Met Gala Mischief and Medicaid Millionaires

Summary

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The Charlie Kirk Show

Episode: "Met Gala Mischief and Medicaid Millionaires"

Date: May 5, 2026
Host: Charlie Kirk
Co-hosts: Andrew, Blake Neff
Guests: Ari Fleischer, Luke Rosiak, Candice Lee, Eric Newman

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Charlie Kirk and the team blend sharp cultural critique with deep dives into policy and investigative reporting. Highlights include a breakdown of the Met Gala’s “champagne socialism,” analysis of Republican electoral prospects with Ari Fleischer, a bombshell investigative report into Medicaid fraud with Luke Rosiak, and a feature on a new Scout-themed book series promoting resilience in youth. The episode’s undercurrent is clear: exposing hypocrisy among America’s elite, highlighting vulnerabilities in government programs, and championing traditional values in politics, family, and literature.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Met Gala: "Champagne Socialism" and Hypocrisy [01:59–09:44]

• Met Gala Overview:

  • Tickets cost around $100,000, acting as tax write-offs for the ultra-rich.
  • Outrage over societal inequality is juxtaposed with extravagant, often outlandish outfits.
  • Event is described as “performative,” illustrating the elite’s detachment from everyday Americans.

• Notable Outfits and Commentary:

  • Cardi B’s outfit compared to the monster from "Akira":

    "Cardi B had some outfit where she looks like she’s got kind of a bunch of polyps or tumors growing out of her... like the 80s movie Akira." — Blake Neff [03:58]

  • Sarah Paulson’s “dollar bill over the eyes” as a critique of wealth, despite being a millionaire herself.
  • Discussion about Anna Rose Philip (first black transgender woman with quadriplegic cerebral palsy signed to a modeling agency) as a symbol of performative status signaling.

    "The stacking thing of disabled and black and trans and you know the first. And it’s a very performative thing." — Blake Neff [07:38]

• "Oppression Olympics":

  • Jokes about checking boxes and status signaling among celebrities.
  • Critique of the media’s and Hollywood’s obsession with self-righteous performances.
  • Meta-commentary on the very act of discussing the Met Gala: is it giving oxygen to performative antics or exposing elitism?

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2. Political Shifts and the Save America Act [10:32–16:27]

• Trump’s Cinco de Mayo Tweet Revisited:

  • On its 10th anniversary, the panel recalls Trump’s infamous "I love Hispanics" taco bowl post.

    "Happy Cinco de Mayo. The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics." — Blake Neff reading Trump [10:32]

• Impacts of Proposed Voter ID Changes:

  • Washington Post analysis on the Save America Act’s potential effects on state voting patterns.
  • Requiring proof of citizenship could flip states like New Mexico and Nevada in Republicans' favor, as many Democrat voters in those states may lack easy access to accepted documents.

    "We're disenfranchising voters that don't have easy access to citizenship. You do the math on that one." — Andrew [13:37]

  • Noted that some deep blue states would become more competitive, while some red states would become even redder.

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3. Ari Fleischer on Senate Inaction, Filibuster, and 2026 Election [16:27–33:52]

• Trump vs. Senate GOP Leadership:

  • Trump’s disappointment with Leader Thune and frustration over filibuster reluctance.

    "I like John a lot, but he has a couple of Republicans that are foolish people. A couple of them I can't stand, actually." — Trump, relayed by Ari Fleischer [18:07]

• Why Isn’t the Save America Act Advancing?

  • Ari: Numeric reality in the Senate and traditionalism keep the filibuster in place.

    "The only reason I can think of. There's no other reason not to pass the SAVE Act." — Ari Fleischer [19:01]

  • Concerns that eliminating the filibuster now would let Democrats implement sweeping structural changes if/when they hold power.

    "Democrats want to eliminate the filibuster to create new states... change Supreme Court justices... Electoral College... for power." — Ari Fleischer [20:50]

• Inaction Breeds Cynicism:

  • Filibuster as central culprit for legislative stasis, fueling public nihilism and distrust.

    "This inaction is the kiss of death for national unity and for making people believe government can get anything done." — Ari Fleischer [24:54]

• 2026 Election Outlook:

  • Ari predicts Republicans will lose the House, 50/50 on the Senate.
  • Noted demographic shift: GOP now the party of the working class; Democrats of college/postgraduate voters.
  • Rumors of John Fetterman (PA) going independent and potentially caucusing with Republicans, though Ari doubts it—calls Fetterman an "aberration" in a progressive party.

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4. Medicaid Millionaires: Luke Rosiak Exposes Welfare Fraud [37:03–53:33]

• The Scheme in Brief:

  • In Ohio (and other states), Medicaid waivers allow people—primarily Somali immigrants—to bill the government for "personal services" like conversation or chores for relatives.

    "Wouldn't it be nice if we could all have that? So the real wrinkle is a lot of these Somalis started getting paid by the government to be personal servants to their own relatives." — Luke Rosiak [38:49]

• Systemic Exploitation:

  • NGOs, Democrat operatives, and even politicians encouraging/managing these lucrative scams.

    "You have a Democrat politician who actually founded a home health care company that got $11 million, then ran for office." — Luke Rosiak [41:38]

  • Buildings full of “home healthcare” LLCs, most vacant, each billing millions with minimal oversight.

    "You can peer in the window and there's not even like a desk or computer... but it's billing $5 million from the government." — Luke Rosiak [46:05]

• Red State Failure:

  • Ohio, a GOP-run state, has actually made it easier for this fraud, and Governor DeWine even raised the payouts.
  • Oversight is virtually nonexistent; enforcement is weak.

• Scale and Demographics:

  • In states like New York, home health aide—often an immigrant “family” member—is the most common job.
  • Nearly all the actors in this system are foreign-born, with Somalis being the most prominent group.

    "It’s virtually 100% foreign... anybody who doesn’t see the pattern here... is completely blind." — Luke Rosiak [49:33]

• What Should Be Done?

  • Strong call for federal rollback of Medicaid waivers abused this way.

    "The shortest path to keeping our country from insolvency is to just stop allowing people to charge the government for hanging out with your own family." — Luke Rosiak [52:34]

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5. Cultural Restoration: Dragonslayer Book Series [55:12–69:49]

• Guests: Candice Lee & Eric Newman, authors of "George Goodwin Dragonslayer"

• Mission: Inspire resilience, agency, and identity in young people through positive, adventure-themed literature.

  • Draw inspiration from G.K. Chesterton:

    "Fairy tales exist not to tell children that dragons are real, but that they can be killed." — Eric Newman [55:37]

• Celebration of Scouting/Classic Values:

  • Book centers on a group of Scouts on a quest, facing real-world (and fantastical) challenges.
  • Aims to counteract negative forces—addiction to screens, nihilistic media, and woke literature—by appealing to youth’s imagination and sense of purpose.

    "We want to inspire the next generation to see that you do have a hero inside you." — Candice Lee [56:10]

  • Bears Grylls wrote the book’s warning:

    "But even more dangerous are the kids in this tale. They're tough, they're brave, and they're exactly the kind of heroes our world needs." — Bear Grylls, quoted by Andrew [56:54]

• Repeated Calls to Parents:

  • Give kids literature that builds courage and virtue, not victimhood.

    "I’m not a baby, I’m a dragon slayer." — Eric Newman’s son, relayed as a transformative story [67:05]

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6. Closing Moments and Takeaways [69:49–End]

• Call to Action:
  • Urge listeners to defend ICE on social media and pressure Leader Thune to pass the Save America Act.

