uh Charlie loved most was Hillsdale College, and he took all the online courses.
You should check it out, Charlie for Hillsdale.com, Charlie for Hillsdale.com.
But uh more than that, he just loved some of the great thinkers that were a part of that amazing institution.
And we, you know, we just talked about Oxford Union, which is not part of Oxford or Cambridge, but it is, you know, sort of by name, it's connected to it, but it's an institution that's really important.
And Hillsdale is tremendously important here in the United States of America.
We have Dr. David Azrad from Hillsdale.
He is a an assistant uh professor and research fellow at Hillsdale College's Van Andel Graduate School of Government, and he's probably of all the professors been the most frequent guest uh from Hillsdale on the Charlie Kirk show.
So we're honored to have him on our show today.
Dr. uh Asrad, thank you so much for making the time and joining us.
No, thank you for having me.
And uh I I'm glad you're carrying on Charlie's legacy and you you didn't uh cancel the show.
Good for you.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, we you know, I'll never forget, and I don't know if I've said this on the show, but you know, it was basically a day or two after I remember Erica looked at us and she's like, You have to keep the show going.
They will not cancel my husband's voice.
They will not.
And you know, I do feel and I know we've talked about this.
We we feel like we have a like a Charlie GPT thing in in my head.
It was because we were having a discussion about something yesterday, and I was like, I know Charlie would disagree with me on this, but this would be my perspective.
And everybody's like, Charlie would definitely disagree with you on that.
I was like, I know, I hear him in my head.
Um, but this would be our little collision of ideas.
Yeah, but you look, you you knew him much better than I did, but uh, wasn't he all about disagreement?
I mean, isn't that the saddest?
I mean, aside from the personal human tragedy, is that they murdered someone who dedicated his life to dialoguing.
And uh, you know, I have hot Mediterranean blood in me.
I could have never demonstrated the patience and the forbearance that Charlie had listening to these morons ramble, say the dumbest possible things, and the genuine patience he exhibited in talking to them, and that's who they murdered.
I mean, they killed the guy who I think best represented the conservative ideal of dialoguing with the other side, which really raises the question whether, you know, uh we should keep on dialoguing with these people.
Oh, interesting.
Well, yeah, let me know what what are your thoughts, Doctor?
I mean, you know, we just watched this No Kings rally, and I I confess I was having I was having similar thoughts.
I mean, if you're going we just had the Oxford Union folks on talking about what they saw as there was a president-elect that celebrated Charlie's murder, said let's effing go on a private WhatsApp group message, and there's a vote of no confidence that succeeded to oust him from this role.
And it's not that we're anti-free speech, but there is a line that you can cross and polite society, whatever you want to call it, common decency, common values in in the West.
Like, there is a line where we say, I'm not arresting you for for doing that.
We're not suggesting that, but there, but you do not deserve to represent uh this debate.
You do not deserve to hold this position.
You do not deserve to be a teacher of, and by the way, we're still waiting on Lucy Martinez, STEM teacher at Nathan Hale Elementary School, who motioned to her her neck with a with a with her hand, uh mocking Charlie's assassination.
For her, we're waiting for Lucy Martinez to be fired.
There is a line.
And so maybe explain what you're what you're thinking there, Doctor.
I mean, look, I'm not trying to suggest that everyone on the left uh longs for violence and it's completely unreasonable.
There are still some, I think, genuine liberal voices on the left.
You know the famous line, I disagree to the death with you, but I'll fight no rather than I disagree with what you say, but I'll fight with the death for your right to say it.
Um there are reasonable Democrats.
The problem I see is that there is a growing chorus of radical, fundamentally illiberal voices.
We should not call them liberals.
They're opposed to free speech, they don't believe in democracy, they don't respect the outcome of elections.
And what worries me is that the supposed centrist liberal sane voices on the left don't stand up to them.
They always see threats coming from the right.
So the people on the left who say that I believe in dialogue and free speech and democracy, you know, Victor Orban, Donald Trump, Boukele, Charlie Kirk, immediately full-blown freak out.
I mean, this is fascism coming to America.
