| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Those are all the questions that will be answered today. | |
| Again, thank you for covering this. | ||
| We will be updating you as soon as we have additional information through normal channels, working with law enforcement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Again, our deepest condolences to the Kirk family and to the students who were there today. | |
| And I would just ask everyone everywhere to please pray for their family and to pray for our country. | ||
| We need it now more than ever. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Conservative activist Charlie Kirk has died after being shot at an event in Utah. | ||
| He was 31 years old. | ||
| Mr. Kirk was founder and president of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative politics on high school and college campuses. | ||
| Here he offers his thoughts on what he calls the new conservative agenda. | ||
| Hello, everybody. | ||
| It's great to be here. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| It's quite an honor. | ||
| Thank you, Chris, and thank you to the whole leadership team here at the library. | ||
| It's tremendous. | ||
| It's been a, as I said earlier, a very long month this week. | ||
| We started, we've crisscrossed the country a couple times, went from New York to D.C., Vero Beach, Florida, Birmingham, Alabama, Lynchburg, Virginia, Charlotte, Phoenix, back to Florida for a couple stops yesterday, woke up in Florida this morning, and here we are. | ||
| So we got a country to save and we got to act like it, right? | ||
| So, no, it's been amazing. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So I want to thank you guys for getting your copies of the book. | ||
| It's still number one on Amazon, which is amazing. | ||
| So in the entire world, we're very pleased by that, very honored, overwhelmed, honestly, by the response by this book. | ||
| And I really want to dive into kind of what's in here and what's important and what I think the media is missing about President Trump, what they're missing about why he's doing what he's doing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For those of you that don't know, I run Turning Point USA, the nation's largest conservative student organization, now on over 2,000 high school and college campuses across the country. | |
| Fighting, thank you, fighting for American exceptionalism, the Constitution, honestly, where it's not always easy. | ||
| And we say that we play offense with a sense of urgency to win America's culture war. | ||
| Our whole philosophy at Turning Point USA is that the left has been winning far too much for the last 40 years, and we're going to go where conservatives have really been losing the last couple decades and making sizable gains. | ||
| And you see that with what we've been able to do on campuses. | ||
| And I think long term, that's going to be one of the most important legacies at Turning Point USA is when you start to see real sizable change in the next generation. | ||
| And so that's part of why I wrote this book, because I've been so blown away by the successes of the Trump presidency. | ||
| And it's important to recount those and to focus in on how he's been able to succeed. | ||
| But then also, I'm equally anxious because I don't want to see the Republican Party go back to big government management, appeasement of our enemies, endless wars overseas, silly immigration policies, and bowing down to China. | ||
| And I think that President Trump has positively recalibrated the Republican Party for generations. | ||
| And I think it's important to learn from it so that our generation continues the successes of the Trump administration for the better. | ||
| And so first and foremost, I wrote this book partly for that reason, but most importantly, as I was watching cable news and I was reading the newspapers, and I kept on coming across these left-wing prognosticators and pundits telling me what President Trump believed. | ||
| And I said to myself, you hate him. | ||
| You hate us. | ||
| You hate all of us. | ||
| And I'm supposed to listen to you. | ||
| And they're saying, well, President Trump is doing this because he wants to enrich his businesses. | ||
| Or President Trump is doing, he has no guiding philosophy. | ||
| He's an unguided missile and he's shooting off tweets in the middle of the night. | ||
| And I said to myself, first of all, I've actually spent time with him. | ||
| I've spent time with the First Family. | ||
| I've seen what he's been able to deliver for our country. | ||
| Why is no one actually articulating what the doctrine of the Trump presidency is? | ||
| Because you just don't stumble accidentally into Gorsuch Kavanaugh, 200 circuit court judges, largest ever tax cut in American history, best economy in American history, lowest ever black unemployment, Latino unemployment, Asian American unemployment, energy independence. | ||
| Salamani and Baghdadi are dead. | ||
| Embassy is moving to Jerusalem. | ||
| Golan Heights are recognized. | ||
| Iran deal is canceled. | ||
| We're out of TPP. | ||
| We're out of the Paris Climate Accord. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Finally, we've been able to put our enemies on defense because we produce our own shale and oil. | |
| That's just not an accident. | ||
| You just don't, you don't stumble into that because if it was, every other president in both parties would have had a track record of success. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And when I was traveling the country talking to many people in this room, a common question I would get is, Charlie, what have these people been doing the last 20 years? | |
| I mean, because it looks like this guy's just running circles around the conventional wisdom. | ||
| And so that's where I went out to go write the book. | ||
| And so people say, well, who did you interview for this book? | ||
| Well, I did talk to the president, and that's partly in the book. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But, you know, also, I went to rally after rally of people that would wait out hundreds of hours just for a chance to see the president of the United States speak for 30 minutes. | |
| And I went to his kickoff rally in Florida where people spent 200 hours outside through tsunami-like conditions. | ||
| And then I went to Minnesota where people waited outside in negative 10-degree weather. | ||
| And I said to my, and I'm sure all of you appreciate this, that is not normal. | ||
| I mean, there's no band, you know, there's not, it's not Bon Jovi, it's not Beyonce, there's no comedian. | ||
| Well, sometimes there's a comedian, you know, with the president. | ||