    "Go say something nice about ICE. They keep us safe and they're heroes." — Andrew [71:06]

• Light-hearted Ending:
  • The panel jokes about celebrating Cinco de Mayo with tacos and stomach bugs.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• "Cardi B had some outfit where she looks like she’s got kind of a bunch of polyps or tumors growing out of her... like the 80s movie Akira." — Blake Neff [03:58]
• "Nobody does ostentatious like libs. Nobody does elitism like Hollywood and the entertainment class." — Andrew [06:17]
• “We're disenfranchising voters that don't have easy access to citizenship. Do the math on that one.” — Andrew [13:37]
• “This inaction is the kiss of death for national unity and for making people believe government can get anything done.” — Ari Fleischer [24:54]
• “It's virtually 100% foreign... anybody who doesn’t see the pattern here... is completely blind.” — Luke Rosiak [49:33]
• "The shortest path to keeping our country from insolvency is to just stop allowing people to charge the government for hanging out with your own family." — Luke Rosiak [52:34]
• "Fairy tales exist not to tell children that dragons are real, but that they can be killed." — Eric Newman [55:37]
• “I’m not a baby. I’m a dragon slayer.” — Eric Newman’s son [67:05]
• “Go say something nice about ICE. They keep us safe and they're heroes.” — Andrew [71:06]

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Met Gala Commentary: 01:59 – 09:44
• Trump’s Cinco de Mayo Tweet & Save America Act Analysis: 10:32 – 16:27
• Ari Fleischer on Filibuster and Election Outlook: 16:27 – 33:52
• Medicaid Millionaires Exposé (Luke Rosiak): 37:03 – 53:33
• Dragonslayer Authors Interview (Candice Lee & Eric Newman): 55:12 – 69:49
• Final Thoughts & Call to Action: 69:49 – End

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Tone & Style

The discussion is sharp, direct, and unapologetically conservative, laced with sarcasm, satire, and pointed barbs toward cultural elites, government inefficiency, and progressive orthodoxies. There’s genuine concern for traditional American values, an undercurrent of populist frustration, and repeated calls to action—mobilizing listeners against perceived hypocrisy and government waste, while encouraging resilience and heroism in youth culture.

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For Further Information

• Luke Rosiak’s investigation: The Daily Wire
• Dragonslayer series: Available wherever books are sold; order for young readers to promote values-driven adventure and resilience.
• Political action: Support the Save America Act; defend ICE online; watch election trends in key swing states.

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This summary provides a comprehensive, engaging road map through the episode—ideal for listeners who want the substance without the time commitment.

Transcript

[Charlie Kirk]

My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro American student organization in the country, fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're gonna end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You gotta stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Turning Point USA College chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life. And I encourage you to do the same. Here I am, Lord. Use me. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble gold investments@noblegold investments.com, that is noblegoldinvestments.com.

[Andrew]

all right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. It's Tuesday, May 5th. We're here at the Y Refi Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. How are we doing, Blake?

[Blake Neff]

We're doing great because it's May 5th in Phoenix, Arizona, and it's 64 degrees out and raining.

[Andrew]

So, yeah, this continues Blake's theme that Arizona is a fake desert.

[Blake Neff]

Fake desert rains all the time.

[Andrew]

Too cold and rains too much.

[Blake Neff]

Probably. It's probably hotter in South Dakota right now.

[Andrew]

He's probably the only person I've ever heard describe Arizona this way. But that's why we keep him around.

[Blake Neff]

Okay. It's not. It's not. It's not cooler than South Dakota right

[Andrew (brief interjections)]

now where it is 47 degrees.

[Andrew]

I was gonna say we did have a spell where it was like 105 for three weeks.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah.

[Blake Neff]

In like early March. And then it went back to raining for a while.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So anyways, so lots to get to today. President Trump has just blasted Leader Thune. We're gonna get to that in just a second while we pull that clip. But we wanted to start the show off in a kind of more fun and jovial way, a little light hearted way because it's just too. It's too easy. It's too much fun. And that is the Met Gala. We knew it was happening yesterday because I saw it trending on social media, but I really could care less until you see some of the costumes, which are just too Too good not to comment on. But let's just basically first premise this Blake with talking about the elitist hypocrisy of the Met Gala, where tickets cost around $100,000 per person. This whole event functions as a massive tax write offs for millionaires and billionaires, by the way, because they can just write it off as a business expense. And they do these ostentatious displays of inequality and they rage against the machine and the man and capitalism and Donald Trump, all while wearing massively expensive outfits, all while massively ugly outfits, being extraordinarily rich and elitist and exclusionary in their own rights. And that's just too much fun not to comment on. Blake, you're a big Met Gala fan, right?

[Blake Neff]

Well, so I will admit, I don't think. I feel like it didn't quite penetrate my head what the Met Gala was until last year. Like it would be in the news and I was just like, okay, whatever. And then we started covering it more consistently on this show with Charlie, and we'd react to it, and so I guess I'm vaguely aware of it now. It seems like an excuse to wear dumb outfits. But I did admit I found them pretty funny this year. I liked, actually. I actually joked about one last night. A Cardi B had some outfit where she looks like she's got kind of a bunch of polyps or tumors growing out of her. She.

[Andrew]

Do we have the card?

[Blake Neff]

Do we have it yet? She kind of looked like. She kind of looked like. If you ever saw the 80s movie Akira where this guy is a psychic and his body starts bloating up into a giant monster that destroys Tokyo, she kind of looks like that.

[Andrew]

Got it. Okay. I haven't seen it yet. Hopefully the team can get it for us. But we do have B roll of the. The gala, so we should put that up. Put the B roll up. It's. I think that's. What's that guy's name again? The Sam something or other. He's Sam Smith. Yeah, he's the. The gay British singer who showed up as some sort of dark overlord or something. I don't know. It like Maleficent. I'm not sure what it is. I guess the theme was he looks fashion as art.

[Blake Neff]

The stuff out of his head makes him look kind of like an exotic insect in a way.

[Andrew]

Well, that could be it. It looks like a really tough thing to walk in this person. Not sure what's going on exactly, but. Oh, this is. We do have. We do have Cardi B coming. B roll of Sam Smith. Him dressed as Satan, if you remember, blindfolded.

[Blake Neff]

Okay, there we go. There's Cardi b with all of the tumor stuff around her.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that's interesting.

[Blake Neff]

Not sure what they're going for there.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I'm not. I don't think it matters too awful much. It's just supposed to be, I think, over the top is. Is the goal. And so, I don't know. Send us your thoughts. What do you guys think of the Met Gala? And is it just. Are we. Are we doing the wrong thing by even giving oxygen here? That's one of the arguments. I actually think it's prime fodder for critique.

[Blake Neff]

There we go. That one is a Sarah Paulson. She has a dollar bill over her eyes, I think.

[Andrew]

So you get capitalism blinding. They might remember she's worth $12 million,

[Blake Neff]

but, yeah, if they've forgotten, I believe the Met Gala is where aoc. She wore that eat the rich thing. And so similarly, here we have a person using a $100,000 ticket to wear an outfit to this fantastic display of wealth and celebrity puts a dollar over her eyes. To be like, money is ruling us. We need to have sympathy with the poor. It's a very performative thing. It's very ridiculous.

