365 Days of 15 Days to Slow the Spread

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Charlie Kirk Show

Episode Title: 365 Days of 15 Days to Slow the Spread
Date: March 16, 2021
Host: Charlie Kirk
Theme:
A reflective, critical look at the one-year anniversary of America’s "15 Days to Slow the Spread" COVID-19 policy, examining government actions, cultural shifts, state disparities, and lasting impacts on freedom, the economy, and society—all from Charlie Kirk’s unapologetically conservative, liberty-focused perspective.

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1. Main Theme and Purpose

Charlie Kirk revisits the origins and evolution of pandemic restrictions in the United States following the onset of COVID-19, particularly the notion that a short, 15-day period of public health restrictions would “slow the spread.” One year later, he argues, the temporary measures became prolonged lockdowns, upending American life. Kirk aims to dissect what these extended restrictions reveal about government priorities, individual liberty, state-level responses, public compliance, and the long-term consequences for American society.

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2. Key Discussion Points and Insights

A. The Shift From Temporary Restrictions to Enduring Lockdowns

• Initial Skepticism: Kirk recounts his early doubts about the “15 days to slow the spread” policy, predicting restrictions would be extended far beyond initial promises.

  “I remember exactly the speech that was being given. And I said, I don’t know, I think 15 days is quickly going to become 45 days. Now, I was naive.” (03:14)

• Modeling After Early Data: He criticizes government reliance on worst-case models rather than real-life case studies, such as the cruise ship outbreak, arguing that data did not justify indefinite shutdowns.

  “It was an elderly population. And the death rate was about 1.8 to 2% of the elderly population, with no therapeutics... If you model it for the rest of the society... it was about 1% at most, with no therapeutic help whatsoever.” (02:57)

B. Government Overreach and Loss of Liberty

• Federal and State-Level Critique:
  Kirk asserts that the government’s heavy-handed response traded liberty for a false sense of safety. He singles out figures such as Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx for dishonesty and unaccountability.

  "President Trump got played by every single person in that picture. Dr. Anthony Fauci... should have been fired just like James Comey.” (05:19)

• Selective Enforcement:
  He derides what he sees as hypocrisy—stringent church and business restrictions, but abortion centers remain open. Pastors face criminal charges for holding services.
• Safetyism vs. Liberty:
  Kirk introduces "safetyism"—the public’s willingness to trade freedom for safety, claiming this mindset enables creeping totalitarianism.

  “If all of life was about being kept safe, then prison would be a desirable place for most people... Liberty is very hard. Liberty requires trust.” (10:05)

C. Contrasting State Responses—Florida vs. California/New York

• Liberty States as ‘Boom Towns’:
  Florida, led by Governor Ron DeSantis, and South Dakota, under Governor Kristi Noem, are framed as models for both liberty and public health, maintaining similar or better outcomes than locked-down states.

  “What Florida shows us is that you can open up a state and some people will still stay at home and that’s okay... And when those options are given, it goes to show that you can actually bring your hospitalization rates, infection rates down and your quality of life improves dramatically.” (12:30)

• Media Narrative and Accountability:
  Kirk lambasts the mainstream press for ignoring scandals involving lockdown-advocate governors (Cuomo, Newsom) while minimizing open states’ successes.

  “Let us not forget Andrew Cuomo, who’s under multiple pieces of scandal right now... Cuomo handled the Chinese coronavirus terribly, but he never missed a moment to go on television to tell you how terrific he was.” (07:35)

D. Cultural and Economic Fallout

• Economic Devastation:
  The enormous financial toll is underscored—trillions in new deficit spending, destruction of small business, and further enrichment of billionaires during the pandemic.

  “We have increased our federal deficit by $5 trillion... The billionaire class has increased their net worth by $600 billion. We’ve lost 40% of small businesses in some cities, as high as 60% in other cities.” (15:32)

• Shifting American Values:
  Kirk posits that the pandemic accelerated negative cultural changes—redefining views on race, undermining education, property rights, and religious freedom.

