Pick Up The Mic: Blake and Jack at Arizona State University
Blake Neff and Charlie Kirk address the Arizona State University crowd, asserting college is a scam while urging young marriage and activism. They refute assassination claims as attacks on free speech, debate anti-Semitism and Francisco Franco's legacy, and deny CIA contract conspiracies involving Erica Kirk. The hosts discuss Jeffrey Epstein files, advocating for proven crimes over guilt by association, and propose automation to replace migrant labor. They link political violence to economic upheaval and community atomization, concluding that rebuilding human connections through churches is essential to counter online warfare and restore constitutional freedoms. [Automatically generated summary]
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.
I almost feel like we don't even need these speakers, but I guess the AV guys will say we do need them.
Yeah, we need to record it or that nonsense.
What's up, ASU?
What's going on, guys?
My second event to ASU, actually the first event we had here was just about six months ago, the first event that I had when we did the vigil for Charlie.
And I think that was one of the biggest vigils that had been done.
So I wanted to say thank you to everybody.
I know that a lot of people here helped to put that on.
I'm sure a lot of you guys were at that.
Most of you are probably there, right?
At that.
So just thank you for doing that.
That was a really special night.
And I remember it was an emotional night.
I think it was a very emotional night for all of us, I'm sure, just being there and being together.
Because you don't really know what else we can do in that.
But Blake Neff is here.
What's going on Blake?
Oh, man, I don't even know where to start.
I haven't been on the side of the table before.
So this is Blake's first ever turning point speaking to a chapter event of all.
So you've been up for Blake Neff.
You guys are very lucky or very unlucky.
And you can take your pick by the end of the night.
Oh, thank you so much.
Thank you.
But so Blake's background, so you guys don't know, is that he was a writer on the Tucker Carlson show for Fox News.
And after that, he came over to the Charlie Kirk show where three years, three years, worked there for three years.
And not only as a writer, as a researcher, but also, and this is going to be, and he's going to talk about it in a second, also as one of the guys that would help Charlie come up with his arguments that would help Charlie do the research, do the planning, do the back and forth, sort of like play out the debates a little bit.
And so when Utah happened last year, that was the first day of that tour.
As a lot of people, you know, may not realize, though, that there was this, when Charlie was going into tour mode, well, Blake, you can talk about this a little bit.
When Charlie was going into tour mode, I want to know what was that got over.
What was that training like?
You know, I think I'll start off with this, which is one of the most common questions we'd get at these events and on the show is people, young people would say, Charlie, how can I do what you do?
And I remember a conversation I had with one of our team members with Brian, and he said, these people don't know what they're asking because they do not want to do what Charlie does.
And I can confirm that.
Like, I saw Charlie doing the grind in and out every single day.
And I'll tell you, the last conversations I had with Charlie were preparing for an event just like this one, bigger, of course, but same thing, because he said, I need to be ready for everything they could throw at me.
So what's big right now?
Oh, well, people are upset about Israel-Gaza.
Prep me on that.
And then I need to be sharp on the Bible.
Let's study.
What does the Bible say on all of these topics?
The very last conversation I had with Charlie by text, not even in person, it was, Blake, remind me, what are all the good arguments for monogamy?
Which I think there's pretty good arguments for monogamy, but he's just refreshed them to me.
And, you know, why is monogamy better than polygamy?
Why is European monogamy better than the way anywhere else does it?
Why is divorce bad?
Blake, hit me.
Hit me, hit me.
Did he just think that he was going to get a question on monogamy?
Yeah, I think it probably was in his mind.
It was because it was Utah.
I think it literally was that.
No, it was like, he brought it up.
You know, and that's what Charlie was like.
And it wasn't just because that event was going on.
Charlie was able to go out and debate every single day because Charlie was effectively debating every single day with you and me in a friendly way.
But he always wanted to be prepared.
And he was always ready to learn.
So he would always be coming and saying, Blake, what's a good argument on this about immigration?
What's the truth going on with the border?
What's the truth with H-1Bs?
I'm hearing about this thing.
I would hear about that thing.
I would get, Jack, tell me about Russia.
What's going on?
What's going on with Russia?
Okay, bye.
And he would do that.
China.
Let's go over China.
Okay, bye.
And what was so exceptional with Charlie was the profound humility and that he was always ready to learn.
He was always ready to pick up a new expert who could teach him something.
And he was never discouraged by having a setback.
He was doing an event like this probably in his last year.
I bet he did 30 of them in a year or something like that.
And as someone who had to review every single one of those, just because we'd be posting them as podcast episodes, I will tell you, Charlie did not win every single debate he ever got in.
Charlie did not win every single exchange he had with students.
He had somewhere, they would go viral with the left where the highlight would be, oh, Charlie gets owned by student on this.
And he would get discouraged by it, but he would not be discouraged ever in a way that made him slack on his prep.
Every setback for Charlie was always an opportunity to just learn more, get better.
I think one of the best lessons you can get from Charlie, one of the reasons he achieved so much in barely 30 years of life is that Charlie understood that the person who fails the most actually succeeds the most.
That's cool.
He had these huge folders of debates and topics, and it would be color-coded.
And oh, hey, this is a section on.
When he was in his car, when he was flying, and he was such immense discipline over his time.
Okay, here's the taxes section.
Let me pull this up to taxes.
Here's something on immigration.
And he would just go to it, stats.
And the discipline over his time, because people would wonder about this.
So it literally, he'd get off the plane, and he'd say, all right, first thing first, let's call, let's call the family.
Calls up Erica, has his kids on the phone, talks to them for several minutes.
Hey, say hi to Blake, everyone.
And then do all of that.
He'd get it, close it, and then he'd go, all right, Blake, where were we on this?
And just instantly pivot over to this topic.
And then once he was done with me or Dan or anyone else in the team, he would just, he'd be going through his binders on his own as well.
Just memorize every single talking point.
And again, it's that every single defeat was a chance to build to a new victory.
Every single setback was a chance to get better.
And that was the grind that made Charlie a famous debater.
It was that and fearlessness.
And I can't say, as someone doing this for the first time, I know there's a lot of nervousness.
I can't say how he felt the first time he ever did it.
But what I can say is by the time I saw him out there, he was a guy who he wasn't afraid to argue in front of 100 people.
He wasn't afraid to argue in front of 3,000 people.
He wasn't afraid if this was going to be seen by 10 million people on Fox News or if it was going to go viral to 100 million people on TikTok.
And it was simultaneously never being afraid of the sheer number of people out there or ever forgetting when you're talking to just one person that it all hones in on that person and you have to speak to them as the individual.
And so I just loop back to people would always ask, how can I be like Charlie?
That's how you be like Charlie.
It is a truly daily endless effort.
You never slack.
You never get lazy.
And I think Jack, you and I can both attest that he was one of the best at it.
And we know because students like you would tell us that.
We know because of the emails we received.
But most of all, we know, and the reason we're here today, we know because someone was so afraid about the arguments that Charlie might make that rather than just grab that mic and make the argument against him, he took things into his own hands in a very different way.
And I'll even, you know, on that note, I'll address that, so I heard there was this situation with another group, the UNF America Tour, that they were trying to have an event on ASU's campus today as well.
And they actually came by.
They paid us a visit at the Turning Point headquarters earlier today.
And we broadcast that live on my show on Human Events Daily.
And we went out.
Blake and I went out and Andrew Colvett, who we work with, also went out.
And there had been some misconception.
And they were asking us if we played a role in having their event canceled.
And I said, not only did we not have a role in that, but also our event got canceled too.
So, you know, believe me, if we had that kind of poll, we would have obviously just stuck with our own regular event that we were planning to have.
And I feel like we had a pretty good conversation with them.
Some of those clips are going around right now.
I'm sure there's going to be some more as well.
And yeah, we chopped it up a little bit, you know, as Blake is saying here.
Turning Point Event Misconceptions00:04:39
Which is what we'd want to do because what we want to do.
Charlie's, every time he did an event, it was those who disagree come to the front first.
It's an agreement fest.
And when we go to, yeah, when we go to the mic, that's exactly what we're going to say.
But I just wanted to add that that was something that we eventually all agreed with because they said, well, what do you think about us having a left-wing version of the Turning Point campus tour?
What do you think about that?
And I said, honestly, I would appreciate you guys doing this than a guy climbing up on a building and doing what he did to Charlie, right?
I think we can all agree on that.
And I certainly wouldn't want anyone doing that on the other side either.
So, because that's what it's all about.
That's what being American is all about.
That's what the First Amendment is all about.
That's what our country is all about.
That's what civic life is all about.
That you can't have the system of government that we have.
You can't have the system of laws.
And right there, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are right up on the wall.
They must have a law that requires that.
Yeah, there must be some law that has that up in every room.
Is that a law here in Arizona?
I'm not from Arizona, from Pennsylvania.
The other room we were in also had them.
But yeah, we noticed in the other room, too.
That's why I thought it might be there.
And that's the point, though, is that this is the system that we have.
We don't have a system where we resort to violence to hash out our disagreements.
We don't resort to violence.
We don't do that.
And that's why what happened to Charlie, not to go at it at length unless people have questions about it, but that's why what happened to him is so heinous because it was an attack on Charlie, but it was also an attack on the ideals of our country,
the ideals of our country, which are based on free speech, free debate, free dialogue, and the ability of someone to be able to get up in the public square and what could be more of the modern public square than a university campus and to be able to have those debates.
And that's what Charlie was all about.
How many of you know what a black pillar is?
Raise your hand.
Boo!
You don't like black pillars.
Yeah, you all know what black pillars.
Get them out.
So black pillars for those who aren't terminally online.
It's the person who is always a doomer, always defeatist, who says everything's going south.
And so either everything's going to collapse or only radical things can stop the collapse.
Blake, are you a black pillar mission?
They always would accuse me of this.
Probably because my name starts with B. His nickname, we do a Thursday podcast where it's all of us together.
And we do kind of nickname him Black Pill Blake.
Sorry about it.
No, but I want to emphasize that, that the system Charlie died believing in is that he was never a black pillar.
He was never a doomer.
He believed that this system that we have in America is one where you can go on a campus and you can win an argument and you can change people's minds.
And he lived that out because we saw him personally help turn the tide on big issues.
He turned the tide on who to vote for in 2024.
He turned the tide on the transgenderism issue, which is one reason he was so, that man hated him.
And he died believing that argument could carry the day in America.