Meanwhile, BLM, Antifa, No Kings rally, uh, assassinating or trying to assassinate public officials, murdering Charlie Kirk, silence, muted condemnations, or basically the sense that, well, he practically deserved it, or we're better off without him.
And, you know, the real threat to democracy in America today comes from the left.
I think the right recognizes it.
Uh, and uh I would basically call on the reasonable voices on the left to realize that the threat today is on the left, but it's almost as if it's in their DNA, and they have a very, very hard time recognizing threats to their left.
They're just comfortable fighting quote unquote fascists.
I think that's uh spot on.
And I, you know, I did a whole segment in hour one, Doctor, where I listed off all the tyrannical impulses or actions of the left during the last four years of Joe Biden that we don't hear anything about now.
All we're told is that you know, we are enabling this dictator, and we're gonna rue the day when they get power back because they're gonna it's like we already rude the day that Joe Biden was elected, and all of us got targeted.
Charlie had to be questioned in front of the J6 committee.
I mean, this this is what we had to do.
And you know, it was a there's other examples that we could discuss.
But I mean, here's the thing.
I mean, they targeted grandmas, they went after uh Catholic schools, they said Hunter Biden's laptop was was uh Russian disinformation.
They obscured or hid the or censored the origins of COVID.
I mean, there is example after example after example after example, uh, tried to throw Trump into prison.
So we've already lived through uh their totalitarian impulses, yet they have the gall to tell us that we're the ones.
So this is what's fascinating.
So Corinne Jean-Pierre is on this book tour uh media blitz, and she's kind of making a fool of herself everywhere she goes.
I mean, even Colbert last night was like, you lied about you know, uh President Biden's mental decline.
She said, No, I promise I didn't.
And it's like everybody, even Colbert's like, okay, I I want to be really sweet to you, but you're leaving me no choice because like even we've given up the goat on that.
So here, but here's what's crazy.
She goes on MSNBC this morning, and she's saying she she needs we we need to see more teeth, more fire.
Play cut 167.
Right now, in this moment, it is there's an existential threat.
Our democracy is hanging by a thread.
Some people will say, would say we're already an authoritarian regime.
And I need to see teeth, I need to see fire, and not just me.
Many people are worried and concerned.
So, Dr. Azarod, we we heard a lot of people say that, you know, maybe after November uh 2024, we're gonna see the Democrat Party moderate.
But no, they Want more fire, more teeth.
I guess they want to see more activists in the streets uh celebrating uh political assassinations.
I don't know what she what she wants.
And look at the unhinged diagnosis.
I mean, what evidence is there that we live in a tyranny that Trump is trying to be a king?
I mean, the guy ran on we should secure our border, I'm gonna deport illegals, I'm gonna go after the worst excesses of wokeness, and uh I believe in economic growth.
You may not agree with these ideas, but he was duly elected, he won the electoral college by decisive margin.
Not that it matters, but he also won the popular vote by um, I think it's two million votes.
And so where exactly is the threat to our democracy?
You brought up the the list of things that happened under Biden.
I always ask my students, setting aside what you think about the particular policy.
What do you think is a greater threat to democracy to enforce the existing laws on the books that were duly enacted by Congress and signed by presidents that say that if you enter the country illegally, you should be deported, or to basically announce de facto open borders that we will no longer enforce the laws, not on something that doesn't matter crucially, let's say underage drinking, or you know, an adult smoking pot in his basement.
Doctor, but rather in allowing the country to be flooded by third world immigrants.
I totally agree with you.
If you know, they don't look at just you know turning a blind eye to legitimate laws and asylum laws, immigration laws as a form of tyranny, but it is because they were they are laws that govern our society.
If you're gonna ignore whole sets of laws outright, just because you don't like them anymore, then you are that is a dereliction of duty, that is a treasonous act, certainly, and that is a form of tyranny, is it not?
Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, I I guess it goes down to look, what does tyranny mean?
What does democracy mean?
Uh, I don't think you need an advanced degree, you know.
I think 10 minutes on Wikipedia could allow you to figure out that democracy should mean that you have elections, the people choose a leader, and then within the bounds of the rule of law, he gets to carry out his agenda.