  “In the last year I believe America has undergone the greatest one-year change of any time in American history, except maybe World War II.” (16:45)

E. Cancel Culture and Freedom of Expression

• Local Stories with National Resonance:
  Kirk highlights the firing of George Kemper, a Loyola Academy baseball coach and veteran, for social media comments critical of COVID restrictions.

  “He posted on social media that he thought that the country was adopting wrong-headed approaches to the Chinese coronavirus... They fired him.” (27:07)

  • He draws parallels to larger trends in cancel culture, warning that ordinary dissenters risk being silenced or losing their livelihoods.

  “The only way that this trend gets reversed, everybody, is if we make enough noise and we push back against this.” (28:33)

F. International Dimensions and the China Question

• COVID-19’s Origins and China’s Role:
  Kirk asserts the virus' Chinese origins and calls for a stronger American alliance with Japan, questioning why national attention has shifted away from examining China’s responsibility.

  “We have decided not to focus on China’s role in all this, where it very well could have been a biological weapon that was formed in the Wuhan laboratory.” (19:40)

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Loss of Liberty:
  “A leftist is a totalitarian waiting to get out. Where they saw this as an opportunity to command you, control you and make you obey.” (09:40)
• On State Comparisons:
  “Florida’s unemployment rate is 5.1%, California’s unemployment rate is 9.3%. And their death rate is basically the same, despite Florida having a much older population.” (05:27)
• On Cancel Culture:
  “This baseball coach is you next. One thing you put on social media, one remark that you wish you wouldn’t have said, one comment, one text message, your life can be obliterated.” (27:32)
• On American Promise:
  “The American promise is that if you work hard, play by the rules, your children can live a moderately better life than you... you can speak your mind, you can worship your creator outside of government mandates or edicts.” (18:23)
• On the Lasting Impact:
  “If you do not contest and contend for your liberties and freedoms, they will disappear if they have not already disappeared.” (16:10)

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4. Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 – 03:14: Introduction and early skepticism of 15 days to slow the spread
• 03:14 – 05:19: Data from the Princess cruise ship, initial government modeling, and early pandemic leadership
• 05:19 – 13:00: Extended lockdowns, federal/state responses, liberty versus safety, comparison of Florida and California
• 13:00 – 15:32: The cost of lockdowns, economic devastation, and government motivations
• 15:32 – 16:45: Did we learn anything? Radical social changes and assaults on small business and religion
• 16:45 – 19:40: Trust in government and the American promise
• 19:40 – 22:30: China’s role, missed geopolitical opportunities, media narratives
• 22:30 – 27:04: New York Times coverage, comparing death rates, liberty and informed risk
• 27:04 – 29:40: The story of the baseball coach, local cancel culture as a warning
• 29:40 – End: Call to action, summary, program signoff

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5. Tone, Language, and Audience

Charlie Kirk maintains a passionate, combative, and sometimes sardonic tone. He mixes personal anecdotes, references to data and news stories, and direct appeals to his audience’s sense of patriotism and skepticism of mainstream narratives. The language is conversational, heavy with opinion, and intentionally provocative.

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Concluding Insights

The episode encapsulates a year of frustration and reflection from a conservative viewpoint:

• Liberty vs. Safety is the throughline, as Kirk laments Americans’ willingness to accept restrictions that fundamentally reshape their society.
• State Policy Disparities are shown as real-world evidence of the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of various COVID responses.
• Cancel Culture is positioned as the next battlefront in the post-pandemic war for American values.
• Kirk closes with a plea for vigilance, activism, and the defense of American freedoms, echoing his movement’s grassroots ethos.

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For Further Engagement:

• Support at charliekirk.com/support
• Submit questions: [e-mail]
• Tour and campus events: tpusa.com

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Note: Ads and promotional segments have been omitted from this summary.

Transcript

[Charlie Kirk]

Hey, everybody. It's been the year of 15 days to slow the spread. We reflect on the last year, our lessons, and the path forward. Email us your questions freedomarliekirk.com if you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com support and if you want to see us on our live tour, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, Nashville, Vegas, San Jose, go to tpusa.com Also, if you are a young woman, you want to come to our Young Women's Leadership Summit, go to tpusa.com ywls15days to slow the spread. It's been a long year. Buckle up, here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

[Guest Speaker or Co-host]

I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point usa.