[Andrew]

So actress Sarah Paulson was seen wearing a dollar bill over her face to call out the 1% who are blinded by money. Paulson, as I mentioned, is reportedly worth over $12 million herself. So that's the kind of champagne socialism that you get at the Met Gala every year. And it's just. It's hilarious. Nobody does ostentatious like libs. Nobody does elitism like Hollywood and the entertainment class. And yet they are the ones that live behind gated communities. They're the ones that do not have to suffer under the decision making of Democrats. Democrat socialists. Oh, and there's. Who's this gal? This one made a lot of headlines. I remember yesterday. This is. I'm gonna get the name for you. This is Anna Rose Philip, the first black transgender woman with quadriplegic cerebral palsy signed to a major modeling agency, arriving at the Met Gala. Okay. So we actually debated whether or not we were gonna talk about this person. I'd never heard of her before. Or him. Cause it's actually transgender, but that was our decision. It's actually somebody that is a trans identifying black person who's quadriplegic cerebral palsy, and they've somehow been signed to a modeling agency, which I find to be fascinating.

[Blake Neff]

It does feel. It does feel like an episode from some sort of satirical program. Like you can imagine south park running with that 15 years ago. Obviously, we won't knock on her for the disability. Of course, the stacking thing of disabled and black and trans and you know the first. And it's a very performative thing.

[Andrew]

And then how many boxes on the oppression Olympics can you check? Sort of thing.

[Blake Neff]

It just gets at the status signaling aspect of all of this. Because we'll be frank, we all knock on her for the disability. But does it make sense to sign a person with quadriplegic cerebral palsy to be a model?

[Andrew]

No.

[Blake Neff]

I can't imagine the market for that.

[Andrew (brief interjections)]

Clothing is terribly large.

[Andrew]

That's a really good. That's a very keen observation. I hope it's not as well. And yeah, I'm sorry that this person has this disability, but the whole projection and the virtue signaling of it is really. I think I saw one post that was like breaking barriers everywhere. Glass ceiling. And I'm like, wait, glass? It's a dude. That's a man, actually. So the man breaking the glass ceiling. Anyways, none of it makes sense, but it sure is fun to comment on and make fun of, because guess what? It's all fake. And you know what? The kids say it's all performative. And it's hard not to laugh at. But this is like their super bowl for fashion. This is the fashion Super Bowl. Blake, you would fit in wonderfully. I would pay money to see Blake react live to this man.

[Blake Neff]

You're gonna make me. You're gonna inflict that.

[Andrew]

I mean, that's actually what we should do next year.

[Blake Neff]

Oh, gosh.

[Andrew]

We're gonna make Blake watch the red carpet and live react me. That would be. That would do numbers. Email us if you want to see Blake do live reaction to red carpet experiences. That would be great.

[Blake Neff]

We did get an email from Damon, said, I don't want to watch the Met Gala. I just want to watch Blake react to it.

[Andrew]

Bingo.

[Blake Neff]

It'll to two layer react.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Blake Neff]

But. Yes. 10 year anniversary of.

[Andrew]

Oh, hold on. Hold up now. You're. You're. You're throwing. I want to know, would you watch Blake Neff, Mr. Fashionista, Mr. Cultural Icon himself, live react to red carpets in general or the Met Gala and just give his honest. We. We'd have to pay while this. Like this could. Your honest reactions would get us like canceled and fired and. And. But it would be. It would be really entertaining. Let me just tell you. So. Yeah, that's what I said. Would you watch it? So email us freedom charliekirk.com Freedom charliekirk.com All right, so it is May 5, Cinco de Mayo, which means it is the 10th anniversary of the tweet heard round the world, the Taco Bell tweet from President Trump. Throw it up there. It's important that you guys see this.

[Blake Neff]

May 5, 2016, candidate Donald Trump, out of the blue, jumping from the top rope posts. Happy hashtag. They still use those more in those days. Happy Cinco de Mayo. The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics.

[Andrew]

That's my favorite part.

[Blake Neff]

And he's got the thumbs up and he's eaten the taco bowl. For you younger people or forgetful people, this. We've changed so much because the reaction to this was apocalyptic.

[Andrew]

Yes. Yeah. Now he does Jesus memes. And which we're not.

[Blake Neff]

We don't like the Jesus memes.

[Andrew]

But, I mean, but that's like, that's what it takes now to get people worked up. This just destroyed the media cycle for, like, three weeks. And my favorite part about it is I love Hispanics, exclamation mark. It's so Trumpy. And it makes it like it's genuinely humorous to me. The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower, girl. All right, so I think there's a fun, easy enough tie in here. So go ahead and throw up that graphic of the Washington Post and the Save America act here. So little Cinco de Mayo tie in New Mexico. All right, we're not talking about old Mexico. We're talking about New Mexico. But the Save America Act. The Washington Post did a deep dive into what would happen state by state if the Save America act was passed. And we do have that graphic, if you can get it up there, guys. But the point is, it was shocking. There are two states in particular, Nevada and New Mexico, that showed massive shifts. So New Mexico, and this is based on 2024 numbers. So we don't know what they would be today because obviously the electorate has shifted back in the Democrats favor a little bit, which tends to happen when you're in power. But it would go from a negative 4 Trump state. So Trump lost by 4 points to a Trump 3.3% percent state.

[Blake Neff]

And we should explain what's going on here. The justification for this is among its many provisions, the Save America act, it raises the requirement nationwide for voter id, essentially, to you must possess a proof of citizenship.

[Andrew]

You have hold qualifying citizenship documents.

[Blake Neff]

Exactly which. So that could be a passport. It could be your birth certificate. And the argument from Critics, the argument from the Washington Post is not all Americans have easy access to those documents. And so you could imagine those people are maybe going to miss this cycle because they don't have them or they don't care enough to go and get them. And their argument is that nationwide it's about even between Republicans and Democrats, who is easy access to those? They say about 90%, basically, of both

[Andrew]

groups of each party, but state by state it does.

[Blake Neff]

But they say overall, their argument is in individual states there is a partisan split. And their claim is in these swing states of Nevada and New Mexico, that Democrat voters in those states are significantly more likely to not have easy access to proof of citizenship, which I know Andrew and I are raising an eyebrow here. Oh, they don't have easy proof of citizenship.

[Andrew]

So we're disenfranchising voters that don't have easy access to citizenship. You do the math on that one.

[Blake Neff]

Another fascinating one, they're showing some other states that would shift to the right. They argue that Connecticut would go from 8 points Democrat to only about 5 points Democrat. So that's still blue. That's about as blue as New Mexico. But we know that in a big year, New Mexico could go right. Washington state, Washington state, 10 points. So Super Blue to 4.7. So it's as blue as, well, again, as blue as New Mexico was.

[Andrew]

Yep.

[Blake Neff]

And that's a much more competitive state. That's a state where in a good wave year, you win their Senate race.

[Andrew]

But some red states would get even redder. Wyoming would go from R plus 21 to R plus 25.4. South Dakota, 23 point. South Dakota would go from R plus 15 to R plus 22.8. Tennessee, R plus 14 to R plus 20.7. Louisiana, R 11 to R plus 18.1. So there's a lot of people that probably shouldn't be voting in a lot of states. Point being, there was one state that stood out as maybe going a little bit left, and that was North Carolina, which to me, North Carolina is going to be the new Virginia. We're eventually very upset about North Carolina.

[Blake Neff]

We need to be ready and we need to be picking up states to potentially offset that one.

[Andrew (brief interjections)]

That's a tough state.