| But I think he's on it. | ||
| He's so much more, he's so much funnier than the late night comedians ever will be. | ||
| Do you ever notice that, seriously, do you ever notice that at the late night comedy shows, they're applauding in the audience, they're not laughing because they're not funny. | ||
| It's like a political talk show at 11 o'clock at night. | ||
| Anyway, and I said to myself, I asked myself, what is it that drives these people to wait so long at these rallies, to take days off of work, to feel as if they're part of something? | ||
| And then it hit me, and it goes back to something that was talked about in the Federalist Papers by our founding fathers, which is citizen government. | ||
| For the first time in many decades, the people finally believe that there is a vessel that listens to them and that delivers for them. | ||
| And the great irony of the whole thing, and you wouldn't have been able to write this in a novel to have people believe it, is that it took a billionaire businessman who's supposed to be as disconnected as anyone from you to actually represent you in the kingdom of Washington, D.C. | ||
| And so from the moment he came down that escalator, he changed American politics fundamentally for good. | ||
| Because when you go to these rallies and you talk to these people, here was the consensus. | ||
| It was, I felt like I was losing my country. | ||
| I felt like both parties were participating in it. | ||
| I felt like the Republican Party talked to Good Game and did nothing to fix it. | ||
| And I was so sick and tired of politics as usual, I wanted someone with a sledgehammer, a Brooklyn brawler, to go blow it all up. | ||
| And so that's kind of special. | ||
| And in fact, I said it was kind of poetic. | ||
| And of course, people, you know, people say, well, I don't like his tweets and I don't like his, you know, I'm going to address this one time and one time only. | ||
| And here's the best way that I can address it is America was drowning in the middle of the ocean under the managed decline of both political parties over the last 20 years. | ||
| And if we're honest with ourselves, it's been both parties that contributed to this, to big government management and adventurism abroad while our country is crumbling. | ||
| And finally, in the middle of the night, when we're just gasping for air, a rescue helicopter brings us back up to life and we're able to breathe again. | ||
| And the first thing you say to that person that rescues us is, oh, I don't like your tweet history. | ||
| Like, no, we're breathing again. | ||
| It's completely and totally irrelevant. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like the heart surgeon that, you know, okay, finally, thank you for the triple bypass surgery, by the way. | |
| Hate your tweets, but I'm glad we're breathing again, okay? | ||
| And not to mention, I could make an argument that the Twitter feed actually sets the cadence and is a public North Star for every single person to understand what the president is trying to accomplish and keep people accountable for it. | ||
| Because traditionally you need to hold a press conference, the media won't always cover it, but now there's a real-time standard and a real-time accountability measure for everyone to see exactly what the president is thinking and what he's doing. | ||
| I think he's hilarious. | ||
| I actually like a politician that is outside of the cocktail party, say one thing, do another thing, consensus in Washington, D.C. | ||
| I don't care if he offends a couple people here and there. | ||
| I like the fact that he punches back twice as hard because I feel as if our politicians haven't been fighting for our country for the last couple decades and they've been perfectly okay with this kind of managed decline. | ||
| And so when I heard this time and time again, I said, okay, that's the thesis of the Trump presidency. | ||
| Here's the big picture doctrine. | ||
| First and foremost, when you go into the doctor and you say, give me the bad news first. | ||
| Tell me everything that's going on that's bad. | ||
| And President Trump in his announcement address basically was pretty brutal. | ||
| He said, we're losing. | ||
| He said our borders are wide open. | ||
| Our trade deals are stupid. | ||
| China is laughing at us. | ||
| Our economy is anemic. | ||
| Obamacare is a disaster. | ||
| The courts are compromised. | ||
| The deep state is corrupt. | ||
| And this was in like the first 30 seconds, right? | ||
| And it was the first honest assessment I think our country had received in a very, very long time. | ||
| And that's the first part of his doctrine, his philosophy is, I'm going to tell it straight to the American people. | ||
| I'm going to tell you, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. | ||
| I'm not going to tell you one thing when it's actually the other. | ||
| And the second thing is what ideas are actually rooted in a renewal of a nation. | ||
| And to understand the historical significance of what President Trump has done and what he's trying to do and what he's getting opposition to do is actually trying to revitalize and resuscitate a country that was in that managed decline. | ||
| And it's so historically improbable to do what he's doing because when you have a superpower, the likes of which America is, when you have 47, 50, 55 million people on food stamps, that's really hard to turn that around because people are just going to vote themselves benefits. | ||
| And the founding fathers warned us against this. | ||
| And one of the things I think that is one of the most amazing accomplishments of the Trump presidency that never gets mentioned is 10 million people are now off of food stamps since President Trump got inaugurated. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| That is historic. | ||
| Because for the first time in our country's history, I shouldn't say first time in our country's history, but the first time in modern American political history, we've been able to turn that around. | ||
| And that is something that was the demise of the Roman Empire and many other empires before when people can vote themselves stuff. | ||
| But President Trump convinced people and convinced the electorate there's not dignity in just voting more benefits for yourself. | ||
| How about we create the greatest economy in American history? | ||
| How about we bring dignity back to forgotten America? | ||
| And so he, there's, so then he runs on this, and the historical improbability is so amazing because you see what's happening on the Democrat side. | ||
| And I think when you right now and you see this, it should make everyone just kiss the ground and thank God that President Trump was able to defy the odds the way he was. | ||