[Charlie Kirk]

We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives. And we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. One year ago, one year ago, we had the speech of 15 days to slow the spread. It has been the year of 15 days to slow the spread. Now, I was a skeptic early on. I remember exactly where I was sitting. Remember that, Connor? I remember exactly the speech that was being given. And I said, I don't know, I think 15 days is quickly going to become 45 days. Now, I was naive. I actually thought that the people in charge valued individual liberty. I actually thought that when Dr. Anthony Fauci and his lies were exposed, he was going to be fired. And I thought that Americans would demand their freedom back immediately. Play tape of Mike Pence saying 15 days to slow the spread thing more

[Mike Pence (Tape)]

important for the American people to do to slow the spread than to heed your state and local guidance in areas impacted by the coronavirus and for everyone else to put into practice the 15 days to slow the spread. Dr. Fauci will reflect on the importance of mitigation and the impact that we believe that it is having around the country.

[Charlie Kirk]

And so I can understand maybe a week or even the 15 days just to see who is being impacted, to see how the virus is spreading, infection rates and death and hospitalization rates. But if you remember back, we did a program on the Charlie Kirk show podcast where we said, wait a second, we have the data from the Princess cruise ship, which was a cruise ship out in the Pacific Ocean, where the Chinese coronavirus was spreading throughout the cruise ship, only about half of the ship ended up getting infected with the Chinese coronavirus. It was an elderly population. And the death rate was about 1.8 to 2% of the elderly population with no therapeutics, no hospital treatment, no social distance, any of that. And so then if you model it for the rest of the society and you factor in the staff, the employees and the younger people on the ship, it was about 1% at most, with no therapeutic help whatsoever. And it's amazing because that one test case of the Princess cruise ship that happened in the Pacific Ocean could have been modeled for the rest of the country. And that data never should have compelled us to shut down our entire country indefinitely. So I understand the 15 days, I even understand a month. But let's say even after a month, April 15, when we were shut down, we were told that we had to, quote, flatten the curve. You remember that Dr. Birx famously said, if everybody in America does what we ask for over the next 15 days, we will see a dramatic difference and we won't have to worry about the ventilators. That was a lie and she knew it. We won't have to worry about the ICU beds because we won't have our elderly and our people at the greatest risk to be hospitalized. Dr. Anthony Fauci said, quote, the guidelines are a 15 day trial guideline to be reconsidering. It isn't that these guidelines are now going into effect until July. What the President was saying is that the trajectory, the trajectory of the outbreak may go till then. In reality, we should have focused on targeted quarantines of the elderly and the sick. And we knew that. Let's play tape here of Dr. Anthony Fauci lying, which seems to be a habit every time he opens his mouth. Play tape.

[Dr. Anthony Fauci (Tape)]

I think the question that I think maybe John asked about, until July, the guidelines are a 15 day trial guideline to be reconsidering it. It isn't that these guidelines are now going to be in effect until July. What the President was saying is that the trajectory of the outbreak may go till then, make sure we don't think that these are solid in stone till July.

[Charlie Kirk]