And then tyranny would be the naked abuse of power with complete disregard for the rule of law.
Uh, we were not a tyranny under Biden.
I mean, otherwise he would not have lost the election.
But there are clear tyrannical impulses on the left, which, by the way, go back a long time.
Um, you know, there's uh if your readers want to do a bit of reading, it's it's a tedious essay, but it's quite insightful.
Herbert Marcusa, who's considered one of the founders, the fathers of the new left in the 60s, another bad German export to America, wrote an essay on repressive tolerance, in which he basically redefines tolerance and democracy to mean what the left wants and justifies violence and censorship against the right in the name of their conception of democracy.
And it's a revealing essay because he just says the quiet part out loud.
Democracy means the left, democracy means violence and censorship against the right.
And that's basically the the way they look at it.
I think Karim uh Saint uh what's her name?
Saint Pierre or Saint Jean, I mean, remember Jean-Pierre uh has never I mean, I don't think she's read many books.
I can't even believe she wrote one, to be perfectly honest with you.
But um that idea is alive and well.
They've come to basically redefine democracy as our policy preferences, and if you disagree with this, you're a fascist.
And they just I mean, at this point, I think I saw a poll.
87% of Democrats think that Trump is a fascist.
What does that mean?
But what it does is it lays down the predicate for justifying violence.
Because if he is a fascist, then why shouldn't we kill him?
Wouldn't we have been better off had we murdered Hitler?
Yeah, you're 100% right.
They dehumanize so they can justify.
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Mikey McCoy, chief of staff here at Turning Point USA.
Actually, I want to welcome him into the conversation, Dr. Azarat.
He's sit he's with me here in studio.
Mikey, go ahead.
The floor is yours, Mike.
Yeah, Doctor, you I think there's uh a place where you graduate beyond reason, and the left is really good at doing this.
Um, men being in women's restrooms is beyond reason.
Teachers that you entrust with your children doing finger guns at their neck in a no king's rally to mock Charlie Kirk's death is beyond reason.
And arresting grannies for being on the steps of the Capitol during January 6th is beyond reason, especially when those same people who celebrated the arrest of old ladies for for being on the steps of the Capitol, then then hit Trump saying that there it's not an insurrection and he shouldn't try to stop crime in some of our biggest cities by uh enacting the insurrection act.
And so, Doctor, the left is headed um to uh uh increasingly to a place where they just do not care about common sense or reason, and I'm a little worried.
Uh uh there's institutions like Hillsdale, but at these woke universities, I I'm worried that these teachers are continuing to teach their students um that reason no longer matters.
And uh this isn't just on universities, this is uh a thing as a whole when it comes to the left.
What are you seeing when it comes to that?
But let me give you some good news.
Um, the sixties radicals uh were a lot of these ideas basically entered the American bloodstream and became mainstream.
Look, the 60s was a failure because they failed to destroy the country, but it succeeded insofar as these people grew up, got PhDs, cut their hair, and became the professors who run the universities that are the nerve center of the regime and that credential and train the elites.
But the 60s radicals, I think were genuine revolutionaries who all in all did not want to be another brick in the wall if you're old enough to get a Pink Floyd reference.
I think the professors today and many of the students are bought for the most part small sold.
They do not have the courage of their convictions.
They talk a big game, but if you were to apply the slightest bit of pressure, I believe most of them would fold like lawn chairs.
Let me give you maybe a flippant example.
Threaten to revoke their parking privileges at the call at the universities, say at in red states at public universities.
If uh they don't start behaving, if they stop pushing the crazy trendy agenda, most of them will fall, fold.
We're not we're dealing with an enemy that in a sense appears impressive because their pieties appear to be authoritative, they make so much noise, they control the institutional high ground.
But on the other hand, my experience from debating them, reading their works, interacting with them, suggests that most of them are not true fanatics, they're just not used to encountering real opposition.
And I think Trump's agenda on the second term on the universities gives us a glimpse into what could be possible, but we need a lot more of that, and we need red state governors uh to start putting pressure on their universities.