| Because Senator Sanders will probably get screwed out of this thing because the establishment doesn't want him to be the nominee. | ||
| For good reasons, maybe. | ||
| I mean, he's a Bolshevik, a breadline advocate, and a Castro sympathist. | ||
| Besides that, I hear he's a really nice guy. | ||
| But, I mean, and Joe Biden's political strategy is the most perplexing and puzzling political strategy I've ever seen him up. | ||
| Confuse your wife with your sister. | ||
| Don't know what state you're campaigning in. | ||
| Don't remember the name of Barack Obama. | ||
| Don't remember the preamble to the Declaration or the Constitution. | ||
| Tell people not to vote for you and then call them ponyface dog soldiers or whatever he said. | ||
| And finish fifth and sixth in the first couple of contests. | ||
| Basically, meander into topics that no one cares about. | ||
| Have rallies that are only a couple dozen people. | ||
| And eventually, you'll be the last person standing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's going to go down as one of the most puzzling political strategies in American history. | |
| And a lot of it was because of Mike Bloomberg's failure to, you know, essentially is the worst politician in American history. | ||
| How that guy made $61 billion, let alone ran a board meeting, I don't know. | ||
| But essentially, Bloomberg reset the race, and Bloomberg's failure allowed Biden to be essentially the economic equivalent or the political equivalent of what a treasury bond is, essentially a flight to safety. | ||
| Like, what is the one thing I could put my money in that I don't care if it has no return, it's just right there. | ||
| You know, for those of you that, it's like, who's the T-bill? | ||
| Joe Biden, got it. | ||
| And so, and I actually make the argument for those that us that support President Trump, and this is a minority opinion, I'd much rather run against Joe Biden than Bernie Sanders. | ||
| I'd much rather run up against corrupt and confused than authentic and free stuff. | ||
| I don't want to validate and I don't want to elevate a sinister Marxist ideology at the highest level of American political party. | ||
| I would much rather run up against someone who's half socialist, half not, and completely and totally corrupt, and the most corrupt vice president in American history, which was Joe Biden. | ||
| I would much rather have that matchup for our country. | ||
| And some people agree, some people disagree, but definitely with the target audience I deal with, Senator Sanders has much more appeal than Joe Biden, and I'll build that out. | ||
| But you see what's happening there, and you see the establishment rot on the left. | ||
| And the fact that President Trump was able to defeat 16 Republicans, beat the Bush dynasty, beat the media complex, beat all the attempts to try to destabilize him. | ||
| And I talk about this in my book. | ||
| I was a Governor Walker and then a Senator Cruz supporter and then a Donald Trump supporter in that order from the Midwest. | ||
| And I had my understandable doubts that this guy was going to deliver for the conservative agenda. | ||
| Now, as soon as he was the nominee, it wasn't even a question. | ||
| I spoke at the convention. | ||
| I traveled the country with Donald Trump Jr. | ||
| I put everything on the line. | ||
| I said, there is no choice. | ||
| It's just over. | ||
| It's not even a conversation. | ||
| But from the moment that, and I spent more time with Donald Trump Jr., I spent more time with Eric Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And for those of you that were day one Trump supporters, you deserve huge amounts of credit because it took a lot of courage for you guys to have that. | |
| And you started to see the fact he won the primary was remarkable. | ||
| The fact that he won the general was even more incredible. | ||
| I talk about in this book, and the media ridicules me, and I'm going to say it again because I love to bother them, is I believe it truly was a God thing that Donald Trump got elected president of the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I really believe that. | |
| So I really do. | ||
| I believe that it was nothing short of divine intervention that came down and allowed America to have a second chance. | ||
| So he gets elected, he gets inaugurated, and 17 minutes after he gets inaugurated, they say the case for impeaching Donald Trump now begins. | ||
| So they, seriously, now this is so important. | ||
| I talk about it in this book because I don't think it's talked about enough. | ||
| He very easily could have hedged. | ||
| He very easily could have become a vanilla Republican to try to get them off his back. | ||
| See, the Mueller investigation was a hoax, but when they were probing Mueller, I hope you all understand this, it was a warning shot. | ||
| They said, stop it, Mr. Trump, or else we're going to come after you. | ||
| Don't move the embassy. | ||
| Don't cancel the Iran deal. | ||
| And then maybe we might not put all your friends in prison. | ||
| And then maybe we might not investigate your son for a couple years. | ||
| And if you think I'm over-exaggerating, I'm from Chicago. | ||
| I know the way the Chicago mob politics works. | ||
| That's how they run Washington, D.C. | ||
| And President Trump, to his heroism and the courage, he said, wait a second, I'm not going to be bullied into not doing what's best for the American people. | ||
| He very easily could have done what other past Republican presidents refused to do, which was not move the embassy to Jerusalem or not recognize Golan Heights or not cut Planned Parenthood funding or not do the tax cut. | ||
| And then it all kind of came to a very big head, which was something that bothered them more than anything else. | ||
| And I have an entire chapter on this, which I think is so important, which was the Justice Kavanaugh fight, which was President Donald Trump very easily could have pulled the nomination of Justice Kavanaugh. | ||
| In fact, a lot of people would have said, yeah, I kind of get it. | ||
| And instead, President Donald Trump is the first president in a lot of your lifetimes, the first president since Ronald Reagan, to put the left on defense, to actually push back against them where they're disoriented and they're confused. | ||
| And we call this, you know, Trump derangement syndrome. | ||
| And there's a lot of truth to that. | ||
| You saw that in the Justice Kavanaugh fight, which was one of the most important cultural moments, I think, since Anita Hill or even since then, you know, back, especially in the Supreme Court, where you had fabricated accusations that were elevated to legitimacy by the media. | ||
