Whether it was in the midst of Covid, during the breaks days of Biden's presidency, or immediately following Donald Trump's 2024 win, Charlie opened every AmFest with a powerful message of hope for everyone in attendence. This is a montage of some of the most memorable moments from his opening speeches. 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.
I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.
My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.
But if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end up purposeful.
College is a scam, everybody.
You got to stop sending your kids to college.
You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.
Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter.
Go find out how your church can get involved.
Sign up and become an activist.
I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
Most important decision I ever made in my life.
And I encourage you to do the same.
Here I am.
Lord, use me.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
Thank you, everybody.
It's a great day to be in America.
What would you say?
Please take a seat.
Everybody, I want to just give a thanks to our amazing Turning Point USA staff that have put all this on.
The work they have put in is unbelievable.
Give it up for our Turning Point USA staff.
They've done an unbelievable job.
And we have people from all across the country here.
And for those of you that have been coming to Turning Point USA events for a couple years, look around, everybody.
You are not alone.
And we're going to win.
And we're going to win big time.
Look around.
It's unbelievable.
We are here to celebrate the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
We're here to reclaim the narrative.
We have over 10,000 people from all across the country.
I'm told we have people from all 50 states, from Alaska.
Who's from Alaska out there?
Someone's there.
Right there, from Hawaii.
Who's from Hawaii?
Someone's got to be from Hawaii.
There to California.
We won't hold that against you.
How about Texas?
We got some people from Texas here.
And Arizona.
I mean, come on, we got some people from Arizona.
America is our home.
And what's been going on in our country for far too long is we have allowed self-interested politicians and liars to take advantage of us and destroy our home.
No more.
We're taking back our country, everybody.
We're not going to let it happen anymore.
We have a unique history and culture as Americans.
We need to be unafraid to say that.
Unfortunately, the fact that we as Americans have to now tolerate the renaming of schools from Abraham Lincoln to some sort of woke nonsense in San Francisco.
The fact that we are not putting up statues to Thomas Jefferson, but instead tearing them down, we as Americans must understand that it is a gift we get to live in the United States of America, a gift from God that we get to be Americans.
The freest, most prosperous, greatest nation ever to exist.
America has always been focused on eternal principles rooted in the natural law.
We as conservatives, we are people that want to conserve the good, the true, and the beautiful against those that want to try and destroy it.
That means, and you saw this in the last year, and I'll talk about in a second, that it's one thing to post something on television or to do something weird on social media.
It's another thing to try to indoctrinate your kids.
We're not going to tolerate that anymore.
Parents are going to be first.
We celebrate our birthday every July.
The fact that we as a nation have a birthday is a big deal.
July 4th, 1776, when Thomas Jefferson wrote, When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands of that which is tied to them and never the separate but equal station, which derives from the laws of nature and nature's God, everybody, no other country in the history of the planet, in the history of the human species, was founded on an eternal call that says you as a human being have dignity.
That you have a right to speech, that you have a right to organize, that you have a right to start a family.
And we recognize in America, despite what the regime says currently, that those rights do not come from government.
come from God, and you have them naturally, and they can never take them away.
It is government's role to protect our rights against tyranny.
Government does not give you rights.
Government is not going to tell you how many people you get to have over for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
They work for us.
The United States Constitution starts with, we, the people.
They work for us, everybody.
We love our country.
We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries.
And today, I want to point you to their podcast.
It's called Culture in Christianity, the Allen Jackson Podcast.
What makes it unique is Pastor Allen's biblical perspective.
He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues we're facing today: gender confusion, abortion, immigration, Doge, Trump in the White House, issues in the church.
He doesn't just discuss the problems.
In every episode, he gives practical things we can do to make a difference.
His guests have incredible expertise and powerful testimonies.
They've been great friends.
And now you can hear from Charlie in his own words.
Each episode will make you recognize the power of your faith and how God can use your life to impact our world today.
The Culture and Christianity podcast is informative and encouraging.
You could find it on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes.
Alan Jackson Ministries is working hard to bring biblical truth back into our culture.
You can find out more about Pastor Allen and the ministry at alanjackson.com forward slash Charlie.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
Please take a seat.
Thank you.
Give it up for the Turning Point staff that made that video.
Is that not incredible?
That is just awesome.
Great to see all of you.
I just want to compliment our Turning Point staff for the promotion, the marketing, the branding of this world-class event.
I mean, this is just extraordinary, isn't it?
And one of my favorite takeaways from today is to show that in Maricopa County, you could get people through lines effectively and print badges and right Maricopa County.
If you want to learn how to get 10,000 people through a line and print something with almost no problems, come to a Turning Point USA event.
That's all I got to say.
Too soon, is what they're saying.
And they say it helps with healing.
Honored to be here, everybody.
And thank you guys for taking your valuable time to be here and to get recharged, re-energized, and to think deeply in the next couple of days of why we fight and why we sacrifice so much of our money and our energy and our time.