It is completely unacceptable that public universities in red states are subsidized by tax dollars and continue to promote and teach completely unhinged theories.
You know, I would say to Governor DeSantis, shut down every sociology department at a public university in Florida.
It's a free country.
If you want to study sociology, go to Rollins College or go to another state.
But we, the taxpayers in Florida, will not subsidize these corrupt disciplines.
Same things with environmental studies, women's studies, queer studies, black studies.
If it's got studies in it as a rule of thumb, it's a corrupt bogus discipline.
Shut it down.
Charlie would be uh cheering you on right now, Doctor.
So what what do you say to the rebuttal though?
Where then they just say, Well, I thought you were for pro-free speech.
This is like Nazis burning books.
Well, I I'm not forbidding the teaching of these disciplines.
I'm saying they will not be subsidized by tax dollars.
So I brought up Rollins College as a private liberal arts college in Florida.
Let them teach whatever the hell they want.
But why are red states subsidizing uh, you know, entire disciplines that are corrupt and don't contribute to the common good?
Look, why do we have public universities?
They're meant to serve the common good.
We can exercise a judgment and say that certain disciplines do not, and we won't subsidize them.
We'll shut them down.
Go teach it some somewhere else.
I I it's not, you know, not teaching a book is not the same thing as forbidding its distribution.
You know, when you go to Barnes and Nobles and they have these BS displays of banned books, removing a book from a public library is not forbidding Amazon to sell it.
It's saying the tax dollars are not going to be wasted on this garbage.
You wrote an article in 2016 talking about the new red scare, and you basically made the argument that most people, most Gen Zers and millennials, when they say we like socialism, and they they you know, these polls that we've all seen, they don't actually know what kind of social well they don't know what it means.
They think it just means we like being nice and maybe a little bit more subsidized health care or whatever.
So you wrote this article 2016.
I read it this morning, I was like, wow, I just I mean, talk about holding up.
I mean, this thing just aged like a fine wine.
What uh what are young people when they say they like communism or socialism or out with the you know protesting or they're on TikTok or whatever?
What do they actually mean?
Yeah, so my point was simple.
I wrote this when Bernie Sanders really first flared up nationally and became a big thing.
And conservatives were you know ripping out their hair saying, Oh my god, have we learned no lessons from the Cold War?
Marxism is coming to America.
And my point was simply that Bernie Sanders and the overwhelming majority of people who say that they like socialism are not Marxist communists.
They don't want the government to nationalize the means of industry, they don't believe in dialectical materialism, they don't think that the state will one day wither away.
They've never read the communist manifesto, and if I don't think they have the IQ to read it, and if they tried to read it, they'd find it boring because it doesn't talk about gays, climate change, women contraceptives, abortions, and minorities.
My point was simply that uh a lot of people post-financial crisis in 2008 are very angry at capitalism, and that what Bernie Sanders calls democratic socialism, I think is really just New Deal liberalism, i.e.
You keep the private sector, the government doesn't nationalize companies, but you have a lot of taxes on the wealthy, you have a lot of free government programs, and then you heavily regulate the private sector to prevent it from you know polluting, uh discriminating, abusing workers or consumers.
Doctor, you're preventing it from growing.
That's what you're doing.
Yeah, but but continue on.
I apologize.
Yeah, so look, that's not free markets, it's not capitalism, but it's not Marxist communism.
I think the interesting question, the challenge would be would in the long term, will it lead to actual communism?
So this was Hayek's argument and the road to serfdom is that this insneering of the market by the government, ratcheting by ratcheting, step by step, inevitably will lead to full-blown socialism.
Um I don't know about that.
That's you know, to quote Yogi Bera, I hate making predictions, especially about the future.
But I just see in the young people who clamor for socialism.
I mean, what they're basically saying is give me free stuff.
Uh and by the way, you know, there's a lot of that in America already.
I mean, we have a huge welfare state.
We give a lot of quote unquote free stuff to the poor, a lot of quote unquote free stuff to the elderly.
They're saying, well, give free stuff to everyone else.