President Trump got played by every single person in that picture. Dr. Anthony Fauci and the deep state medical establishment should have been fired just like James Comey was fired. Dr. Anthony Fauci will be responsible for the mental health crisis happening in our country. For the thousands of people that we lost to suicide to the cost, the human cost of the lockdowns. Outkick.com, an article by Clay Travis says Florida versus California. Chinese coronavirus data proves that lockdowns do not work. Florida's unemployment rate is 5.1%, California's unemployment rate is 9.3%. And their death rate is basically the same, despite Florida having a much older population. So the Chinese coronavirus and our handling of it taught me a lot about the state of America. Number one, it taught me that people do not want to be free. They'd rather be taken care of. They believe in safety ism over liberty. Now, the amazing thing about liberty is that we could have opened our country fully and completely, which we should have done one month or even two weeks after we got enough data to understand what we were dealing with. We could have said, look, if you're very scared of this virus, then stay at home. The amazing thing about liberty is no one was going to force you to leave your home. If you believe masks work, then wear a mask. Instead, we did the opposite. We decided to use the heavy hand of government and force everyone to stay at home, sacrificing liberty, treating every single person the same. Florida opened fully last May. Restaurants, school, sports schools, and even gatherings going back to last May. I was eating in restaurants in Florida. All throughout the summer, Florida was wide open. And there was no dramatic increase in the spread of the Chinese coronavirus that all the doomsdayers said there would be, despite Florida having the second oldest population in the country. Now, this contrast, you would think, would interest the activist mainstream press. Instead of celebrating Ron DeSantis as a hero and condemning Gavin Newsom as being one of the worst governors. And let us not forget Andrew Cuomo, who's under multiple pieces of scandal right now. It's very funny. I went through the entire New York Times today. I don't recommend you do this. And there is one mention of Cuomo on the 15th page. You would think that the governor of the second largest state. Is that right? The second largest state in the country who's under a nursing home scandal by accusation by Letitia James and under very credible sexual assault and sexual harassment accusations. You think that would probably be of concern of the New York Times. You know, the state that the New York Times is actually headquartered in. Instead, the New York Times has a picture of. Oh, no, this is the top story for them. Democrats take a lesson from Obama's caution. This makes me fall asleep reading the headline. So Cuomo handled the Chinese coronavirus terribly, but he never missed a moment to go on television to tell you how terrific he was. He wrote a book, won an Emmy in the midst of all of this. And the open states with the courageous governors like Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis have the data now to prove that liberty in fact works. In fact, it works even with a contagious virus. Now, it's so amazing is how some states are still locked down as I do this program right now. And if your state is still locked down, then your politicians have a separate political agenda outside of protecting and preserving the liberty and the welfare of you. You know what's so amazing is that Democrats and liberals have for years said they care. Your body, your choice. You can put whatever substance you want in your body. However, nen, when it came to the Chinese coronavirus, they became what they always were inside. A leftist is a totalitarian waiting to get out. Where they saw this as an opportunity to command you, control you and make you obey. The science is clear. Lockdowns do not work. Now Sweden showed us that early. Sweden has actually been kowtowing to the political correct pressure in the last couple months and they locked themselves down. I want to be very clear, just because I'm against lockdowns does not mean I think that everyone should go into a meadow and have a mosh pit. It seems as if every time I offer a valid or factual criticism of the lockdowns, people are acting as if I want to see some sort of Woodstock era gathering in the middle of nowhere, almost like burning men. Ending lockdowns simply means that the politicians, the elected officials, trust the people. It's that simple. Now, liberty is very hard. Liberty requires trust and liberty by definition comes at a cost. If all of life was about being kept safe, then prison would be a desirable place for for most people. We would get rid of automobiles and cars that result in 50,000 deaths a year. Or we would have 10 mile an hour speed limits. We would get rid of all weapons, which Democrats want to do and some moderate Republicans want to do. We would get rid of cheeseburgers, which again, Democrats want to do. Heart disease and high cholesterol is a massive driver of death in our country. If it was all about saving lives, we'd get rid of soft drinks, which again, I think I'm saying things Democrats are proposing because it actually is consistent with their safety ism worldview, a retreat to being taken care of instead of trusting people to make good choices and good decisions. And then they will have to pay the price or the consequence of not making good decisions. What Florida shows us is that you can open up a state and some people will still stay at home and that's okay. In fact, I encourage some of those people to still stay at home over the age of 80. Pre existing health conditions they already have, maybe asthma or they've had some other issues. They should take this virus very seriously. But what the public polling in Florida has shown us is that not only are the lockdowns working, but they're very popular. And people want to have the liberty and the option to be able to make those choices. And when those options are given, it goes to show that you can actually bring your hospitalization rates, infection rates down and your quality of life improves dramatically. The biggest reason why the Democrats and some moderate Republicans have kept their states closed for one year and the 15 days to slow the spread is because deep down they actually think they're smarter and better than you and they think you are stupid. They really believe that you must be micromanaged through every decision. They have a condescending worldview. We call this ivory tower, elitist ruling class. All of that is an accurate description. But liberty by definition is something that a lot of people are not comfortable with. Because liberty then puts the pressure on you. Liberty then puts the decision, the choices solely on you. Some people actually want to be told what to do. The American experiment has always put a value on liberty while admitting its cost and consequences and de emphasized safetyism. The science and the data are clear. The lockdowns everywhere should be ended. Every single number points to that. And that's why Florida has become a total complete boom town. But I was in Chicago last week for a whole week and I went to downtown Chicago and parts of it were unrecognizable. The lockdown was self inflicted. We did this to ourselves. So we all know about conservatives getting kicked off social media.