You see, we're in a very important time in our nation's history, and we as a movement, as a conservative movement, need a vision.
Without a vision, the people perish, is what it says in the scriptures.
And I have the opportunity to travel the country and talk to lots of different people, and we have been lacking a coherent vision of what we as conservatives believe in and what we are fighting for.
Now, we know what the bad guys are fighting for.
And a movement with no vision, we're nothing more than just a gang, just a random group of people with kind of shared ideas and shared values.
But a vision, something that we are aiming for, something as a movement that we strive for, that we work for, all of a sudden will make everything make sense again.
You see, there's so many people here that are taking the bold and courageous step to homeschool your kids.
We're our homeschool mothers and fathers here that have said in the last couple of years or in the last year, I'm going to go run for school board.
There's plenty of people here that have run for school board, people that have run for office.
Who here knocked on doors this midterm cycle for candidates?
You see, this room is the room that always goes the extra mile.
But one of the things we have to take a step back and say, well, what exactly are we fighting for?
What does success look like as a vision and as a movement?
So the vision of our opponents and the Marxist totalitarian left is filled with venom, hatred, darkness, resentment, arrogance, and despair.
We can go at length, and you're going to hear about it from our amazing speakers about how the totalitarian left has taken over our institutions, how they're teaching our children this vile garbage of critical race theory and this woke nonsense.
We know what they want.
They want power.
They want control.
They want uniformity.
And they want submission.
Now, this is not some sort of abstract concept.
One of the reasons why I believe that Turning Point USA is the most important organization in America is because we go to places where there are not a lot of conservatives.
At Turning Point USA, we play offense with a sense of urgency to go to places that we are in the ideological and philosophical minority.
And guess what?
We're not always welcomed when we go to these college campuses.
But we are going to win when we go to places that we are not always welcomed and we go there anyway.
And our Turning Point USA students and chapters are doing that every single day.
And so recently, you probably saw my visit at the University of New Mexico, my mostly peaceful visit to the University of New Mexico, where they did bring out the welcoming committee of the riot squad and these terrorists were there at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, so bothered that our amazing Turning Point students wanted to have an event about free speech, the Constitution, and conservative ideas.
enjoy this short clip of what we just experienced.
Who, who, who, who, who, who, who?
She comes, is a racist!
She comes, is a racist!
I'm Lee Simon Tipo, who are you?
I'm not talking about what the f**k he is like, f**k it, coward.
Let's go for a couple of cops.
What do you think about the cops?
What do you think about the cops?
Cops?
You know what I say?
Americans?
Americans.
Especially the cops.
Yeah, really pleasant and joyful people.
They're a movement of happiness and uplifting positivity.
But we did not allow these terrorists that try to prevent our students to be able to go to the event, that did everything to cancel it, to win.
We made a point at Turning Point USA to continue the event, saying we don't care the cost.
We don't care what it's going to take.
We also said, hey, if you're gonna act like a domestic terrorist on a college campus, then we are going to mock you relentlessly.
Enjoy this.
And how peaceful they are.
Because we want peace.
We're about solidarity and bringing peace here.
But we're here to show them that love.
This is why we're going to win.
I mean, there is no way these people long term are going to win.
And it's going to require courage and boldness to go to places where, even though they deploy their paid activists, we're going to keep on showing up.
In fact, I think we have our turning point leaders from the University of New Mexico here somewhere.
And those are the real heroes that have to go to class every single day, that are spit on, that are called names, and they continue to fight.
So, what is our vision as conservatives?
We know their vision is one of despair and confusion, the destroying of distinctions.
One of the things the totalitarian left wants to do for our society is to destroy the distinction between God and man, between man and woman, between good and evil.
They want to blur the lines that allow us to live in a free and stable and civil society.
Because you know what?
They get a lot more powerful that way.
But our vision needs to be clear and bold.
How about this?
We want a country where our kids love America again.
We want a country where kids are taught about Jefferson and Madison and Jay.
A country where they're taught about Abraham Lincoln and the beauty of the Declaration and the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.
We want a country where kids are taught that if you judge somebody on the basis of skin, you are a racist and we should instead care about character, not the complexion of somebody's skin.
Our vision for America, it's hard to believe I even have to say this, is we want a country where kids can be kids again.
We want a country where kids are safe from groomer teachers and predators who are trying to put prescriptive pharmaceuticals into their bodies that will do irreversible damage.
We want kids to be kids again in America.
We want to live in a country where puberty is not treated like some sort of illness that needs irreversible medical surgery.
We want to live in a country where the innocence of children is preserved and protected.
We want to live in a country where we don't have to have the debate, some sort of, we don't have a debate, there is no debate about pedophilia, period.
End of story.
We want to live in a country where that's a non-negotiable.
Our vision is that we want to value wisdom, eternal principles, prudence, common sense, more than someone who has a PhD in North African lesbian poetry.