[Andrew]

North Carolina and Georgia are going to be problems for us in the future. So if you can pick up a New Mexico, if you can pick up New Hampshire, if you could pick up and hold comfortably Nevada, if you hold comfortably Arizona, these become our red wall. And that's significant. If you're like me and you're Tired of random stuff getting thrown into your supplements like artificial colors and sugars? You probably would love to know more about phytonutrition. Phytonutrients are the naturally occurring plant nutrients found in whole foods that give them their color, their taste, their smell. And the presence of these three things is a surefire sign that you're getting real phytonutrients. Balance of Natures all whole health system supplements are a value bundle that includes their fruits and veggies and fiber and spice supplements, which give you 47 ingredients of fruits, vegetables, spices and fibers and all of the naturally occurring phytonutrients that come with them every single day. Balance of Nature takes produce through a specialized vacuum cold process that stabilizes the ingredients. They are then powdered and packaged with no binders, fillers, or flow agents. So whether you've been on the fence for a long time or it's the first time you're hearing about them, I recommend that you go to balanceofnature.com and order the whole health system supplements as a preferred customer. Today, go to balanceofnature.com welcoming back to the show. First time in a while. Ari Fleischer. Welcome back. It's good to have you, sir.

[Ari Fleischer]

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me back. It is, it's a joy to be back.

[Andrew]

Thank you. Yeah, it's a joy for us, too, with guys like you that came on with Charlie and then you come on with us, and we're honored to have you and lots to get to. I hey, and Andrew, if I can,

[Ari Fleischer]

you know, just as I was preparing and thinking about the show today, I went back somehow and looked through my old direct messages on Twitter and I found so many from Charlie to me, I, I, I didn't even remember they were on there. It was the sweetest feeling just to reread those messages. And Charlie initiated it. That's the kind of guy he was.

[Andrew]

Yeah, he was always, you know, if I may be so bold as to say, I mean, Charlie was a guy. I remember when we had you on the first time, and, you know, I don't know what the current context was of it, but we were going hard in the paint against something that was probably a little uncomfortable for, you know, guys of the Bush era and things like that. And. No, no, no, I'm not necessarily saying you or anything, but, but I remember bringing that up with Charlie going like, you, you know, we should have Ari on to kind of talk about this. And he was, like, so into it. He was like, you know, that's great. That's great. We're going to bring everybody together and get everybody kind of, you know. And anyways, I just. He saw in you somebody that could kind of bridge different parts of the party and a good ally in that stuff. So thank you for coming back. So, speaking of divides in the party, there's a lot of them. We could go into them in some respects. I'm going to start with President Trump take takes a shot at Leader Thune this morning, which is something he hasn't really done yet. So I want to play that clip and get your reaction, sir. Sat 21.

[Candice Lee]

Are you disappointed in leader?

[Ari Fleischer]

Yeah, no, I'm disappointed. I like John a lot, but he has a couple of Republicans that are foolish people. A couple of them. Like a couple of them I can't stand, actually, if you want to know the truth.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Well. So this comes off the heels, by the way, of seeing this Washington Post report. I don't know if you saw it, Ari, but it showed that based on the context of certain states, based on the way certain voters have certain documentation in certain states. I'll let you read into why they don't have certain documentation in some states. But a state like Nevada would go R1 to like R6 point something. New Mexico would go D4 to R plus 3.3. So if you pass the Save America act, you could actually be putting additional states in the Republican column. Again, that's based on 20, 24 numbers. Why are they not getting this passed? What do you want to see happen? Do you think it's possible with our current composition?

[Ari Fleischer]

You know, I think the simple answer is they don't have the votes to. What it requires is the elimination of the filibuster. And they have 53 Republican senators, of course, so if they lose four senators on that vote, they cannot eliminate the filibuster. And I think that's Thune's math. He's looked at it, he's looked in his caucus and he's asked who would vote for it. And he knows where the defections are right now. It was kind of the same problem the Democrats had when they had West Virginia senator and Arizona senator and the Democrat Party say they would refuse to eliminate the filibuster. Republicans have a small group of Republicans who won't eliminate the filibuster. That's the only reason I can think of. There's no other reason not to pass the SAVE Act.

[Andrew]

Ari, do you think. I mean, I'm all about naming names at this point. So We've got. Let's say Thune is actually in the camp of eliminating it. We've got Thom Tillis probably won't go along. That's the one people aren't thinking about, I think North Carolina, he's. He's run sideways of the Trump admin. And so there's beef there. Got Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell. So those four correct? Yeah, correct. Or is that. Was that five? Let me do that.

[Ari Fleischer]

That's four. That gets.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Ari Fleischer]

That gets you down to 49 votes to eliminate the filibuster.

[Andrew]

And who knows what Rand Paul would do? I guess I. My question is, you know, if you're Leader Thune, could you get Attilis on board? Could you. Is there. What could you do? I mean, what. Here's the problem. Thune just looks like he's happy that it's failing. If I'm calling it spade a spade, it looks from the outside, he's very content to let this die on the vine and then, you know, basically face the parliamentarian reconciliation to see if he could do it in, you know, moving forward then, which remains unclear. So if you're consulting the communications of Leader Thune, Ari, what do you tell him? Because right now it just looks like he's complicit.

[Ari Fleischer]

Well, you know, what he could do is try it. He could try to put it through and let the vote fail and then prove to everybody. I tried, but I think, Andrew, you've got it right. I don't think John's heart is in eliminating the filibuster because he's kind of the traditionalist mode in the Senate. And I've had conversations with senators who want to eliminate the filibuster about this. And the counter, of course, is if we do this, the Democrats are going to do it, too. And the Democrats are going to do it for different reasons. Republicans want to do it to pass policies. Democrats want to do it to maintain or get power. Democrats want to eliminate the filibuster to create new states because they need new seats in the Senate because they can't win on their current makeup of the country. They can't win enough Senate seats. They need to create new ones. They want to change the way we have Supreme Court justices. To them, it's structural changes to get power, possibly including the elimination of or changes with the Electoral College so the popular vote wins. These are the things that Democrats want to get rid of the filibuster for. Republicans want to do things to pass policies, and that's a huge difference between why the two parties want to eliminate. So I've always been for eliminating the filibuster, by the way, but my standard has been eliminate it, but you eliminate it in a way that it does not go into effect until the next Congress begins. Because I'm for fairness, and I don't like either party changing the rules in the middle of the game to grab power. Filibuster is wrong if you can only need a majority of past things, which is what I think it should be. Put it so it goes into effect when nobody knows who's going to control the Senate. Nobody knows who's going to control it starting in January of 2027, just 11 months from now or 10, nine months from now. So do it that way, and it's fair to everybody, and then whoever has power can pass things with 50%. I just don't like rigging the game in the middle, given where we are right now. If I were a senator and this came before me, I would vote to eliminate the filibuster today, though, you know.

[Blake Neff]

All right. The biggest struggle, I think, with eliminating it now is, as you say, we are not that far from an election. And I feel, other than potentially the SAVE act, we don't necessarily have a lot of legislation that we'd like that's ready to go. And the chief accomplishment of getting rid of the filibuster might just be it does finally do something which we need, which is to expose which Republicans are lying to you about what they really want to do. Because, as we've said on this show many times, the chief use of the filibuster is not to protect the minority nearly as much. It is to protect the majority from votes they don't want to actually take. So we have Republicans in the Senate right now who say, I'm tough on the border, I'm really a hawk on immigration, but they would not vote to actually restrict legal immigration. They would not vote to enable mass deportations if that vote really was going to change national policy. And you can repeat that for issue after issue, pro life issues, LGBT stuff,

[Andrew (brief interjections)]

one issue after another.

[Blake Neff]

And once you get rid of the filibuster, the Senate is real again. The Senate is actually capable of passing bills that aren't just omnibus monstrosities.

[Andrew]

We have a zombie Senate. I mean, it's basically useless.