He died believing that freedom of speech was the way we can resolve our differences.
He died telling people, you don't need a revolution.
You don't need to overthrow the state.
You don't need to do something crazy.
You can change this country with a microphone, with some bravery, and with some actual diligence, taking action.
Charlie was always the one.
Go out there, debate people, do things, organize, get out the vote.
That was Charlie's message.
That's what he died for.
And that's why you and I have to pick up the mic.
And I think that was, and I think ultimately, you know, the moment that, you know, and the one, I forgot the name, but she said to me that, you know, she had actually met Charlie once.
from the other tour and had and said, you know, well, one day, because she was looking at the Turning Point campus and said, you know, one day I want to get so big that we have buildings and a campus and all this to it.
And I said, okay, well, good luck.
And she goes, that's the same thing Charlie said.
Good luck.
I said, you know what?
Good luck.
Fine, because that's our system.
Our system is go out there, try to do it.
If you can't do it, try again.
If you fail, try harder.
That's what Charlie was all about.
Charlie never gave up.
And, you know, there's never going to be another Charlie Kirk.
And I don't like what people do that whole, I'm the next Charlie Kirk.
Never Give Up Like Charlie00:10:36
No, you're not.
Like, just stop.
There's only ever going to be one Charlie Kirk.
There's ever only was going to be one Charlie Kirk.
And there will only ever be one Charlie Kirk.
But in Charlie's absence, while he's away on assignment with God, that the worst thing we could do to honor Charlie's legacy and in those days afterwards and the hours and now here we are a month, six months after, the worst thing we could possibly do is to quit and give up and pack it up and say, all right, well, you know.
Whether it's giving up on the right or giving up on his strategy.
Right.
Because his strategy wasn't working, and that's exactly why he was killed.
So we're going to do what we can to try to keep Charlie's legacy going.
What do you guys think about that?
Should we do that?
It looks like it works.
Awesome.
Okay, all right.
All right.
Hi, Jacob Blake.
Honestly, it's great to see you guys here, like taking up your time to talk to us.
Like, thank you so much.
And I just want to say, God bless Charlie.
Like, he meant a lot to me on the street.
Amen.
Thank you for saying that.
I'm not the biggest disagreeer.
I'm just not agreeing on everything.
But my big question here is: I'm a Jewish student here at ASU, and I am more conservative, leading a conservative leading.
But around the conservative and greater right community, you do see a bunch of anti-Semitism, and the ADL has been pointing at it, and I've noticed it myself.
Other students have noticed it themselves.
What would you say for these Jewish students to do, and what should the leaders do to own up to this and try to fix this problem?
So are you saying that you see it on just on the right in general, or actually incidents on campus?
I mean, on the right in general, but then also there are some incidents on campus.
Can you tell us, any, just in detail?
I mean, I'm not sure how to get this.
I'm not putting you on the spot.
Yeah, I understand.
Like, there are points where there are jokes made about the Jewish group that does perpetuate harm.
But I get their jokes, and I don't take it too much personally, but there are students that do.
So, what would you say to those students who feel like they're not welcomed in this community?
My first rule: I think, as always, it's always important to follow a principle of charity.
You say you know their jokes, and I think as long as they are jokes, don't hunt for offense because that alienates people.
But I think you are correct to see this problem.
I think this is something Charlie was super concerned about.
We talked about this even into his final days because it is owning this.
Yes, we do.
That's not you guys, and I appreciate that's not you guys because 100% because I know some people want to dismiss it as people just being paranoid, but it's not paranoia because we can see it clearly there's almost a germ that gets in some people's brains where it's extremely tempting for them to blame any problems in their country, any problems in the world, and let's be frank, any problems in their personal lives on the Jews.
Why is it them so commonly compared to Sidden to others?
I'm sure if I could solve that question, I could probably get a big grant from somebody.
But it is a recurring pattern, and you're right to be concerned about it.
Now, what you should do is, first of all, just don't make any apologies for who you are.
Don't allow anyone to intimidate you.
Don't allow anyone to say that you're a second-class American because of what your heritage is.
And as long as you're able to hold firm on that, I think you'll win a lot of respect from people.
And I think Charlie had a good disposition on this where he'd point out: like, don't pick, we shouldn't pick fights with people if they're critical of the nation-state of Israel.
It's not America, they're a different country.
You don't, you can disagree with people, but you don't pick fights with them or call them anti-Semitic if they dislike Benjamin Netanyahu.
He's a politician, and he's a foreign politician at that.
But we do have to draw a hard line.
If someone is going to be saying that the Jews control everything in America, like that's just not true, and it's paranoid.
And if they're going to say the Jews are responsible for why there's pornography or whatever things they come up with, you actually just have to, I'll be frank, I think those people just have to be called out as morons.
Because I think for a lot of them, it's just a low-hanging fruit.
And we are, I'll be frank, we're seeing a side effect of something that Charlie fought for that we all care about, which is true freedom of speech and getting rid of censorship.
It used to be five years ago, six years ago, we had rampant censorship on every single platform online.
And it did mean there was a lot less anti-Semitism on the internet, but it also meant you couldn't say what a woman really is.
You couldn't really criticize immigration.
You couldn't take a lot of views that we're now able to say.
And a side effect of Elon Musk buying Twitter, renaming it X, opening that up, a lot of other platforms, liberalizing so that we can say what we really believe is, it did have the side effect of enabling a lot of these people.
So we have to be tough because we have to win this argument with arguments.
We don't want to return to a world where censorship is rampant because that's where the left wins.
Yes.
Thank you so much.
I absolutely concur with that.
We can move next.
You're next.
How you doing?
Hi, good evening.
So, you know, I know a lot of you here knew Charlie Kirk, so I'm sorry for your loss.
So anyway, I am a history major here at ASU, and because a lot of people aren't interested in dwelling on the past, but because I'm a history major, I am.
So, Jack Pasobich, I've read that you before have defended Henri Alissimo Francisco Franco, who was the Caudillo of Spain from 1936 to 1975.
So you believe he was a crusader who saved Spain from communism, is that correct?
He certainly did.
So then do you think, that leads me to three questions then, do you think it was necessary for him to space in order to save Spain from communism to have the Nazi Luftwaffe level the city of Guernica to the ground and kill thousands of civilians just to take the city from Basque, Catholic Basque nationalists who only wanted autonomy for their nation?
Do you think it was necessary to save Spain from communism in order for them to execute or imprison indigenous Basques, Catalans, and Galicians who were simply speaking their native languages or practicing their cultures?
I mean, do you think it was necessary for him in order to save Spain from communism to abolish the democratic republic and make himself dictator for life and keep Spain until his death under this stifling dictatorship where there was what little progress did happen, only benefited the elite and very strict traditional society?
Because I don't understand.
It's more than just little progress.
It was known as the Spanish miracle.
Well, the economic economic progress was tremendous.
But it benefited mainly the elite, but I don't understand how you can celebrate free speech while supporting this dictator who banned entire languages.
And in one instance, and I will show anyone, I'll email anyone if you want to know where I read this, that one of his police officers once executed a taxi driver simply because he gave him directions in Catalan.
So if this is the model, if Franco-Spain is the new rights model, then I don't want anything to do with that.
Well, have I said that's the model for America?
Well, no, but some people have, although your position is that...
You asked about what I've said.
Right.
I apologize.
I don't want to strawman you.
But your position is that he saved Spain from communism, but it was necessary for him to do all those horrible Spain from communism.
There was a civil war, Spanish Civil War, and I noticed you mentioning certain things that happened on one side of that war, but you haven't mentioned anything about what the communists were doing in the first place that led to the Civil War kicking off.
Well, while there were communists and anarchists on the Republican side, it was mostly, if you look at the results of the 1936 congressional election, it was mostly liberals and socialists and moderate socialists who wanted a democratic republic.
And I just don't, you know, you can, and even if, even though people on the Republican side did do horrible things, I don't see how that justifies all of the horrible things Franco did in trying to eliminate these states like the Bass Country.
Things like things like smashing churches, things like murdering priests, things like raping nuns on the altars, and then taking their dead bodies and parading them in the town squares.
I have photos if you'd like to see.
And all of these absolute atrocities which were going on throughout Spain.
Well, I think you didn't seem to mention.
Well, I agree that all that is wrong, but I don't understand how any of that can justify leveling Guernica or all the other things that I mentioned.
Again, it was a civil war.
Well, but the banning of all those cultures, that happened after the Civil War.
Again, it was a civil war.
There was a situation that he led.
And again, I've never once said that America should be like Franco-Spain.
People have tried to put words in my mouth and say that I've said that, never said that.
Okay, well, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to straw manual.
No, no, I'm not necessarily saying that you said that, but there are people who have tried to say that.
I've just never said it.
Okay.
So, but even after the Civil War, it was still illegal for people from those groups to speak their languages and practice their cultures.
I mean, why, in the name of national unity, why was that?
I mean, do you think that was okay?
Well, Spain has a totally different history than the United States.
So their history in terms of maintaining their culture, their heritage, maintaining their territorial integrity, it's totally different from our culture.
So they have a culture, for example, that had to deal with the occupation of the Muslims, the occupation of the Moors, and who they fought against for almost 1,700 years, to be able to expel and then maintain their territorial and cultural identity.
And so in that context, I'm sure that's what they were operating under.
But the United States of America has a totally different system than Spain.
We are not Spain.
We don't, hopefully, are not going to be speaking Spanish as our national language anytime soon.
But of course, you see the way things are going, that might happen, or at least as a quasi-secondary language.
And so I wouldn't necessarily say that the things done within the Spanish context are things that we should do here in the American context, just because they're two totally different situations.
Spain vs America Contexts00:10:37
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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We got a question on Israel, Jewish students.
We got a Franco question.
This is fun.
Hey guys, how are you doing?
Hi, how are you?
What's your name?
My name is Johnny Durkin.
Johnny?
Can we raise that?
Yeah, sorry.
We'll raise it for you.
We've got different heights going on.
You said John was your name?
Yeah.
Or Johnny?
Johnny.
Johnny.
So I'm a space systems engineer.
That's awesome.
You know, with the events of Charlie Kirk and sort of the organization of Turning Point and its sort of place in America, I mean, I think it's good that you guys are out here debating and putting on a platform for free speech.
Of course.
So I do have a question about the organization itself, though, which should be fair game, hopefully.
