Charlie Kirk declares college a scam at the 2021 Chapter Leadership Summit, urging youth to marry early and build businesses instead. Citing Socrates and Jesus as truth-tellers persecuted by oppressive systems, he advocates creating new things, always speaking truth, and mastering classical history. He dismisses "conspiracy theorist" labels regarding vaccine mandates and election integrity, advising students to outwork peers, lead their parents, and engage in grassroots activism to preserve the American project against campus authoritarianism. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Fighting Evil and Proclaiming Truth00:15:14
My name is Charlie Kirk.
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 will 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.
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That is NobleGoldInvestments.com.
Wow, Andrew and Amy, I remember the first chapter leadership summit.
It was like the first row right here, and now we have to have ballrooms, and it's amazing.
How many of you are at SAS?
Young Women's Leadership Summit.
And then, of course, we have America Fest coming up in December here.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
And so.
Not in Palm Beach anymore.
After what they did last year, we pulled the plug.
I'll tell you what.
We're coming to here in Phoenix.
We're going to have a great time.
So, there's a couple things that I just wanted to touch on, and then I'm going to do questions because, I mean, this is not like a college visit.
I'm not going to really change a lot of minds here.
I think we're all basically on the same page.
Instead, I want to answer your questions, hear what you're going through, and how we can help you.
I was so touched yesterday being able to meet, I think, basically all of you and hear a lot about your.
Difficulties, what you're going through.
And I mean, I was really struck by those of you that say, Charlie, I have a semester left of college and I'm being forced to get this experimental vaccine.
What do I do?
I think we've already connected some of you to some legal help and there's already some kind of wheels in motion there.
But the biggest thing that I heard from all of you last night is what is basically the problem in our country, and you are actually solving this problem, is that you feel that there is a price of ridicule and mockery.
Because you decide to be a Turning Point USA chapter leader, right?
And you know what's amazing about all of you, and I tell a lot of our donors and our board members and the adults that kind of support us, they say, Well, Charlie, how are we going to save the country?
It's this simple.
We need millions of Americans to do what our Turning Point USA chapter leaders are doing every single day to be the same person in public that they are in private, to say that I'm going to publicly advance the ideas that America is the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.
I believe in a conservative direction for our country, and you should have.
Applaud for that, by the way.
Of course you can.
And we're not going to apologize for our deeply held beliefs.
And kind of from that point forward, I mean, there's like a couple things that we really kind of focus on here at Turning Point.
We believe the Constitution is the greatest political document ever written.
We'll talk about that today.
We believe that markets are the best way to organize society and private property should be given a preference.
And of course, the bigger overarching theme, which is kind of the thing that All of you engage with every single day is what is America and what is our role here?
Is it just like this act of randomness, an oppressive, colonialist, homophobic, misogynistic, backwards type country?
Or is it something that is the greatest experiment in self government in human history?
And so, what's so exceptional about all of you is that you've made a decision at a very young age to kind of put social status, to put popularity aside, and you say, actually, I want to save the country, and that's a lot more important.
You deserve to be, I want to encourage you for that.
You deserve to be commended for that.
And you will all be blessed, and you will be.
You will be able to benefit from that more than I think you realize.
First of all, as I mentioned earlier, people say, Charlie, I wish I could say at work what I say privately.
Now, for a lot of you, that's not really the case because you've kind of all come publicly.
You're out of the closet, right?
There's really not a lot of mystery left.
Now, maybe there is.
Maybe some of you, there's some, you know, I don't know, but.
But most of you, basically, you're known as the conservative kid at your school, right?
And you should be proud of that, by the way, right?
I'm sure all of you have then found two or three of the whispering types, right?
Man, I totally agree, but I can't even say anything.
Then there's the people in the middle that are like, yeah, I agree with part of this, but I'm not going to do anything.
I have to go to Harvard, and that's really important, right?
Yeah, okay, sure.
I want to go become a judge, and I have to lie my way to the top.
Like, yeah, okay, sure.
For you, you actually have decided, and this is what makes our Turning Point USA chapter leaders heroes, and why you guys are all heroes.
I'm not going to overly build your ego up, but you deserve a little bit of an encouragement.
You've decided that truth and fighting for things that are true are quite honestly more important than being popular.
More important than being the cool BLM activist that has the sign that's like, oh yeah, look how good of a person I am.
If I have to, I see these signs hanging outside of dormitory rooms.
I'm sure you guys see this all the time on your college campus, which is basically like, I'm a better person than you are.
That's basically what the sign is, right?
And the new way they're doing that, of course, is through all of these different social movements.
And so where you come in, Is you're part of a movement.
You look around this room, this is just the elite chapter leaders, by the way.
This is not all of our chapter leaders.
Obviously, our campus coordinators, you're all here and we're growing that.
But there's a lot of chapter leaders that aren't here today.
But what makes you different is that you're the top tier.
You're the ones that are doing the most, organizing the events, pushing the hardest.
You're the ones that our own staff have singled out and said, you know what?
These are the ones that are really going to drive Turning Point USA forward.
And so, I want to talk a little bit about kind of our nation and your future in our country.
Then we'll get to some questions and kind of what it looks like.
We all know this.
Our country's on really fragile footing right now.
And I want you to think differently about one way that we can frame this.
I don't want you to blame your parents for this awful circumstance that we're in, even though it's true, by the way.
It's totally true.
No, it's actually very true.
That they decided that none of this stuff mattered.
How many of you have parents that have told you to calm down the conservative stuff, right?
Of course.
Of course, obviously.
Some of you are like, no, my parents tell me to ramp it up.
Okay, yeah, and there's some of that too.
But I'd say about half the hands, right?
Do that again, about half the hands say, you know, calm it down, too much.
You want to get a job and have a future.
Like, okay.
No, we want to have a country, thank you very much, okay?
Like, that's actually really important.
And it's tempting to want to say, why didn't you fight in the school boards in the 1990s?
Why didn't you care about this stuff in the 2000s?
Why didn't you get into the curriculum fights?
Why didn't you stop the 1619 project the first time it was uttered?
Right?
It kind of gets this resentment, and sometimes I play into that, to be perfectly honest.
It's tempting, right?
Because you're like, come on, this is all a bunch of garbage.
But look, they meant well.
Our parents' generation wanted peace and prosperity for us.
I'm 27, I'm not that much older than you.
And I was in a lot of your situation six or seven years ago.
Our parents wanted to have an America where you didn't have to all of a sudden show vaccination status, they just didn't want to fight for it.
You see what I'm saying?
They wanted the America that I grew up in, and some of you actually never grew up in the America that I grew up in.
Some of you can relate to this.
You were on like the later edges.
It was awesome.
Here's how it worked: no one cared about skin color, and you had sports.
And we didn't have these little devil devices all the time.
No pings and dings and Snapchats and TikToks and none of that stuff.
You went outside and you played.
You know, the phones we had were like these combustible engines, right?
Massive things you had.
It was great.
And if anyone in my high school ever said anything negative about America, even in my liberal high school, people would look at them like, okay, yeah, whatever.
We actually love America around here.
That's the America I grew up in.
By the way, this is like nine years ago, guys.
I feel like I'm talking, like, you know, Richard Nixon didn't do anything wrong.
I'm like, okay, yeah.
I'm talking nine years ago.
And so here I am at 27, and I just want to tell you that as we kind of look down at this moment, that this happened so rapidly and so fast, but it really was multi decades of it building up, right?
Political correctness, critical race theory, not being able to speak your mind, the textbooks changing, the social media dominance.
And our parents, in a lot of different ways, They never would have shown up at a conference like this that you're at right now.
Let me look around.
There's 300 plus of you, and you're spending the best days of summer.
Some of you in high school, raise your hand if you're in high school, by the way.
It's awesome.
How cool is that?
And the best days of summer, literally organizing and taking notes and saying, How can I become a better tactician and activist, better educated to save the nation?
And by the way, none of this stuff is political, by the way.
Our political stuff is all turning point action.
We're just talking about cultural.
We're talking about ideas.
That's what we do at Turning Point USA.
It's actually more important, way more important than the political stuff, by the way.
It's way more important.
And I know a lot of parents, they look at this, they say, oh my goodness, where did this come from?
So here's where I'm going to kind of bring you down a little bit after I built you up, right?
Is that this room should be 10 times the size, considering how bad it is out there.
And if I met a lot of you last night, you said, Charlie, I'm the only one at my school.
Only one.
Me plus two.