I believe there is more wisdom in the American plumbing community than at Harvard or Yale.
This one hits home.
We want to live in a country and build a country and rebuild the country where it's easy to be a parent, where it's easy to get married and have children.
If we as conservatives stand for anything, it should be to tell our young people that one of the most beautiful things you can do is to get married and have kids.
And right now, that is increasingly difficult in this confusing, chaotic time.
Young people say, well, it's just too expensive to get married and have children.
It's just too difficult.
Or I don't want to participate in the patriarchy.
What a robbery of joy.
I could say this now personally.
We welcomed the daughter into the world back in August.
Praise God.
To think that children, young people, are growing up and being told that there's something oppressive or tyrannical about the covenant between a man and a woman and having children.
Hey, we as conservatives, if there's anything that we stand for, it is to be fruitful and to multiply.
And if you look at what the left is trying to do, less children because human are a stain on the environment.
You look at every one of the things they're trying to teach, like, oh, you don't need kids.
You could be happy with video games and some sort of promotion at your corporate job.
Maybe that is for you, but one of the reasons why our generation, it's very sad, is the most depressed, suicidal, alcohol-addicted, and drug-addicted generation in history.
Is the stuff that gives you meaning they have been told is evil.
This is Lane Schoenberger, Chief Investment Officer and founding partner of YReFi.
It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us.
His endorsement means the world to us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come.
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Wow.
USA.
Wow.
Welcome to America Fest, everybody.
It's great to be here in Phoenix, Arizona.
This is great.
13,000 people in Phoenix, Arizona for the largest multi-day conservative event in the history of this country, everybody.
Unbelievable.
I got to tell you, first of all, the Turning Point USA staff, have they not done an unbelievable job putting on this event?
We had to add all these bleachers back here.
It's incredible.
It's unbelievable.
By the way, all 50 states are represented here at America Fest.
All 50 states.
And 14 countries represented.
Albania, Canada.
Boy, you got a tough one there.
Justin Trudeau.
He's got to go.
Finland, Germany.
By the way, conservatives are growing in Germany big time.
I'm told that these people are here legally.
Honduras, Mexico, Israel.
We love Israel.
Don't we love Israel?
We love Israel.
Korea, Poland, we love Poland.
We can learn a lot from Poland.
I'll tell you what.
They have a border.
The United Kingdom, now they got to watch out if they'll let them back into their country.
China is here.
Somebody from China got the new federal state of China is here.
Austria and Japan.
15 countries represented here at America Fest as well.
I just think that's amazing.
And you look around, you're here for a reason.
You are here to celebrate this country, but you are here to be filled with hope.
It's been a tough year, hasn't it?
There's been some wins, and we'll celebrate those.
It's your third annual America Fest.
It's amazing.
Who here has been here for multiple years?
Raise your hand.
That's amazing.
We're living through a top-down revolution, everybody.
We're living through a revolution that's different than most others.
It is a cultural revolution, similar to Mao's China.
But this revolution is when the powerful, the rich, the wealthy decide to use their power and their wealth to go after you.
Instead of building hospitals and improving our country, they are spending their money to destroy the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.
George Soros, Lorene Powell Jobs, Mackenzie Bezos, Reed Hoffman, Mark Benihoff, Reed Hastings.
And yes, the person who calls himself president, Joe Biden.
That's right.
The psychology is that of civilizational suicide.
This country has never lived through the wealthiest hating the country.
What makes this movement different is that you are here as a grassroots response to the top-down revolution happening in this country.
You are here as teachers, as mothers, as students.
I want our Turning Point USA students to receive a round of applause.
These are the freedom fighters of America.
It's unbelievable what they're doing.
This is a bottom-up resistance, and it terrifies the ruling class.
I get asked sometimes by the media, they say, Charlie, you know, don't you think the country is so divided, right versus left?
I think there's some interesting divisions, but no, no, no.
That's not the true division.
The real division is Washington, D.C. versus America.
Do you know what makes Turning Point USA different and America Fest different?
We do this event as far as possible away from the kingdom of Washington, D.C.
I think we have too many groups headquartered in D.C.
I think these groups, oh, we're in D.C. and we do all this work.
I inherently don't trust you if you have an office in Washington, D.C. I'm sorry.
You know what the other division is?
It's the powerful and the well-connected versus the middle class versus the everyday warrior.
The division in this country is versus the decent and the indecent, as Victor Frankl said in Man's Search for Meaning.
And we are living through this time where the question is still an open question.
Will the people who are the sovereign in this country do everything they possibly can with this incredible blessing given to us by God to fight back and win against the elites that want to ruin it?
Now, some people say, oh, you know, these elites mean very well.
I think this is an important thing to talk on.
Talk about for a second.
The elites don't mean well when you have a wide open border and 12,000 people are coming across the border every single day.
