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April 3, 2023 - Straight White American Jesus
32:07
Trump Indictment: Civil War + MAGA Jesus

Brad speaks to Dr. Matthew Boedy, Associate Professor at the University of North Georgia. Dr. Boedy is the go-to source on all things Charlie Kirk and TPUSA. He explains the rhetoric Kirk has used with his various audiences since the Trump indictment: talk of civil war, comparing Trump to Jesus, and calling for protests/rallies outside of SDNY when Trump is arraigned. He and Brad talk about how this rhetoric filters into thousands of churches across the country via TPUSA's vast network of media channels and Kirk's cross-country speaking tour. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ SWAJ Seminar: https://www.straightwhiteamericanjesus.com/seminars/ BUY OUR NEW ELECTION AFFIRMER MERCH! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163 To Donate: venmo @straightwhitejc https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/straightwhiteamericanjesus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Axis Mundy You're listening to an irreverent podcast.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
And we are here today with a return guest, somebody who's here actually a couple of years ago.
It's been some time now, but it's definitely been here before.
And that is Dr., excuse me, Dr. Matthew Bode.
So Dr. Bode, thanks for coming back.
I'm happy to be here.
So you are an associate professor at the University of North Georgia, somebody who specializes in kind of professional life and rhetoric and composition and that whole world.
And as I noted last time, you've done something I think is really cool, and that's written a historical novel, also written on rhetoric and a work called Rhetoric and the Responsibility, two and four language.
But as with last time, we are here to talk to you today about your ongoing project, which is following Charlie Kirk and the TPUSA organization quite closely.
When I think of, like, if I ever need to, like, kind of check in on Charlie Kirk, I usually don't go check in on Charlie Kirk.
I usually look at, like, your Twitter feed to see, like, what's happening.
So you're the person in my mind who's on the Charlie Kirk beat.
And I really called you up kind of short notice to say, what has been Charlie Kirk and TPUSA's response to the Trump indictment?
So I'm going to start with that question.
We'll see where we land today.
But let me just say this.
Trump news, Trump gets indicted last week.
He's supposed to be arraigned this week.
We'll see if that happens smoothly.
What is happening in the Charlie Kirk universe in the day since then?
Well, one thing announced, I guess, today, two things really.
One, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is from Georgia, and two, Turning Point, I won't say staffers, but people connected to Turning Point, are hosting a rally slash protest in a park across the street from the courthouse at noon on Tuesday, which is about two hours before the arraignment, but Trump will already be in the courthouse by then, from my understanding.
And then second, just today, Trump and his staff announced that he will fly back to Florida to give a speech at Mar-a-Lago, or some sort of announcement, whatever, statement at Mar-a-Lago after the arraignment.
And this is something that Charlie Kirk, I guess, called for or said he suggested he should do on a series of radio programs that we've seen over the last few days.
And Charlie Kirk did one of his radio programs in a bag of hats.
So he's always been a supporter of President Trump, and he is, as they say, doubling down on that support.
So what I'm hearing from you is that basically, you know, when the arraignment happens this week, there will be a protest happening across the street led by, and it's kind of expected by now, the kind of provocateur in chief in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
But TPUSA kind of has people connected to it who will be there.
I mean, you know, in some sense, this could be one of those situations where there's like 26 people and who cares?
However, I don't know about you, but living in the wake of January 6th, these kinds of things are always just going to make me really, really nervous because I don't know what could happen.
You know, Manhattan is a different animal than the District of Columbia.
It's a little harder to kind of get a lot of people in one place, parking cars and that kind of stuff.
But can you give us some specifics?
Why protest?
What is their rationale?
I don't know if it's a protest or rally or whatever.
Just stand outside the courthouse and yell, you know, God bless America or something.
Whatever they're going to do, it's in the park across the street.