I'm like, well, how big's your school?
35,000 people.
Like, okay, I bet there's others, but I get the point, right?
The point is that it's one or two out of 35,000 that are actually organizing, or one or two out of 20,000, whatever it is.
And so the moment necessitates action and it necessitates you doing something about it.
You being here and signing up to be a campus coordinator already shows us a lot that what you're willing to do.
And there is a campaign, and you see this happening, that is almost like you want to give up.
If you're like me, it's tempting where you kind of want to give in at times, right?
Like, all right, fine, whatever.
Like, I'm not going to fight the mask thing again.
I mean, whatever, fine.
They can control my speech.
Like, whatever.
They can put these substances into my body.
Like, whatever.
It's tempting because they make you feel as if you have to consider, they almost want you to feel like you're losing your mind.
I mean, you flip through social media and you're like, every single person is against you.
And you're like, my goodness, is this some sort of psyops operation against us?
But then you look around to actual human beings, you're like, huh, a lot more people agree with me than I thought.
And so, what does success look like for a Turning Point USA chapter leader?
Let me manage your expectations.
Now, maybe Notre Dame Prep would be an exception, maybe.
Maybe some of these other conservatives, like Liberty or Hillsdale, would definitely be an exception.
Let me manage your expectations, though, okay?
Like, let's pick University of Texas Austin, okay?
Let's pick a very liberal school.
She's not gonna win over the student body on large, not gonna happen.
Okay?
She's not all of a sudden like 51% of University of Texas Awesome people are gonna be like, MAGA.
Not gonna happen, right?
Yeah, I know.
They're going to the downhook as OU or either Texas Tech or AM or whatever, right?
Oh, yeah.
Texas Tech, very good.
Same thing at Texas Tech, maybe there might be some hope, but it's liberal.
The point is this is that, what, you say Hale State or something?
Hale State.
Okay, got it.
So the point is that you gotta manage your expectations, right?
And this is an important thing.
By the way, that's not actually what the success we're looking like for.
Here's the first form of success just truth being spoken.
That's it.
I don't care if it's one person, two people, 10 people, 30 people, 50 people, 100 people, 1,000 people.
That's it.
Just saying things that are true.
Saying them publicly, saying them boldly, and saying them courageously, and not caring what they're going to write about you in the student newspaper.
Not caring about what the anonymous BLM Twitter accounts coming after you're going to say.
You say, you know what?
I am going to keep on saying this.
I am going to say that God created man, God created woman.
I'm going to say that America's a wonderful country.
I'm going to say that borders matter.
And you can say whatever you want about me.
And do you guys want to remove a weapon?
From their ability to come after you.
Everyone complains about cancel culture.
I do too.
Here's the problem with cancel culture we allow our own side to get canceled.
We allow ourselves to get canceled.
We then police our own speech and be like, man, am I allowed to say that?
Am I allowed to do that?
You know, some of you have probably seen that I said some things this week, whatever.
The point is that, whatever, we don't have to get into that.
The point is this, thank you very much.
The point, the reason I doubled down is not even that I care that much about it.
The reason is that people were telling me, like, you must be canceled and shut up.
I said, you know what?
I am gonna post this, I'm gonna triple down.
Because the second that all of a sudden you allow other people to police your speech, you might as well just say, I'm no longer a living human being.
The minute that all of a sudden someone comes at you, like, you have to stop saying that stuff, and it might be something that you're so deeply passionate about, it might be an intricate issue on the Second Amendment, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, whatever it is.
And this happens all the time on university campuses, all the time in high schools, where that social pressure happens.
Okay, so here's the first rule when it comes to cancel culture that we have to no longer abide by make yourself Indifferent and laugh off the cost that they're gonna throw at you.
Now, this is hard, because for some of you, that means that you might actually get kicked out of school.
I'm not kidding.
Some of you.
Now, public school is a lot harder to do that, right?
Laugh Off the Cancel Culture Cost00:11:46
A lot harder.
But for some of these private schools, you could see the language they're coming after.
They're like, certain conservatives don't have a place here at XYZ school.
It's a huge cost to pay, it's a big cost.
Now, before they get to that though, they're gonna try to make your life totally miserable.
Right now, this is like the greatest pitch ever to go tell you, right?
Like, okay, you might get kicked out of school, you're gonna lose all your friends, you're gonna get ridiculed and mocked.
By the way, have a nice semester, right?
Like, but I'm not gonna lie to you, we don't do that, right?
But at a young age, here's what you are gonna become you're gonna be tougher than every single one of your classmates.
You're gonna have grit, perseverance, you're gonna have guts, you're gonna be what makes Americans different than the French.
All of your other classmates are gonna live very well.
I go after the French all the time, by the way, mercilessly all the time.
Yes, that's right.
I think.
We got a good German around here somewhere.
Super organized guy.
He's always on time, I'm sure.
So, where is he?
I met him last night.
Really sweet guy.
And so, again, I always make fun of the French.
You know, they were the only people ever to invent both the tourniquet and the white flag of surrender.
You know, it's brilliant.
So, anyway, enough of the French.
So, what makes Americans different is, and you could see this with the lockdowns, by the way, is that we still have a little bit of this, you know what?
I'm not going to put up with this authoritarianism.
By the way, I'll be very honest with you, though.
I am so disappointed and saddened at how much we put up with this last year and a half.
And by the way, we're still like the best in the world with it.
I know that sounds crazy.
Like, just finally, the Italians are starting to march against the lockdowns in Italy.
Like, finally.
After like a year and a half.
And like, finally.
So, what does that mean for you on your campus?
So, there's really like three things I wanted to say to you.
And it's super simple stuff, really generic.
And you're like, oh, Charlie, it's so cliche.
It is cliche, but it needs to be said, and we're going to build it out, okay?
It's literally three things.
I wrote them down because I wanted to make sure I was precise in it.
Okay, it's this simple, which is all of you are already doing this, but you need to go create new and lasting things.
Stop complaining all the time.
Okay?
Go start Turning Point USA chapter.
Start a business.
Start new things.
At your age, you gotta start new stuff.
I started Turning Point USA at age 18.
I had no money, no connections, no idea what I was doing.
I didn't go to college.
I didn't even know how to sign a check, front or back, credit or debit.
They don't teach that stuff in high school, by the way.
You better believe it.
I just started it.
By the grace of God, tons of energy, and now you could see what it's become, right?
160 plus full time people on staff.
You guys saw our campus, and it's totally by the grace of God.
But Turning Point USA never would have started if I didn't just start doing something.
And I guarantee you, in this room right now, someone has a way better idea than Turning Point USA that you're wrestling with and you're like, I want to do it, but the social pressure, stop it.
Go build lasting and beautiful and new things.
The energy that you have, the directive you have at your age, you're never going to have again.
So here's why college, I think, has become such a disservice to our country.
And obviously, a lot of you are in college, but let me tell you how you could break out of this, right?
Is that every time you turn the corner in college, it's about buying new textbooks, going to bigger class sizes, doing homework that you're like, I don't understand how this applies to me, going further into debt.
When you're your age, you shouldn't be just like micromanaged by the man or the machine.
You should go create new stuff.
You're able to pull all nighters and still be able to make coherent sentences, right?
The energy you have when you're 19 shouldn't be used to go like learn about Nietzsche.
Like that crap can come later, okay?
You can go learn like existential nihilism when you're 25.
Trust me.
It's just as garbage when you're 25 as when you're 18, let me tell you, okay?
Instead, when you're 18 or 19, Go start something new.
It could be a business, a nonprofit, a campaign.
Go run for something.
Go take a risk.
Seriously.
And like you being here is part of that.
So I want to commend you and encourage it.
The only way the American project gets saved is big and bold and dramatic risks from our young people.
And by the way, the left, they get embraced when they do this, right?
Like, oh, look at Sandy Cortez.
She's such a hero because she ran for office when being a bartender.
Like, yeah, okay, whatever.
Sure.
You know what?
Good for her.
She at least did something like that.
We need more of that on our side.
Go rise up and whatever that is.
It could be writing a book, you know, becoming a professional musician.
Well, Charlie, what if I fail?
Well, you're probably going to fail.
Of course, you are.
That's part of the entire American project, too.
We are the most forgiving of failure of any nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
It's reflected in our culture and our bankruptcy laws.
I'll prove it to you.
This is why we're different than the Europeans.
People say, well, Charlie, how dare you argue supremacy?
I'm not saying supremacy, okay?
I have a preference for our culture.