| A man that had a sterling record that was like the most boring person in the history of Maryland. | ||
| I mean, the guy literally had his journals from high school. | ||
| I mean, his calendars to prove his in it. | ||
| I mean, it was unbelievable. | ||
| And they put him on. | ||
| I don't even know who that's impressive. | ||
| Like, that should have been a nomination, a hundred to nothing vote that he still had his journals from high school and his calendar. | ||
| He's like, no, no, on June 18th, 1974, I was at Carl's house. | ||
| Like, it's really amazing. | ||
| It's actually impressive. | ||
| And like, you deserve to be on the Supreme Court for that and nothing else. | ||
| And then the gallivaning leftist apparatchiks. | ||
| You had Senator Harris and Senator Coons and then Jeff Flake, who was part of the problem. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wrote the book in response to people like Jeff Flake. | |
| I hope, and I do name some names in the book, not too many, but Jeff Flake, who was pathologically opposed to Trump, ended up doing the right thing and voting for Kavanaugh, but gave it such a hard time, elevated the worst aspects of the American left to the highest level. | ||
| We had that circus, and we had this absolute circus. | ||
| And President Trump did not waver an inch because he understands what the left is trying to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because he's been fighting the left in different forms and features his entire life. | |
| The left, it just didn't call itself the left, but when President Trump tried to build Trump Tower in New York City and he came up across corrupt bureaucrats and Democrats, that's the left. | ||
| When President Trump tried to build Woolman Rink, which was an ice skating rink that was delayed and delayed and delayed, that was the left. | ||
| And so he has a playbook for this. | ||
| And it's almost as if he was chosen for a time like this because he's one of the few people outside of politics that has a track record of actually beating these sorts of tactics time and time again. | ||
| And yeah, it takes a Brooklyn street fighter sometimes to go after them. | ||
| And so he wins the election, he gets inaugurated, and then he actually does something that confused everybody. | ||
| Like he actually did what he said he was going to do. | ||
| And it's like, we're not used to that at all. | ||
| And in fact, it's this really bizarre thing where, you know, the aides will come into his office and they'll say, well, Mr. Trump, a decision is coming up whether or not we want to renew NAFTA. | ||
| And it's this really strange decision-making process called, What Did I Say I Was Going to Do? | ||
| And that's what I'm going to do. | ||
| And we're not used to this, by the way, because both parties have never operated like this. | ||
| It's, we're going to do one thing and do another. | ||
| Renegotiating NAFTA, that alone is worthy of a parade. | ||
| I mean, USMCA is one of the most amazing legislative trade accomplishments, and it's not talked about. | ||
| Putting China finally on defense and getting a really, really good trade deal. | ||
| We're getting an even better trade deal. | ||
| Thank praise God if we get a second term. | ||
| We'll get an even better trade deal with China to continue to put them on defense. | ||
| But it's as if the Washington cartel was perfectly fine with China getting limitlessly rich at our expense. | ||
| And he was the only politician with the guts to call them out. | ||
| And then, so you look at the judicial victories, just that alone. | ||
| I mean, Gorsuch Kavanaugh, 200 circuit court judges, that's it. | ||
| But it's also his indifference to care about what people before him did. | ||
| And a great example for this, I think one of the most important fights is the fight for life. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| And the fight for the unborn. | ||
| And I really do. | ||
| And so you look at President Trump, and what 20 years ago, if you would have told me a guy that donated a Planned Parenthood that was on the cover of a Playboy magazine, that was a prior Democrat, would be the most pro-life president in American history. | ||
| I would have said, what are you talking about? | ||
| Yet he comes at every decision with an open mind and rationally and analytically looks at, okay, look at the evidence before me. | ||
| And his story of how he became pro-life is very moving. | ||
| He knew a woman that was contemplating abortion. | ||
| She decided not to have an abortion. | ||
| He saw this kid rise into a total superstar. | ||
| And for him, that was that person would not exist if it would have been for that abortion. | ||
| And so what does he do? | ||
| He's the first president in American history to speak at the March for Life. | ||
| And that's amazing. | ||
| Not the first. | ||
| The first. | ||
| And so, and again, I'm not here to bushbash, but they did not speak at the March for Life. | ||
| They didn't. | ||
| They did not cut Planned Parenthood funding. | ||
| It went up steadily. | ||
| And that should really open people's eyes because it's this guy that's not supposed to be the socially conservative individual with justices. | ||
| And again, we have some questionable justices on the Supreme Court. | ||
| But President Trump did this bizarre thing. | ||
| I'm going to tell you the list of people I'm going to nominate. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| He actually picked from that list. | ||
| And a lot of people voted for President Trump based on that list. | ||
| A lot of people, because that's the third branch of government that doesn't always get the appreciation. | ||
| And then foreign policy, which I love, because there's this bigotry of binary choices that happens in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And I hope everyone in this room learns from this and applies it to your own life, no matter what the situation is. | ||
| Because here is the two consensus in Washington, D.C. Option A: We are going to be trigger happy and invade a lot of different countries in the Middle East and try to nation build and try to impose our values all throughout the region. | ||
| Sounded good 20 years ago when we had a balanced budget and we really believed we could bring liberty to the Middle East. | ||
| I think it's pretty much the consensus: we're not going to turn Libya into Louisiana anytime soon, right? | ||
| And the consensus was we're going to send more of our most prized possession into this region of sand and death, as President Trump called it, and continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to try to democratize a region that is not ready for it. | ||