And two Turning Point allies, Jack Prosebitz, who is the editor of Human Events, which is connected to Turning Point, and Graham Allen, who is connected to Turning Point USA Faith, are like the two other names listed on the banner with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
So they're like the opening act, if you will, in the bandstand.
But frankly, I don't know how long that's going to last.
You would think that Trump would come out at some point from the courthouse, maybe wave, or maybe they know that he's going to be there at noon and getting out of his car.
But I'm sure people in the courthouse will be able to hear what it is they're going to say.
And they have made a big deal about being peaceful.
And I think the word peaceful is on the banner, you know, picture on the Internet.
And Charlie Kirk himself has said that This whole indictment and case in the surrounding cases are ways in which to incite another January 6th.
Now follow that line.
They're suggesting that January 6th was the fault of the people who incited it, which were not Republicans and Donald Trump.
So they're all saying, be peaceful.
They're all saying this is going to be a peaceful protest or rally, whatever you want to call it.
And it is a bizarro way in which to describe their thinking.
I mean, just to suggest that they're going to be peaceful and the rest of the world is not, and that we're going to incite them by saying something that they can then say, I mean, I can't even explain it.
Well, I, you know, this is a line of thinking I've heard quite often throughout the last decade or so, and that is that, and it's really ramped up obviously in the Trump years, but also Since January 6th.
So the logic I just heard you recite is, all right, friends, be peaceful.
But, you know, there's a chance that the woke globalists on the other side, the radical leftists, the the crazy Democrats are going to try to incite us.
And if they do, it won't be our fault.
Let's just be clear.
But we should try to resist that temptation and not let them go dissent to it.
I mean, it really sounds like classic kind of, you know, Dan and I talk about this on the show quite often that it's really a logic that says, well, you know, I'm walking, and my fist is in front of me, and it's moving, and if your face gets in front of it, then, you know, I'm sorry if that happens to you.
Like, it really sounds like if there is violence, they're setting up to say, well, yeah, we wanted to be peaceful, but we were attacked first.
We were, we were whatever is that.
And I mean, this, this is the, the civil war rhetoric logic from Charlie Kirk.
It started out as a cold civil war a couple months ago.
He used the Roman Rubicon metaphor a couple of times in the recent days.
Um, he, he right after he says that he says, no, this is not the same thing, but he didn't say is we live in a new country in a new time.
Uh, and we have to fight in the ways in which they're fighting.
I think about the Civil War because he mentions it.
And so you can see the ways in which they're trying to frame it as, like I said, a response to something.
I mean, we all know that the Civil War started when Fort Sumter was bombed, you know.
Is it Fort Sumter?
I remember correctly, but I'm sure I did a tour as a kid and now I can't remember what it was.
Anyway, so the Civil War rhetoric was really big in the last few days on Charlie Kirk's show.
He both had a special breaking news edition for an hour when the indictment came out, and the next day, of course, he had his three-hour regular radio program.
And I mean, he is he's heated, he is angry, he is outraged.
That's the word that I constantly want to use.
And he's been outraged for a couple of days, of course, since Trump, you know, brought this whole thing that he was going to be indicted.
And I think that is his play, right?
You have to keep the outrage going.
And so I guess my first point that I want to make is how How many days can this outrage continue?
We're going to have the arraignment and the indictment read and we're going to discuss it for a couple of days.
But after that, what is the next thing that's going to keep the outrage going?
Because it is an outrage generation atmosphere or things that they're into, right?
I mean, Trump's made, I think he said, what'd they say, $4 million over the last four days.
Yeah.
And he's going to give a speech.
So he has to keep this momentum dominant.
And I think one of, on the radio show, Jack Posevich said that he should just get indicted and then go on a tour.
They can go on a rally every single day.
And yes, that's exactly how you keep yourself in the news.
Keep yourself on Fox News and keep whomever the governor of Florida is, you know, muted.
And that is exactly what they're going to do.
I'm really glad you touched on Charlie Kirk's reaction.