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[Charlie Kirk]

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[Charlie Kirk]

the question remains is did we learn anything in this last year? And I don't think we did. We have increased our federal deficit by $5 trillion. Basically asking inflation to come our way. The average billionaire is much wealthier than they were before. The billionaire class has increase their net worth by $600 billion. We've lost 40% of small businesses in some cities, as high as 60% in other cities. And what do we have to show for it? The states that locked down do not have better virus hospitalization or death rates than the states that fully and completely opened. It was an unnecessary move, but an intentional move by Democrat governors that wanted a federal bailout. They wanted a federal bailout well before the Chinese coronavirus came through. And finally they had their big opportunity to get federal dollars appropriated to broken cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. What I never understood about Chicago and their lockdowns was that if it was all about saving lives and Lori Lightfoot trying to have people stay at home, why didn't Lori Lightfoot ever have that big of a concern for the death in the streets of the city of Chicago? There were 792 homicides in Chicago just last year. And yet she's worried whether or not people are wearing masks when they're showering some of the strictest mask mandates in the entire country. Because it's actually not about saving lives. It was never about saving lives for Lori Lightfoot or J.B. pritzker or Andrew Cuomo or Bill de Blasio or Gavin Newsom or Eric Garcetti or any of these guys. Instead it was about making themselves more important obey us. And what was so stunning to me is how little backlash there was from free thinking people. And this should be a fire alarm and a wake up call for all of us. If you do not contest and contend for your liberties and freedoms, they will disappear if they have not already disappeared. I just want to make this point. In the last year I believe America has undergone the greatest one year change of any time in American history, except Maybe World War II. Maybe in one year. We have radically redefined how we view race. We have decided to go backwards and view race like the KKK did. We have decided to say that the education of our children does not matter. We have changed the way that we value small businesses and private property. We have pastors facing $2.5 million in fines, like my friend Pastor Mike McClure at Calvary Chapel San Jose, which, by the way, we have a Turning Point USA campus tour stop in San Jose. We're going to Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, Nashville, Vegas, then San Jose. TPUSA.com Jenfree if you want to check it out. And we're gonna have a lot of fun there. And we're gonna be talking about a lot of topics. So pastors were criminalized, but abortion factories remained open. So as we are now looking back on the one year of the 15 days to slow the spread, why should we ever trust anything that the people in charge tell us about public health, public policy, the direction of our country, the best way to solve problems? The answer is we shouldn't. And yet the Democrats in the left, they commonly say we must trust the science. They don't believe that they're saying trust the scientists that we like. The entire conversation around the Chinese coronavirus should have always been around therapeutics. Zinc, vitamin D, natural sunlight, hydroxychloroquine, and other potential therapeutics that could have helped with the treatment of the virus. Instead, all the focus was around sit at home until we have a vaccine. And guess what? President Trump delivered a vaccine quicker than anyone ever before. Joe Biden says there was not even a vaccine when he came into office, despite him taking a vaccine while Trump was president. Pathological liar. And in the last year of the year of the 15 days to slow the spread, I saw the wealthiest, most prosperous, most blessed country in the history of the world basically sit back and watch as their country got radically redefined by people that do not share American values and want to restore the American Promise. What is the American Promise, by the way? The American Promise is very simple. The American promise is that if you work hard, play by the rules, your children can live a moderately better life than you, and you are able to see your life materially increase and increase in richness in other ways outside of financial. The American promise is that your politicians are going to tell you the truth, that you can speak your mind, you can worship your creator outside of government mandates or edicts. Everything in the last year has been a targeted campaign at breaking the American promise. And it just so happened in the midst of an election year. As you notice, every time I mention the