So, full disclosure: I don't think are either of us actual Turning Point employees.
I am an employee of the Charlie Kirk show, so I can't speak formally for Turning Point.
Obviously, I know many people there.
I have an extensive relationship, but I can't speak.
I'm for Turning Point.
We know things about Turning Points.
We know things.
I mean, I'm a Turning Point contributor, but Blake is saying, other of us are Turning Point officials, so if you're asking us about specific decisions, we may not have as much detail, but please, please fire away.
The general thing.
Yeah, yeah.
So, there's been videos of Turning Points Now, CEO Erica Kirk.
I've surfaced of her in CIA training videos.
You could look it up on your phone.
Joe Rogan talked about it.
It's been all over the place.
So, are you going to be skeptical?
Well, I'm not skeptical.
I'll let you finish the question.
You can look it up.
It's clear as day.
This is from before her meeting Charlie.
And after Charlie's unfortunate demise, something else was scrubbed off of Turning Point's internet, which was Paul Vallelli, who is a co-author of Mind War with the pedophile Satanist General Michael Aquino.
He was positioned as chair of the board, and that was since removed from Turning Point's website.
You can look at it.
As chair of Turning Point?
Yeah.
You could just Google Paul Vallelli Charlie Point.
I'd have to check that out.
Yeah, I haven't seen that.
I'd have to check that out.
I can't Google it right now.
It's on Turning Point.
I couldn't tell you the composition.
I can't tell you the composition of Turning Points Board.
What I can tell you is.
I was just saying it was removed after Charlie's unfortunate demise.
So you're saying he was on the site, or is there a video about it?
It was on the site, and then it was removed from the TPS.
So I was just wondering: do these connections warrant deeper investigation given the circumstances of Charlie's actual violent murder and death?
And then he was sort of speaking out against the current Iran war before.
He was against it theoretically, right?
And so.
So hold on.
Are you suggesting that if Erica Kirk was in Erica Franzve was in a CIA-related video, that's evidence that she was involved in a plot to have Charlie murdered?
I didn't say that.
I just said that.
Why did you mention it?
Well, let me get there.
Let me finish.
Let him go, let him go.
It's fine.
So, I mean, to my understanding of narrative control, you know, the pedophile ring scandal of the Epstein files, you know, you're just talking about what the communists were doing, you know, raping people on church stages and stuff like that, where there's a mind war pedophile Satanist general, Michael Aquino, who is, you know, writing, you know, significant psychological operations books that are influencing us today here and now.
So the question is, if he was vocally opposed to this war, and before the easy label of conspiracy gets thrown out, like, just Google the things right now, because I'm not going to entertain being called a conspiracy theorist.
This is like clear as day.
Yeah, so like my question is, is it smart to put these people front and center for turning point right after you know a violent assassination?
Now saying that you know CIA is pro war, right?
This is a group that has a following of young Republicans and conservatives being on campus doing debates.
So there's obviously a vested interest in large groups and accounts and narrative control at the CIA.
So if Erica Kirk is actually someone who was working for the CIA, there's no former CIA people.
Everybody's still working for the agency.
The question is, you know, should they be front and center at turning point, in your opinion?
Well, I'll start with this, by the way.
So Blake, this is your first event.
And just permit me, if you will, I think this helped answer your question.
Maybe help answer your question or at least give some insight.
Blake, this is your first, you know, pick up the mic anytime.
You stood next to Charlie a number of times, but never done it before.
Has anyone prior to you coming up here told you anything about what you have to say and what you can't say?
Nope.
Not even just a turning point.
Anyone in general?
Nope.
Same way for me.
No, there hasn't been, and I did see Erica, you know, earlier today, and she just said, good luck, you know, basically.
So, I mean, there isn't really a setup.
We talk about narrative formation that nobody really, so if I was doing narrative formation, and I am a prior intelligence officer, that, you know, I would make sure, I would make sure that I would say to my subjects, hey, you know, make sure you plug this thing, this thing, this thing, make sure you say this about Iran, make sure you say this about the war, make sure you say this about the president, et cetera.
If I were running that kind of operation, it's just, we just never done that.
They said, here's the event, here you go, here's the room, here's the mics, have at it.
And that was pretty much it.
So if you're running a SIOP like that, you want to make sure that you're hitting those repetition points over and over and over.
Yet, that's just not something that was done.
Look, I know there's different pieces of media that Erica did when she was working as, she was in media and she was doing different contract work for people.
People do different, you know, people take different contracts when you're in that world.
And I think that she did obviously different things.
I know a lot of people that have tried to be actresses and stars and different things.
And they take different contracts.
It's kind of, you know, what you get.
I want to get to the crux of it, which is, but that's not, and yeah, to get to the crux of it, that, just because you do a contract job for somebody at one point, you should look up IMDB on anybody.
But even further, I am actually in a Jackie Chan even under the DB.
You asked why, if it was wise to put Erica front and center at the organization.
The reason Erica is front and center at turning point is because when Charlie was alive, people repeatedly asked, Charlie, we're worried something will happen to you.
People always speculated that something could happen to Charlie.
And when he was asked, first of all, he was totally fearless.
He would just say, like, oh, it'll be fine.
Erica will take over for me.
That is what he said over and over.
I saw them interact all the time, almost on a daily basis, even when he was traveling.
He was calling her all the time.
He was talking to her all the time.
Charlie and Erica were partners.
They were husband and wife in a deep way.
Their marriage was incredibly admirable.
I've seen a lot of marriages.
Some of them are good.
Some of them are bad.
Charlie and Erica's was exceptional.
They were on the same wavelength.
I saw how much that relationship, I didn't know Erica as well prior to Charlie's death, but especially in the wake of it, I saw how much everything he'd done meant to her and how completely committed she was to fulfilling his mission, what he had done in life, that she knew the life I thought I was going to live has changed very abruptly, but I am fearlessly going to embrace the new one because I know it's what I have to do for my husband and for his legacy.
That is the reason she was put front and center.
And she hasn't really.
She's become the CEO of the organization because that is what Charlie wanted, and it's because I saw it with all the people who were senior at Turning Point.
There wasn't even a question that that is what would happen.
There was no one forcing this.
There was no one pressuring it to happen.
This is what everyone at Turning Point wanted to happen.
But the mind war Paul Valelli connection to U.S. Army psychological operations is more to the point with the CIA and Erica Kirk being hired by the CIA before meeting Charlie in a media, you know, a media outfit of his own founding, right?
Where, you know, it's a war of the words out there, so to speak.
Are there words that you believe she's used that are completely different from what Charlie would advocate?
I have never seen such a thing.
I've never heard Erica advocate for like war or anything.
Not at all.
For example, we've continued the Charlie Kirk show, and we've talked about the war, and I don't think we've taken a pro-war attitude on our program.
And I don't think we've ever faced any pressure on that front, whether from Erica, from Turning Point, or from the government.
Protecting Our Son From Attacks00:03:26
And I think, in truth, it's been very upset.
Yeah, like it's been very, I'll be frank, it's been very upsetting for me to run into insinuations and allegations like this because, Jack, if you and I want to have to borrow this to get into it, like I didn't make any allegations against you.
Well, I'm not saying you did, but a lot of people have used the things you mentioned to do it.
And I've seen people incredibly close to Charlie that he cared about and who I knew cared a lot about Charlie face a lot of bizarre harassment in these months since then.
In a period where they're trying to build on what Charlie did, they've been trying to grieve themselves.
And they've had to deal with people nitpicking how they behaved after someone was shot to death right in front of them.
They've been nitpicking what these, yes, publicly, while they were there, in front of them.
I was there.
I was 10 feet away from it when it happened.
And I've been blessed in that I haven't been harassed nearly as many as some of the people I've known.
But I find it detestable what some people have done because, Jack, you and I can attest, because we've looked at it as closely as anyone, that we are very confident that they have the right person in this case.
Are we not?
My mic has been mismatched.
No, I totally agree that when you follow the evidence, that the evidence points to Tyler Robinson.
It just points to him.
The one thing that I can't get by, not even to get into all the, which I could go through the forensic evidence, but the, and the, you know, obviously the physical evidence.
But the fact of the matter, as a father, right, the fact that it was his own parents, his own mom and dad, that turned in Tyler Robinson, and you didn't ask about Tyler, but I'm going to talk about it anyway.
That as a dad, you know, to pick up the phone in a situation like that and to call someone in law enforcement that, you know, had been a friend of yours and say, hey, I think that's my son that did that horrible thing.
In a situation where you've got the president of the United States calling for the death penalty, you obviously see the situation.
You know how bad it's going to be.
And in the face of all that, you still pick up the phone and turn in your own son.
It's one of the most admirable things I've seen anyone do.
It's incredible.
It gives me so much hope for America and so much hope for our society and the system, as we talked about.
That's why I'm not a black pillar.
And I'll just say it from my own perspective: as a dad, I don't know if I could do that for my own son.
I don't know if I could do that, to turn in my own son.
But that man did.
And because he did that, and it wasn't the FBI that caught Tyler Robinson, and it wasn't the local police, and nothing against them.
It's just this is how it happened.
They put out a photo.
They put out parents.
His mom saw it.
His dad made the phone call.
And I just, I've never talked to them directly, but if I did, I would just say, praying for you guys, praying for you as much as I hope anyone else is, because I can't even imagine what you're going through.
Thank you for your question.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
It was a good question.
It was a good question.
It was a great question.
Epstein And Trump Allegations00:12:59
Let's keep them going.
No, I'm glad we could talk about it.
No, it's, you know, we're chopping it up.
That's what it's all about.
Considering that you guys are a conservative organization, we've been called that.
Assume that you guys are supportive of the current administration.
Would that be correct?
Generally, yes.
Well, technically, Turning Point cannot endorse a candidate.
Yeah, noise enough.
Yeah, right.
We are a conservative organization.
We are in alignment with a very large share of the president's.
Legally, we have to say, since we're at the student event, that we're not endorsing.
But yeah.
Yeah, of course.
Okay.
Well, do you guys probably support the cabinet picks?
I do, yeah, do you?
I support them to the extent they've delivered on what they promised, which is, you know, whether the DH Secretary is Christy Noam or Mark Wayne Mullen now, as long as they are keeping the border secured, which they did, as long as they are deporting illegal migrants, if they're clamping down on all the other ways people have illegally come in this country and kept it secure, I like it.