So we have Medicare and Medicaid.
Well, then why not, you know, for the poor and the elderly, give it to everyone else.
We want free college, free daycare, free this, free that.
Um, I don't approve uh of the longing, but uh, this is not Marxism.
So we should counter it, but understand understand it for what it is, and it goes way back in the American tradition.
I mean, it's basically a new deal liberalism.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
I'm glad you got to explain that because that that nuance is important.
We have to know the enemy that we're fighting, and we have to we have to address it head on for what it is, not what it's not.
And I think there's just a lot of confusion.
I think you're right.
A lot of young people just want free stuff, and they think, well, why can't we have you know free health care for everybody?
Well, you know, uh, if we could find a way to pay for it, uh maybe it's not a terrible idea.
But in the in the meantime, as uh Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism, you eventually run out of other people's money.
So we're always going to be confronted by the shackles of reality.
Dr. Azrat, thank you so much for joining us and making the time.
Thank you for having me.
I enjoyed the conversation.
Yeah, same very much.
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So really quick, uh, couple news items just to get out of the way.
The there was a planned meeting uh between the US and Russia that has been called off.
Marco Rubes called that up, so I want to make sure the audience knows that.
Um so they're having productive calls, but the meeting has been called off.
Um so the little saber rattling uh and all that.
And then another news uh John Brennan has been referred for criminal charges by Jim Jordan.
So those are topics that we're gonna probably have to unpack tomorrow, but that that is all breaking.
Uh and uh it's very fascinating stuff.
And uh we will we will get to it, I promise.
But uh we're in in the meantime, we're gonna welcome Jordan Harman from Angel Studios.
Welcome to the set.
Um you walked in and you said what is I think you know, the first time that when you come to this set and you see Charlie's empty chair, it it is a bit surreal.
Yeah, I mean, it's um I mean, obviously the last time I was here, the you know, we had lunch with Charlie, and I remember um talking to him during lunch and asking him, you know, do you ever worry about something, you know, some crazy going and doing something crazy on one of these campuses, and he's like, you know, if that's the way God takes me, then that's the way I go.
And obviously that hits differently now because it's like you know, he's not here anymore.
And so um, yeah, and it it's it's surreal for so many.
I have so many emotions walking into this room because it's uh, you know, he just he was one of the best of us.
Yeah, well said.
I mean, Mikey can attest.
I mean, we I think we all had our moment like that with him where we talked about that stuff, and he was incredibly courageous and brave.
And and and with I mean, with with that being said, like over the last 12 years since we started Angel, it's obviously grown over the years, but we've gone through some many ups and downs.
And Charlie, from the moment we met him, became a fan of what we were doing, and he he defended us in in the ups and the downs.
I think that's kind of a testament to what many people have said is when they were in their hardest times.
You know, I was chatting with Will Sharf uh a couple weekends ago, and he was just saying he was in his darkest moment, and the first person to call him and text him was Charlie.
You know, like classic.
It's just that's just who he was.
And so, you know, there was many times whether it was through controversies or frustrations or people, you know, angel going through different times in our company's history.
Charlie was pretty co I mean, he was constant.
Like he was there, he wanted a sport, he loved what we were doing, and so man, I'm I'm just honored and grateful to be here.
Well, thank you for making the time to come out.
But uh Mikey, I don't know if you want to chime in on that, because that's so char what you're explaining is like so Charlie.
Yeah, when when somebody's down, the first person to reach out to them, that's Charlie.
And it's he's also the most loyal person ever, and that it it didn't matter if you had done something so bad, if he was loyal to you, he would he would step up for you and be there when you needed somebody the most.
And it's typical him.
So I'm not surprised.
Yeah, he's always an uplifting guy.
Yeah, and you actually, you know, you guys put out a video um, I guess like the week after it happened, like maybe a week after whatever, and you just you honored Charlie.
I thought it was so well done, and I thought it was so tasteful, you know, because there was people trying to I I think I don't know, they just would do it wrong.