virus, I call it the Chinese virus, the China virus. In fact, I was the first person to tweet out China virus. And then when Trump had a Twitter, he, quote, tweeted my tweet. And then he used it ever since. I'm not saying he got it solely from me, but there is public proof of that. And yet throughout all of this, I feel as if we have decided not to focus on China's role in all this, where it very well could have been a biological weapon that was formed in the Wuhan laboratory. And then we make a very dangerous conflation with how we talk about what has happened in the last year in the New York Times. Worthless paper has a whole section here, all these pictures of these kids that don't have, that had no school, sports, that had no activities. And the story is actually pretty compelling. However, it blames the virus for all of it. It says that Covid disallowed these 17 year olds from having a soccer season or from having dance class. I said, Covid didn't do any of that. The Chinese coronavirus did not prevent any of that. The lockdowns did. And so we are dealing with two separate threats. One that was a foreign attack on our country from the Chinese Communist Party. Allegedly, and with 99% assuredness. I could tell you that this was probably developed with malevolent intent from the Chinese Communist Party because that's all they do, is lie. They are treacherous, deceitful people. And the Chinese Communist Party has internationalist goals and ambitions that are so immoral and evil. And as I said yesterday, a missed opportunity was forming an alliance. Not just an alliance, but a in your face, come and get us type coalition with Japan, who the Chinese have always feared the Japanese. You see, the Chinese have always had a heavy emphasis on history and culture. The one thing the Chinese Communist Party fears is a strong Japan. We should be involved in activating or reinvigorating the warrior spirit in Japan. Instead, we have a base there, which is great. And we have a phenomenal military in Okinawa. In fact, I just spent some time with someone who served in Okinawa. Phenomenal guy. But I think it would be in our best interest to help rebuild the Japanese military. Anyway, that's a side point. And so I'm reading this article in the New York Times and the way that the story is told is, yes, we are pointing out that we removed the freedom and liberty and the way of life from young people. But we act as if we had no choice in Florida. It shows that we do have a choice. We did have a choice in Florida. It shows that an open state not only can have better virus rates, better hospitalization rates, better death rates, lower unemployment rate, higher growth rate, rising property values, but people are happier. And even the New York Times, which is a worthless paper, haha found it says, I'd much rather be in Florida other than New York. No big city in the United States has been struggling with more Chinese coronavirus weeks in Miami, but you'd hardly know it if you lived here. Now remember, cases are not deaths. And you go through this and it talks very positively about how the American way of life has been restored in Florida. Ron DeSantis says, you can live like a human being here in Florida. You aren't locked down, people aren't miserable. We've been doing that for over a year in Florida. The governor boasted and he should boast because he trusts his citizens. And so then the New York Times says more than 32,000 Floridians have died, an unthinkable cost that the state's leaders rarely acknowledge. Hold on a second. How many people have died in California? The death rate is basically the same. So massive lockdowns and the infringement of liberties make no significant increase or impact on the death rate. Yet the New York Times completely misrepresents this. And an untrained eye of someone that gets the New York Times delivered to their home, they'd say, oh yeah, that's really bad. Maybe it's not as good as you might think, but there is a good quote here. People here, they have been able to work, the kids have been able to go to school. Again, if you think that this virus is a threat to you, then don't leave your home. That's what liberty is all about. I actually know someone that is deathly afraid of flying. They drive everywhere, even cross country. There's no federal law that says that this person must get on an airplane. They have the liberty to get in the car and to drive, even though driving is much more dangerous than flying. But that's their belief. The point is that if you believe this virus is a threat to you, then stay at home. Don't prevent others from living their life. This used to be something that liberals, an argument they used to use around mass drug legalization and other socially degenerate causes. But when it comes to just going to church, owning a business, and living a normal life, that's when they decide to put up a big fight. Look, you've heard me talk about MyPillow.