If you want to sit around and sip wine all day, like, yeah, go to Italy, okay?
I want to win, okay?
That's what Americans do.
We win.
Okay, like we don't just that's what we do here.
Okay, so let me tell you that we're the most forgiving of failure ever.
Bankruptcy laws in America, if you fail, there's a way to get out of it through bankruptcy laws.
I don't think any of you guys are gonna have to get to a place where you declare bankruptcy, but also the people we consider to be the greatest heroes are the people that fell the furthest and then built themselves back up.
We love those stories in America, we love it.
The people that were like left for dead, the Lazarus stories, right?
Raising from nothing.
Tiger Woods, like total rock bottom, right?
And he's decided to like do a sequel, right?
With recently.
But, like, the point is, like, no, seriously, it's like, okay, rock bottom, built it up, and then, okay.
But, you guys, I don't know if you remember Tiger Woods, like, top of the game, best golf forever, right?
Like, everything you can, and then totally destroys his life.
Affairs, car accidents, injuries, lies, divorce, the whole thing, right?
And he's like, you know what?
I'm now gonna prove it to myself.
Comes back and wins a master's a couple years ago, right?
Same with Kobe Bryant.
God bless Kobe Bryant.
By the way, if you wanna talk about someone who should be a role model for the black community, It should have been Kobe Bryant.
I mean, that guy, so I love Kobe Bryant.
Kobe Bryant, same thing.
So, Kobe Bryant, may he rest in peace.
Kobe Bryant was at the top of his game, had an awful affair.
I don't know if you remember this, got accused of sexual assault, possibly rape.
His whole life was in shambles, recommitted himself to his Catholic faith, and all of a sudden became an ambassador of discipline, of restraint, and of order, and went back and won another three NBA finals.
We love stories like that.
So, don't give me, like, oh, I might fail.
Of course, you're going to fail.
I failed along the way.
The question is Will you have the ultimate failure?
The ultimate failure is giving up, quitting.
Now you can kind of see a little bit of a through line of my recent commentary, right?
I can't stand giving up.
Don't do that.
It's not who we are.
Putting up your hands like, man, I can't take it anymore.
You're all stronger than that.
You're a lot tougher than you think.
You're a lot tougher than you give yourselves credit for.
You could dig a lot deeper, everybody, and you could push through when all of a sudden you feel like the world is against you.
You all of a sudden could get through that next hurdle when you're like, man, I can't go any longer.
Yes, you can.
You're 18, 19, 20 years old.
The physical barriers are probably not as much as you think.
You could go 72 hours without sleeping, every single one of you at the age you're at.
Seriously.
I've done crazy stuff like that when I started Turning Point.
Red eye flights, driving on two hours' sleep, knocking on random doors, forgetting people's names on phone calls, falling asleep on conference calls, you name it, I've done it all.
And without that kind of crazy, like upside down grit, only in America type cowboy spirit, I don't know if Turning Point USA would exist.
I wouldn't trade it for the world, by the way.
I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Now we have a team and an infrastructure able to do all those sorts of things.
And by the way, you know how many little failures we had along the way at Turning Point?
False starts, things that shouldn't have happened?
But the real thing was like, are we going to just put up our hands and say we're not going to do this anymore?
That's how people want us to think about the country, though, right?
They want us to give up on the country.
We don't do that here.
That's not who we are.
My grandfather did not fight in World War II and just give up when the Philippines was all of a sudden taken over by the Japanese.
We didn't give up when the Nazis took over all of Europe.
Like, you know what?
No, we're going to do a bigger invasion against.
That's right.
You call them the Nazis, not the Nazis.
You haven't seen Glorious Bastards, great movie, by the way.
I want you to channel what all of us have in common, which is a shared American ethos and ethic.
When you look at that flag, every single person in this room, you have something in common.
By the way, they're trying to destroy this American family.
You know that?
That's why they want to destroy our history.
You know why?
History is the stories that we tell each other where all of a sudden we have shared values.
That's why they don't want you to hear about Guadalcanal.
They don't want you to hear about Iwo Jima.
They don't want you to hear about all of a sudden how we destroyed Soviet communism without firing a bullet.
They don't want you to hear about that.
They want you to hear about, like, you know how racist we were and we're even more racist.
Not like, yeah, okay, enough, okay?
Eventually, this kind of negativity just wears down a person.
Like, no, we are built on the shoulders of heroes in this country.
We're built on the shoulders of titans and risk takers, people that sacrificed for us.
And so, go create new and lasting things.
Enough kind of being paralyzed by, you know, the forces around you.
You can liberate outside of this simulation, every single one of you.
That's, and by the way, I have a copy of the US Constitution.
This Constitution gives you the charge to be able to do this.
And what the system wants you to believe is you can't do those things.
You can't go build new things.
You can't think big.
So you say, Charlie, well, what's an idea for me?
I don't have an idea, but you do.
Here's the best idea of how to start a business.
You want to hear it?
Start an endeavor.
It's this simple Go find something that everyone is complaining about and go solve their problem.
It's that simple.
You want to go be rich?
Go do that.
It's that simple.
Go find something everyone's complaining about and go solve their problem.
Just so happened, everyone was complaining the country was dying and young people weren't getting organized.
And I agreed with them.
I said, okay, let's go educate a bunch of young people.
So, what's education?
I don't know.
Let's just figure it out.
We got energy.
The one thing that you guys have that I had, and I pray I still have, is energy.
Use it.
You guys can do more work than anyone else.
Outwork everyone else around you.
And the other part is like, well, you don't have the wisdom to do that.
You guys can get wisdom.
Go read big books, long ones, that all of a sudden you're like, why am I reading this?
That's exactly where, as soon as after 500 pages, you're on the right course towards wisdom.
Trust me.
Go read stuff where all of a sudden your friends are like, huh, loser, like, ah, perfect.
Yes, right place.
No more tick.
If you guys take a month off of TikTok, every single one of you will be wiser, by the way.
Infinitely wiser.
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Microplastics Harm Your Brain Health00:15:53
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Number two: three things, right?
These are not hard.
Number two: always.
Tell the truth.
Always.
Always tell the truth.
So, Pete, I'm gonna give you my own personal opinion.
I'm gonna tell you where I disagree with Ben Shapiro on something.
Love Ben, smart guy.
Where some people say, hey, should I lie to get a good grade?
I'm sure all of you encounter this all the time, right?
So, for me, grades were never really important, okay?
No, it's true.
Like, I mean, I could always just kind of navigate it.
I'd step up for the test.
I'm sure a lot of you are this way.
Like, bare minimum, I'm gonna go focus on real stuff.
Like, you know what I mean?
And, like, the teacher will hound me, and the teacher always kind of was like, You could do better.
I'm like, yeah, if I actually cared, right?
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, and again, I'm not endorsing that.
I'm sure some of you are like shaking, like, no, grades are everything.
I'm gonna ask you to pray about that.
Your grade should not be your identity.
No, seriously.
Your grade should not be your identity, seriously.
And by the way, I'm not like endorsing, go like fail every class and don't show up.
Like, you know, don't be a schlep, okay?
At the same time, it's like, is that your whole existence?
It's like, I got an A plus, an APU, a sister, I got a five.
Okay, congratulations, terrific.
Who's James Madison?
I don't know.
Well, okay, so you study for a test, but you don't actually know any of it.
I came across someone's like, I got a five on AP US history.
I said, okay, who wrote the Federalist Papers?
It's like they kind of broke into a sonata.
I'm like, that's not the answer.
It's like I'm not trying to do like, you know, Constitution 101, that's like some basic stuff, right?
You got a five on AP US history.
You should know that it's Alexander Hamilton and James Madison coming together before the Constitution Convention, 1787.
And John Jay, who was the first Supreme Court Justice of the United States.
That is correct.
So it's like, who wrote it in newspapers in New York State?
Not that complicated, right?
And again, it's not a trivia test.
It's like, don't make that your identity.
But so, going back to where I disagree, is some people say, Charlie, I'm going to get graded down differently.
Of course you will.
Obviously.
What's the most important thing in your life?
What's the most important thing?
That's something you should always ask yourself.
And by the way, all of you might have different questions.
Let me tell you what the most important thing is to me.
I believe the minute that you start lying to yourself and lying to others, you start breaking that covenant and that promise with your creator.
Telling the truth is everything, it's everything.
So, in the Christian ethic, the Christian tradition, We believe that Jesus was not just someone who said true things, he was truth himself.