The elites don't mean well when they go after our children and they castrate our children in the name of medicine.
Our elites don't mean well when they put the leader of an opposition political party and try to put him in jail for 700 years.
These elites don't mean well.
In fact, they hate the United States Constitution.
They hate the Declaration.
And what you represent, your presence here, the largest multi-day event in conservative grassroots history, is a message that will be heard by these people.
Because what they have been, the reason they've been able to do what they have done is that we have allowed them to do this.
We've allowed them, and we were too busy doing things that were very important, running our churches, running our business, growing our families.
And 11 years ago, when Turning Point USA was started, I could not have imagined what God had in store for this organization.
And I want to take a second here because, you know, every so often there's some, you know, person from Media Matters that writes some organization, you know, some article about Media Matters.
By the way, God bless Elon Musk.
I hope he sues Media Matters into oblivion.
I'm going to talk about that in a second.
Where they attack Turning Point and they say, oh, you know, Turning Point just does events and all this.
By the way, if all Turning Point USA did was this event, that's a pretty amazing thing.
Just pulling off this event is no small accomplishment.
And by the way, while I'm thinking about it, Elon Musk liberating Twitter will go down as one of the greatest free speech victories in the history of Western civilization.
You know how awesome it is?
Where we can log onto Twitter and we could say, yeah, you know, Dylan Mulvaney, he's a man.
Rachel Levine is a man and kind of like a creepy pervert, honestly.
That January 6th is probably an inside job.
It's more of a Fed surrection than anything else.
And that 99% of people on January 6th did nothing wrong.
That we can go on Twitter and say that, you know, George Floyd wasn't a hero and Derek Chauvin was targeted in a Soviet-style trial that was anti-American and un-American.
One of the reasons why the powerful are getting nervous is because we can finally speak again online.
One of the main victories of 2023 is that we could say, that's BS.
No, you're not going to trans our kids.
You're not going to groom our children.
You're not going to then call us these terrible, awful names when in reality, you're actually the things that you're calling us.
You see, as our ability to speak and challenge authority and challenge power grows, the likelihood of our victory increases.
You see, 11 years ago, when we started Turning Point USA, we started in a very, very humble way.
And I want to take a step back because I want all of you to know the incredible journey that we have been on at Turning Point USA.
And I want to tell you the Turning Point story.
That's one of the first pictures there.
Bill Montgomery, may he rest in peace.
That was at the Republican National Convention in 2012.
Little did I know that God had in store that we were going to have an event nearly as big as the RNC 11 years later.
It all started in this office in Lamont, Illinois.
Who's from Illinois?
Anybody?
You know what's great about being from Illinois?
There's term limits in Illinois.
One term in office, one term in jail.
You know, we have cell numbers for our governors.
Different, not cell numbers.
My grandmother passed away recently, lifelong Republican.
She's been voting Democrat ever since.
And so, all right.
See, that's what's so great about Twitter being liberated.
I can say all these things.
Thank you, Elon Musk.
Thank you.
If I was streaming on YouTube right now, I would be completely gone.
It all started in this office, and I love it.
Apple, HP, Microsoft, and Turning Point USA all started in a garage.
And so that garage right there in Lamont, Illinois, was where this started.
What started as an idea, what started as a movement of one of two with no money, no connections, and no idea what I was doing is now a movement on 1,800 high school and college chapters across the country with 600,000 student activists, 300,000 grassroots donors.
Only in America is a story like Turning Point USA possible.
Only in America is it possible to say, you know what, I don't like the way the country is going and to do something about it.
And throughout the years, you know, people have said, oh, you know, Turning Point, you guys, you're too loud.
Why don't you just sit down and obey?
I don't know about you, but I think the people that have been running the conservative movement the last couple decades should just go be liberals because that's what they actually are and leave the conservative movement and allow us real conservatives to be in charge.
And the numbers speak for themselves.
A recent poll shows that high school boys are the most conservative that they have been in 50 years.
50 years.
Now, I want to show you because to kind of give you an idea and a picture of what we're up against, I go to these college campuses and I just, you know, I set up a table and I talk to these kids and I listen and some of them are pretty fired up.
And I think this picture is a perfect picture of a left-wing male.
You know, they want a guy with a lisp zipping around on a lime scooter with a fanny pack, carrying his birth control, supporting his wife's career while he works as a supportive stay-at-home house husband.
He has a playlist that is exclusively Taylor Swift.
And their idea of strength is this beta male's girlfriend opening a pickle jar just for him.
At Turning Point USA, we resoundingly reject this.
We believe in strong, alpha, godly, high-T, high-achieving, confident, well-armed, and disruptive men are the hope, not the problem, in America.
Now, I got to show you this video.
It's unbelievable.
This is the left-wing beta male in one picture.
By the way, I sit down, this is at University of Arizona, and I'm just getting comfortable.
And this lunatic comes up.
And he perfectly, by the way, describes what I'm just saying, right?