[Blake Neff]

And it seems like that's all we'll get. If we get rid of the filibuster now, we'll maybe get the SAVE act, which is good, but other than that, we don't have other big wins queued up. Whereas Democrats, they have in their think tanks, in their blogosphere, they have a lot of this stuff. They've thought about this, they've dreamed about this for over a decade at this point, as you say, policies they want to pass. For example, they want to bring back nationwide abortion. They want to make a nationwide Roe v. Wade law. That's something they would pass with no filibuster. But they also want Puerto Rico and D.C. as states. They want to pack the Supreme Court, they want to enact a whole swath of things whose intent is. They don't need to worry about the Republicans having a filibuster free Senate because their intent is no Republican will ever hold power ever again.

[Ari Fleischer]

I think you're really onto something big right there. To me, one of the greatest dangers in our country right now is inaction. If you want to have an angry populace, if you want to have a group of people who just give up on government, who say, this American experiment just doesn't work anymore, this great tradition we have of sending people to Washington so they do what is in the nation, nation's interest, but nobody can do anything because of the filibuster. So inaction is the rule of the day. Inaction is the law of the land. This breeds cynicism, this breeds resentment, and it breeds people giving up on our government. I don't ever want to be in the category of being someone who gave up on government. I will continue to cling to my ideals and there are going to be letdowns. Of course there are. But I still want Washington to work. And the filibuster is the biggest reason Washington doesn't work. There'll be years. I hate it when the Democrats have power. There'll be years. I love it when the Republicans have power. But you have to have a system that can get things done for better or worse and then throw the bombs out if you don't like it. That's what empowers people. That's how we, the people have a check and balance on the people we elect. This inaction is the kiss of death for national unity and for making people believe government can get anything done.

[Andrew]

I totally, I totally agree. I think a lot of the cynicism and the nihilism that's set in where you get these, you know, the accelerationists that, you know, that used to be sort of right coded influencers or whatever that are now saying, hey, just vote Democrat, burn it all down and we'll remake, I mean, all of that stuff is coming out of a sense of inaction. And a lot of this critique against President Trump where they're saying it feels just the same as it did before. It's just a different party in charge that's coming from the Senate. It's just this permanent logjam. Ari, there's a lot of consternation. The Iran war has not proven to be popular. Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, just said that the ceasefire is not broken, so they're still doing the blockade. There's some tension there, obviously. Exit strategy, how to bring it to a close? Unsure. But I will tell you, Ari, I've spoken to so many students through our Turning Point chapters and elsewhere, that all of them. I have not heard one student, Ari, not one said that they were positive on the war. All of them are negative on it. Okay? And so there's a generational divide. It's like, do you watch Fox News or do you watch. Do you get your stuff from social media? All right, there's like, that's the divide. So what do we do about it? And is there any remedying this before midterms? What are your bright lines of hope out there ahead of midterms?

[Ari Fleischer]

Well, you don't want to ever conflate war with an election. You really don't want to say we need to do this or do that because of the electoral consequences. You don't go to war if you're worried about electoral consequences. You go to war to win and get home, whatever political season it is. What I hope here, and I think this is what President Trump is doing, is Operation Enduring Fury has now turned into Operation Boa Constrictor. Instead of fighting with bombs and forces we were doing before, what we're now trying to do is just squeeze their economy through the naval blockade and hope that that leads to change inside of Iran. I'm not sure that this is ultimately going to work because it leaves the same people in charge of Iran. And I think the only solution, the right solution, is you can't leave Iran stronger. You can't let them prevail in any way in this current combat we're in. And Trump has to see it through. Trump's got to make sure that the Iran that comes next is a peaceful Iran and Iran that changes the face of the Middle east and Iran that we, for 47 years have accepted is just the terrorist on the block. That changes the Middle east, makes it the most dangerous region in the world. Why does it have to be the most dangerous reason in the world? It doesn't it's been because of Iran. So you've got to change the leadership of Iran. It is a wants to be a pro western country. That is where you talk about the young people in America. The young people in Iran are overwhelmingly pro Western. They're just trapped under a theocracy that's killing them. And so the hope is that by replacing the government, forcing them out, something else comes in and we don't have to be part of that. We can't be the ones making regime change. I learned that haven't been part of what happened in Iraq. That won't be successful. It has to come within. But we can create the environment where it comes from within. And then the Middle east can be the peaceful region with a wholly new alignment of Gulf states, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Western Europe is going to fall behind Eastern Europe and these nations are going to be where peace and capitalism and prosperity come from in a changed world.

[Andrew]

Yeah, and I think you're right, I agree with that assessment. But when you talk to voters, especially young people, Right. So we saw this historic surge to the right of young people, thanks in large part to the work of Turning Point and Charlie. But I'm telling you, as soon as the Epstein stuff happened where President Trump kind of pushed it off and didn't want to deal with it at first, we saw a huge shift first thing. Then Operation Midnight Hammer, we saw a huge shift. Nothing we could message on was gonna change that. They didn't want war, they wanted Epstein transparency. Then we get Operation Epic Fury compounded the impact. So I'm kind of just trying to be a realist here. Like the messaging we do with our student, our Turning Point students are, they're telling me that they don't know how to defend what President Trump has done in Iran when they're tabling on campus. So we have to sort of bake into the pie here that young people are gonna go the other way here in this election. Where do we make up the ground? What can we do? And what should the messaging be domestically, specifically? I mean, affordability, housing, whatever. What do we need to do? What does President Trump need to do to try and right the ship ahead of November?

[Ari Fleischer]

Well, I've been saying this even before the military operation began in late February that Republicans are going to lose the House. I just think it's obvious when you look at the numbers, when you look at historical trends, when you look at what happens in the sixth year of a two term presidency, it's hard to escape this historical pattern and particularly With a president whose job approval is what it is. The President's job approval is right around 40%. It's not horrible, but it's very low. And this is going to be indications of a midterm that's going to be very hard for Republicans to keep the House. So I think we're going to be in an era of divided government in the next cycle and it's going to set up a wallapalooza of a 2028 presidential. And the other interesting thing about history is Republicans used to be the party that did well in the midterms because we were the party mostly of college educated voters who turn out every two years to vote. Democrats were the party of a lot more blue collar working class people who came out every four years to vote. That pattern has switched. Republicans are now much more the party of working class people and the Democrats are now the party of people with postgraduate degrees and college degrees. They turn out every two years. So tough election cycle for Republicans. I believe we're going to lose the House. Senate is right now a 50, 50 shot for Republicans to keep the Senate and set up the biggest battle you can imagine.

[Andrew]

I think this is all shaping up for a 2028 absolute drag out race. It's going to be, it's going to be something. But I will tell you interestingly enough, one of these X factors. There's a lot of reporting going on that John Fetterman might go independent and caucus Republican. I don't know. I don't know if I trust it. Cuz he's still very much like a Democrat socialist economically, but he's a patriot and he's a reasonable guy. He's made a lot of reasonable comments, patriotic comments. So that's an X factor that would be really interesting to see. I don't know. Are you hearing anything within the Beltway, Ari, about this?

[Ari Fleischer]

I just, I don't believe it. I don't believe it because I take John Fetterman at his word. He's always given his word bluntly and he says he's a Democrat, he'll always be a Democrat. And as you point out, on abortion, on gay rights, on a host of issues, he is a more progressive Democrat. It's just that he's reasonable on Israel, he's reasonable on how you treat people. He's reasonable on saying you don't shut the government down. He's what a handful of Democrats used to be 10, 15, 20 years ago before they got drummed out of the party by the progressive movement inside the Democrat party. There used to be about a dozen Democrats who would do and say things like him vote the way he does on Israel and not shutting down the government. He's the only one left. So he just kind of stands out because he's such an aberration in a progressive Democratic party.