The way I think of Kirk, and I'm totally happy for you to expand on this or tell me I got it wrong, but Kirk is this really critical link for a number of reasons in MAGA world.
He's a huge supporter of Trump.
He's been on that bandwagon for a long time.
Uh, he's also younger.
He's not, he's not in the boomer generation like a lot of the Giulianis and the Bannons and these guys.
He's, you know, he's relatively fresh-faced, we can say.
He's also, and this part is something that I think is, for me and my work, is really important, is he is really, really connected to churches.
Like TPUSA has done And for all of Charlie Kirk's, shall we say, what I would take to be moral failings, his ability to organize TPUSA into an organization that has infiltrated churches and basically tried to become a kind of national youth ministry for Christian nationalism.
So the reason I think about him is really important in this ecosystem is like what he's saying, the way he's reacting is going to filter not only into like MAGA World, the guy watching Fox News in his armchair at night, But like the churches and the 30-somethings who are attending and the celebrity mega church kind of circuits where him and Jack McCoy and others are just really making the rounds.
So does that make sense to you?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
There are a couple of key moments.
I've listened to both of those shows that I mentioned too, through religious rhetoric moments.
He jokes and says directly that he's not making this comparison, but that he makes the comparison between Jesus and Trump, both of them being indicted or arrested during Holy Week.
And that joke or that comparison has been made on Twitter for a couple of days, so I'm not surprised that he says it.
But the one thing, the other one that I thought was really interesting in describing, I think this is in his opening to his radio show on the 31st, describing this new world that we live in.
They crossed the Rubicon.
This is totally different.
This is all unprecedented.
He says that the righteous Have to just suck it up and enter the arena when they don't want to.
And he's referring to churches and pastors whom, uh, specific ones that he says aren't getting involved and should get involved.
I mean, he used the word righteous.
There's only one way he knows how to use that word.
And then in describing this, this change in the world, in the United States from, from pre-Trump indictment to post-Trump indictment, he says, it's like going from BC to AD.
Wow.
Wow.
If that's not a Trump-Jesus comparison, I don't know what is.
And then he jokes about making the actual comparison a few minutes later, but going from BC to AD, there's, there's only one person that does that, right?
I, I knew that the, I knew that when the indictment news came, we were going to get the sort of, Hey, it's who else got arrested before Easter or whatever it is.
I knew we'd get those memes.
I knew we'd get the jokes, but I didn't think that Charlie Kirk.
Would go so far down this road of saying, this is like going from B.C.
to A.D.
I mean, that is extreme.
That's incredible.
You're a professor of rhetoric and you're somebody who pays attention to words.
You're somebody who pays attention to how words function and work.
I'm wondering for you, number one, has that Civil War language really ramped up?
Is that something that he does often or has that increased since the indictment?
And then two, You know, from a rhetorical standpoint, if I mix the idea of a civil war or a an internal conflict with the Jesus kind of trope of Trump being comparable to the Savior who died and rose again during Holy Week, What does that do for people listening, right?
Like from a rhetorical standpoint, if I hear that.
So I guess two questions, you know, does the Civil War stuff increase since the indictment?
And then what is the overlap of Civil War and Jesus do if you hear that at a church or at a podcast or watching TV at night?
I think that there are multiple audiences that he is after, but one of them, of course, is, you know, white evangelicals.
And many of them may have voted for Trump, but aren't active supporters are out there.
And that's what he's trying to engage and activate.
He told people to start wearing their Trump hats or their Trump shirts, you know, to show the world.
And I think there are multiple ways you try to get at that crowd, try to activate them by the political part of it.
Politics should not be stopped at the edge of the prosecutor's office.
But you also do it the religious way.
And so it is fascinating that he dropped the, you know, BCAD stuff and he's using Civil War.
But also, I think that he is estranged during the ad breaks on his radio show.
He's doing ads, but he's also showing two or three minute clips from his church appearances.