He's got to get his vitamin D level up.
Come on, man.
You live in Arizona.
Like, come on.
This is what our Turning Point USA students and warriors have to deal with on a daily basis.
Watch this.
You, I hate you.
Yeah.
Would you like to have a substantive conversation?
A substitute?
Yeah.
You're a asshole.
Would you like to have a conversation?
Sure, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't like you.
I think you spread hate.
I think you spread bigotry.
I think you piss a lot of people off because I just, I mean, you're just an awful person.
I don't think you really want to debate because you're just here to piss people off and energize your crowd of racists.
What have I ever said that's racist?
Oh, can you name one thing?
Can I support Charlie?
Can you name a second?
Does that mean anything?
Can you say a second thing I've ever said that's racist?
I think you're just trying to play a game, and I think this is obviously going to be useful to me.
What have I ever said that's race?
I just want to fucking hate you.
You're awful.
Get off my camera.
When have I ever said anything that's hateful?
Have a nice day.
He can't say anything I've ever said that's racist because I've never said anything that's racist.
That is the American left in one picture, everybody.
Lots of rage and no wisdom.
No country was ever saved by a male feminist.
Countless countries, though, were lost by weak beta males.
And at Turning Point USA, not only do we celebrate masculinity, we believe that masculinity is the answer to so many of our problems in this country.
And let's put that poll up again.
The most conservative that young boys have been in 50 years.
There's a lot of negative news out there, everybody.
But young boys and young men are looking for something to connect to that gives them purpose, that says it's okay to be a man, that says there's not unlimited genders.
And by the way, just so we're clear, I got this from Billboard Chris.
There are no genders, two sexes, and unlimited personalities.
That's the way that we should all answer it.
Unlimited personalities.
Now you might say, but Charlie, the women are so liberal.
Now there's a lot of reasons for this, and I don't mean to dwell on it.
But you know what?
At Turning Point USA, we're doing something about it.
Right there, the largest young women's leadership summit, 2,500 young conservative women.
I want to show you that in America, you could start small and dream big and make a difference.
I am sick of the negativity.
This was our first ever Christmas event.
100 students eight years ago.
Eight years ago, we had 100 kids at a holiday in Express in West Palm Beach, Florida.
People laughed at Turning Point USA.
They made fun of Turning Point USA.
They said, Turning Point USA is never going to be anything.
You know, Charlie, just, you're a waste of time.
And you know what we did?
We kept our head down and we built and we outworked the competition.
And what started with 100 kids, look around everybody, is now the largest event in the entire conservative movement.
You can see this, the whole room.
It's just unbelievable.
Now I know many of you are saying, but you know, I have to send my kid to college.
I have to send my kid to college.
One of the ways that we're reaching students is online.
You see here, we are reaching millions and millions of young people every single day.
Joe Bob, Alex Clark, Savannah Hernandez.
We have an army of online influencers.
Our Turning Point USA digital team, it's the most dominant year online.
Don't take my word for it.
What does the New York Times say writing in third person?
Mr. Kirk's social media posts garnered far more engagements, a combination of likes, retweets, comments, and other interactions than those of mainstream news organizations like the New York Times and CNN.
Thank you, New York Times, for telling the world that we're bigger than the New York Times.
Now you might say, but Charlie, what exactly is going viral?
What is the content that is being seen?
So in another episode of Charlie goes to an Arizona taxpayer-funded campus, I go to Northern Arizona University, and some lunatic.
Charlie, you're scripting these things.
Trust me, I don't script any of this stuff.
I don't need to script it.
And, you know, there was a whole mob there.
They were screaming at us.
And there were some very, very angry women that were screaming at me.
And I said, okay, you know, Matt Walsh has the famous movie, and God bless Matt Walsh for it.
What is a woman, right?
So I said, why don't I ask this group of women, what is a woman?
What is a woman?
That's a stupid question, dude.
That's a dumb question.
What is a woman?
It's not a trick question.
What is a woman?
No one identifies as a woman.
You can't answer the question with the question.
Yeah, define the woman without saying woman.
It's a social selling woman.
You're in college paying for an education.
What is a woman?
How about you talk to someone with media training?
You don't need media training.
It's not a trick.
What is a woman?
You can't answer the question with the media training.
The college kids of America going hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt who think it's a trick question when you ask them what a woman is.
College is a scam, everybody.
You got to stop sending your kids to college.
I'll tell you what.
And we're doing something to solve it at Turning Point USA.
Newly launched Turning Point Academy.
You guys should go by the booth and say hello.
Leading an education revolution for homeschool moms and parents all across the country.
Turning Point Academy is leading the charge in curriculum development and teaching the teachers.
In addition, at Turning Point USA, in addition to our high school program and our college program and student body presidents and our massive events, we recently launched something very near and dear to my heart.
We are in a spiritual war, everybody, that is beyond just the material that we are seeing.