[Andrew]

I hope that you're wrong, but I suspect that you're right, Ari. So yeah, because he is a socially and economically he's way left. He always has been. So we'll see though I am hearing conflicting reports so we're gonna keep watching that. It'd just be interesting if we end up losing the Senate 4,951 and then Fetterman switches over to independent and caucuses Republican. That'd be fascinating. Ari Fleischer, former White House Press Secretary and FleischerCommunications.com check him out there. Thank you for coming back, sir. It's great to see you you Andrew.

[Ari Fleischer]

Great to be with you guys. Thank you.

[Andrew]

God bless you.

[Andrew (brief interjections)]

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[Blake Neff]

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[Andrew (brief interjections)]

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[Charlie Kirk]

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[Andrew (brief interjections)]

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[Blake Neff]

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[Ari Fleischer]

So.

[Andrew (brief interjections)]

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[Charlie Kirk]

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[Andrew]

You know, Blake, there's that old expression. It's good work if you can get it. You know, it's good work if you can get it. And you know, I think I'm gonna go. I'm gonna ditch all this, this current gig, and I'm gonna go into hospice care for my relatives. I'm going to get paid professionally to have conversation and companionship with my family.

[Blake Neff]

Yeah, And I think we've seen the numbers. It seems like you could make vastly more than you could make in any sort of media job. Millions of dollars.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Blake Neff]

Maybe billions.

[Andrew]

I could be a Medicaid millionaire, too. You could as well. But guess what? We're not. Because we're honest citizens. But there's a whole lot of people that aren't honest citizens that probably aren't even citizens in many respects. Maybe they're illegals. I don't even know what the rules are here, but we're gonna find out. Luke Rosiak is an investigative journalist and reporter for the Daily Wire. And he has a new story out that he's been working on for a couple months titled Medicaid how the Feds Pay Immigrants Billions to Hang Out With Their Families. So welcome to the show, Luke Rosiak.

[Luke Rosiak]

Thanks for having me. That's right, Free butlers for Somalis and Medicaid millionaires. You got it.

[Andrew]

Okay, so we know all about Somali fraud in Minnesota, you focused on Ohio. What I find really interesting about this story, by the way, this is the first story you're dropping in a series, so there's more to come. But what's interesting about this story is the origin of it. So you know, Doge was much celebrated, much attacked part of the first hundred days and then some of the Trump administration 2.0. But they left us a little Easter egg that you went looking through to find this story. So tell us about that and why Ohio.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, you know, one of the criticisms people had of Doge, especially on the left, is why are you guys even bothering? There's not that much spare change you can rustle up in the couch of the federal budget. Cuz most of it is locked away in defense or you know, non discretionary funding. And if you look at that pie chart, a big chunk of what we spend is Medicaid. So there's like, they're, they're telling us there's no ways there. I mean, you've got to eliminate programs or thing. Medicaid is just paying people to go to the doctor. Well, that's because we never, we never got to see what Medicaid was. And so Doge released data that shows who's getting paid by Medicaid, which I think is a huge deal for transparency. It's the kind of thing Barack Obama should have done when he was always going on and on about being transparent and using technology. I mean, this doesn't reveal and invade the privacy of anybody's, any patient's medical information. It's about the corporations that get rich. And that's what we're seeing here is the new welfare queens aren't the participants in poverty programs. They're the people that get paid to ostensibly serve the poor people. And those people go on to become millionaires. Now in Ohio they have a waiver, much like Minnesota. The, the root of all the fraud, most of the fraud, everything but the daycares is these Medicaid waivers that they have in Minnesota. Ohio has the same problem. They'll pay you for what's called personal services. And that's not medical. That's why it has that weird name. It just means it's Medicaid. But it has nothing to do with the intended purpose of the program. You can just cook and clean and even provide, as you said, companionship and conversation for somebody that's like 65 years old or whatever. So that's why I call it Butlers for Somalis, because it's just like somebody to literally just do your chores for you. I mean, wouldn't it be nice if, if we could all have that? And so the real wrinkle is a lot of these Somalis started getting paid by the government to be personal servants to their own relatives. In other words, just to hang out with their family the way that everybody has done throughout all of millennia. Maybe if your parents are getting up there and they're 65 and they could use somebody to vacuum the carpet, you do that because your parents raised you. And it's a, it's a human, human decency thing to do to return. But the Somalis found a way to actually get paid by the government for just doing normal stuff and hanging out with your family.

[Blake Neff]

So you say found, but in your investigation, I know with a lot of really bad government programs, there's notoriously social workers, nonprofits, who basically explain to people how to do this. Have you found any evidence of that? Like, are there. We'll just say it. Democrat operatives, either in literal form or spiritual form. Do they go around and explain to these people, or is this an organic development where the community has figured out, oh, there's money to be had and no one's going to stop us. And if they do catch it, all they might do is slap you on the wrist and you can, you know, go back to Somalia for a bit.

[Luke Rosiak]

Well, in part two on my series, which I think went up, you have a Democrat politician who actually founded a home health care company that got $11 million, and then he sold it and ran for office with the Democrat endorsement for state Senate. He was also involved in One of these NGOs, as you mentioned, that got like $7 million from the federal government. And so there are NGOs kind of pushing people to do these things. I talked to one guy who was getting paid by the government to help refugees sign up for other government programs. So it's not enough to give the Somalis free disability and free food. You also have to pay a different Somali to encourage the first Somali to fill out that form to get the free money. And so there's definitely a sense you go through these buildings. And in part two, that, that you'll see on the daily wire, I go to these. There's this one landlord in New Jersey, and it's based in New Jersey, and they own seven buildings in Columbus. Now, these seven buildings have 288 home healthcare firms in them. And those firms have built a quarter billion dollars over the last several years. That's just one landlord. And then the landlord goes and you know, is buying private planes and things like that. So there's good money in this at every level though. There's a whole economy now based on this and you know, some of them are basically the ones hanging out with their family and getting paid. But then there's also a corporation that sits in the middle because the average person doesn't, they can't bill Medicaid directly. You need what's called an npi. So there are all these, all these companies, these little, they're really nothing more than an llc, but they are able to bill Medicaid and then they will pay the family member to hang out with, with, with their relatives and you take a little cut and it, it really, it really adds up to like a billion dollars a year in Ohio.

[Andrew]

Geez Louise. And so has Governor DeWine commented on this waiver that you're talking about that Minnesota also has? I mean, this is a Republican run state. You would think that they would plug these holes and these gaps in oversight and enforcement.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, he actually raised the amount that these people were getting paid recently and he made some positive comments talking about how important it is to give everybody what they need or whatever. So the Attorney General of the state testified recently about how crazy the rules are. Basically there's a law that makes it less severe to steal from Medicaid than to steal from anybody else. The Attorney General can't do any investigative subpoenas to gather information to prove fraud. And they used to have a rule that you're supposed to have a GPS on your car if you're one of those people who isn't hanging out with your own family members, but you're one of those people that has a roster of clients that you go and visit. You should have a GPS to make sure you're really visiting them. You're not just putting down the names of your friends and getting a kickback. Well, apparently they got rid of the GPS rule, which I don't know why you would do that because a gps costs like 50 bucks and you could save like $10 million. So it's also just pretty difficult to prove in, in a court of law that you didn't go to your cousin Abed's house some Tuesday a year ago, you know, unless you have like footage on everybody's house. So, you know, it's pretty difficult to track these people. I found some crazy stories by putting a lot of investigative resources into it, but I'm skeptical that the government is really able to monitor these people at all. And certainly from what you see on the ground, there's not a lot of oversight going on.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I mean this is all really depressing. And I saw that JD Vance quote, tweeted your report. That's promising. As obviously he's chairing the anti fraud task force. So hopefully they're gonna take it very seriously. But it's just despicable that this is happening in a conservative, in a Republican run state where they're making it easier to commit frauds. Now Luke, you went to this one building here, which I just thought was so telling and it was all blacked out windows. There was nobody inside. You did on the ground reporting for this show, this image, if you guys can. This building where all the windows seem like there's no, you can't see in. They've blocked them all up. What did you see here? And what, what, what is the significance of this building?