| And President Trump ended that immediately. | ||
| He said, wait a second. | ||
| I don't like that. | ||
| That's essentially the neoconservative, adventurous foreign policy doctrine. | ||
| The second school of thought is the exact opposite and equally as bad, which is we're going to pick the worst regimes in the region, send them billions of dollars of cash in the middle of the night, bow down to them, validate them, and send them well-wishes onward towards a nuclear weapon. | ||
| That's the other side of the extremist. | ||
| So President Trump said, well, that's silly, and that's silly. | ||
| So here's what we're going to do: targeted, tactical, and agile strikes against America's enemies with disproportionate deterrent response, number one. | ||
| But number two, we're not going to have the endless bridge-building War industry in Afghanistan and in the region that puts our most prized possession, our young people, where we have PTSD issues, we have veteran suicide issues, we have assimilation issues of our veterans back into society. | ||
| He said, enough. | ||
| He said, we're here to win wars, not try to democratize an entire region. | ||
| We owe it better to our veterans than to put them in a multi-decade conflict with no end in sight, with what victory is not well defined. | ||
| So what does President Trump do? | ||
| He says, okay, I'm going to end these endless wars, but if Soleimani continues to go after American citizens, I'm going to take you out with a drone strike. | ||
| Zero American citizens died going after Qassam Soleimani. | ||
| Al-Baghdadi, dead. | ||
| And liberating the generals on the ground. | ||
| ISIS was on the rise when President Trump took office. | ||
| And the destruction of ISIS is one of the greatest, most amazing accomplishments. | ||
| And he did it with minimal loss to American life, but liberating the generals to be able to go after America's enemies on the road, on the ground, which is incredible. | ||
| Ending the war in Afghanistan, and we'll see how that all brokers out. | ||
| But I think we all agree that 20 years, it fatigues the American spirit to be endlessly occupying a country that does not want Western values, that is not accepting Western values. | ||
| When we send $5 billion a year just to the Afghan security forces and we have hundreds of thousands of kids in our inner cities that can't read, I think our priorities are a little bit backwards. | ||
| And President Trump recognizes that and wants to reset our priorities forgotten to bring dignity to Forgotten America. | ||
| I'm going to summarize and I want to get when I get to questions. | ||
| So I wrote this with a sense of urgency because I don't know if President Trump is going to get re-elected. | ||
| I think he should win in a landslide based on the successes. | ||
| But one thing I want all of you to dismiss from your vocabulary, and I say this is tough love, he's not going to win in a landslide. | ||
| It's not going to be easy. | ||
| And I hear this everywhere I go, folks, and even some people in this room, okay? | ||
| It's closer than you think. | ||
| I've been to 44 states in the last year. | ||
| I talked to a lot of people on the ground. | ||
| There is a misinformation campaign against this president. | ||
| There is a lot of work left to do. | ||
| And I go to party after party where people think it's already in the bag and they're planning the transition of the second term. | ||
| And I say, okay, President Hillary Clinton, right? | ||
| Okay, President Mitt Romney, humble yourself and let's get to work because this thing is not over. | ||
| And I hear this a lot. | ||
| Oh, there's no way. | ||
| I said, here's a way, folks. | ||
| If Google wants him to lose, he's going to lose. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Voter fraud. | ||
| My goodness, what goes on in this state alone is going to be the blueprint for the rest of the country. | ||
| And by the way, they're sending their most mischievous, you know, the mischief that goes on here in Orange County. | ||
| They're teaching them in Milwaukee how to do that same thing in the battleground states, a ballot harvesting, vote by mail. | ||
| Not to mention what the media is going to be against him. | ||
| Not to mention, I really believe the Democrats are going to try to encourage and coach bad economic climate so they can defeat Donald Trump. | ||
| Bill Maher said it as such. | ||
| He's hoping for a recession. | ||
| And so I know that he should win. | ||
| He should win in a 1972 Richard Nixon-style landslide and a 1984 Ronald Reagan-style landslide. | ||
| He should. | ||
| It's not going to happen. | ||
| Whether he's going to win electorally in a majority way, I don't know. | ||
| That remains to be seen. | ||
| But they're not going to be taken by surprise this time. | ||
| They're just not. | ||
| Bloomberg is going to spend whatever he's going to spend. | ||
| The tech companies are going to do whatever they're going to do. | ||
| And so I want to see an animated and engaged and a worried conservative base, not a confident conservative base. | ||
| You guys can be quietly certain in what Trump has done, but you should be worried because they're working their tails off, folks. | ||
| And I see it every single day. | ||
| And that's the sense of urgency I hope all of you leave with. | ||
| Because a year from today, he could not be president. | ||
| I just want you to realize that. | ||
| It's conceivable. | ||
| In fact, I'd give it about a 50-50 split right now. | ||
| 50-50 to coin flip. | ||
| That you could be here gathering and it could be President Joe Biden. | ||
| I see a lot of people laughing, but it could happen. | ||
| And that's why we need to operate with a sense of urgency that I highly implore with all of you. | ||
| So I want to get to some questions until we do the book signing. | ||
| I'm honored to be here, guys. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Charlie. | |
| We do have some time for a couple of questions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Our first one's going to come from one of our cadets that presented the colors. | |
| Thank you for your presentation earlier. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And what is your question? | ||
| Good afternoon, sir. | ||
| My name is Ashley Yu. | ||
| I'm a high schooler from Troy High School. | ||
| As high schoolers, we don't have a lot of exposure or experience in politics. | ||
| So how do you suggest that we can maintain educated and more involved in modern new politics? | ||
| Well, thank you for the question. | ||