I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade in the suburbs of Chicago at Christian Heritage Academy.
Most important decision I ever made in my life.
And I encourage you to do the same, making Jesus Christ the chairman of the board of your life.
I started growing Turning Point USA, and the Lord kept on blessing Turning Point.
And I just, you know, would speak at a group here or there and people say, oh, you ever spoke at a church?
Oh, not really.
And then COVID happened.
And I made, without a doubt, the worst prediction in the history of American podcasting.
I look right in the camera on the Charlie Kirk show and I say, you know, all these lockdowns and all these orders to tell people to stay at home, they're not going to last.
The American church is going to lead the resistance, is going to fight back against these lockdowns because the church loves liberty.
And that was one of the dumbest things I have ever said on the Charlie Kirk show.
I was shocked when the bride of Christ, the church, shuddered in fear when they took Easter and Pentecost from us, when we saw the faithful stay at home, when we needed a revival more than ever, when suicides were going up, when alcoholism was going up, when drug addiction was going up, the church stayed and coward and fear.
And I looked around and I said, this is a time when the church should be defying these tyrants and these government leaders.
They called strip clubs essential and they called marijuana dispensaries essential and they called convenience stores essential.
And yet they said the church was non-essential and so many pastors took it.
And then, in the summer of 2020, during Floyda Palooza, we saw churches parroting a lie from the pit of hell when they said that America was systemically racist and that you're a racist person because of the color of your skin.
And I looked around and I said, why is the church peddling this?
And I took a step back.
I said ah, the marxists have took over the FBI, they have took over our colleges and they're trying to take over the church next.
And out of that, we launched TP USA Faith.
The mission statement of Tpusa Faith is very simple, we want to kick wokeism out of the American church as quickly as possible, as the heresy that it is.
And we got to work.
We are organizing pastors across the country.
And some people say, but Charlie, you know, stop being political.
Excuse me.
This is biblical.
Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, all were counselors to the king.
Jeremiah 29, 7, seek the welfare of the nation that you are in because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.
It is biblical to defy tyrants.
The midwives to the Hebrews in Exodus 1 were told to slaughter the newly born children, and they disobeyed Pharaoh, which pleased God.
Disobedience to tyrants is obedience to God.
Disobedience to tyrants is obedience to God.
Because liberty, liberty is not man's idea.
It is God's idea.
And we are at a period of time, everybody, where the American church, most American churches are not speaking out on these issues.
They say, you know, well, I just do the gospel.
So do we.
Do you think that the gospel includes allowing the church to be called non-essential and to stay shuttered and afraid?
Too many pastors have a much bigger wardrobe budget than a book budget.
Too many pastors are the cool kids giving a TED Talk in a rock concert that is indecipherable from the world and not preaching the word.
You might say, but Charlie, I don't like this, you know, religion.
So we'll get over it because this country was founded by courageous, Bible-believing Christians.
55 out of 56 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Bible-believing church-attending Christians.
Nine out of 13 of the states at the American founding required you to be a Protestant Christian at the founding.
In the Declaration of Independence, God is mentioned four times.
Laws of nature and nature is God.
We appeal to a supreme judge of the universe.
There has been revival after revival.
Billy Graham led a revival to this country, and he also said that communism is Satan's religion.
One of the reasons we are seeing the issues we're seeing in America today is because the church has been silent and the secular Marxists are taking over the nation.
TPUSA Faith on a daily basis seeks to wake up the church with courage and clarity and conviction to lead a movement to push back against the secular totalitarians in America.
We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries.
And today, I want to point you to their podcast.
It's called Culture in Christianity, the Allen Jackson Podcast.
What makes it unique is Pastor Alan's biblical perspective.
He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues we're facing today, gender confusion, abortion, immigration, Doge, Trump in the White House, issues in the church.
He doesn't just discuss the problems.
In every episode, he gives practical things we can do to make a difference.
His guests have incredible expertise and powerful testimonies.
They've been great friends.
And now you can hear from Charlie in his own words.
Each episode will make you recognize the power of your faith and how God can use your life to impact our world today.
The Culture and Christianity podcast is informative and encouraging.
You could find it on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes.
Alan Jackson Ministries is working hard to bring biblical truth back into our culture.
You can find out more about Pastor Allen and the ministry at alanjackson.com forward slash Charlie.
Welcome to America Fest, everybody.
Thank you, everybody.
The real thank you is the Turning Point team that worked their tail off this last year.
That's who you should be applauding.
By the way, I like this touch.
Look at all these students that we have at Turning Point.
You want to look at this.
I like that.
They helped win the election, everybody.
Young people move by 30 points this election cycle.
I'll tell you what.
The kids are all right.
Welcome, everybody.
It feels good to win back our country.
I'll tell you, this has been a difficult and challenging year in so many different ways.
And we have to think back to where we were, as the video said, in January of 2021.