Pete Hegseth, unconventional Secretary of War PIC, to say the least, but if he is putting merit first in the military instead of gender equity and all the other types of equity that they've prioritized in the military under the Biden years, then he has my support.
When the FBI is putting investigating actual terrorists first, actual criminals, actual evildoers, instead of sending agents into Latin masses to see if they're doing anything untoward when they say a potter noster, I'm in support of that.
And I think Marko Ruby has been an excellent Secretary of State.
I know several people in the administration, and I've been very impressed with what they've been able to do.
And so I feel like there's more to your question.
Yeah, so last pause-specific people here where obviously you have Kash Patel and Pam Bondi that were tasked with UNRID Acting and releasing the Epstein files.
We have zero perpetrators that have been arrested.
Would you feel like that's a cover-up when one of the files names that they had seven perpetrators that they knew assisted?
I think, I mean, look, this is something I've said publicly a number of times that I think that the way that that was handled was, I think it was mishandled.
It was obviously mishandled.
And the whole thing they did with, you know, handing me this binder and saying, oh, here's the Epstein files.
And it was all just stuff that had already been public.
And then, you know, we don't find out until we get a chance to go through it later on that if they had just come out initially and said, these are the files, we can get everything out, we can put it all out right now, then I think they would be in a much better position than they have been now.
And in fact, I'm going to be interviewing the working on it.
I'm not going to say it just yet, but working on interviewing a senior official at DOJ specifically about this, hopefully, fingers crossed later this week.
And I'm going to ask him those same questions because it's something where, look, when I talk to, when we go together, I was just at Liberty University.
Now here we are.
It's when I talk to young voters or young students, one of the number one questions I get isn't Iran, it's not foreign wars, it's Jeffrey Epstein, where are the arrests?
All day long.
And that's something that we called for at the last turning point event that we ended up holding with Charlie, which was the Student Action Summit down in Tampa, right?
And I remember you probably remember behind the scenes, too, just that was all blowing up.
And Charlie, he was a very, one of his best traits is he was stopped talking to the grassroots, and he would take an honest read of the grassroots all the way to the White House to the president.
And yeah, some of them got very angry because he was saying people are very upset about this.
And they got mad at him.
He says, too bad they're still really upset at you guys.
We've, at this point, right, having gone through everything that we went through to get the files, at least we do have the files now.
Personally, like I said, I wish they had come out day one, week one, put it all out, or if you have to go through it and put it out week two, whatever it is.
It should have been, should have been sooner.
Obviously, you can't change the past on that.
But I would love to see arrests.
I would absolutely love to see arrests in the UK, right?
They got arrested for the, well, it was Prince Andrew.
I guess they took his title away.
He was arrested.
They had to drop their Lord Mandelson had to get dropped out of their cabinet.
I don't know if he's been arrested, but it was a part of this insider trading thing.
And there's been a number of instances where we've seen again and again and again that it seemed like Jeffrey Epstein had this influence over his rich friends slash clients, some might say, that certainly, to my mind, requires criminal scrutiny.
So it seems like we're broadly in agreement, we want them prosecuted, but we do disagree a bit on what's sufficient disclosure.
I would say, I would first of all point out that we have more Epstein transparency now by about two orders of magnitude maybe than we have.
We're not saying sufficient disclosure.
And so we only have to do that.
And even then, there's been no accountability.
Like, think about the fact that Bill Gates, one of the 10 richest people in the world, is profoundly humiliated right now.
He's basically socially ruined by everything that's come out.
The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, he got embarrassed by what came out of the files because of the exchanges he was having with Epstein's team.
I believe the general counsel of Goldman Sachs, I think, got forced out of his job.
That's a pretty elite position.
What I would say, and what the president warned about, what the president warned about when this was all ramping up last summer is if you just release everything in a blanket way, there are going to be people who are going to be assumed guilty of crimes who aren't guilty of anything.
And I think that's been borne out because there is an element where people have just demanded anyone whose name has appeared in this should be arrested.
I firmly believe, yeah, if you can name a specific person who abused a specific other person or engaged in truly illegal behavior that's been alleged, they should be prosecuted.
They should be arrested.
But I would always encourage people to look closely at what is actually proven in anything that's happened.
Because I don't follow this as aggressively as some people, but I've seen it happen over and over where, oh, a photo comes out, and just because one of the faces is blurred out, they'll say, oh, this is this person with their victim, with no evidence that this person was a minor, was trafficked, that there was any sexual relationship of any kind.
And you can't run a country that way.
You can't run a country through insinuations, through guilt by association.
You have to actually prove things.
And I think as much as it's embarrassing to the world's elites that they were all just friends with this guy who we can all agree is very gross, we do have to be careful before we jump from that to mass arrests for everybody.
That sounds cathartic.
Now I'm going to start disagreeing.
I do want mass arrests.
When Bill Clinton started looking at some of those pictures, you guys saw this, right?
When he was looking at those pictures, you could see old Bill had that wistful look in his eye where he's like, he's like, oh, yeah, that was her.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I remember that.
I'm old-fashioned.
I think Bill Gates should just go to jail for perjury back in Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton.
Yeah.
And Bill Gates too.
Bill Gates should go to jail for Windows Vista.
He should definitely go to jail for Windows Vista.
Can we all agree on that at least?
Yeah.
No, no, it's something where, look, at the end of the day, I think we need to understand that we talk about these questions of policy in our country.
I'll take it to a higher level, I guess.
We talk about these questions of war, like the gentleman was just asking, of war, of diplomacy, of negotiations.
And then we find out that something like Epstein was going on.
And we tell people that, oh, well, just trust us.
We've cleaned it all up.
And I think there's serious questions that arise then that how can we trust what any decision maker is making if they were a part of these activities?
And I'm talking about the nefarious and criminal activity side, that they weren't trying to conduct some action or conduct some foreign policy maneuver because they were worried about their involvement in Epstein's operations coming out.
And I think these are serious questions when you have people like the ones that we've seen, the ones that we've talked about, the elites that were involved in there.
What question does this leverage or what influence does this leverage, blackmail, if you want to call it that, have in our society?
When, look, Jeffrey Epstein had all this leverage over Bill Gates, and then suddenly Bill Gates has kind of handed the reins to our society during COVID.
Did that play an influence?
I don't know, but it's certainly something that as a citizen of a free republic, we should all be asking.
Well, I completely agree with the fact that I do believe Clinton is, well, both Clintons are likely part of that whole ring.
I also would agree Bill Gates, but someone you didn't mention that I think is implicated as much or more would be president Donald Trump with multiple credible allegations according to FBI documents where they claimed they seemed to be credible and across many interviews seemed to have the same story, tended to not have any holes in it.
So what do you feel about that?
As you're mentioning the blackmail, where it's reasonable to assume that Israel has it.
You know, Epstein had ties to Israel and Mossad.
Possibly there.
Israel could have those.
They could have leverage over us.
Russia claims to have had access to the files and have blackmailed on Trump.
So do you feel like those people could be blackmailing our president, in which case putting us in danger?
Well, I mean, you look at those cases.
In a number of those cases, Blake, you might remember the exact one better than me, but they were looked into.
A lot of those were actually found to have a lot of holes in them.
A lot of them didn't actually hold up under scrutiny.
People were even making phone calls into the FBI saying, oh, Donald Trump did this to me years ago after Epstein had already become public.
So just because somebody calls in and makes a complaint to the FBI, that still doesn't mean it's credible.
And as a guy who worked in the intelligence community, I'll just real quick, we would get reports all the time that somebody walks in and says, oh, something happened.
You still have to check it out.
You still have to actually go in.
And this is one of the issues when you're looking at raw information like this is that it's not, it hasn't been assessed.
Its credibility hasn't actually been weighed and measured.
That's something I am going to be asking if I get the opportunity to a senior DOJ official to ask about those sorts of things.
But in every instance with Donald Trump, it has always fallen apart.
And we've seen a pattern of this for years with Donald Trump, that there's an allegation against him and people look into it and it just doesn't hold scrutiny.
I fall back to the same default that Charlie often did, which is just to point out that throughout, as you said, we had four years of Biden.
They basically rewrote New York state law specifically so that he could be sued by, what's her name?
Letitia James.
Yeah, so Letitia James could go after him, go after his organization.
They completely warped their laws.
They could go after him for his financial filings from his company.
They said he was covering up a felony for the Alvin Bragg.
Alvin Bragg.
So Alvin Bragg was interpreting statutes in Nobel to go after him.
They're basically rewriting the law to go after him at the federal level with the special prosecutor.
They're basically rewriting the law to go after him in Florida.
They're coming up with endless novel legal approaches to go after Donald Trump once he's out of office.
And they're doing this for a simple reason that they are fanatically obsessed with putting Donald Trump in prison because they hate him.
Actually, they did.
And they did this.
They did multiple special counsels.
And they did the special counsel with Robert Mueller.
You mentioned the other day.
We have that they're going to keep doing it.
Yeah.
And we have basically a decade of non-stop effort to find something to put Donald Trump in prison.
And then you're telling me that we actually had secret evidence from the Epstein files, which were already well known and famous at this time, for four years of President Biden, and they never bothered to indict him on that.
I just find that pretty unlikely.
I would assume that they didn't release them and indict him on that because they're part of it too.
So I think all of them are part of it.
If they release about one person, now they implicate everyone else, and now it's.
I would encourage you to look at, for example, there's a bunch of roads and parks that are going to be renamed in Phoenix in the next few days because they were named after Cesar Chavez.
The left doesn't have a problem throwing out their own people to get someone that they sufficiently hate.
You guys might not remember, but about a decade ago, Al Franken, he was a senator, they threw him out as part of Me Too.
They are totally willing to dump their own lawmakers, their own fundraisers, their own people.
Harvey Weinstein, a big Democrat fundraiser, they threw him out.
They don't have a problem taking out their own people, and they still never took out Donald Trump with Epstein.
I think that's the best evidence that there really is not a lot there, personally.
Why Democrats Missed The Mark00:04:30
But I want us to make sure we get to some more questions.
So thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Seriously.
That's Ethan Blake.
That actually is, to me, I think that is still one of the strongest arguments that why not just release it yourselves when you could have.
Why go to all the Russia gate and dossiers and all this?
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Sir, what's going on?
I wanted some clarification as we talked about First Amendment and free speech, and that's equal to the American.
We don't need a clarifying amendment.
It's a great amendment.
It's a cornerstone of our American democracy.