He did Awaken Church in San Diego a couple days ago, and so on his radio show during the Trump and Dietmar radio show is 2-3 minute clips of him at the church.
I mean, and I didn't listen to it because I thought they were ads, but I'm sure he said something that was connecting with his religious audience.
And then he goes back to the political, and there's no difference, divide between the two.
And that is his goal, right?
If he's trying to activate pastors to speak on politics, to activate congregants to be involved in politics, he is suggesting there is no divide between church and state.
And so the way in which you put those threads together is Trump.
You can make the joke about Trump and Jesus, and it's a joke, and he makes it, I guess, and what I'm saying is that he knows he shouldn't make that comparison, so he makes a joke about making the comparison.
But he consistently says again and again over those three hours or four hours that he's at the show, Trump is a symbol.
He doesn't say a symbol for what, but Trump as a symbol of something else, of your faith, of your country, of your God, or a symbol of democracy or Republican, using all the words wrongly, but nonetheless, I think that that is the type of rhetoric that implicitly gets the message across.
And it's hard to come back.
Because you can fact check him, which I try to do, or you can talk about his rhetoric and how it implies things and you pull out explicitly what he's saying.
But the people in the pew, and I'm one of them, I go to church, so I'm not denying that, but it's like they want to hear what they want to hear because it does match what they already know.
And that's why Charlie Kirk is very good at what he does.
Because he takes what people already know and is able to take something new about it or new that he's adding to that and puts it in language that they already know.
Trump as a symbol, the Civil War rhetoric.
I think that, you know, he's less religious on his radio show per se, but he does make an obvious reference to A.C.
and P.C.
and A.V.
But at the same time, he's more religious at the church setting.
And then when you play the church setting on the show, it all comes together.
Well, I want to just draw together a thread because you mentioned Awakened Church, and I think Awakened Church is just a great example of everything you're talking about.
We talked about Awakened Church a couple weeks ago because they had this men's conference, and the men's conference was called Valor.
And if you watch the recap videos and all the stuff from the conference, I mean, it was like guys in fatigues and obstacle courses.
Charlie Kirk is doing men's weekends now?
No, I did not know that.
He is doing three-day men's weekends, and I forget the name of it, but it is men in the forest doing military-style drills.
I mean, the video is them pushing wood up a hill, if I remember correctly.
And it's like $75, $150 for a weekend.
If you can't afford it, let us know.
But he's got a series of ones throughout the spring and the summer.
Well, and this is this is exactly what you just said.
That's exactly what this men's retreat.
I mean, it's guys in mud pits, you know, grunting and metal music.
And and I guess my point is, like, we talked about that at length on the show a couple of weeks ago.
That awakened church.
Has really blown up since the pandemic because they did exactly what you just said.
They started telling people what they wanted to hear.
We're not going to close for vaccine mandates.
You don't have to wear a mask.
The government has a vast conspiracy against you.
All Trump.
Let's have Charlie Kirk.
Let's have the MAGA all-stars come speak at our place.
And that church now has like eight campuses.
It's blown up.
And so to me, that's If you're wondering, what does it look like when Charlie Kirk goes into a church and starts to infiltrate and help it grow?
Well, Awakened Church is down there in San Diego.
Some people started, Juergen, and I can't remember Juergen's last name, but they started that church like 15 years ago, or various churches.
They really only grew into this mega church sort of engine when they started doing the full-on MAGA COVID resistance thing.
But Charlie Kirk is the kind of guy that brings that prepackaged messaging, and you just sort of, whatever he's got to say, you tell that to your congregation, you have them over to speak, and you went from 1,000 people at your church to 5,000 and so on.
So I'm really glad you brought up AwakendJour.
I think it's a really good example.
And he's doing that at churches across the country.
I mean, currently, right now, this afternoon in Missouri, Sean, whatever his last name, Sean Foyt, Foyt, I can't pronounce it, the worship leader, is outside the Missouri Statehouse on his 50 capital tour, singing worship songs, getting a couple of speeches from politicians.