January 7th of 2021.
They said the MAGA movement was dead.
They said that Donald Trump will never have a political future.
Joe Biden was coming in and putting people in prison for going into the Capitol Rotunda and praying.
Joe Biden was mandating the vaccine, keeping the border completely and totally wide open.
We were seeing our country disappear and vanish from us.
But here's where you come in.
For every single one of you in this audience that never wavered, that always had the president's back, that continued to support him, you guys are the beginning portion of the greatest political comeback in American history.
Look at what we are up against, because it defies any sort of human reason.
From the law fair, they tried to put Donald Trump in prison for 700 years.
Every major tech company banned Donald Trump from their platform.
Donald Trump was banned from Facebook.
He was banned from Google.
He was banned from Pinterest because he's like a big Pinterest guy.
He was banned from Spotify.
He couldn't even listen to Phantom of the Opera.
They did everything they could to make him disappear.
But there was a problem: you could put Donald Trump in exile at Mar-a-Lago, but you can't make 75, 80 million people disappear.
Is that they can make him as if, okay, we're going to try to solve this problem, but what are you going to do with the people of this country?
And that's where all of you that continue to do the work, you entered.
We entered front stage, and it was difficult.
We were told that this was never going to happen, that the Democrat Party was immovable.
For all of you on campuses that continue to fight for conservative causes that were graded differently, kicked out of class, that were smeared, that were slandered, it was as if there was no immediate hope.
But you guys had faith and faith not just that we could take back our country.
And if we are honest with ourselves, we cannot take credit for what happened on November 5th.
The person, or more importantly, who deserves credit is God Almighty for saving this country and giving us four years of Donald Trump.
We didn't earn it we were We worked out of obedience, but we were inches away from a civil war.
And Donald Trump just so happened to turn his head at a specific time to look at a PowerPoint.
I mean, I've been to a lot of MAGA rallies.
How many MAGA rallies does he do a PowerPoint presentation?
And he just happened to turn his head at that specific moment and that bullet whizzed by and grazed his ear.
And by the grace of God that we did not earn and we did not deserve, his life was spared on July 13th in Butler, Pennsylvania.
He had every reason to play it safe after that.
He had every reason to just kind of take it easy.
He had every reason not to continue to campaign, to say that, I'm just going to kind of hope for the best.
He did more events.
He said, I'm going to go do outdoor events.
Forget it.
We're not going to let the bad guys win.
And you can tell who a person is in a moment of crisis.
You see, our leaders talk a big game, but anytime they actually feel the pressure, they fold.
And we saw who Donald Trump actually is in that moment.
When he fell to the floor and he rose, he spoke to all of us at a fundamental level, at a level that we can't even put into words.
When he ascended and he said, fight, fight, fight.
It was an anthem.
It was a clarion call for all of us that regardless of what you are up against, this is a guy who did not need to be doing this.
You know that Donald Trump could have cut a deal.
Donald Trump could have cut a deal.
The final warning shot was when they raided Mar-a-Lago in August of 2022.
That was the warning shot, like, hey, you better not do this thing, run for the presidency.
Cut a deal.
Golf for the rest of your life, or else we're going to put you in federal prison.
And Donald Trump had a choice.
Do I do the easy thing or the right thing?
And if there is one thing that you teach your child, it's you must do the right thing, even if it is the challenging thing.
He knew what he was signing up for.
Young men are the most conservative they have been in over 50 years.
50 years.
Think about that.
Now, a reporter asked me, they said, Charlie, can you try to explain this phenomenon?
I said, yeah, it's very simple.
Young men want to be part of a political movement that doesn't hate them.
In fact, let me go a step further, that thinks they're essential to a future of a country.
That we need strong men and strong women.
That we're sick and tired of hearing about toxic masculinity when we are drowning in toxic femininity.
When we become a feelings-based culture, you can't say that.
You can't do that.
You're going to offend somebody.
And who is the most overtly masculine political figure of the last hundred years?
No, it's not Tim Walz.
Stop it, okay?
That's not true.
No.
Of course, it's the man who would never apologize for America, that stands proudly for our tradition and our history, that doesn't care about what sensibilities he offends, that calls Justin Trudeau governor, the guy that just said.
And in many ways, this was an election that was more about culture than it was about politics.
That it was about who are we as a people?
What are we doing to the next generation to say that you have to be taught diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory, that you have to be under this transgenderism nonsense?
As a side note, by the way, as one of the first things that I hope this new administration does, we need to end the medical mutilation of our children called gender-affirming care in this country immediately.
And also say, no men in women's sports ever.
But understand, that was a controversial thing to say three or four years ago.
It took a little bit of a, I don't care energy, a little bit of a masculine chip on the shoulder to say, no, actually, you're not going to have some dude in my locker room change with my daughter.
And I'm not going to allow that to happen.
You see, they wanted us to be quiet and afraid and silent and subservient.