I agree.
Indeed.
But I wanted to clarify: are you guys free speech absolutionists?
This guy over here, I pretty much am.
I mean, unless you're going to, are you going to ask me something weird?
I would say, I would say I'm, Blake and I have gotten into this before.
I don't know where you're going, but Blake and I have gotten into this before, and we have discovered that he is much more of an absolutist than I am on it.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, how do you feel about the President of the United States tweeting out that he's celebrating the death of a U.S. citizen, Robert Mueller, just the other day?
I don't care for it.
It is free speech.
I don't care for it.
I think what I will say is when we had Charlie's memorial right here, one of the best moments of it was it took a lot of bravery.
Erica went up there and she sat on stage in front of 70,000 people in that building and who knows how many millions watching around the world.
And she says, that man who killed my husband, I forgive him.
And then a few minutes later, Donald Trump went up there and he said, yeah, you know, I don't forgive my enemies.
I hate them.
I hate my enemies.
I'm happy when bad things happen to them.
We kind of know what we're going to do.
He then added, but maybe Erica could change my mind.
Maybe.
Yes, he did.
Yes, he did.
I think it is, I would say Donald Trump, anyone would admit, even his supporters will admit he has traits they like and traits they care for less.
And the president's tendency to dump on people, you know, after they've deceased is not one I personally care for.
So you would be fine with people saying, oh, I'm glad that Hitler is dead.
I'm glad that we are currently bombing Iran and killing the Ayatollah.
Or when Charlie Kirk died, people were celebrating.
I mean, people absolutely had the legal right to celebrate it.
I found it incredibly loathsome, not just because he was a good man and a father, but also especially the heinous way in which he was killed.
To celebrate it when someone is murdered, not just murdered, but murdered while at a table like this one, holding a free speech event specifically because of his speech.
I think it was exceptionally evil that people would do that, but I do think they have the legal right to do it.
I don't think you should go to prison for doing it.
You mean for the speech?
For the speech, yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I feel like my chair is drinking.
I like it when I know people have opinions that I dislike.
But that's different than First Amendment.
First Amendment is a different question.
Howdy, what's your name?
George.
Howdy, George.
How are y'all doing today?
Doing very well.
Doing lovely.
Awesome.
I'm from Fresno, California, if any of you guys know where that is.
The Valley.
Oh, yeah.
Obviously, California has a stereotype of being a very blue state, which it is.
And in California, of course, there is a lot of illegals just in general.
Farmers Need Automation Support00:15:06
Now, a lot of that is due to the agriculture that is there.
So I do assume that you guys are for deportation of all illegals, correct?
Okay, so my question is, if this amount of illegals that do do this labor, the farm work, everything, because I'm not doing it.
If someone has a high school diploma, you're not doing it.
What is your solution for that then, if you were to get rid of them all?
Broadly speaking, automation.
Bring in robotics, bring in, you know, get Elon Musk on that, or whoever the next robotics guy is.
I mean, you look at some of the auto pickers and auto, you know, autonomous robotics that we have now.
I mean, my gosh, if we have AI drones that can find people on the other side of the planet, I'm pretty sure we can find something that can find an apple or an orange.
So we've let ourselves get addicted to low-cost foreign labor.
And like other addictions, there is a short-term high you get from it.
It saves you money, lets you make more money in the short term, but the damage is long-term financially, and it's just long-term on the country.
So yeah, a farmer might be able to run their business better, but that's still not worth it if it's degrading America's respect for the rule of law, if it's degrading our national cohesion because we don't all speak the same language, if we're offloading the trouble of maybe they'd be on welfare or they're expensive to educate or they use a lot of health care.
All of those things are getting offloaded onto the public system, but we're letting all of this happen because we've gotten addicted to lower cost labor.
Economically, I think we have to treat it as an addiction, and sometimes you basically have to go cold turkey.
And I'd be the first to admit there will be economic difficulties that come from this, but the difficulties would be less if we had taken action longer ago in the past, and the difficulties will be even greater if we wait too long to do something about it now.
Yeah, I was just going to add economically, you have a similar dynamic to the invention of the cotton gin in pre-Civil War, that in pre-Civil War South, that the cotton gin had already been invented, and yet you didn't see the widespread adoption of it because of the system of slavery.
And even though the cotton gin ended up becoming far more efficient and obviously cheaper to run than having wide fields of workers doing this for you, that because that was the system in place, obviously, there was a war over it, et cetera.
We know the history.
But in fact, there was a system similar to automation technology that had come out that could have actually filled that gap, but for people wanting to do it.
A visual I think of a lot is that in China, you can now find guys who they are working in an office building and they have a robot-driven tractor and they're doing it all in this, you know, their air-conditioned offices.
Steve Bennon's calling.
And meanwhile, in the U.S., you can find, there are some farms where their tractors don't even have a cabin on the top.
You're up there in the sun all day, having it beat down on you.
You don't even have a roof over your head.
And when I see that image, all I can think is those have to just be illegal immigrant or otherwise low-paid migrant farm workers where it's just, there's no value add to making their lives any better.
And by the way, you're correct.
This would be automation as the solution.
This would be something where I would be totally okay.
I know I'm supposed to be like Mr. Conservative or whatever, but I'd be totally okay with the government coming in and providing subsidies to these farms to help them get over, because obviously there's going to be significant capital input during this period.
I'd be totally fine with, I mean, farmers get subsidies already, so it's not like it would be a huge change, but having an additional implement for them to encourage automation and so that they're not having to spend tons and tons of money to be able to do that.
But upgrade through automation.
I think it's going to happen either way.
And honestly, I think it's this massive migrant labor force that's here that's really the only thing stopping it.
Yeah, but also like, again, automation in like a perfect world, of course, everything that should be automated as possible.
People doing dangerous jobs, whatever.
But that cost comes back onto farmers.
Farmers who are already struggling to get ends of meat.
And you're right.
But that's what I'm saying.
There could be, I would support social programs for that.
Right now, we're subsidizing health care for these illegal immigrants.
We're subsidizing the education for these illegal immigrants.
A lot of them, their children are eligible for welfare, and so effectively they're on welfare.
Imagine if all the money that's going to that was instead put into a giant bundle and we took it to a Silicon Valley firm and said, figure out how this tractor can run itself.
And we could.
And I don't know anything about the welfare side and all of that.
I'm not going to pretend like I know anything.
All I know is that it's already a struggle for farmers in general.
People are already stopped wanting to be farmers in general.
Like Fresno State, ag capital of California.
So much ag goes through there.
There's less and less people who want to do that stuff because the profit margins are thin.
So if we just take away these illegal immigrants, there is no more labor for that.
And I'm not doing it.
You're not.
Anybody's not.
No, I completely agree with you that farmers absolutely do need to be supportive because if you have a country that can't feed itself, then guess what?
Let's, you know, we were just talking about war and things like that.
That actually is a national security issue, among other things.
Because if that system breaks down, guess what?
Now you can't feed your army.
Now you can't feed your defense forces.
This is a huge, huge problem.
So I agree with you.
And it's something where, you know, I think that the big factory farming is something that has also, in addition, become an issue with small farmers as well, because it's pushing them out in many cases.
And it leads to outcomes that our good friends in the Maham movement would tell us are very unhealthy as well for Americans.
So I feel like there's a lot of room for discussion on this issue.
And I would be totally open to helping out.
I really would.
Awesome.
One more question, small question, just because I know other people would like to speak.
Why do you guys think the way you think?
Like, were you brought up this way?
Did somebody tell you, like, hey, you should come to this club and hear what these people are thinking?
Like, what happened with me today?
My parents are wingers, and I've always been a winger.
No, it was weird.
Like, when I was born, my dad just put Rush Limbaugh in my crib.
No, I'm just kidding.
No, honestly, couldn't tell you.
It just, you know, neither of my parents were particularly political.
They were both registered Democrats at one point.
And, you know, I could get into a longer story about it, but my town, our hometown, my family's hometown, got kind of overrun by crime as I was growing up.
And so I sort of lived through the loss of a close-knit community where the kids that I grew up with were the sons of the guys that my dad grew up with.
And I lived in the same house that my father grew up in and his father had been in.
And we'd lost all of that because of crime, because of Section 8.
And by the way, it was also turned into a sanctuary city for illegals.
And I don't know.
I think it was that process of losing all of that that really just played a huge role in sort of my self-formation, if you will.
Where are you from?
Narshaw, Pennsylvania.
Oh, wow.
Awesome.
To add a little bit, just because it might be relevant, so I guess a reason I wouldn't just rebel against my parents the way some people do.
I think it mattered a lot that my parents could explain what they believed to some extent.
I do remember my dad explaining to me that Democrats take money from the people who earn it and give it to the people who don't.
He made my sister recite that.
But he could explain it.
But then also that they really, you could see every day that this, you know, for example, we were religious and went to church.
I think a lot of people grow up in houses where, you know, maybe their parents will tell them you can't do that.
Or their parents will say they're Christian, but they've never seen their parents go to church, for example.
That it mattered to my parents that we go every week, that you live your life accordingly.
And I think seeing your parents be consistent about the values they hold and then be pillars of their community and all of that, which my parents are, that's what keeps, that's certainly what kept me from feeling any big temptation to just overthrow that or throw it out because I could see my parents were great people.
And so let that be a lesson to all of us.
I've met Blake's parents.
They're pretty cool.
Mine are cool too, though, but Blake's are cool.
Mine are cooler.
All right, you guys are doing an awesome thing.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, great questions.
Thank you.
Hello, I just wanted to say thanks for putting this together.
I don't agree with a lot of what you guys say, but I'm very pro-free speech.
I get that a lot.
I think it's very important.
I disagree with this guy constantly, so I'm right there with you all the time.
I wanted to hear about your guys' opinion on like, I guess, the broadening of America's involvement in regime change and whether or not you think that it's a good or a bad idea from Venezuela to Iran and the possible invasion of Carg Island and the current blockade of oil in Cuba.
Well, I'd love if I could just real quickly mention on the Venezuela question, because on this, if people don't know, Venezuela recently had President Trump, we all woke up one day and found that President Trump had arrested the leader of Venezuela, as you do, and that he had been extradited to the United States.
He's in New York.
He's now standing trial.
But I remember saying that day, and I think I tweeted this, I said, is it really regime change if you just get rid of one guy?
Because what's interesting in Venezuela is that the regime does still largely remain in place.