That a life that will be blessed and a life that will be in alignment with how God wants us to live will be the embodiment of truth.
Do you know truth has a really amazingly paradoxical thing?
It's liberating and it also comes at a cost.
Always.
You'll never be able to be a truth teller and be loved by everybody.
No one.
You'll never be a truth teller and be of the world.
Not going to happen.
And so, when it comes to the grade, maybe you'll be able to persuade the professor, but you'll all come across the situation.
I guarantee it.
Raise your hands if you think you're graded differently because of your conservative views.
Yeah, basically the whole room.
Okay, you'll all come across this.
And by the way, I'm not telling you what to do.
I want to be very clear.
There might be an argument where lying to get a grade might be the better argument for you.
I don't accept that moral framework.
I'm not going to try to impose morals on you, okay?
I'm just going to ask this for consideration, okay?
So, I don't want you to go back like, oh yeah, Charlie told me to go fail.
I did not say that.
By the way, treat my speech like a buffet line.
Take what you like and leave the stuff you don't, okay?
Seriously.
None of this stuff is impositional on you, okay?
But here's the thing if you're gonna all of a sudden go write some sort of systemic racism, Nicole Hannah Jones, Robin D'Angelo, Tahanisi Coates garbage to go get a good grade, when are you gonna stop lying?
You gonna stop lying at the job interview?
How about at the promotion?
How about when you're senior management and you're supervising an entire division at Citibank or Goldman Sachs or Wells Fargo?
How about all of a sudden, when things get really tough and you're running an HR department at Coca Cola and they're like, we're going to go give 100 million bucks to BLM, you're going to stop lying then?
If you have a plan, you're like, okay, I'm going to lie here, but not here, you're way more self disciplined than I am.
Like, way more.
Because I know lies are a tricky thing.
They start to manifest in your behavior, don't they?
You don't even realize you start lying at times.
They just kind of spread out, they become part of your language.
Truth takes effort.
It does.
Truth takes courage.
You got to do it over and over again.
And then all of a sudden, When it gets really hard, they say, okay, what do you think of Trump?
Then you gotta be willing to say, maybe I like him.
He's the worst person ever racist, misogynist, bigot, homophobe.
A plus, congratulations, welcome to Harvard.
Which one?
So, I believe that career advancement and getting a good grade is mostly all garbage.
I want a generation of truth tellers with courage, not a bunch of people with good grades that watch the country decline and decay in front of them every single day.
So, always tell the truth.
People say, Charlie, you gonna get a vaccine card?
I'm like, I'm not getting vaccinated.
By the way, there's this crazy thing on social media.
Charlie Kirk's been vaccinated.
I guarantee you, I haven't been vaccinated, okay?
At least with this current experimental vaccine.
Again, if you've got the vaccine, I'm not here to tell you one way or the other.
But it's like, Charlie, you're going to get a card.
You're not going to be able to travel.
I'm like, look, I just told you I'm not going to get it.
I'm not going to go, like, fake my way to it.
I will pay the price of this.
And guess what?
You're also going to have to deal with whatever wrath that I can concoct when you try to limit my freedom and liberty, right?
And whatever that is, you're not going to like it.
Like, whatever that is, it's not going to be good.
And you got to own it.
Don't apologize for it.
Like, oh, yeah, uh, You know, when you're all at a dinner table with your family, your friends, or your relatives, are you getting vaccinated?
Are you getting vaccinated?
Are you getting, like, who are you?
Like, that's like a weird thing.
Are you HIV tested?
Like, what kind of creep are you?
Like, can I see your full medical history?
Like, can I go see the results of your colonoscopy?
Like, weird, overweight Karen?
Like, what kind of weird thing is that?
I need to see your intense medical history.
Like, you have way too much power.
I don't know who you are.
No one elected you.
You're not in the Constitution.
Like, leave.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's the way that you should respond to that.
Like, way too much power.
Like, I need to go see your vaccination history.
What kind of crazy people are these?
Anyway, always tell the truth.
Look at them in the eye.
This is what I believe, why I believe it, and treat me as you will.
That sort of inner peace that you'll have will only come with the third thing.
We're about to get to the third thing.
So people say, Charlie, how are you able to just, you know, withstand the arrows?
And all this, of course, gets tough at times, obviously, right?
I'm not like gonna say that it's like superhuman, but it gets easier when you do the third thing.
And the third thing is this you gotta know your stuff.
The more you know, the more you read, the more you listen, the more you're open to correction, the more wisdom you pursue, all of a sudden you're not gonna care when very unimpressive low IQ people start screaming at you.
You're not.
When you start pursuing beautiful ideas, like real stuff, I'm not talking about the stuff that they're pushing, I'm talking about stuff that's all of a sudden, what is the good?
What does that mean?
Like classical education.
When all of a sudden you dive deep and you become a master of these ideas, all of a sudden you're just gonna kind of play badminton with all this, seriously.
Yeah, whatever, whatever.
You got to know your stuff.
So, what does that look like?
Dive deeper, get to root causes.
Now, maybe for you, religion is really important.
Go read Thomas Aquinas.
If anyone here is a Christian, go read Thomas Aquinas and get good at it.
That's tough stuff.
You go read the Summa, get back to me.
That's tough.
Maybe you're not a Christian.
You're like, you know, I'm really big into the Enlightenment.
Okay, go read Rene Descartes, go read Immanuel Kant, go at least go back to the Greeks.
You got to be able to tell me what Socrates played on Aristotle believed.
You got to be able to tell me what the allegory of the cave is, the allegory of the ship.
And if this stuff's like way over your head, that's okay, guys.
That's, by the way, that's why we're all here.
But all of a sudden, when you get deeper into this, with hopefully some humility, because you don't want to become cocky or arrogant, right?
You'll get to a place where all of a sudden you won't care about the opposition that comes against you.
All of a sudden, you'll be like, you know what?
I know what I believe and why I believe it.
Like, just get out of my way.
And what I find far too often is that the conservative movement at times is we get really charged up of what we want to do.
And we don't always go deep into why we want to do what we want to do.
Like, what is the natural law?
That's a huge question.
Like, do we have a whole three months to go through it?
Because that's how long it takes.
Now, some of you go to great schools.
Some of you don't go to great schools, to be perfectly honest with you.
Take your self education seriously.
Take at least 30 minutes a day and turn your phone on airplane mode and go read a meaningful book, listen to a podcast that explores these ideas.
Obviously, we would love it if you listened to ours.
We try to do this at least once or twice a week.
Thank you.
But go challenge yourself and write something down at the end of that day that you learned that day that wasn't there the day before.
So, here's three things that you guys got to do every single day.
Go find something objectively beautiful and spend time in that thing.
It might be a piece of painting, it might be a painting, it might be a conversation with a friend, it might be a song.
The reason why there's so many issues of mental health in America is obviously there's some chemical side of it, is that we become such an ugly society.
And I don't mean like ugly people, I mean ugly in the sense of language, in music, in the aesthetic, is that the lack of depth in our conversations is just terrible.
And TikTok and all that stuff plays into it.
It's like, well, Charlie, what does that mean?
Well, for some of you, you might be going to school in Colorado or something.
You're easy.
You've got natural beauty all around you.
Some of you've got to go to school at St. John's.
Where's our St. John's people?
Okay, in the middle of New York City, it'll be a little bit harder, right?
But beautiful pieces of music, poetry, whatever it is, there's a canon of things that were developed in the pursuit of things that matter that you should ponder over, that should take you to almost take your breath away and make you wonder.
You know how often.
How rarely I should say that young people actually get a chance to do this today.
You know why?
Because there's an evangelistic nihilism on the other side.
They tell you when you enter into college, there is no truth, there is no meaning, there is no beauty, there's nothing but a power dynamic.
Those people should be ignored completely and totally.
Because even if they were challenged against their own premise, they don't actually believe that stuff.
And I'll prove it to you.
Next time a professor says, yeah, there is no truth, there is no meaning, nothing matters, say, okay, so you wouldn't feel anything.
If all of a sudden your wife or your daughter got kidnapped, it doesn't matter.
It's all a bunch of cells, right?
It doesn't mean anything.
That professor would be like, oh no, that would bother me.
Okay, so there is something.
There's some form of custody or an agreement to something that matters more than anything else, an attachment to something you care about.
And so you have to ponder on those things and then seek wisdom.
Anyone know what wisdom is?
Maybe you listen to the podcast, maybe not.
Yes.