| And if you do pursue a career in service, you deserve to be commended. | ||
| So thank you for being here today. | ||
| I really, we do appreciate that. | ||
| Look, there's tremendous resources out there. | ||
| I know Dennis Prager is going to be here tomorrow. | ||
| PragerU is a great resource that I recommend. | ||
| What we're doing at Turning Point USA through our digital productions, I think, is very, very helpful. | ||
| But just be curious, be hungry, read the other side. | ||
| It is true that in high school, it's not always taught the way that we might want it to be taught. | ||
| But I would pursue just, I would encourage you to take five minutes a day to try to just carve out for politics, whether that be reading the news, make sure you read the right form of news. | ||
| That's all I'll say with that. | ||
| But just be curious, be open-minded, and passion is what will drive you. | ||
| And your patriotism should inform your politics. | ||
| Never forget that. | ||
| So thank you for being here today. | ||
| We deeply appreciate it. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One question I have, and a lot of people here probably went to college when I did. | |
| Anyway, on college campuses, used to have debate. | ||
| What are you seeing right now on college campuses? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, this is my day job, right? | ||
| So I wrote this book as a singular project. | ||
| But what I really do is I, you know, we have a machine at Turning Point USA. | ||
| We have 160 full-time staff. | ||
| We're on 2,000 high school and college campuses across the country. | ||
| We're working very hard. | ||
| I think I'm the only conservative to speak at UC Berkeley, Stanford, and UCLA in one semester and live to tell about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I also, I've spoken all across the country. | |
| To be perfectly honest with you, the greatest threat to our country is what's happening on college campuses. | ||
| And we as conservatives need to recognize that. | ||
| And it's less about reform and more about rebellion, to be perfectly honest with you. | ||
| These are multi-billion dollar cartels that don't care about the students that are going through their halls, that are not interested in teaching students core American values. | ||
| A couple thoughts on this. | ||
| For high schoolers out there, just ask yourself the question, why am I going to school, not where am I going to school? | ||
| You do not need to go to four-year college to succeed in our country. | ||
| You do not need to go to four-year college to succeed in our country. | ||
| We need more plumbers, electricians, HVAC, welders, police officers, firefighters, veterans, and entrepreneurs. | ||
| And in my opinion, far less people that go to the elite schools all across the country that prognosticate and tell us about how horrible and awful America is. | ||
| There's actually a massive multi-billion dollar window for people that are specifically trained in the skills for American-based trained labor. | ||
| And that deficit needs to be filled, I think, by high schoolers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Parents far too often push their kids into college. | |
| I'm just going to give you some hard truths here. | ||
| Unfortunately, more times than not, it's about the parents' ego, not the kid's future. | ||
| If you as a parent out there are not prepared to look at your friend, your family member, or your neighbor and look them in the eye and say, my kid is not going to college and I'm perfectly okay with it, then it's more about your ego than your kid's future. | ||
| And I say that with love and I say that with compassion for your kid's future because you see that in the University of Southern California admission scandal. | ||
| In what world is it okay to fabricate that your kid was not involved in any athletic competition? | ||
| It was the parents that were doing that. | ||
| We're not just talking about one-off thing. | ||
| We're talking a million-dollar industry where parents were fabricating records and doing immoral and illegal things so their kids could go to USC. | ||
| So what if your kid goes to USC? | ||
| And I mean, and I don't mean this as a way to insult anyone that this might have, but I see these parents where they say, my kid's an honor roll student. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, I would be embarrassed if my parents had a sticker. | |
| How about like my kid's a good person? | ||
| Like, I mean, right? | ||
| I mean, I don't, but it just, it doesn't resonate with me. | ||
| This hyper-fixation on who can climb the academic ladder the quickest. | ||
| It's important if you want to do certain things, and I hope everyone wants to go to the highest level, but I care much more about your character and your work ethic than what degree you got from some coastal institution. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Kirk, I just want to thank you for being here. | |
| And I feel like you're an ambassador for common sense and probably biblical prophecy, too. | ||
| And congratulations on your book. | ||
| My question is, as a small businessman, I think that one of the biggest shams that we face, especially in California, is that there's all these great ideas, but they come with a cost, correct? | ||
| And that cost to businesses and to the general public is, well, it's actually, it's probably considered immorally concealed, right? | ||
| So speak a little bit about that and what it does to the economy and businessmen. | ||
| Thank you for answering it. | ||
| Look, entrepreneurs and small business people are the backbone of the American economy. | ||
| And we should be pro-individual, pro-family business, pro-entrepreneur. | ||
| And California is a perfect test case of how to destroy the American entrepreneur. | ||
| And it's protecting the corporate status quo, but it's not empowering the actual little guy. | ||
| And so, for example, as you'll see tons of people go to Sacramento or tons of people that go to Washington, D.C. saying, well, we need more regulation for all these sorts of reasons. | ||
| Big business, it's a rounding error for them. | ||
| They can afford more lawyers and more lobbyists and more regulatory compliance. | ||
| It's the small guy with eight employees that it puts them out of business. | ||
| In fact, it protects the incumbent more than anything else. | ||
| What I think President Trump has done so well is we've seen a rapid increase in small business startups across the country, which is phenomenal. | ||
| And I think that sort of bottom-up enterprise model is something that we need to get back to in our country, not just a protection of the corporate status quo. | ||