And I just saw on Twitter, he's giving, he's giving out communion Yeah.
And an altar call.
And this is a TPA USA state sponsored a series of events, right?
So it is multiple angles, multiple ways in which they try to activate, engage these people.
And I want to mention that there was, what's the best way to put it?
I was listening to the one hour special that Charlie Kirk did.
And I was surprised it took them 15 minutes to get to God is dead and the left is atheist.
And that's the reason why all this is happening.
He and Jack Postovich were, you know, riffing on things and Jack says something about Nietzsche and then Charlie Kirk says it's beyond good and evil.
And then Jack goes back to will to power, which, you know, same.
I mean, it took him 15 minutes to say the United States is now an atheist country and that's why we have indicted Donald Trump.
I mean, I was surprised it took him that long.
But there's the logic.
And that logic is just so easy to espouse.
And people buy it.
People, you know, people, they love to hear it and it makes sense to them.
Let me ask you this.
You know, you just mentioned Sean Foyt and the Missouri Capitol.
You know, that's backed by TPUSA.
I guess one of the questions I have is like, as we get further down this Trump indictment journey, Where do you see this going in terms of TPUSA's ability to help organize things like rallies and events?
You know, everyone has heard about their kind of alleged involvement with getting people to J6.
As you say, he's doing this in churches all over the country.
I mean, from Southern California to Georgia to New Hampshire.
You know, as we think about a Trump indictment tour, which I'm sure the Trump team is already planning, Does TPUSA have an interest and or the means to kind of help with that or where do you see that going?
This is the interesting part.
If you want to, you know, dissect Charlie Kirk's support of Trump, but also his helping out of Ron DeSantis.
Yeah.
Um, you know, Charlie Kirk's done a couple events with Ron DeSantis, uh, interviewed him once, um, and then, you know, has, uh, I think a couple, a week or so ago, leaked that Ron DeSantis was thinking of putting out the statement about, I'm not going to be involved in the X tradition, which was, you know, stupid because it doesn't matter.
Um, so I guess what I'm getting at is, yes, Charlie Kirk, total Trump supporter.
But he also is in it for the long haul.
He knows he can't attach his wagon to one person, even though that one person is the wagon, let's be honest.
But I don't think that Charlie Kirk himself is going to attach TPTUSA to these rallies.
He's not showing up for the one in two days in New York, though he could.
He doesn't have anything else planned.
I mean, his campus events have all ended.
I think that he is best supporting Trump on his radio show with the rhetoric, and we can go some more of that.
But he didn't speak at the January 6th rally, and that was on purpose, because I think he knows there is a line that he can't cross.
I'm not saying that he has some sort of moral guidance.
Maybe he does.
But he knows that at certain things, he will lose his donor base faster and quicker than Trump would.
And that same thing has happened to Ron DeSantis.
I mean, he says a couple things, had to back off, and now he's sinking in the polls.
I guess what I'm getting at is Charlie Kirk knows he's not Trump and should not attach his, you know, trust in that one man.
So no, I don't think that Turning Point USA or Turning Point Faith is going to attach themselves to Trump's rallies, but they will do their own thing and they will echo his rhetoric.
I mean, Charlie Kirk gave a long, you know, monologue on his radio show saying the same things that that Trump is saying.
This is revenge for winning the election.
This is Democrats, you know, trying to tie up 2024.
I mean, he is doing all the things and they're attacking, not attacking Trump, they're attacking you.
This is about.
So he's echoing all the things that Trump says.
I just don't think physically he wants I mean, just imagine who's going to show up for this Trump statement in Florida, you know, a couple of hours after he died.
Who's going to stand next to Trump after he was arraigned on a criminal felony, possibly 30 charges?
I don't think Charlie Kirk wants that photo op.
Well, and you answered my next question already, and I'm glad you put the two together, which was going to be, it seems to me like Charlie Kirk has to do what a lot of people in the American right are doing right now, which is Yes, Trump was indicted.