Yes, the things that never change.
There's practical knowledge and there's eternal knowledge, okay?
Practical knowledge is who's the governor of Arizona.
That's going to change, right?
Well, whatever.
You guys can, but the point is that good or bad, but eternal knowledge is this Is it a good or bad thing to have children?
Should you be loyally married to your spouse?
What happens when you tell the truth?
What is courage, prudence, friendship?
These are eternal questions.
That's what matters.
You see, in college, they fill you with a bunch of practical knowledge and they leave you totally shallow on the eternal knowledge.
Why?
Because they believe that human beings are a project in progress.
They don't think that people 234 years ago had anything meaningful to say because they didn't have Twitter.
They didn't have vaccines, losers.
When in reality, we don't believe human nature changes.
We believe human nature stays the same.
We believe that the ancients can actually not just be helpful, but instructive to every decision that we make today.
That the people that pondered over things without the distractions of the news cycle.
2,000 years ago, could actually tell us a lot more than some hack on MSNBC right now.
Or some college professor at some Ivy League school.
So, you gotta know your stuff, and guess what?
When that happens, your ranks will increase.
People will gravitate towards you.
All of a sudden, you'll be able to call right from wrong, add depth and context to conversation.
You'll become a better organizer on campus.
You'll become more understanding what happens when opposition comes against you.
You won't be taken off guard when all of a sudden a big social media post comes, you know.
Because all of a sudden, you'll see a pattern when you start to study beautiful things.
You know what that pattern is?
That truth tellers get wrongly accused.
That truth tellers have to pay a price for saying those things.
And that courage is the commitment to that truth, regardless of the cost that comes against them.
And you'll see that pattern time and time again.
You see what happened to Socrates.
You see what happened to Jesus.
You see what happens to any one of the people that dare speak out against the times, the customs, or the traditions around them.
And all of a sudden, you'll say, man, now all of a sudden I can understand this a lot better.
And then you'll be better equipped to be that courageous organizer.
So, what are we doing here?
What does success look like?
Success at Turning Point USA is not a political success.
It's not like Republicans win, Democrats lose, like whatever.
And the success is this: that all of a sudden we have to have spreading like a wildfire, a revolution of courage and truth in our country.
Where all of a sudden you're not the only one standing alone, and you won't be.
It will spread because there are thousands of other people on your campus that are waiting for someone to challenge this authoritarianism and this tyranny.
All it takes is sometimes that one step and being willing to kind of take that backlash and take what that is.
So, there are three things in summary, and then we'll do some questions.
Go create new and lasting things.
Take risks.
Think big.
You're young.
Take advantage of it.
Number two, always tell the truth.
Always.
Tell the truth to yourself.
Tell the truth to your Lord.
Tell the truth to your friends.
And tell the truth when things are difficult.
You will be blessed by that.
Always.
And number three, know your stuff.
Become masters of these sort of topics and issues.
Have an unsatiable appetite.
Toward knowledge and wisdom and truth.
You should be filling up volumes of booklets, of notebooks, and forget the college stuff, right?
Like, they're not going to teach a lot of this stuff, and maybe Hillsdale, you're the exception.
But, like, you dive deep, all of a sudden you're like, man, this makes so much more sense to me.
Now I understand better ways to organize and better ways to do things.
Those are the three things that we need to commit ourselves to.
And this is the, I'm going to close with how I finished.
Master Topics with Unsatiated Appetite00:08:20
Don't blame your parents, lead your parents, show them what a responsible generation does with these things.
Do not do the Alexandria Casio Cortez thing.
Don't be like, oh, they're a bunch of losers.
Don't do that.
Say, you know what, they meant well, but they weren't up to the task.
I'm going to show them what it is, and they're going to follow me.
Your parents will follow you if you have courage and truth and direction.
I know that sounds totally contrary, right?
But if you feel let down like your parents, like, oh, their generation let us down, don't blame them.
They're your elders.
We are commanded to honor them.
Honor them by then leading them towards truth and with courage.
All right, let's do some questions.
God bless you guys.
All right, I don't know how we want to do that.
Okay, sure.
Hey, Charlie, thank you for calling out St. John's.
We know how much they love our turning point chapter.
So, a thing that I'm a big advocate for is like it's great to start your turning point chapter or like call out the professor in class, but to also like run for your student government and get into the student newspaper and student radio station.
So, even like I'm predicting that in my radio station this year, I'm going to be claimed for hate speech or like misinformation or something.
So, what's advice for?
Any student here that wants to join their high school or college student newspaper or radio station and start a podcast similar to yours and not get canceled?
Yeah, I mean, look, it's a great question.
First of all, what you're going through at St. John's is ridiculous.
All of you guys should be supporting.
They won't approve the chapter, they're forcing vaccinations.
It's terrible.
It's just out of control.
We have your back.
Thank you for being here.
And I know Pastor David's been helping you out a lot, which we're really thankful for.
Here's the thing if they won't let you into the school radio station or the school newspaper, go start your own.
Right?
And I'm gonna just manage your expectations.
They're gonna use all these buzzwords.
Like, experts say Turning Point USA is a public health threat.
Like, okay, what?
Like, what experts are you talking about?
No, seriously, this is what they're gonna say.
Like, experts say that you're a source of extremism.
Like, okay, extremism is a very relative term, right?
Extreme compared to what, right?
Like, if it's extreme all of a sudden to say that, like, there's man and man and woman and woman, like, I'm not exactly sure what your definition of extreme is.
Here's the thing though all of you should first attempt and try.
To get into leadership positions on your campus, whether it be in student body president, I don't know if they heard from CVP, I'm sure you guys will, or CLP in the coming days.
And the same can be said, by the way, for trying to influence and trying to get into the radio and these others.
But I will just say, they're going to try to do everything they possibly can to kick you out of that.
It's a private school, so you don't have that many measures at your disposal.
Just go start your own thing then.
Okay.
Yes.
Hi, Charlie.
Firstly, I want to say I just by chance found out the other day you and I are from the same place.
I'm from Glenview.
You know where that is?
Oh, yeah.
Where'd you go to high school?
Glenbrook South.
GBS, okay.
We beat you guys in a lot of times.
The Titans.
Yeah, you guys are a.
Yeah.
I was going to say something.
I was going to say, like, a bunch of spoiled brats go to GBS, but what's your question?
You're right.
You're right.
I'm just going to be honest.
Like, we're the middle class school.
That's anyway, so yeah.
My question has to do with our parents, because I was going to ask this at SAS, but I'll change it a bit.
You mentioned at SAS that they're living in yesteryear's America.
You put that very aptly.
For these parents that say, calm down, you're a conspiracy theorist, oh, I'm more worried about next week's paycheck than next year's country, is it possible to, through facts and logic, we say it a lot, to convince them of the true danger that the left poses?
And if so, how?
That's such a good question.
I'm giving you a hard time about GBS, by the way.
Oh, no.
I mean, you're right.
Yeah, I mean, so, yeah.
No, it's good.
Anyone else from Chicago around here?
Yeah, you guys know the Glumberg area well, probably then.
Yeah.
So, look, so this is a hard thing.
And I'm going to go a little bit over time than the clock on the screen, by the way, if that's okay.
There's a lot of questions.
So I will say this that this is a really hard thing to convince them because our parents, not all of them, have been trained to say, conspiracy theory, conspiracy theory.
So here's what you just got to do slow it down.
Use these two examples, okay?
This is it.
And this is helpful for all of you.
Just say, hold on.
10 years ago, if someone said that a former president was flying with a New York financier with underage girls on a private jet to a private island in the Caribbean, that was considered to be not just a conspiracy theory, but an unspeakable conspiracy theory.
In fact, when I first started Turning Point USA, this was talked about a lot in like the deep Reddit channels.
Like, Bill Clinton's flying on this, and you wouldn't be allowed to mention it anywhere.
Well, now we know all of it was true.
All of it.
That was considered to be a massive conspiracy theory, remember?
So that's a really helpful, disarming example for your parents.
The next time they try to tell you, like, that's a conspiracy, like, hold on, time out.
Let's go through things that were once called conspiracy theories that aren't.
The second one is such an obvious one, right?
Which is the front page of psychology today.
You guys can all look it up.
Back in December, they said, conspiracy theories, what's behind it?
And they said, experts say, The virus did not come from a lab.
Why do so many Americans believe it?
That was a conspiracy theory, remember?
And now it's considered to be like 100% true, according to Mike Pompeo, who's been briefed on intelligence and all that.