It is still intact.
It's just that one guy has left.
Dulcy Rodriguez is still kind of on top of that.
Stephen Miller was kind of pressed about this when he went on with Jay Taporo on CNN.
Because Tabor was saying, are you going to do elections?
Are you going to hold this?
Are you going to have that?
And Stephen said, no, no, we're not going to change any of that.
We are arresting one guy and we're going to leave it out.
And I thought that was an interesting in-between model.
Because I think what you're getting at is this question, are we going to have these regime change wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, like we saw in the past, which I think many people rightly view as disastrous, as wasteful, not just in terms of time and money, but also in terms of American lives and the lives of the locals, which arguably were not bettered in any regard to this.
I found it an interesting, too early to tell, I suppose, because it just happened in terms of Venezuela.
I'm not going to dodge the other questions.
I just wanted to say that I thought that was an interesting in-between.
Now, whether or not there will be other in-betweens, Cuba, you mentioned, although it does look like something very, you know, very soon will happen in Cuba.
And then Iran is kind of the bigger question.
Do you want to take the Iran start on that?
Well, I mean, Iran, I think you pointed out a good point, which is there's that split that President Trump has embraced, that there's a difference between regime change and nation building, because nation building is what got us.
Nation building is what got us in all these disastrous conflicts that were very long.
They had open-ended, non-existent victory conditions.
Oh, you know, we'll stay in Afghanistan until we win.
What does winning look like?
We don't know.
And because it required a lot of Americans there, we lost thousands of American lives.
And the president has charted out a different path where he says, I don't actually care about the nation building part of it.
I care about having friendlier governments that are more accommodating to us instead of these hostile ones that are sending drugs or constantly flaring up crises in their region.
Now, on the specific Iran thing, I think we warned, we've been very cautious about that one, that there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical of escalating our involvement in Iran.
Charlie warned about that a lot.
I share his concerns about that.
What I would say about the president and this particular decision he made is we've been around the block a few times with President Trump, specifically on Iran.
We had a war scare in 2019 when they, I think they shot down one of our robots.
And then in 2020, after Soleimani, and then last summer with the Midnight Hammer bombing, and every single time people thought, oh man, Donald Trump is escalating.
He's going to plunge us into a war.
And every single time he pulled back and nothing came of it.
And the fact that he chose differently this time, I think we should entertain the possibility that he had a very good reason for doing that.
And we'll know more when it's all said and done.
For now, the war did begin.
I support the U.S. winning wars once we're in them.
But there's, of course, room to debate it and question it.
And I think we'll have that fully hashed out in the weeks to come.
All right.
I just want to touch on Venezuela for a second.
I did also find it very interesting how we didn't really change any regime in Iran and we just kind of changed it from a Venezuela, yeah.
We just changed it from a Chinese dictatorship, a Chinese-backed dictatorship to like an American-backed one because we just brought in the VP, I think, Deli forgot her name.
Delsie Rodriguez, yeah, my bad.
No, you're great, man.
It's great.
And do you think, because I know people have been talking about it, the Department of War has been, the question's been raised about a troop invasion of Karg Island on the Strait of Hormuz.
Would that be a step too far in terms of American foreign policy?
Well, I mean, step too far is, you know, it depends on whether you mean in terms of political opinion, depends on whether or not you mean in terms of military operation.
In terms of military operation, could the United States do it?
Yes, the United States could do it.
Would it be easy to hold?
No, it would not be easy to hold because it's within conventional artillery range of Iran proper, so of the mainland.
So, I mean, they could, you wouldn't even need missiles.
I mean, obviously they have drones as well, but conventional artillery would be able to range whatever those forces are.
So it would be hard to hold.
Yes, it would be very hard to hold.
I've actually outlined, and I've said this a number of times, Fox News and other places that I've been, that you actually wouldn't necessarily, if your goal is to neutralize Karg Island and control Karg Island in terms of bottle up the oil flow out of there, then there are numerous ways to do that that don't involve boats on the ground.
Nuclear Power For Energy Security00:06:56
Obviously, cyber warfare is something the United States has been perfecting, was used in Venezuela.
I mean, anything that's got a computer in it, you turn it off, and then immediately, guess what?
If those ships can't load and unload, guess you've just stopped the oil flow without a single boot on the ground.
Also, as a Navy guy, I have to say that also, if you take out the piers, then, again, the ships don't have the ability to load and unload, but the larger oil infrastructure is still intact and could be fixed at a later date.
So there are numerous options available.
And when it comes to this, I think we'll have to see whether or not the president is using this just to, he's obviously deploying troops.
There's no question about that.
We have two Marine expeditionary units, MEUs, about 2,500 each, that are headed over.
There's some indications that some other special forces units, 82nd Airborne and other, may have been called up.
We'll see.
We'll certainly see what the plan is.
To Blake's point, we've seen the president push and push and push to the brink and then get to a desired end state and pull back.
And part of me thinks that we're probably going to see something like that again.
And look, we saw the president this morning talking about partial ceasefire and talking about actual conversations that are going on, possibly indirectly with Iranian leadership.
And Iran says, well, there are no talks.
And it's like, well, no, because he's talking to the Egyptians and then the Egyptians are caught, you know, that kind of thing is going on.
And so I broadly would be very supportive of a deal in this, really.
All right, let's see if we can get at least two more, I think.
Are we on time?
How are we doing on time, guys?
Oh, we've got 30 minutes?
All right.
Well, yeah, we'll do them, but then we'll try to keep them shorter.
Thank you very much, by the way.
But we'll as many of them.
And we'll keep our answers short too.
Adi, what's your name?
Hi, I'm Layla.
Hi, Layle.
What's your question?
Sorry, I like did not come in here planning to ask a question.
Don't worry about it, don't worry.
I'm kind of like really nervously sweating right now.
You have nothing to be nervous in here.
You're doing fantastic.
Anyways, like I said, I wasn't really planning on asking anything.
I just came here to gain some perspective.
But something that you said, Jack, intrigued me when you were asked when you were discussing the future of agricultural labor and you're talking about things like AI-based alternatives and automated systems.
I am a graduate student in sustainability.
I graduated with my bachelor's of science and sustainability as well.
So I'm in a lot of climate-related spaces, I suppose.
And even though I'm still only a student, I've been able to learn from some really incredible researchers and scientists and pioneers in all kinds of ecological related fields.
So this is more of like a general question, like you can answer in whatever way makes sense to you.
But I was wondering what your general take on climate change is and how you think the current administration is handling it.
And do you believe that the techno-optimism perspective is a concrete enough solution to depend on in the future, even if we don't really know what that will look like even 10 years from now, much less 50?
Yeah, no, great question.
I would generally say I'm a techno-optimist.
Gen 4 nuclear power is something that I'm totally behind.
I think it's great.
Again, so I mentioned I served in the Navy and in the Navy we use Gen 1 nuclear power and Gen 2 and Gen 3.
And so we have such an experience of operating nuclear power plants on our ships and so our submarines.
Every single submarine the United States Navy has.
I'm just talking from my background, so that's why I'm going there.
No, sorry.
That's so cool because nuclear came from submarines.
That's how Hyman Rickover, yeah.
Yeah, sorry.
No, you're fine.
Go on.
Yeah, so it was Hyman Rickover, incredible American officer who understood the nuclear Navy and the power of it because realizing that with nuclear power on the ships and then the subs eventually, that you could essentially have a submarine that would stay or a ship that could stay on station indefinitely.
And your only limit on that is actually the sailors.
So food, you know, oxygen, et cetera, which of course with AI is going to be the next, you know, the next bridge that we cross.
So we're going to get to the point, I think we're probably already at the point where I know they've said the last fighter pilot has already been born.
The last submariner has probably already been born.
It's just going to happen.
Same with aircraft carriers as well.
And so we have such an experience with nuclear in the Navy and a very safe experience, by the way, that I really do think that it's time to start getting Gen 4 nuclear power back into the mainland.
And this is something where obviously there's going to be people who disagree on renewables and disagree on certain things.
One of the questions, of course, is do you get enough power from renewables?
And just right now, we're not quite there yet in terms of the power export that we're able to access from there.
That's why we're seeing the Iran war right now, right?
That's why it's natural gas and oil.
That's why gas prices are the way they are.
And I've said for a long time that if we just, we made, I mean, think of it, right?
We found these magical rocks that give us free energy forever.
And then we had some incidents while we were learning to use the magic rocks.
And so we buried them and stopped using them.
And I just think that's kind of wrong.
And so I think that techno-optimism absolutely is something that I'm 100% behind.
I think that it's something where you can marry these concerns about climate change with the future and also with people who would just want to see and make sure that we maintain enough energy to not only maintain our standard of living.
And Blake, you were talking about this on the podcast the other day, but also expand and progress our standard of living.
I would just say we've never degrowthed our way out of any big problem.
And if you look at where the biggest innovations are coming, which would include anything that would resolve global warming or any environmental problem, it's actually coming from the countries that have the most energy production because those are the most innovative and productive.
So stuff comes out of the United States, it comes out of China because we're the nations that generate the most power, generate the most innovation.
And we should care about the environment.
We have to be stewards.
As Christians, we believe in stewardship, but we are not going to achieve that by taking this anti-civilizational posture that I think a lot of people do.
I think a lot of hostility towards hostility towards electricity, hostility towards industry, ultimately just becomes hostility towards prosperity itself.
Climate Change Requires Innovation00:15:15
And we can't go down that path.
That's the path of failure.
It's the path of being Britain.
I don't want to be like Britain.
Being the UK.
But I think also just to add, one of the reasons that Greenland comes up so much is because you're starting to see, and we're seeing the reduction in northern sea ice.
And the fact that those waterways are now opening up across the North Pole is going to be not only going to lead to the economics of the future, it's going to lead to wars of the future.
It's why Russia is building megaports on their northern tier.
And it's clearly something that's driving, you know, people say, why is President Trump talking about Greenland?
And I bring up some of these issues.
And they say, oh, wow, I never thought of it that way.
All righty.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
We promised we'd be shorter and we were not sure.
We're away shorter.
Let's see if we can be better on this.
She asked a good question.
Only bad questions from now on.
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All right, what's your next bad question?
I've set a new rule.
Okay, hi, my name is Kat Ellison.
Howdy, Kat.
Thank you so much for coming to ASU.
And my question is, what is something that you would like to see more out of the Trump administration?
See, that's a good question again.