They do it in a way that was just not quite right, and you just did it in a way where you you were um honoring Charlie's legacy, you were honoring what he meant to you, what he meant to Angel, and you were it's just it was like a heart cry of just your mourning and your grief, and um I thought it was just really beautiful,
and I t I I I remember sent it to a bunch of people and I said, like, listen, if you want to honor Charlie, this is the model, this is how you do it, because it it really you could just see it came from your your heart, and and I knew that it you you were reflecting in the piece of just like everything that Charlie had meant to to you guys personally, but what he had helped how he had helped champion your company and and how devastated you were that he wasn't there to do that anymore for you.
Yeah, I'm I think you know, there I it's funny because you say that I was I've read this message multiple times, and I'm sure that anybody who's had a direct relationship with Charlie has probably gone back through their messages and read messages from him.
But I remember, you know, one of the last messages he sent me was because we had, you know, obviously King of Kings had blown up.
He had been a huge part of promoting that because he loved it for his kids and his family.
And I, you know, I I deeply wish he could have seen David, the movie coming out this Christmas, because it has that same impact.
But his text messages said, because I was I was just saying thanks for fighting the good fight, and he said, Thank you.
And then he always included an incredible scripture, you know, that was always so timely.
Romans 10 9, because if you confess your mouth that Jesus is the Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved.
And he said, Let's share the truth of the resurrection daily with boldness and love.
God bless you, my friend.
Wow.
So he's just I mean, he's just that's like everything he did was his testimony in Jesus Christ.
And it's just like it's man, sorry.
I told myself I was not gonna get emotional today.
Trust me.
And uh, and it's impossible.
It's my wife might have had many tears.
So anyway.
Yeah.
Um You know, it's one of those things like we have this terrible reality that we live in where like people either think we're being like too happy or too sad or we're not doing it right, and it's like everybody's a critic, everybody's a critic.
It's like you know, it's it's um it's one of those things where it's not I mean, you know, the mourning process is not linear and it comes in waves.
It does.
And you take it, Mikey.
Yeah, yeah, you're I mean he's you got that northern Europe that's still he um yeah, he lived his faith every day.
Um and every morning he would send a scripture to he would go through his phone and just send off a scripture everybody and um we we talk a lot about people just living their faith.
And uh we I've had a conversation with Erica and and Frank Turk about how Charlie, when he was killed, died at the peak of his faith.
And it was like he had loved the Lord the most at that moment in time.
Yeah.
And how much he was reading the Bible and how much he was studying it and prepping for it.
That entire campus tour, he had a big notebook of of things to reference.
It was the binder, but then he had a second binder that was all just Bible oriented.
And what Andrew said, these things were prove me wrongs, they're debates, but they're really tent revivals, and he was always proclaiming the name of Jesus at these things, and it it was it's an amazing thing, it's a challenge for all of us to not just live our faith, but hopefully one day we can die at the peak of our faith.
That that's super powerful.
I I well said, I wish I there was parts of me that wishes I had been, because I mean he was in Utah.
He was five minutes from our office of you know, when he when he was killed, and so that that assassination would happen, I was actually in New York City because we were going public the next day.
And I got the message on Liberty Island with my wife and kids, and I was standing behind the Statue of Liberty when I got the message, I was like, This can't be real.
Like one, I knew he was at UVU.
Had we not been going public that week, I probably would have been there at UV U with you guys at the tent.
But I was like, um, you know, I saw the message and I was standing by and and and it just like it this huge like it's so linen that it was like the first the first thing I thought of was like, God, why did you let them take like the one of the best of us who's just like driving this forward?
And then it kind of came into my mind, no, it's because he's one of the best of us that God let him take him because and and that God was gonna it became clear in my mind that God was going to use that moment to do something special.
And then you look the last like you know, month and a half and how incredibly powerful it's been.
I I do believe, although I wish I could have been there.
I'm glad Jeff and Neil made it to the memorial, but I I had some conflicts with family stuff, but I do believe that that memorial service probably I say probably has a caveat, but I believe it was the most broadcasted moment of testifying of Jesus Christ that's ever happened in human history.
Yeah, yeah, I I definitely believe it.
It's at least one singular moment.