Those are just two examples.
And I think those are facts and logic.
What we're getting at, though, I hope you guys all know, I can't stand the phrase conspiracy theory.
It drives me crazy.
Now, are there wacky things?
Oh, you better believe there are wacky stuff, right?
I'm not saying everything that everyone ever says is true.
Conspiracy theory, because of the way our culture has been built, has been turned into this like paralysis thing.
Like, okay, I'll stop talking about that, right?
Can't ask questions about that.
It drives me insane.
Now, there's things that people say that just aren't true.
I was getting these emails right near, you know, December.
It's like, Mike Pence is currently in Guantanamo.
What are you talking about?
He's in Gitmo.
Have you seen these things?
I'm like, that's not even a conspiracy theory.
That's just fiction.
Like, it's just like Narnia type stuff.
Like, I don't know what.
And I get these wackadoodle emails.
So use some practical wisdom or some prudence, right?
And you all have that, right?
But here's the point I can name five things right now that we aren't allowed to talk about.
Like, that's a conspiracy theory.
That's a conspiracy theory.
What they're trying to do is they're trying to limit the frame of discussion so they can control us within that robust discussion.
So they want us to have a really heated argument about the corporate tax rate, and that's supposed to define our political system.
You know what I mean?
Like, oh, we disagree.
I'm 39, you're 38.2.
Vote for me.
Like, that's what they want.
When in reality, like, hold on a second.
Like, the borders are wide open.
They're bringing infected migrants into America, if you even call them migrants, right?
They're pushing an experimental vaccine on America.
Okay, I'm talking about any of this stuff.
You know what I mean?
And so I get that all the time.
And you have to just, here's the one thing that I will say about the conspiracy theory thing don't act like one, okay?
So, it's one thing to say things and then don't act like one.
Don't raise your voice.
Grasping your hair is really bad.
Don't do that.
Okay?
You know, like the hands wide open, the worst thing you could do, right?
You know what I mean?
Like, and then here's some phrases to avoid.
What do you mean you've never read it?
Or you've got to go to this unknown URL.
You've never done that either.
Okay?
So, you could pursue truth.
Just don't act like one.
Okay?
Don't raise your voice to a place where all of a sudden you're shrieking bad.
Okay?
Like that shrieking decibel.
Don't do that.
And so, be very calm than measured.
Be like, well, Didn't we used to call the Epstein story a conspiracy theory?
Don't you think we overly use that sort of description?
And then just let them answer.
Just total silence.
That's a lot more effective.
Is that helpful?
Avoid Shrieking Bad Decibels00:11:28
All right, thank you.
Next question.
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Hi, Charlie.
So, in regards to Hillsdale, I'm super blessed to be studying there this fall and I'm super excited for it.
But one of the things that I've been wondering is how do I stay involved in the front lines and a part of the culture war when I feel like it will be so easy to feel comfortable there and fall into that comfortability when I'm surrounded by people and professors that are also pursuing beauty and truth and are committed to that?
That is definitely the exception to the rule.
You're going to be very intellectually challenged there because there's a lot more intellectual diversity at Hillsdale than I think people realize.
First of all, you got to deal with libertarians.
That's a whole different thing, right?
I'm kidding.
I've got any libertarians here.
God bless you for being here.
Seriously, I mean that.
I used to be a libertarian, and we'll bring you along the ride.
So I'm kidding.
I'm kidding.
I'm giving you a hard time.
Thank you, man.
No, I am libertarian on a couple of things.
I think lockdowns were the worst decisions ever done in our country's history.
And I agree with libertarians on guns.
I think that the Second Amendment needs to be deregulated.
Not more regulated.
I think we need to have more liberty, right?
See, so we're good on that.
But I'll give now the libertarians a hard time, right?
We got to come out of the cloud sometimes when we talk about economic policy, right?
And talk about things that are.
You'll have a lot of fun with that at Hillsdale, right?
Because what happens at Hillsdale and other schools, and they talk about this, is when you get super smart people that read all the time, you start to really get convinced that a certain model of absolutism.
Is then able to be implemented, right?
So you're gonna be really challenged, don't worry.
But the other thing is, keep your eyes open for local political involvement and local things you can do in that regard.
The same goes for all of you that might be at other conservative schools.
There was another Michigan conservative school that someone mentioned yesterday.
Yeah, we met, right?
There was another one that was like, yes.
Northwood, yes.
Same sort of thing, okay?
But then also, don't be afraid to play devil's advocate to the smartest conservative that you know at that school.
You know what I mean?
And think of the best possible arguments you can.
Challenge and check your premise, right?
Remember, you guys should all write this down.
A wise man loves to be corrected.
Remember that.
All of you should want to be corrected every single day.
We don't like that, right?
Don't tell me what to do.
No, you should want to be corrected.
Think about it.
Who wouldn't want to correct truth with error, right?
Who wouldn't want to replace something that you believe is true that isn't true, right?
A wise man loves to be corrected.
So I think you'll be just fine at Hillsdale.
Okay.
Yes.
Hi, Charlie.
So, my question is I know you've addressed the fact that, like, a lot of us lose friends or whatever, but we want to change their minds and we want to be able to have those conversations that the culture is telling us don't talk about that, don't talk about that.
So, how do we break through that wall that they've put up and really have those conversations and really start to bring these kids back?
Because they're our friends and they're our family and we love them.
Yeah, so that's a great, great question.
Where do you go to school?
I am graduating from Helena High in two weeks.
Awesome, in Montana.
In Montana.
God bless you.
You're not jaded yet, so I'm so thankful.
I wish I was like you.
No, I'm kidding.
No, I'm giving you a hard time.
So, Helen is a super liberal area.
So, let me tell you guys something, and then let me tell you the kind of reality of it, and then I hope that I'm wrong with it.
Maybe you guys can correct me.
You should want to pursue dialogue, you shouldn't engage in ad hominem attacks.
You should want to try to get towards truth.
But the unfortunate reality, and I'll give you some tips on how to do that, is that sometimes they will be the ones.
To disengage that conversation, to be brutally personal, right?
To all of a sudden be corrosive and not even want to do anything with you.
So, here's just some good tips for conversation.
Don't ever tell people what you believe.
That's a waste of time.
No one wants to hear that.
Ask them why they believe what they believe.
Don't tell people what you believe.
No one wants to be lectured by you.
Say, like, hey, that's really interesting.
So, what do you believe?
So, has that ever worked?
Where'd you get that from?
Like, what country is that working well in right now?
Do you trust the government?
Well, you don't.
Then why would you want to give that government more power?
You see what I'm saying?
Be a lead questioner in a courtroom, don't be a lecturer, right?
All of a sudden, it puts them on a beautiful platform, makes them feel like they're the most important person in the world.
They could talk about themselves all day long, how smart they are, right?
Well, I'm a BLM activist because I read an Instagram post that said that systemic racism is the most harmful thing to U.S. society.
Oh, that's the totality of your intellectual tradition.
Interesting.
Is there other Instagram feeds that you follow?
Oh, just that one.
Okay.
So, and that's a, I got it.
Okay.
So, you see what I'm saying?
And so, but then the other thing is try to, again, I fail at this.
I try to get better at this, right?
We're all sinners.
We all fall short, but this is what you should do.
And I have plenty of videos where I try to engage in this, right?
Is you really have to allow your style to be attractive enough that people want to keep on talking to you, right?
So, you have to win stylistically, not just substantively.
Right?
You have to win on having.
Here's the.
So, Charlie's people say, Charlie, what does that look like?
Have the lower heart rate than the person you're talking to.
It's that simple.
So, if there was like kind of a heart rate meter, like you need to have the lower heart rate, and they need to be like, right?
That's what they need to be, right?
The lower heart rate will win the argument every time.
You'll think more clearly, your vocabulary will be more precise, you'll be able to draw on information that you knew previously.
You'll be more compassionate and empathetic.
So, I hope that's somewhat helpful.
But I also just want to make sure I'm not painting an idealistic picture.
There will be, unfortunately, losses with holding these conservative views.
But where are you going to college?
Liberty, you're going to be just fine.
So, good for you.
Jake was student body president of Liberty right there.
So, all right.
Yes.
Charlie, a lot of people are really concerned about election integrity and restoring faith in our elections.
What can the people in this room do?
To ensure that that will happen and that we can be confident that our family members can be confident to actually go vote and believe that their vote will count?
What a great question.
Thank you.