What's that?
Deportations next.
More deportations, yeah.
I'd like to see it.
Yeah, I would like to see more home building.
I really liked Charlie's idea of moonshot, build 10 million homes.
21st Century Housing Act is coming.
I like that.
It's not the moonshot, but it's getting there.
I'm in favor of a country that builds stuff.
And I think we should make it as easy as possible for, you don't need the government to do it, for private actors to build things in America.
I think we should see it as a huge failure every time.
It should be nationally humiliating that that bridge in Baltimore got knocked over by a boat, I think, two or three years ago.
It still isn't replaced.
I think the timeline is 2030 now.
2030, yeah.
And similarly, they're trying to build a microchip plant in New York.
It's been held up by, I think, a nonprofit that's funded by China and has six people in it.
And they've held that up for a few years at this point.
That should be a national crisis.
And the biggest one is housing.
It should be the simplest thing in the world to build enough houses, enough apartments, enough condos, enough take-your-pick to have an affordable option for everyone in this country.
And it is purely a regulatory failure, in my opinion, that we have brought up.
You know what else would help with housing?
Deportations.
That is true, and it is.
There we are.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Hey, gentlemen, my name is Danny, and I'm a freshman here at ASU, and I'm studying marine biology.
I wanted to talk a little bit.
Wait, wait, you're studying marine biology in the desert.
Right.
Oh, I hear it a lot.
I'm sure that's the first time you've heard that.
I grew up in Florida, though.
Oh, okay, okay.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Hold on.
Wait, you're from Florida.
I'm over this.
And you moved to the desert to study marine.
Okay, no, I'm just...
Are you done?
Can I ask?
I'm not judging.
She was not judging.
She was choosing between that and you, Miami's desert program.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, so I wanted to speak a little bit on the killing of Sheridan Gorman, an 18-year-old from Yorktown and a freshman at Loyola, Chicago.
Why does it feel like cases like this don't get national attention or public acknowledgement from major political figures, especially those with ties to the community, someone like AOC, who is from Sheridan's hometown and high school?
And also, should there be more pressure on leaders like AOC to address this?
Absolutely.
I think the reason, we've gotten better about highlighting them.
The Trump administration, to its credit, has highlighted incidents like that.
They had a case similar to hers with Irina Zarutska.
her family members at the State of the Union.
We should highlight these because they're not, there are, there will be crimes in any country.
There will be murder victims in any country.
But there is a special type of failure that comes from letting a person into your country who then murders someone here because you can control who comes into your country.
Every single person who comes from America, we should be looking at them and saying, does this person make America better or will this person make America worse?
And for decades on end, our leadership class, in particular among Democrats, many Republicans are implicated, they abdicated that responsibility.
They abdicated their responsibility to their citizens to make sure that the people coming into this country made this country better.
And they did it because it allowed a few people to make a quick buck.
It allowed some people to feel morally superior like they were good people.
And frankly, it allowed some people to get power.
A lot of people do this because they see it as a way to entrench themselves in power by replacing the people already in this country.
And so absolutely, it should be called out as much as possible because it's exceptionally evil what these people have done.
That right now, if you go To an airport in this country, you might have to wait an extra hour or two hour or three hours because they are currently refusing to fund DHS and they are refusing to fund DHS because they are angry that ICE might deport someone like the illegal immigrant who killed that woman.
And this is happening over and over again, and it should be highlighted every single time.
I'll also mention that this is a failure on the right, and it's a failure of conservative media as well.
Because so you look at a situation like Alex Predi or the, remember the Maryland man, Rego Garcia, who is actually being deported now, if I remember the latest on this, that when one of those situations happens, you know, and it's and the left has the ability to portray a victim of the right, what you'll see them do is they will go up to every single senator on the right, every Republican, they'll go up to people in conservative media, they'll go up to every single one of them.
Do you agree with this?
Do you denounce this?
Are you okay with this?
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, over and over and over.
And this is a failure, I think, on our side because we don't do that.
What you just said about AOC and why isn't she bringing this up?
Conservative media doesn't do this enough.
We just don't do it enough because it requires having now.
That's also part of the, there's also an issue of scale there because they just have more reporters and they can hang people off at the, you know, at the Capitol building or other parts of DC, et cetera, just to be able to do that all day.
And this is this is why one of the things that I have always appreciated Charlie for and turning point for was investing in new media and investing in those enterprises, building up grassroots, building up individuals to be able to, Nick Shirley, right?
You know, you look at something that people can do on a regular basis that would not have existed in the past.
So you're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right that it's a problem, but it is a problem that we're seeing improvement on.
We are.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you very much.
Hi, my name is Ocean Rosso, and I'm a Turning Point Chapter President in my community.
And I've had the honor of speaking to thousands all across the state.
But one issue I see come up again and again, specifically in my generation, is an apathy when it comes to freedom or the Constitution or even the conservative movement from both liberals and conservatives in this movement.
So my question is: how do you believe it is best for us to combat this apathy and save freedom?
Well, I think that's a great question.
And of course, we got the shirts on, and this was the shirt that Charlie was wearing that day.
And we sort of talked about it at the, you know, I get it, right?
The reason that people are saying, well, they say, people are saying the system is messed up, so why should I support that thing on the wall over there?
That's the system that got us here.
So I should be against that.
And who cares?
Because if that system brought us to this, then what good was the system, right?
That's usually what you get in response.
And when you look at the building blocks of that, and you, you know, Blake and I were just talking about it at the outset here, and we talked about what happened to Charlie.
That's what happens when you move outside that system.
That when you move outside that system and you stop having dialogue and you stop having conversation and you stop having debate, like we have had tonight, we've had disagreement and Blake and I, I'm sure, will be disagreeing all night as we do in our chat rooms and all the rest of it.
But the point is, is that this is the system that brought us to these incredible, dizzying heights that we have as a country, as the United States of America.
And we should probably be very careful about being so cavalier about just chopping it down and getting rid of it because this is the system that brought us to where we are.
And so, you know, I think that Charlie would say, use that story, use his story as an example to point out the dangers of losing the First Amendment or deciding to step beyond voting and dialogue and peace because of how bad things can get and how things can get very quickly.
And there were a lot of, and by the way, I would say this, and I said this to a lot of media, and you're not saying this, but I'll say this again, that, you know, there were people who, there were people constantly, if you guys, if you're here on the right, if you're part of Turning Point, they'll say, oh, you conservatives, you're so violent.
Right-wing violence is the greatest threat to America.
And I always say this.
I say, really?
Really?
Because if that were true, and if we were really the people that you say we are, then look at how we responded to Charlie Kirk.
Did we respond with violence in that situation when we were visited with violence?
No, we did not respond with violence.
What did we respond with?
We responded with prayers.
We responded with togetherness.
We responded with unity.
We responded with peace.
I came here to ASU, to that incredible prayer visual that we had.
We got together and we prayed.
That is who we are.
And so it's something where, yes, the media is also part of that First Amendment.
Don't we love them?
But it's, again, it's part of the system so that we have that push and pull and we don't have one side just dominating over the other.
And so use real life examples like that of things that are incredibly relevant.
And, you know, Luigi Maggioni, Thomas Matthew Crooks, we can, you know, you can point to, unfortunately, I'm sure there'll be more incidents of violence that come up because when you walk away from this, that's where you get.
Thank you.
Thank you.
very much.
Hi, my name is Charlie and I applied to be a field rep and I was just asking what advice you have.
Thank you.
I was just going to ask like what advice you have for somebody like me who applied for like tabling and dealing with backlash on campus.
I mean, what's the advice Charlie would give us?
You've always lost when you get angry.
Yeah, never get angry.
He would always say that.
You know, never, you know, never be in a situation where you are, you know, you're being overwhelmed.
Never allow the emotions of the moment to overwhelm you to say, here I am.
Oh my gosh, I'm feeling this certain way, or this question is making me so upset, or this person is making me so upset.
Maintain your frame, right?
Maintain your frame.
Don't get frame-mogged.
Don't get frame-mogged.
Maintain your frame.
Hold frame.
And at the same time, just remember, you know, you're out there representing TPUSA.
You're out there representing the premier conservative organization and youth organization on the face of the planet.
And that you've got the full faith and full force of Turning Point behind you.
And should something happen, hey man, get it on film and we're going to be able to take care of you.
We're going to be able to be there and have your back.
If something, you know, we've had people knock over tables and things like that.
And I'm not saying that's going to happen.
But if it were, you know, don't get frustrated.
Don't get flustered.
Get evidence.
Get it on tape.
Get receipts.
And we're going to film that.
But at the same time, it's maintaining that outlook of being a happy warrior, right?
And that's how Charlie was.
He was the happy warrior.
He would go out there.
He loved debating.
And I think that's what Turning Point's all about, being happy.
And believe me, I can dip into anger myself at times.
And it's something that I've tried to advise for myself too, is that, hey, if you're going to be out there doing a Turning Point event, do it like Charlie would.
Do it with kindness, do it with grace.
And I think that's what he always tried to lead with.
Charlie always, he would tell me, actually, I think this is the first time I ever traveled with him, and he told me, Blake, if I'm feeling sad, I just decide not to be sad, and then I'm not sad.
Not what I'm drinking, dude.
I thought, okay, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
I'm not sure I believe him.
But he actually, it was true.
He actually, he was a strong believer that you can choose how you react to things.
You can choose the attitude that you bring into things.
And that's probably very difficult the first time you do it, maybe the first 20 times you do it.
But it is a skill that can be built over time.
And one of the things I had, you know, I worked with Charlie for three years.
And what I grew to admire the most in him was that sort of discipline that I saw.
You can meet a million people who are smart and then their lives are a disaster.
But it was that Charlie was the absolute master of having discipline over his feelings, discipline over his reaction to things, discipline over how he over the things he could control in his life, he exerted maximum power over, and the things that he couldn't control in his life, he left to God.
That's right.
Thank you so much.
Congratulations.
Thank you for stepping up, too.
I think we have eight minutes now.
Discipline Over Smart But Failed Lives00:12:52
We're going to make it, guys.
We're going to make it.
All right, let's speed around.
Let's go.
How's it going, guys?
My name is Landon.
Howdy, Landon.
This is not as much of like a question.
It kind of is, but it's also like a debate topic as well.
Charlie, bless his soul.
This is something I've always wanted to debate him.
And it's like how to raise your kids.