Yeah, I mean, we tracked over a hundred and twenty million streams just like from our stuff, and there was countless.
I mean, I'm telling you, countless of uh other accounts that were just taking the stream and broadcast so we had no idea how many how broad it was, but at least 120 million, but probably let's just say double that, maybe triple.
Who it's like God said, I'm calling you home, and I'm gonna accelerate your mission.
You know, one of the things that I heard from multiple people was this vision, and the fact that you hear it from multiple people almost I think it actually strengthens the fact that it's that it's probably true, is that and it's it's hard for me to talk about, especially because you got the emotions for me uh flowing, but so I'm gonna try my best here.
But um, you know, that they saw this picture of Charlie standing before the Lord, and right as it happened, and that he was perplexed, he was joyful, you know.
He's in he's standing before the Lord.
He's of course there's joy there, but he's also perplexed, and he looks back and he said, I want to go back, you know, I want to go back to Erica and I have this mission.
And and God was like, and Jesus was like, Yeah, you can go.
Um, but before you do, um, I want you to see the harvest if you stay and if you come home.
And he the Lord showed him the harvest, and Charlie said, Okay, Lord, I'll come home.
I love that.
And I love that.
And I I believe that we are we are just at the very beginning of seeing what the harvest ultimately will be, and how many more um Charlie Kirks there's gonna be just born out of this moment, and how much how many, you know, make heaven crowded, uh, was what Charlie and Erica used to always say to each other.
And I think um I think that Charlie's life is ultimately the the embodiment of that very idea.
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I just, you know, for what it's worth, I mean, you know, the King of Kings, Charlie will Loved promoting that project because it was right on Easter, and you know, it was one of like there's I'll be honest, there's some projects you guys would do that.
He was more enthusiastic than others.
But came in King of Kings, King of Kings was one of the top top ones.
Cause I mean, what's not to love about it was just about Jesus and um It really was like Easter and for kids for you.
Really big.
And I know Charlie played a big role in that because I kept hearing like Charlie, Charlie's, you know, his reads are amazing, and like he's really getting a lot of people out to this thing.
So maybe just in the minute we have in this segment, tell us uh about that particular project and what he did for it, and then we'll talk about uh the truth and treason in Young Washington coming up.
Yeah, I mean, Charlie, obviously with King of Kings that came out at Easter.
It was it was for us that we the Angel Guild, our membership that has to green light every project before we ever take it out in the distribution.
They gave that one of the highest rated ratings we've seen to date, and it really was kind of the passion of the Christ for kids where they could go and experience something that was monumental, and there were so many moments actually in that movie where we saw people would send in footage of kids just in tears watching Christ be crucified, but in this way that was approachable and meaningful, and I think Charlie caught that vision like right off.
And so he went into that and just was constantly doing his reads and talking about it more than he ever needed to.
And uh, and then it did have an impact.
It ended up being the number one uh biblical animated opening of all time.
Um, and uh it's coming up on 80 million in the global box office, which is absolutely remarkable.
Oh, that's fantastic.
And uh our team went and found your your tribute to CK video, so we're gonna play that in just our good friends at Angel Studios.
I love Angel Studios, amazing new film, uh, this holy week.
Phenomenal.
Because I think about Charlie's life and how much of a support he was of Angel.
It's hard not to feel so grateful for what he did.
He supported us in our darkest days and in our brightest hours as a company.
Jeff and I and Charlie were doing lunch together.
We asked him, he said, Are you are you at all worried about one of these college campuses?
And he just said with so much peace in his eyes and so much peace in his heart.
If that's how God takes me, then that's how I'm supposed to go.
And I feel like that was a clear message that Charlie's life is a testimony to Jesus Christ, his Lord and Savior, and his relationship with him was the most important thing that he would want the world to remember about his legacy.
Man, are we grateful to have gotten to be a little connection in the multitude of connections that he made throughout his life because it was so impactful to us.
Thank you, Charlie.
Love you.
We miss you.
We're gonna continue to drive forward the good news.
Beautiful tribute that you did uh in the media aftermath.
I just thought it was so so well done and and so heartfelt.