We have to react with outrage.
We need to, in the short term, rally around the former president and all that.
But we need to do so knowing that if he goes down, if he's unavailable to run for president for some reason, or if the winds shift and it is DeSantis, then as me, Charlie Kirk, I need to be able to pivot quickly and say, you know, all right, well, you know, DeSantis is here to carry the mantle.
He's going to continue the work that was started and TPUSA and I are ready to kind of support that.
So it seems to me, you know, you answered my question, which was, you know, we don't see Charlie Kirk next to Trump.
We don't see him perhaps out in front a lot.
You know, this is one of the things I've wondered about is like, I don't see Charlie Kirk out in front, even though TPUSA is present.
And I guess what you're saying is that's because he needs to kind of make sure he's able to pivot when he wants to and not I mean, there was this weird report about a month ago that Trump was unhappy with Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA, and that perhaps he wasn't out there supporting him enough, and maybe that's changed now.
But the hair-splitting divide, and I say it's buried into the weeds, but just on the radio show with Charlie Kirk and Jack Kosevich, who was a Trump supporter all the way, he is going to say there's nobody else.
Charlie Kirk is going to, you know, give you a couple of different things and, of course, help Rod Zatantis out every now and then.
And, you know, it is very strange listening to them talk about the indictment because they're both saying the same things at some point.
But when when Jack Potapowicz was going on and on about these narratives that the left is doing and doing the Steve Bannon bit, Charlie would cut him off at times and go, no, I want to talk about this.
I mean, maybe with his own thing, I want to talk about what I want to talk about.
But eventually, The idea was that you couldn't get or you didn't want what Jack was saying was because it's going to be all Trump.
I guess what I'm getting at is Charlie kind of knows he can't put his eggs in one basket.
And while he can support Trump all the way and look like he's doing, there's also ways in which he can do other things.
Um, and I think that he makes it about the constitution, about the Republic and Trump as a symbol.
And I think that's how he does his support Trump, but not.
Um, go all the way, which is kind of weird to say, but I think that that's what he's trying to do is trying to give his audience to be activated, engaged.
Yes, they're going to be Trump supporters, but over the long term, or even perhaps past 2024, you got to have more than just him.
Well, it's a contrast to someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who seems to be, you know, I think there's a, there's a sense in which I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying out to be a vice presidential candidate.
Whether that has any viability, I don't know.
We could talk.
It's a whole other episode.
But Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to show up on Tuesday, is going to be at that protest, is going to be on the news.
There's going to be headlines.
There's going to be clips of her speaking.
Um she seems to be somebody who's saying no my my fate depends on Trump whereas someone like Kirk and I think there's others in in in this movement who are like well we'll we're gonna support everybody and see what happens and then we'll when the time comes we'll shove the chips in and we'll make our play but for now we need to see what what's happening and we need to read the Read the hand and read the table.
So yeah, I think that, again, Marjorie Taylor Greene says, I'm a proud Christian nationalist.
Kirk doesn't want to use that term.
Kirk, in his radio show, calls for lawfare, which you mean is, you know, warfare by legal strategies.
He wants Republican ADs and Republican district attorneys to indict, you know, anybody and everybody on the left.
He called that mutually assured destruction.
Yeah.
But Marjorie Taylor Greene isn't calling for legal warfare.
She's calling for warfare.
Yeah.
You know, and so he is, I don't know, a step or two away from that.
But at the same time, he is a step or two beyond her.
And I want to bring that up because he, at the end of his radio show on the 31st, read from an essay by Sam Francis.
And if your listeners aren't familiar with him, he, in the 90s, I think he died in 2005, Was the editor of the Concerned Citizens newsletter, that is the White Citizens Council, you know, redo.
And Charlie was not just reading it because he was saying it's bad, he was reading it because there's a concept in there that he wants people to follow and understand this, I don't want to say it wrong, Anarchy, Tyranny, Anarchy, And tyranny together, he's saying the federal government's both of those things.