So, kind of speaking outside of Turning Point USA here, and just kind of more personally, if we don't fix our elections in our country, then we're not gonna have elections ever again in our country.
We have to fix the way we do elections in our country.
And so, this is another one of those things where, like, you're not allowed to ask questions.
Like, who cares if there were 72,000 more ballots, mail in ballots in Arizona received than were sent out?
Like, nothing to see here.
Who cares that in Georgia they just keep on running ballots through the machines, literally, as we see that.
So, what all of you can do is first of all keep caring about this issue and educating yourself on it, and then demanding out of your lawmakers that we start to see real movement on this.
So, anyone from Georgia here?
Man, I'll tell you right now, you guys need some major changes in what's happening in Georgia.
Demand it.
You know, yeah, well, you and I agree.
So, and that's part of it, right?
Is that, you know, saying, so you might, I don't know what you're asking, like, what do you mean by demanding it?
Like, the Georgia voter integrity law.
That everyone got so upset about didn't go far enough at all.
And, like, we need a full forensic audit of Fulton County and Cobb County in downtown Atlanta and in Georgia to find out what actually happened in the 2020 election.
And this disenfranchises all of you.
It does.
We got to end mail in balloting as we know it in our country.
It is an absolute disaster.
Mail in, like, voting month in America is a joke.
I mean, when I grew up, again, as I feel like I'm talking about 50 years ago, we didn't have these, we got your election results on that night.
Less than 5% of people voted by mail.
You were able to vote at least a couple weeks leading up to Election Day, and it wasn't that big of a deal.
And now they have to expand for like six weeks of voting.
Every human being that's ever lived gets a ballot.
It's a big problem.
And so, what does success look like?
We need to model our elections after Florida, which is very simple.
Which is, Governor Ron DeSantis has done a phenomenal job of this.
Where, and so you need to just demand this out of your leaders.
We want Florida style elections.
It's that simple.
We want to be able to have the results on election night.
You only get ballots if you request them, right?
And you have to have a signature verification of it.
Let me close with a quick story on this, and then we'll go a little bit over.
I know that I'm going to screw up the schedule today.
But so I went to go, I'm a registered voter in Florida, left Illinois and registered in Florida.
When I went to go vote early, next to me was a guy that was trying to game the system, in my opinion.
He was trying to get a vote early, and it said, according to the system, they told him, Hey, we already sent a ballot to your home, and that ballot's been returned.
He's like, No, no, that's not true.
Let me vote.
And it turned into this argument.
And they're like, Well, you can sign an affidavit here that says that's not true, but you could be held criminally liable if that's right.
And he's like, Forget it.
And he just left.
I was like, Huh.
Now, we don't know his true intentions.
Maybe it was a glitch in the system.
The fact he wasn't willing to sign that affidavit was really interesting.
And I think to myself, that one example probably prevented thousands and thousands of instances of voting fraud across the state of Florida.
And that's exactly what we need.
If you want a ballot by mail, you sign for it, it comes to your house, you sign for it, signature verified, you can fill it out, and you sign for it again when you send it out.
Mandating Medicine on Employees00:04:16
That's fine.
And then they have polling places that you come with voter ID to go vote early.
It's not hard.
Not every single state has their elections screwed up and broken.
This state has no idea what they're doing.
Out of control.
Florida has to be the model for safe and secure elections.
Simple, no fault mail in balloting.
Election results must be reported by nine o'clock on election night.
It's that nine o'clock on election night you need all of your election results in.
That's two hours after polls close.
That's plenty of time to get all your votes tabulated.
And finally, voter ID.
Voter ID when you go and vote at every single election place across the country.
We'll take a couple more.
Hi, Charlie.
I'm Tori.
So, as you probably know, they are trying to get an FDA approval for the vaccine.
So, given that happens, my college has already said that they're going to mandate it if that happens.
What college?
Ball State University in Indiana.
So, if that were to happen and colleges start to mandate it, what would be your advice to all the young people who don't want it?
So, is Ball State public?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, public, you guys have a lot more options at your disposal.
That judge in Indiana really set us back.
I don't know if you guys saw that ruling or not, where he said that every student at IU can be forced in Bloomington, Indiana.
Can be forced to take the vaccine.
This is an experimental vaccine, and according to the FDA's own wording, and let me be very clear you guys are 18, 19, and 2021 years old.
I'm sure someone here is vaccinated, and I'm sure you guys made an informed decision to do that.
I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but in general, at the age that we're all at, everybody, you guys do not need to be inoculating yourself with an experimental vaccine against a virus that has almost immeasurable risk against you.
Seriously, it's like you can't even measure.
The risk that it has against our generation.
And, but I can tell you though, is that I have 6,000 emails of people that have had serious adverse events to this vaccine.
Have any of you guys have any friends that have had adverse events?
Yeah, that's a lot.
Look around.
That's not normal, okay?
Like, I'd say about what, probably 50 hands just went up?
That's a lot.
I'm talking about people that are paralyzed, menstrual cycle disruption, mood changes, can't leave the bed.
Some people's fathers drop dead after.
Really, really scary stuff, right?
And so, if you're over 70, yeah, I think it makes sense to probably get it if you're really afraid of the virus, right?
Like, that's a totally different calculus.
But you're 17, 18 years old, right?
The risk reward ratio is like, man, hold on.
By the way, how many of you have already had COVID?
Raise your hand.
Yeah, hello.
I mean, that's pretty stunning, right?
So, wait a second.
So, you have to go get the vaccine to go prevent from getting vaccine that you're already naturally prevented from getting.
Like, what kind of psycho stuff is this?
And so, This is where I get a little fired up at the parents' generation.
It's like, where are the parents fighting for their kids right now?
Again, I have to kind of hold myself back, right?
Where I'm like, all right, you're not going to do it.
We're going to lead.
Okay, public school.
We'll help you with legal assistance.
If your religious exemption is the best, if you're in a public, we've already connected a bunch of people to Kelly Shackelford at First Liberty.
Happy to keep on doing that.
If you're in private, you're up a river without a paddle.
I'm sorry to say.
The Department of Justice has come out and said that you could basically discriminate against anyone based on vaccination status.
To me, I find this stunning.
I would like to have a lawyer explain to me the case law where you now can mandate medicine on your employees.
Like, I just want you to understand how crazy this is, and no one's been able to debunk this.
I want you to imagine if all of a sudden I said at Turning Point USA, like, every single employee has to take birth control that works for me.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, oh no, I'm gonna go now, I'm gonna now go program and going to tell every single employee what medicines they could take to come work for me.
Like, that's kind of creepy and weird, right?
And a massive overreach of privacy.
They say HIPAA doesn't apply, which I don't believe them.
Right?
And again, the courts are just ruling against us under this pandemic heading.
Knock Doors Till Knuckles Bleed00:03:31
So we'll be able to help you out, though, through some legal stuff.
Okay, one or two more.
All right.
My name's Harrison.
I'm from Nashville.
I was just wondering what do you do to keep a super strong work ethic?
Me personally?
Yes.
Yeah, well, so the one thing I've never had trouble is sitting still.
And so, yeah, I guess this is kind of built into me.
It's kind of Midwestern work ethic.
Those of you from the Midwest know what I'm talking about.
And so, by the way, there are plenty of lazy people from the Midwest.
Let me tell you, it's not everyone is working really hard.
So, yeah, look, I think life is a gift, man.
And I think we got a short period of time to hopefully do things that glorify God and advance truth, hopefully make a difference.
And idle time and just kind of sitting around is not for me.
And so, look, here's a good test for you is just.
Outwork everyone around you.
Wake up earlier, go to bed later.
And for me, it's this kind of like I look at a lot of the kids that I went to school with, high school with, and I kind of look around.
They really prioritize pleasure in the years that we prioritized, you know, work and like, you know, kind of pushing really hard.
And so, you know, it's very tempting to want to, and I'm just going to be very honest with you guys, is that the sooner you guys get out of the kind of like late night drunk culture, the better your life will be.
The sooner you get out of that.
Right?
And so, and again, I'm not moralizing.
Everyone's been through that, like, whatever.
Like, you can make whatever decisions you want.
Maybe it's going to work out for you.
What I will say, though, is that nothing good usually happens after midnight, right?
And people that wake up early tend to dominate the world, okay?
These are just like general rules for life.
By the way, so people say, well, Charlie, when do you have to do things that you don't like?
I can't stand it.
I'm an unapologetic anti-morning person, not a fan, right?