So thank you for that.
But you have uh Truth and Treason.
That one's the the one that's coming up soon.
It just came out this last weekend.
Oh, it did.
Opening weekend was this last weekend.
It's you can go get tickets right now.
I apologize.
Um, no, no, you're good.
I I the interesting thing about this film is it's been the director's been working on it for almost 20 years, and we've been involved for a little almost you know half a decade.
And this film, um, when the whole Charlie thing happened, it was this moment where like this film is more timely than ever.
It's a you know, it's about this young man who and tell me if this sounds familiar.
You have this young man who sees culturally his entire society going in a direction that he thinks is absolutely atrocious.
Yeah, and he takes his faith and truth and words, and he goes and types out these words into pamphlets and spreads them all over Hamburg, Germany to try to get truth out to the German people in a way, and and you know, i anybody who's who's experienced real fascism, you know, you can't you can't say what you want to say.
Yeah, exactly.
And uh, and so this but this this young man, his name is Helmut Hubener, it cost him his life.
And so when the whole Charlie thing happened, we were releasing this movie literally in the next month, and we were just like, wow, what this is Charlie's story.
It's this young man who spoke truth, who was unapologetic about his faith, and uh and he he sacrificed everything for it.
And he died at what 17 years?
17 years old.
Oh my goodness.
He's the youngest resistant fighter to ever be executed.
That's that's just uh that's incredible.
Uh an incredible story and terribly tragic.
Um, but a really powerful film here.
Um 172, it's a little bit longer uh trailer, but I I want to I just want to be able to soak in it because uh these these uh this content is really important for our culture, so I want to soak in it.
172.
Look what I found.
I'm looking at a little red leaflet which cools the fear of the great deceiver of the people.
And enough people find out what's really going on and stand up.
I'm in.
You just have to take the first step.
Must be stated.
It's just treasonous actions are inexcusable.
There it is.
I think it's just a matter of time though.
I could hide you.
Mr. Big Short Resistance Vice.
You can't even talk to that guy at work.
You never know who's watching.
We know what happens if they hurt you.
You thought this through before you planned your little code, right?
You're trying to get us all killed.
I'm not afraid to die.
Edward knows that we can see through.
The truth will prevail.
The truth will prevail.
Yeah.
I mean, that's powerful.
And you know, something that Charlie was very well aware of is that if you speak the truth clearly, boldly, and you call out the lies of a culture.
In this case, obviously, this was Nazi Germany, but if you do it in, I mean, the same thing happened to you know, lots of people actually.
We think it was Socrates, wasn't it?
For speaking the truth.
When you speak the truth and you you you attack the gods of any age, the the false gods of any age, um, then you are confronting powers that um that are hostile.
And and that's what this story is essentially about.
For for me, and I I look at this story in a very unique way, in that um, there's been this really uh disconcerting behavior that's been happening culturally where the far left is framing everybody as Nazis and Trump is Hitler, and this this story goes into what real fascism looks like.
Like what we're experiencing today, where people get like you wouldn't be able to do a no kings protest in Nazi Germany.
You know, that that that doesn't exist.
No, and so I do think it's important that we get out there and that we we put our foot down and we say enough's enough on the the this branding of anybody who has an alternate opinion or is a conservative or a more liberty-minded person as becoming a calling them a fascist or that they're they're a Nazi.
Well, and we're running out of time here, and I apologize, but you also have Young Washington coming up, right?
Yeah, an amazing movie.
That's gonna be huge.
I the 250th.
I wanna, yeah, for the 250th anniversary, which also sort of reminds me of Charlie, uh, as I do think of him as a modern founding father.
Um, but I want to make sure people, if they want to see it, where do they go?
They go to Angel, you can go to Angel.com slash Kirk.
You'll see all of our stuff on there.
Um, if you want to specifically look up uh the Young Washington Project, just still go to Angel.com slash Kirk.
You'll see all of our projects, upcoming anyone that's streaming currently and all the ones that are in theater.
So again, we're grateful, honored to be here.
So grateful for Charlie, his legacy and what you guys are doing.