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, and if people go to Daily Wire later today, they will see a bunch of different images like that along with the lists of all the people that have, are tenants inside. And they all have Muslim names, probably 99%. And when you go in the buildings, they're also probably 90 to 99% vacant. They have these little offices that say something Home Healthcare, something else. Home Healthcare llc. All these little names, but the papers, logos and the signs are just like printed out off of somebody. A lot of them are just the same, same thing. Some of the doors, like one of the doors didn't even have a door knob. So it's like obvious that nobody's going into it. You could see mail that had post was postmarked like months prior. Like nobody's going to these buildings. There's smoke alarms chirping for batteries, there's stray cats in the parking lot. And it's really creepy. I mean they, the hallways are very, there was like a whole street full of buildings like the one on your screen. And you walk down the hallway and down the hallway and down the hallway and it's just LLC after LLC after llc. Nobody in any of, any of them. And you. And, and, and it was only until recently that you could now look up in federal records and be like, now we know why that little office exists because nobody's doing any work in there. But it's billing $5 million from the government. This one got $32 million from the government. This one Got 9 million from the government. And you can peer in the window and there's not even like a desk or a computer in the office. It's just an empty room. So it was just a really creepy and I think black pilling experience, honestly.

[Andrew]

Is anybody doing any, like, oversight in the state of Ohio? And this is, are there people that go out and check the LLCs to see what they're doing is what, what, what's the enforcement mechanism here?

[Luke Rosiak]

I think they basically take their word for it. You submit an invoice that said you went to such and such person's house and you, you performed services like housekeeping or conversation for so many hours and the government pays. I mean, there's really no way you can check. Occasionally they'll do these audits that find that the, the companies claim to have visited people at home when they were actually in the hospital. And Medicaid knows that because the hospitals were charging Medicaid for their inpatient care. And that's really the only way they get caught is when two different entities at once try to bill Medicaid for the same person. And so what Medicaid does then is, is they make the home health care companies just refund the money for that specific day when they got caught lying. But they just keep taking their word for it that all the other thousands of times that they say they went to somebody's house, that was definitely only the one time they lied is when they were in the hospital. The other times it's probably fine. And so there's all kinds of clues that these people lie routinely and some of them lied to me.

[Andrew]

So I want to underscore a point that we made in the previous segment, Luke, that this was all made possible because DOGE made public what had previously been hidden from public view. And that is some of the details on Medicaid and how it was paid out. Correct. So that was a DOGE contribution, which is huge. I want to know two things. How many of these people involved in this scheme are Somalis or foreigners? What percentage would you say? And then I'm instantly thinking of states like Washington, Maine, New York, where these are booming businesses. How much of the fraud do you think in those, how much of this industry, this booming industry is fraud in those states?

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, so, I mean, I've seen it reported that the most common job in New York City is a home health care aid. And so once you understand that's being a free butler for a Somali or hanging out with your own family member, I mean, that's a fake job. It's basically ubiquitous. But we don't say it's ubi. If you know how to work the system, you get paid to hang out with your own family. In your own house. So it's like $15 billion or something. In New York. In New York. It's insane. But yeah, it's really bad. I think that we're going to have to look at rather than doing fraud enforcement which turns into whack a mole, you know, you bust Abdukar Muhammad and then pretty soon his brother, you know, Abdi er Muhammad pops up with a bunch of assets and a new company, new company name. It's just so easy for these people just to start new LLCs anytime they need and to put to move assets around in between their family members. They can also flee the country if they need to. Like we saw in feeding our future. They can wire money abroad where we can't get it. It's very difficult to track these people because they all have the same names. And to get to your point, I mean what percentage foreign? Essentially all of them. I mean 99%. Like I was so struck by that. And I think if you could take a field trip of liberals to these places, they would be very radicalized because anybody who doesn't see the pattern here, the connection between immigration and then the exploitation at scale of these generous safety, safety net programs that hadn't really been abused in previous years is completely blind. It's important to, to make that connection because it couldn't be more blatant. It's virtually 100% foreign. And yeah, I think it's very difficult for the government to track. I mean how do you know the difference between Mohammed Ahmed and Ahmed Mohammed? There's a guy that owns a business whose name is just Omar Omar. A lot of times their birthdays are just listed as January 1st because we don't know when they were born. They spell their names different ways, multiple ways within a single document.

[Andrew]

Why are we giving somebody that puts January 1st on all their like, you know, I mean why are. That's the part that's frustrating. It's like why are we not looking into it? We're just gonna write million dollar checks to these people and not perform any oversight or check to verify anything. I mean it's really infuriating. And what makes it even more infuriating is it's May 5, it's Cinco de Mayo today. So all the libs are all over the place talking about abolish ice. Abolish ice. Meanwhile, we've got billions of dollars just flying out the window going to God knows where, probably back to Somalia to fund Al Shabaab or whatever. This is a massive, massive domestic problem. Go ahead Blake.

[Blake Neff]

Well, I wanna end on a white pill, so you have a minute here, Luke, Stuff that this is a red state. What should we be changing? What could a state, in your opinion, pretty easily do to reduce the impact of this? Even if we can't eliminate it without deporting 20 million people, I think that

[Luke Rosiak]

the Trump administration needs to rescind Medicaid waivers and restore Medicaid to what it was intended to be, like basic doctor service. It's not really fair to have certain states be able to provide more than others because the feds are paying for it 70%. And I think that's part of why the states don't care that much if it's wasted is because it's 70% other people's money. So it's great that JD Vance is going to have this task force. Take a look. I've got a lot of really sketchy red flags for them coming out in the Daily Wire this week. But the shortest path to keeping our country from insolvency is to just stop allowing people to charge the government for hanging out with your own family. And if you do have a mom who's getting old and could use some help once a week, do it on your own, because it's the right thing to do. And that's what I think differentiates Somalis here, is they don't want to do normal family tasks unless they get paid.

[Andrew]

Luke Rosiak. Great work. Keep going, man. Keep. Keep going.

[Luke Rosiak]

Thanks, guys.

[Andrew]

I wasn't expecting this, but death of recession genuinely stop me in my tracks. This isn't about dodgeballs and jungle gyms. It's about control. The modern American classroom didn't just happen. It was intentionally designed, standardized and centralized. And once you see who built it and who protects it, everything will click for you, too. Billions of dollars flow through education bureaucracies every year. Test scores collapse, and somehow the answer is always more money and less parental authority. The documentary breaks down how organizations like the NEA amassed enormous influence, how radical gender ideology entered classrooms, and why. Something as basic as recess, movement, freedom, childhood, all the good things, how they had to go. That's not random. It's systemic. Institutions protect themselves. They do not protect your kids. That's why this documentary exists on Angel Studio streaming platform, Angel Guild. Angel Guild is willing to distribute films that challenge powerful systems when legacy media won't touch them. So go to angel.com charlie and watch death of Recess right now. If you're a parent or if you plan to be one, you need to see this film.angel.com. charlie, without further ado, I want to bring in our next two guests who have written an amazing new book. These are New York Times best selling authors Candice Lee and Eric Newman. They're the authors of a new book called George Goodwin Dragonslayer. I believe Bear Grylls is involved in the project. Candace and Eric, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

[Candice Lee]

Hey, good to be here.