Because I knew that Charlie was a huge advocate of being like a strict parent and stuff.
Because I remember when he was on the George Janko show, he said in that podcast episode that the kids that always went out and did drugs and drinking and stuff were the ones that had not very strict parents and the strict, and the kids that had strict parents, you know, they would always be afraid that their mom or dad would kill them if they ever did something like that.
But personally, for me, as someone who didn't have particularly strict parents, I never went out and drank or did drugs or anything.
So I'm kind of like more of an advocate of, I also am an advocate of like, you know, strict parenting causes sneaky kids because I have seen it before.
So I'm kind of more of an advocate of like, obviously being, you know, you need to be strict at times, but always like, you know, be there for your kids.
Because my parenting situation was, is they would, my parents would say, you know, if you ever go out to a party and get drunk or something, just know we may not agree with what you're doing, but just know that we are here for you.
And if you need to talk to us, or like if you're at a party in a bad situation, call us because we would rather us come pick you up and you get home safely than you not come home at all.
So that's kind of my view on parenting personally.
I just kind of wanted to know your thoughts on that.
Yeah, I'm kind of heterodox on this.
And I don't think that, and I've thought about these things a lot, and as a dad, I think about this all the time, obviously.
But I think that different people have different kids and different kids need different outcomes.
And I don't think parenting is a one-size-fits-all thing.
I don't think I've ever actually said this publicly.
But you mentioned it.
It's been something I've been thinking about for a while.
And I don't think there is any one answer that's going to, oh, this is going to set your kid on the straight and narrow.
I mean, I think there's generally good principles.
But at the same time, I just think different kids are different.
And so what you have to do more than anything before you even start applying one of these systems that people sell to their kids is you have to meet your kids, meet them where they are, understand them, try to know them as they are.
And don't try to mold them into exactly what you want them to be, but also coach them, if that makes sense, and find out what they are specifically talented at or skilled at or what they gravitate towards, and then use that to say, okay, these are the best ways you can use your talent for good, whether it's something that I want or not, and hopefully it's something I want.
And you can do that, unless of course it's being a libtar.
As long as you're patriots.
And I do think that's the best way.
So strict versus not strict.
Now, that being said, one thing that I would add, though, is you can have friendly relationships with your children, and you should.
You want your kid to be, what's the metric?
You want your kid to be able to be to enjoy quiet moments with you and just feel that comfort.
But at the same time, you can't do that at the cost of stopping being a father or a mother to your kid.
You have to be mom and dad.
You cannot be, you know, oh, I'm just friends with my kids.
I'm going to let them do whatever.
It's like, nah, that ain't it.
Because kids can't be free-range.
It don't work.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, there's a much longer topic there, but it's a good question.
I said bad questions.
These are good questions.
What's happening?
Thank you.
This audience is fired.
Get out of here.
All right, this is our last one.
All right, here we go.
Lucky you.
Hi.
I'm lucky on your shirt.
Yeah.
You're a lucky guy.
There we go.
I had two questions, but I'll ask them really quick, and you can answer however you want to.
The first question was regarding, it was mentioned about automation in regards to farming and then AI and other stuff like that.
I don't want to make assumptions, but to be quick, I'm just going to real quick.
In general, when it comes to like, I guess, kind of protectionist policies to protect American labor while also being in favor of like free markets, economic growth, and protecting labor, there seems to be like a conflict with automization and AI with the potential for people to lose jobs.
And then there's also the potential where subsidizing certain industries could probably cause economic dissatisfaction with like taxes.
How can you deal with both of these situations together without losing any type of like core values or principles about certain economic policies?
And then the other one was regarding political violence is like a serious problem in the country and so is with like radical beliefs.
And it seems to be like a problem that comes on a lot more because of like online discourses.
I have friends who are conservative.
I have friends who are liberal.
They don't ever say anything crazy about political violence.
But then you go online and you see people from either both sides or presenting as being both sides, saying really not good things and promoting certain ideas.
What would you say the solution for that is?
And do you think that there needs to be more cooperation and outreach between people with different ideas to have greater conversations and tolerance with each other?
Well, we have to really blitz this one.
I mean, the political violence one, obviously, I think discourse like this, public spaces, that has to help.
You actually, it is deeply humanizing to actually engage in dialogue in real life with people, not just on the internet.
Call it the grass-touching principle.
You get to see, and it's something that, you know, kind of in the wake of Charlie's murder that I thought about more as well, is that when you're online, as you say, that person isn't like Charlie, the human being who has a wife and kids.
It's, oh, there's that guy, Charlie Kirk.
I hate that guy.
He's always talking his hate.
He's always so bad.
I've got to stop him.
I've got to find a way to stop him.
But, you know, I wish that Tyler Robinson had just come to the event and stood in line and had a debate with the guy rather than doing what he did because I think that it just, to Blake's point, it humanizes you.
It lets you see that the other person, we did it earlier today with the UNF America people, where we got out, we had a conversation, we were actually able to provide them some information that they didn't have, and they actually kind of apologized.
And I think she deleted she would delete something, and she did.
So, you know, it would have been easy for us and probably would have got more clicks out of it if we just went and started yelling at each other.
But, you know, what's really better for the country ultimately?
And I think that's what leads to places where you get more political violence.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was like one of the problems with one of the things that bothered me with after the murder of Charlotte Kirk.
I didn't see any people that I personally knew like celebrating or like saying like, oh, we need a civil war to get back at people.
But then online, you would see people who are very upset on both things saying something that they would never say to people in person, really.
And I feel like that's a bad problem.
And then I feel like it also has the effect of really ramping people up who don't go outside and spend all their time on online spaces.
Can I actually, can I actually combine your questions?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So what's interesting is that, you know, did you think those two things were related at all?
Partially with like AI and like automation.
So I think they are.
I think that political violence and economic upheaval are actually related.
And I think that you see this in the past as well, like during the Industrial Revolution.
So the Industrial Revolution happens.
We're living through the technological revolution now.
And what happens right after the Industrial Revolution?
Like massive Bolshevik uprisings across Europe.
It leads to World War II.
You see reprisals, et cetera.
And prior to that, you see this wave of hyper-violence across Europe.
And even here in the United States, if you go into the 1800s, we had a radical socialist murderer president, which we don't talk about at all.
But right there in New York State, in Buffalo, New York, we had huge bombings on Wall Street and Chicago, which we don't really talk about anymore.
And I think a lot of that was caused by economic upheaval.
So I'm not saying that the internet discourse doesn't play a role, but we did see political violence during another period when we were going through an economic, what would you call it, a shift, a change, an economic revolution like the Industrial Revolution.
And so, because it just leads to massive, massive wealth inequalities.
And I know I've said that around some people, and they're saying, oh, Jack, you can't talk about that.
That's Karl Marx talk.
And I was like, well, no, I'm not saying that I want communism.
I'm just saying that economics obviously plays a huge role in all of this.
When you look at Tyler Robinson, this was a downwardly mobile white male student who looked like he had been decently intelligent, but I guess was a college dropout or was like going to not his original college.
You see the same thing with Thomas Matthew Crookes, the guy who tried to shoot President Trump.
Luigi Maggioni was a guy who went to the Ivy League University, was extremely privileged, and yet at the same time, he also goes off the deep end and it's like off in Japan trying to find himself and doing drugs.
And so when you live through these times of upheaval, it leads to radical decisions and radical acts.
And so I'm not saying that, you know, oh, we'll just stop that and it'll all go away.
No, but as a movement, it's something where when Blake is talking about how we need more housing, when we need to actually relieve some of these economic pressures that have been faced, that I actually think that in the wash, it will actually help with the political violence problem.
Okay.
With that being said, that's sort of in the long term, in the short term, you have to crack down very, very severely on anyone who's committing or planning political violence.
Yeah, absolutely.
One last thing on that is with, it could be argued or like talked about about like certain economic policies and then certain ways that the direction is headed.
And then with the internet, people have been increasingly detached from in-person connections and not in their communities.
How would you say that has affected people turning towards politically violent or like radical ideas?
Well, so what you're happening, what you're seeing happen now is people's identities are changing in the sense that people used to identify with, like, I just told that story about how I identified with my hometown, and that was like a big thing for me growing up, that we all knew each other.
And then you look at how people live now, they're so atomized where people don't know their neighbors.
And this is largely due to the internal migrations that have taken place as people are moving from city to city to find better work.
Over and over, those communities at scale are just smashed up.
And so you're living in this situation where people are moving to places where they don't have these great communities.
So that's why, and I was mentioning this before, that sort of in the wake of Charlie's murder, I've been reflecting on his interest and why he spent so much time being on campus and building campus organizations and doing it in person.
Because I used to think, I used to think I would say, well, why not just use the internet?
Why not just use social media?
You can do all this online.
Why?
You know, it's so much time and so much effort.
Because the internet is evil, Jack.
But no, it's because of this.
It's because I realized that there's another layer to it where Charlie was building human communities and he was working to build human communities.
And obviously, like, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that church is a huge example of a human community, which obviously it's a human community that's connecting you with God, which is quite possibly the highest possible human community.
And so we absolutely need to do better at building those human communities, human communities that connect us with God like churches, but at the same time, just getting to places where we can go out and just be in public with people once again, as opposed to this atomized online, you know, PvP warfare all the time.
Thank You To Our Amazing Team00:01:44
Yeah, as a cybersecurity student, it's really interesting hearing, I guess, the effects of it and learning about them.
And thank you for speaking on that and being here and having answering questions.
Thank you, and thank you for being patient.
How do you guys think Blake Neff did?
This is his first one.
Can you believe that?
I think he does all right.
I want to say thank you so much, guys, for being a great audience.
I asked for bad questions.
Unfortunately, you did not listen.
And all of your questions were phenomenal.
And thank you to the entire team that put this on, that made it together.
I know there's a lot of volunteers.
There's a lot of tech work that went into it.
So let's give a hand to the text group.
Yeah, let's give a hand to Techro, all the volunteers, and the local grab.
We had no problems.
And by the way, and of course, to the law enforcement and security for keeping us all safe today.
A lot of times, we know a lot of times that law enforcement gets painted with a bad brush and a broad brush these days.
And I think that's absurd because these are people that are, by the way, when 911 calls, these are the people who come running.
And you should always thank a person who's willing to do that.
Thank you very much, everybody.
And on that note, I have to run to the airport and I really hope that I don't run into one of Blake's TSA lines.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.