And he's not the first person to use this phrase.
He used it more than once.
But I guess what I'm getting at is to quote Sam Francis or to read his essay and not mention who he is, right?
Or even another person, Pedro Gonzalez called him a conservative commentator.
And I'm like, I mean, you want to say one or two steps away from Marjorie Taylor Greene, and then you quote Sam Francis.
So he can do that on the radio show, but he doesn't want to show up and stand next to President Trump, who Marjorie Taylor Greene will fly to Florida and gladly do that.
So it is a strange dance that you have to do when you're Charlie Kirk, I think.
Well, you know, we're going to run out of time here.
I'll just say, I think this is actually emblematic of why Kirk is probably more influential and powerful than Marjorie Taylor Greene, which may sound sort of weird to people.
Sitting member of Congress, kind of this mascot of MAGA Nation.
But Marjorie Taylor Greene, as you said, talks about a national divorce in a way that just seems unhinged.
It seems unplanned.
And it's just sort of like she's always speaking off the cuff in ways that aren't actually strategic.
Kirk is thinking ahead.
He's talking about lawfare.
He's talking about the long game, right?
He's in thousands of churches.
He has an organization with tentacles that just go throughout the country.
She is basically spouting off on the microphone when possible and anyone will listen.
So I think the way you just put all of that really highlights why for me, long term, Kirk is the one that's going to have a massive influence on the ground.
He's going to continue to be somebody that people listen to for years to come.
And again, he's young.
He's that guy that the 30-something-year-old father of two who's driving to work in his truck is like, yeah, this is my man.
I'm listening to this guy.
He's saying what I want to hear kind of stuff.
So all of that to say, Lot to watch out for, a lot to continue to kind of keep an eye on.
I appreciate it.
Can you tell folks as we sign off here, where can people catch up with you and your project that really monitors and helps us keep an eye on TPUSA and Charlie Kirk?
I'll start with my Twitter account.
It's at Matthew Bode, M-A-T-T-H-E-W-B-O-E-D-Y.
And in my Twitter bio, I have a link to my Charlie Kirk site.
There's a hundred plus fact checks there.
And also my history of the 10 years of Turning Point USA is my pinned tweet.
I'm working on a project now about the international efforts of Turning Point USA.
And I have a chapter in a book about gun rhetoric and the TPUSA gun rhetoric.
So there's a lot going on in terms of the content they create that you try to follow.
And to be honest with you, I don't listen to his radio show every day, but there's a lot that he says that is worth trying to follow.
And like I said, he is very powerful.
I think I've said many times, he wants to be the next Rush Limbaugh, as a lot of people do.
But he has the best avenue in which to get there.
No, I agree.
I didn't say that earlier, but that's who I was thinking of.
I think even beyond Ben Shapiro, he has the chance to be this generation's Rush Limbaugh.
All right, friends.
Check that out.
I have to say, as somebody who is doing this show and trying to keep a handle on what's happening with Christian nationalism and the religious right and Uh, the American right, uh, all the time.
I'm thankful for Dr. Bodhi's work because I, I just can't, I can't, you know, there's so many people to, to follow, so many movements to keep an eye on.
And so whenever I need to know about anything going on TPUSA, Charlie Kirk, uh, your Twitter feed is where I go and, and your stuff is, is what I read.
Uh, as always friends, follow us at Straight White JC and me at Bradley Onishi.
We have our seminar coming up.
April 27 is when it starts, White Supremacy and Purity Culture.
Dr. Sarah Mosiner, you can see all that at our website, but you don't want to miss that, and so if you need more info, head over to straightwhiteamericanjesus.com, send us an email if you need to to ask any questions, etc.
Other than that, we'll be back later this week with It's in the Code and the weekly roundup, but for now we'll just say thanks for being here.
Have a good day.
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