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[Charlie Kirk]

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[Charlie Kirk]

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[Charlie Kirk]

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[Charlie Kirk]

A friend of mine sent me this story last night and it hits close to home. Literally. It's right where I grew up, in the suburbs of Chicago. So hello to all of our friends on AM560. The answer. But this story should be a national story. So there's a veteran who is hired as a baseball coach at Loyola Academy. Loyola Academy is a Catholic school in the North Shore of Chicago. Very ruling class. Very, very. Not just upper to middle, middle class, it's very upper class. And so he was, he's been brought on to be this baseball coach and he writes this story for redstate.com and he says he's become the victim of cancel culture for taking his school's teaching to heart. Without going into any specifics of what he said. And I asked around and they said he didn't say anything wrong. Basically, he posted on social media that he thought that the country was adopting wrong headed approaches to the Chinese coronavirus. He also, like Gina Carano, pointed out that Jews in Germany did not protest throughout their persecution and it led to their eventual death. That's all he said. And so then Loyola found that to be so objectionable that they fired him. A US Veteran. Loyola University. Loyola Academy. I'm sorry, Loyola Academy in the suburbs of Chicago. Now, this is not a story that's gonna hit the New York Times or national news. This is just a normal story. Which is exactly why I wanna talk about It. This is a story that would. People would read and just kinda go on like, oh, he probably said something wrong. No, he didn't. And this baseball coach is you next. One thing you put on social media, one remark that you wish you wouldn't have said, one comment, one text message, your life can be obliterated. We call this cancel culture. It's much more brutal than that. This is life ending stuff. This is life altering decisions that are being made. He writes in his article. How could this be? I stood up for what I believe was right. How could that not reflect well on Loyola? Is that not precisely what Loyola told me again and again? He's a graduate of Loyola to become a baseball coach. They noted that I spoke out against the Chinese coronavirus guidelines. No one claims that. I do not dutifully follow them or I would not as a coach. That's why he got fired. He lost his job as a graduate of Loyola Academy and a veteran because he posted on social media that he thought that the Chinese coronavirus lockdowns went too far. Hello, they did. Loyola's case is that they think that not only should they. That he. That they would put kids in danger because he was a baseball coach that thought that the lockdowns went too far and he literally served in the US Military. He said this quote, had I been given the opportunity to coach at Loyola Academy, I would have followed any and all health and safety guidelines the school prescribed. Even more than that, I would have done my best to build not just a strong baseball program, but solid future leaders. This, from Loyola Academy in the suburbs of Chicago goes to show the weakness, the intolerance and the cancerous rot that has been infecting the education system and our entire country. You have an alumnus of your school who is hired to be the baseball coach who did nothing wrong, and you decide to fire him before he even comes in for orientation because someone found some Facebook posts that they don't like and shame on you, Loyola Academy. Some of my best friends went to Loyola. Some great people have graduated from your school, and now you are being run by a bunch of unwise cowards. This man did nothing wrong. He wonderfully served our country. You should rehire him immediately. And for anyone listening to this on the live stream, on Facebook or YouTube, and, you know, anyone involved in Loyola Academy, the only way that this trend gets reversed, everybody, is if we make enough noise and we push back against this. And no, this is not national news. It's just something. It's just a normal story of a local cancellation of a local example, but I'm focusing on it because obviously I know the school and I know a lot of people that went to that school, but it's a microcosm of what will happen next. And you know this quote, that when they came for others, I said nothing. When they came for me, there was no one to speak for me. Stand up for this man. His man is. His name is George Kemper. He's a. He's an infantryman. Infantry mortarman in the 101st Airborne Division, deployed to Syria for most of 2019. He's pursuing a degree in history, hopes to become a history professor. He wanted to be a baseball coach. They hired him. He went to Loyola. They found one post that they didn't like because he challenged the guidelines and he said, I think they're too aggressive. And they ended his career. Loyola Academy, a Catholic school in the suburbs of Chicago. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Please consider supporting [e-mail] support email us your questions freedomarliekirk.com and please get involved with Turning Point [e-mail] thanks so much for listening, everybody. God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.