| Additionally, look, there's a huge problem in our country because small business people can't find qualified labor that they need. | ||
| And part of it is training, but part of it is, you know, look, and it's, I talk to small business people all the time, and they say, look, there are people that want to come work for me, but they don't have the skills because they got a degree and something that is, you know, essentially they borrowed money they don't have to study things that don't matter to find jobs that don't exist. | ||
| And there's a huge market out there right now, and I don't know what industry you're in in particular, but there's a huge market right now for applicable jobs. | ||
| And one of the big success stories of the Trump presidency, I talk about this, was this myth and this lie that manufacturing was always going to be dead. | ||
| President Trump proved empirically that there was a multi-billion dollar manufacturing opening in our country, and he filled it, and he filled it really well. | ||
| In fact, we've seen a huge increase in manufacturing jobs since President Trump took office. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the final point is this, which is, and I'll kind of go back to the college argument, and I encourage everyone in this room to take this to heart, which is that we as a country treat people that go to college far more intelligent and wise than people that didn't go to college. | |
| And the media propagandizes all of you through this. | ||
| Do you notice how they do it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Through public approval polling. | |
| You ever notice on TV where they say, well, approval rating of the president for college-educated people is this, and non-college-educated people is this. | ||
| What are they really saying? | ||
| Here's what the smart people think, and here's what the dumb people think. | ||
| If you gave me 100 people that didn't go to college or 100 people that did go to college, my experience is that people that didn't go to college are far more wise and humble and hardworking than the people that actually did go to college. | ||
| But I'm not anti-college, I'm just anti-the current system. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you want to be an architect, a lawyer, an engineer, a doctor, it absolutely is for you. | |
| College should be about career preparation, not about ideological exploration. | ||
| But if you send your kid to college, you're going to play Russian roulette with their values, and they may come back someone completely and totally unrecognizable. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Charlie. | |
| Our next question. | ||
| Hi, Juliana Hewlett from Your Belinda, a new member of the Pat Nixon Republican Women's Committee. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for being here. | ||
| I had the great pleasure of meeting Anthony Cabassa of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of California. | ||
| And it was so amazing to hear his story. | ||
| And I know that he's been traveling the state working to gain the Latino vote and confidence in the Republican Party. | ||
| And I think he's doing a great job and he needs us all to support him. | ||
| And also the African American vote. | ||
| And so I'm just wondering what you've seen on the campuses. | ||
| And I'm the proud mother-in-law of an electric lineman up in Sacramento. | ||
| So that's exciting. | ||
| He is in the skilled trades. | ||
| Want to put a plug in for those things because it's amazing. | ||
| But thank you. | ||
| That's my question: what you've seen on campuses and how we can get the vote and the confidence and how that's been going. | ||
| So look, a couple thoughts on this, and it's important. | ||
| Virginia was a deep red state until they allowed out-of-control immigration policies into their state. | ||
| And that's a big problem. | ||
| And I will say that California, you've seen it kind of turn in the wrong direction the last 20 or 30 years. | ||
| And so, look, here's the thing: I do think that the Latino vote can be won specifically over the life issue in particular. | ||
| It's a very pro-life community, and they've been propagandized by the left and propagandized by the Democrats, which is really unfortunate. | ||
| And also, I see something really happening in the black community. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| And at Turning Point USA, Candace Owens got her start, her political start at Turning Point USA, which we're very proud of. | ||
| We're very proud of her. | ||
| And look, we really believe that there's an ideological revolution happening in our country. | ||
| But we need to engage. | ||
| And I talked about this earlier. | ||
| President Trump should be a champion for school choice. | ||
| School choice is one of the most important issues in the entire country. | ||
| Five words that could get President Trump re-elected is school choice for black kids. | ||
| I really believe that. | ||
| I think school choice is a massive issue, charter schools allowing parents to choose better educational options. | ||
| And look, the black community has been so horribly treated by the Democrat Party over the last many decades, horribly treated, especially since Lyndon Baines Johnson. | ||
| And so telling this story and actually encouraging those form of policies, and I talk about this in the book. | ||
| President Trump accomplished the lowest ever black poverty rate, the lowest ever black unemployment rate, criminal justice reform, millions of people off food stamps, many of whom are in the black community. | ||
| I mean, he did far more for the black community than President Obama ever did, far more. | ||
| And he gets very little to no credit for it from the media. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But also, it's about reaching out, showing up, and I think there's something changing where conservatives and Republicans are more open to it than ever before. | |
| But again, that's part of what the MAGA doctrine is, which is bringing dignity back to Forgotten America, is that there are parts of our country that were just kind of cast aside by the ruling class elites, and President Trump has done a phenomenal job of turning that around. | ||
| And so I'm very, I'm cautiously optimistic that we can make some big gains, but it's going to have to be generational. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| And I'm telling you that there's, especially in the black community, there, if Republicans really competed and Republicans really went after the black church, we could see huge, huge gains in those communities. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So. | |