They wanted us to cower into our corner.
But the conservative movement has changed fundamentally.
I hope you guys understand this.
And we can't lose it.
We must lean into it.
We call the shots, not the media, not the oligarchs, not Washington, D.C.
And our asks are so simple.
The media like say, oh, there's radical, they're revolutionary.
So on it, here's our ask.
We want a border.
We want our kids to learn reading, writing, arithmetic, and not graphic pornography at the age of 11.
We want our founding documents to matter much more than federal registry and bureaucracies.
We believe the Constitution is the law of the land.
We believe in three branches, not four.
We also believe, I know this is so radical for them to understand, that when you appropriate money, American citizens are first, not Ukrainians.
Wow, like what a concept.
And you add all of that together, they are the radicals, and they have been the radicals for quite some time.
And the final point I'll make is this, is the remarkable power and potency of the truth tellers in this room.
You see, we have grown up in a time where we say the media is the worst, the media is this.
And in fact, President Trump said that at his first ever MAGA rally.
Do you know where his first ever MAGA rally was?
In this building.
This building was the first ever MAGA rally.
Did you know that?
And the only feedback I have for President Trump is he says the media is this, the media is that.
Guys, we are the media now.
Not them.
Their power is fading and waning.
No one reads their stuff.
Their subscriptions are going down.
Like, CNN has less views than Hallmark movie reruns, which, again, it's Christmas.
A lot of people watch Hallmark during Christmas.
Anyway, separate issue.
Or is it lifetime?
I don't know.
I get them both confused.
Whatever.
And they are increasingly irrelevant.
And what is relevant is the democratization and the decentralization.
And I said it when it happened.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter, I believe it was the most important singular purchase since the Louisiana purchase for this country.
I truly believe that.
And look at the cause set in motion that happened since Elon Musk bought Twitter.
It gave us the ability to speak our mind.
Think about all the things that would have just happened without our ability to challenge it.
We were able to call out the BS on the southern border.
We were able to talk about the transiting of our kids.
We were able to talk about what they're actually teaching in our schools.
We were able to actually talk about like, hey, Kamala Harris can't speak in sentences.
Let's watch this clip.
It's simple, basic things.
And we joke around.
I do not think that we would have been able to expose the American people to how Joe Biden was brain damaged if it wasn't for Twitter or X, because the media wasn't doing their job.
By the way, the media should all immediately lose their government-issued licenses day one for the malpractice they did for covering for Joe Biden's senility.
We are in the driver's seat, and that comes with a lot of obligation.
We are the cultural force.
We are ascendant.
The bad guys are scattered, confused, and afraid, and they will be back.
And the posture should not be one that, oh, we won and that we're the greatest, now we're indestructible.
No, it's the opposite.
It should be one of humility, that we are actually in charge, and we didn't earn it, but we have an obligation to deliver, that we have an opportunity that we may never happen again.
It is a once in many lifetimes opportunity to fill the government with change makers.
I believe the four years of exile is the ultimate Romans 12, 2 verse, that God will use all things, all things for good for those who love him.
When we got displaced from power in 2020, how many of you guys said, boy, 2020, this is the worst thing that happened.
We lost our country.
We were trying to see what was the takeaway here.
It felt as if it was so unjust, which it was.
And it was so much lying and so much manipulation.
But God knew what he was doing.
What he was doing is he was putting our movement in a temporary state of exile where we could become stronger, we could become better, where we could separate the frauds from the real people we could see who people really were, where we could expand our ranks.
We had to desire it more when our back was against the wall.
If we would have won in 2020, the second term, I don't know if it would have been that great.
It would have just kind of been a little bit of COVID.
Okay, that's fine.
And the second term is almost never as good as the first.
And now we almost get two first terms.
And the second one, we have a team that is ready to change the world and bring America back to greatness.
I will close with this.
Soak in this conference, everybody.
This is the first major turning point conference where we can just celebrate what has been done.
But also, we've got to keep our eyes on these students.
They're going to go nuts these next couple days.
I'll tell you.
But also, go start a turning point, USA, college chapter.
Go start a turning point, USA, high school chapter.
Go start a turning point, USA, 5C school.
Go find out how your church can get involved.
Sign up and become an activist.
America Fest is the starting point for us to take America to greater heights in 2025.
Remember how lost we felt a year ago.
Remember how directionalist we felt.
And instead of saying we've won everything, I could take it easy and said God gave us a reprieve so that we can reload, that we can lean in, and that we can make the conservative movement stronger than ever before.
And that's the resources you're going to see in the exhibit hall.
There will be people here that could change your life, future jobs, future friends, maybe even future spouses.
You never know.
We hear that a lot.
But have that posture of activism and action.
We have a slate of speakers that is the greatest in the entire country.
I mean, it's just unbelievable we have here.
It's going to be four days of energy and enthusiasm.
And you guys help make it possible.
This is the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.