But I wake up every single day, 6:30 in the morning, got to host a radio show.
Like, you gotta dig deep, and then I go to work and do turning point.
You do things every day you don't wanna do.
So, part of what developing a work ethic is, is you have to dismiss whether or not you want to do something, and you have to say, ought I do that something, right?
Far too often, it's like, oh, I don't wanna do that.
I don't wanna do that.
I don't wanna.
Like, whoever said, like, what you want to do is the most important thing of what you should do.
Whoever came up with this crazy idea, right?
It's what you ought to do.
And then finally, just hold yourself to a standard and don't be happy where you are.
You know, you should be thankful for where you are, obviously, full of gratitude, but also be tough enough on yourself like, man, I could be a much better version of myself.
You know, I could lose some weight, I can, you know, be better informed.
And so for me personally, I made that decision a long time ago.
And then I'll kind of close with this we'll take one or two more.
I keep saying that.
It's like, but I didn't have a choice.
This is a very important thing.
This is why I encourage people to take a gap year before college.
I didn't have a choice.
I didn't have a choice to take time off.
As soon as I decided not to go to college to make this thing work, I had to do crazy stuff.
I had to wake up early, travel the country, not see my friends for a year, and all of a sudden, like, I have to outwork everyone just to make this thing, like, neutral.
You know what I mean?
And sometimes at college, I feel like kids are able to get a little bit comfortable and at least do the bare minimum.
Commit to Lifetime Conservative Activism00:05:32
Not all colleges, I know there's a lot, you guys are always, you guys are all doing a lot, but I've seen it work both ways, right?
Where there's a heavy emphasis on just kind of meandering through college.
For me, that would have been a disaster.
Like a total disaster.
For me, starting turning point forced me to be like, all right, if I don't work harder than everyone else, then this thing's not gonna work, and I'm not gonna be okay with that.
So, I hope that's somewhat helpful.
All right, where do we got?
I promise two more.
All right, this is the second to last question.
Yes.
Hi, Charlie.
My name is David Metch.
I'm from, well, I just graduated at Arcata High School.
Humboldt, it's fun.
Anyways, before I ask my question, I just wanted to say congratulations on getting married.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
That was just a great example to a lot of people in here, I'm sure, including me.
One thing I wanted to ask.
I've been getting into a lot of this recently, planning on going to college, and I kind of want to get into politics.
What do you think?
How should I start and other people in this room start on getting into a campaign in a local town or anywhere?
How old are you?
I'm 18.
Okay, and you're just out of high school?
Have you knocked on doors before?
Occasionally, yeah.
All right.
Before I even started to do anything, I knocked on 100,000 doors in suburban Chicago.
I learned a lot about politics.
Now, by the way, that's not the only way.
Let me just You know, kind of where do you live again?
I'm sorry, Humboldt, California, California.
Okay, um, when I was in when I was 15 years old in Glenbrook, Illinois, I made like the most calls of anyone for kind of a rhino congressman.
Um, who's been he's like a nice guy, but I was really involved in the grassroots.
Okay, so taking off the turning point hat and putting on turning point action just politically, I say this all the time stop trying to be politically famous.
Okay, enough of the kind of like I'm gonna go like do all these things, like go knock on doors, please.
Okay.
Like, go make phone calls.
Get in the trenches, okay?
Knock on doors till your knuckles bleed, okay?
Seriously.
You wanna go build character?
You wanna go learn a lot about the American political system?
Go get some door hangers.
Go to Fountain Hills when it's 106 degrees outside and go knock on some doors for voter integrity.
You guys want it like that?
You'll learn a lot about politics, a lot about yourself.
You gotta go find the home.
You gotta go up here, here.
Oh, boy.
You know, you knock on the door.
I don't wanna see you.
I hate you.
You're the worst person ever.
I'll take a flyer.
Boom.
Like, okay.
You gotta mark it down, you gotta be organized.
That's hard work.
And so I'm telling all of you, before I started Turning Point, there was four years of activism, because guess what?
That's all that there was.
There was no youth organization.
And so, you know what young people did in Republican politics in suburban Illinois?
You showed up at a phone bank and you got a clipboard.
You're like, here, you know, do this for six months, you might get a picture with the candidate.
And now, like, we have Turning Point where you get to meet, like, all the Fox News hosts, and, like, it's great, you guys are doing amazing work.
The point is, like, before Turning Point, The idea of like political success was like you might get invited to the victory party.
Like, you're like, wow, that's so cool.
It's like you go knock on doors and knock on doors, and you're like, this is awesome, you know?
You gotta get back in that, everybody, okay?
Don't act like all of a sudden you're gonna be the campaign manager overnight, all right?
Humble yourself down, knock on the doors, and that's, by the way, that's what wins elections.
Doors win elections.
I'm talking just from a turning point action standpoint on this.
Okay, the final question, and I don't wanna derail the.
Programming too much here for the wonderful field team.
Hi, Charlie.
I'm Robert Schaefer.
I saw you a while back in Cisco, Texas, with the Wilkes and your buddy from California.
I have a question about Texas.
So, you saw the 50 Democrats that had their tail between their legs and went to Washington, D.C., like little, you know.
And my uncle is a state rep out of the district of Tyler.
He authored the constitutional carry bill for Texas.
But, yeah, thank you.
But my question to you is, how do you think right now Texas is as a state?
Like, even though Abbott did all those mandates and the House and the Senate, how do you think Texas politically is doing right now and how we can combat those politicians doing the, I forget what it's called, what they did though?
They're trying to break cloture.
Yeah.
That's right.
I mean, yeah, they left with Miller Lite, came back with Corona, right?
So, I mean, they did.
So, yeah.
And they had the vaccine.
Yeah, exactly.
Texas is a battleground.
It's probably tilting in the R direction.
And it's again, this has happened because of migration.
And so, not just southern border migration, which is a big part of it, but also migration from California and other states.
So, what do we do about it?
We have to then pass laws in these state houses that the other side hates so much that they wouldn't dare move to the states that we love.
It's that simple.
Like, for example, I wouldn't move to New York, high taxes, abortion laws.
It's like, so they've kept me out.
So, let's keep them out.
Let's pass our version.
Like, okay, we're going to pass the most pro life bills.
Constitutional carry bills, we're gonna bring down the income tax.
Like, all of a sudden, they'd be like, I wouldn't dare live in a state like that.
Stop Attracting Out-of-State Businesses00:02:53
Like, mission accomplished.
Like, and the other thing is, the other thing is, stop trying to attract these California businesses, right?
Stop trying to attract these out of state businesses that bring their values with them.
I am optimistic long term for Texas, though, because the outward, the new migration patterns actually benefit more Republicans moving in than Democrats.
Okay, in summary, everybody go create new and lasting things.
I want to go hear about risks that you're taking.
You guys can always email me directly.
I do read all the emails.
I don't respond to them all, but I do read them all at freedom at charliekirk.com.
Always tell the truth and know your stuff.
One way you guys could personally bless me, I'm sure you guys are already subscribed, so I'm already telling you swipe up and hit subscribe.
Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast if you're not already.
It would help me personally.
And it's a whole battle with subscribers, right?
We're going to win because that's what we do around here.
And so, but I want to just close with this, which is whether you guys asked for it or not, you are now in a place of responsibility for the future of the nation, not just your campus, but the nation.
So you need to commit yourself to a lifetime of activism and involvement, which means that somebody here is going to go create a super valuable company and you're going to give five to 10% of your earnings to conservative ideas for the rest of your life.
Somebody here is going to go run for office after you go knock on 100,000 doors and go be a game changer.
You got to commit to a lifetime of this because I never want to hear again complaining, cynicism, or negativity.
What makes the American project different, thanks to this beautiful document that we have here, is that you can actually change that.
And this is a very cliche thing to say, but I'm going to reemphasize it.
When you lean in and you decide to change it, All of a sudden, you can see some benefit or change because of it.
That's a uniquely American thing.
And so, all of you on your college campuses, there'll be times when it gets tough, when it gets tiresome, when it feels like the weight of the world is on you.
Turning Point USA is there to support you, to assist you.
Call your rep immediately when you're feeling those things.
Talk through it.
That's why we're here for you.
And then that's why we have the events.
That's why we do our regional stuff to be able to build you up.
But know the difference and the change that you have.
When I was 18 years old, none of this existed.
And now we finally have a fighting chance to be able to save this beautiful gift, our home, the United States of America.
God bless you guys.
Thank you so much.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.