| Charlie, thanks so much for being here. | ||
| Could you reassure us all and let us know that you have political aspirations? | ||
| It's very kind of you. | ||
| No, I love what I do at Turning Point USA. | ||
| Look, I have the opportunity to spend time with people that are always running for re-election of something and always going around. | ||
| And that's great for a lot of people. | ||
| I'd love to empower people to do that and help them run for office and all that. | ||
| But I'll tell you, I get so much fulfillment with what we're doing at Turning Point USA. | ||
| I could tell you that. | ||
| And we have seen the dial move so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And people say, well, Charlie, you've got to run for Congress. | |
| You've got to run for Senate. | ||
| No, that's not in the cards for me. | ||
| And I think the culture war and the culture battle is far more important than that. | ||
| And I think that we see, thank you, and I think that we see a great opportunity happening in our country where we see a lot of people rising up and a lot of new candidates that I'll love to support and get behind. | ||
| But I'm perfectly happy exactly where I am. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I just wanted to introduce myself first before my question. | ||
| Because if you listen to the media, they will tell you that people like myself don't exist. | ||
| By that, I mean that I am a Christian and conservative college professor at UCI, Cypress, and Coast Line. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And my question for you, an issue that I am really passionate about is trying to figure out how to prevent school shootings and want to make our schools safer. | ||
| So I'm curious if you have any suggestions on that. | ||
| I mean, I have my own ideas and I would love to talk to you about them, but I'm curious about your ideas. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, the entire whole discussion comes down to if you were a school shooter, would you go to a school that had armed guards or didn't have armed guards? | ||
| It's that simple. | ||
| I mean, and this whole argument that we shouldn't arm our most prized possession in the entire country. | ||
| I mean, we guard our sporting events, our banks, our airports with armed guards and with machine guns, yet we don't protect our kids that way. | ||
| And it's silly and backwards to me. | ||
| It's a much deeper cultural issue than that, though. | ||
| If you look at the Parkland shooting, for example, there was a misdiagnosis of complete failure at the Federal Bureau of Investigation when it came to investigating that lunatic that did that. | ||
| And look, the agenda is to take our guns away, and we can't let that happen. | ||
| We have to do everything we possibly can to prevent the left from coming after our constitutional liberties. | ||
| But also, I think we have an over-medication problem with our kids in our schools. | ||
| I think the pharmaceutical companies have way too much power in our country, and we're pill-pushing to our kids and over-medicating our kids, and it's causing all sorts of different problems. | ||
| And we're talking about chemically addictive substances that are really playing games with a lot of these kids. | ||
| And be very careful what you, I mean, just to give you an example. | ||
| If I would be in school today, they would have me so drugged up because I was, no, seriously. | ||
| And they tried, I was right on the verge of that, and they tried to give me everything because I'm a little bit type A and was always pushing the boundaries. | ||
| No, but and I, my parents, to their great credit, always pushed against it. | ||
| Said he's fine, he's fine, he's fine. | ||
| But I worry about how many people that could really change our country are now being fed these cocktail of drugs under the oh, he's restless. | ||
| Well, he's eight years old. | ||
| I mean, what do you expect? | ||
| I mean, seriously. | ||
| And I think they are correlated to school shootings. | ||
| I really believe that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I get a lot of garbage for that in response, but I don't really care because it's true. | |
| And then also, it's a family issue: we have destroyed the nuclear family in our country, and we have to rebuild the American family. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We really do. | |
| We good? | ||
| Charlie, I'd like to wrap it up with a QA. | ||
| We get quite a few authors that come through here, and the cover of your book is one that's interesting to me. | ||
| Could you give us a little bit of a background? | ||
| Yeah, I'd be happy to. | ||
| And then I'm going to be signing books after. | ||
| And then also, if you guys want to get all your Christmas shopping done, the New York Times list cuts off actually tonight, not last night. | ||
| So if you guys want to go to Amazon and get all your Christmas shopping done and help us, may the New York Times list would be greatly appreciated. | ||
| I also wanted to say a couple thanks before I mention that. | ||
| I want to thank Stacey Sheridan, who helps us out so nicely at Turning Point USA, and my girlfriend Erica, who always travels the country with me. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| And all the people that support Turning Point, Lee and Aaron Harris, Jeff, I see out there somewhere. | ||
| There's Jeff, and so many others. | ||
| Rick Albrecht, it's terrific. | ||
| So thank you guys. | ||
| And I love that. | ||
| Socialism kills, do something about it. | ||
| That's one of our turning point signs. | ||
| I picked the cover of this book for a reason. | ||
| I wanted to find a visual image of the president that I think best summed up his doctrine. | ||
| And he treats our country as if it's a child, something he cares so much about that he's willing to sacrifice everything for. | ||
| I was there when he did this last year at CPAC, and I just thought it embodied it so well where he just comes out and hugs the flag. | ||
| And that's the kind of protective instinct that he has for our country. | ||
| That everything, every decision he makes is around trying to say, I care about this. | ||
| I'm willing to sacrifice for this. | ||
| I'm going to put it all in line for this. | ||
| And so they say a picture speaks a thousand words, and I think it does in that sense. | ||
| And I think the book articulates that also pretty well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ladies and gentlemen, Charlie Kirk. | |
| Thank you guys so much. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of President Trump, was shot and killed during an event at a college in Utah. |