[Eric Newman]

Thanks so much for having us.

[Andrew]

Nice backdrop. I love that the branding's on point. All right, so I'm convinced that we got to get younger and younger people inspired. They need to be activated. They need to feel their own agency, the power of their own imagination. That's why I love what you guys are doing here. Tell us about it. It's a scouting legend, so I have questions about what you mean by that, but tell us about the book and why you wrote it.

[Eric Newman]

Yeah, well, there's a famous quote often attributed to G.K. chesterton that really inspired us. And it's. Fairy tales exist not to tell children that dragons are real, but that they can be killed. And that really is the heart of the story, is we were inspired, yes, to tell a great story, a fun story, an exciting story that hooks readers. But we also, you know, we all know that there are dragons everywhere and we want to inspire young men and women to rise up and slay them.

[Candice Lee]

Absolutely. Yeah. And just storyline wise, it's about what you think it's about. It is a young guy who is faced with an impossible situation. He goes on a weekend camping trip and ends up having to save his whole town. But it really is, at its core, core, one of those David and Goliath stories. The kind of story that, you know, we wanted the, the COVID of the book. I'll just hold it up here. We wanted even the youngest reader to be able to look at that and know, okay, this is a story where somebody is going to defy the odds and do something that seems impossible. And so that's really our heart, is to inspire the next generation to see that you do have a hero inside you. And sometimes it might take something really scary, a dragon, to draw it out.

[Andrew]

Yeah, so you say it. So, you know, there's a warning from Bear Grylls here. I love it by the way he goes warning. This adventure is full of danger. It's got dragons and death, coal mines and cold blooded killers, treasure and true love. The stuff legends are made of. But even more dangerous are the kids in this tale. They're tough, they're brave, and they're exactly the kind of heroes Our world needs. And I kind of love the premise. It's like. So it's set in West Virginia and you know that coal mines are strictly forbidden to go in. But 12 year old George Goodwin knows something more. Deep underground lies a treasure that could save his town and clear his father's name. And so then he's with the scouting troops. So explain the tie in with the scouting angle here.

[Candice Lee]

Yeah, well, we love stories where kids are in the driver's seat, you know, like, we think back to like Goonies and even Jurassic park where there's kids who have to make choices in impossible situations. And Eric and I were sitting around years ago working actually on another project and we were looking at a character who was a side character who was a scout. And the more we started talking about it, we're like, man, Scouts are awesome. They are young people who actually know how to do things. You could throw them in any situation and a scout could probably outperform me when it comes to survival. But they're just so broad in what they can do.

[Eric Newman]

Yeah. And it's the rare place in society now, I mean, we talk about, you know, get out and touch grass. It's the rare place where kids have a little bit of autonomy and they can adventure on their own, learn skills on their own. And we thought, man, this would be a fun place to start a story. So we imagine this 12 year old boy, you know, and we had kind of this lightning bolt brainstorm session. A 12 year old boy. This should take place in West Virginia. We just could imagine a dragon in a coal mine. And then we thought, how, who would be the fellow who would be the, the rest of the crew that helps take this dragon down? We thought, oh, it's a scouting patrol and his best friends. So it just kind of like naturally emerged and it's the kind of story that we happen to love.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Blake Neff]

And I appreciate that for sure. I'm an Eagle Scout myself. Charlie was an Eagle Scout as well. Were you in the Scouts?

[Andrew]

Nope.

[Blake Neff]

Never.

[Andrew]

Oh, no. I came from a ranching family that like my experience was literally just like on a horse in the desert.

[Blake Neff]

Sounds like a great way to be a scout, but. No, but it's appreciated because I am. I'm sure. We followed the travails of the main scouting organization, Boy Scouts, which became the gender Non determinist Scouts. But they're making, they're making some progress.

[Andrew]

They're coming back.

[Blake Neff]

It's, it's certainly been a saga. It's been difficult, it's been frustrating and I Suppose I. I appreciate you guys for evoking that. The classic image of a Scout. I don't know if you describe any specific Scouting group they're in, but that really is a set of values that was hugely useful in America, hugely positive for boys. And I approve of evoking that. Even if we know that today the left went after it precisely because it was such a good thing.

[Andrew]

Yeah, but it is coming back. I mean, they partnered with Secretary of War Hegseth, and they're making headway. I don't know if you have insights into that, if that's part of what's going on in the background here or not, but I agree with Blake that the values of Scouting are so critically important to the next generation. That's why the left went after it. If. If we're being honest.

[Candice Lee]

Yeah, there's something about the. There's not very many opportunities for young people to kind of put on a specific identity that carries the values of Scouting. And, you know, my son just became a scout. He's 6 years old, and he went on his first camp out as a lion cub. And it was interesting when he saw a picture of himself, you know, I'm doing mom milestone. He saw a picture of himself in a uniform and he looked at himself and he goes, oh, my goodness, Mom, I look fearless. And then he came home from his first camp out, and I said, hey, I'm a little cold. He brought me the blanket and said, I'm courteous, mom, because I'm a scout. And there is something about stepping into an identity that carries virtue, that carries these responsibilities with them. That. That's something that we did want to kind of evoke with this story that there's a young man who's not only, you know, he's a Scout, but he's stepping into this identity as a dragon slayer. And that's really broader than any one organization. That's something that all of us can aspire to.

[Eric Newman]

You know, when you look at the Scout. Sorry.

[Blake Neff]

Well, someone our staff was asking, you know, George Dragonslayer, is there symbolic meaning to the name? Obviously there's St George as the great dragon slayer.

[Andrew]

George Washington. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eric Newman]

That was. That was part of our lightning bolt inspiration 15 years ago when we first started this. We're like, how? What's his name? And I remember Candice goes, it's George. It's George. Because this will be a modern day reimagining of the legend of St. George. And that just clicked with us. And so there's some St. George threads woven throughout the whole story. Yeah.

[Candice Lee]

And you know, the cool thing is like saint. The legend of St. George. It's some. It's a story that exists in lots of different cultures, but over time it's kind of been lost. And I think that speaks to how, you know, there are so many great stories. The kind of stories that move and inspire us have kind of gotten lost to this generation. And so we loved the idea of being able to reimagine that because we just, we believe that this, the stories kind of work in this space of imagination that's ultimately the bridge between the heart and the mind. And you know, we want to take ideas that are out there and kind of help ground them in stories so that they can move from just being ideas to becoming, you know, beliefs and convictions. And so that's just one of the things we love about storytelling.

[Andrew]

So you would say that this book is probably best geared for what ages?

[Eric Newman]

It's technically middle grade, so you're looking at like the Percy Jackson. Right, The Percy Jackson audience. So they say like 4th to like 7th or 8th grade in that range. And that happens to be one of our favorite genres. You know, we were both raised on Goonies.

[Candice Lee]

Yeah.

[Eric Newman]

And we love like adventurous stories where the stakes are really high. It's life or death. And. But yeah, at the heart of the story are. Is a group of kids.

[Candice Lee]

Yeah. And we, we really did our best. You know, we, we have this core group of characters that are so fun. They range from 12 to 17. But really, even the moms are awesome in the book. We kind of wanted to make it something that if a family sits around and reads it aloud, there is something that everybody can, you know, everyone can enjoy and also everyone can kind of aspire to in some ways. So yeah, it's a fun story.

[Andrew]

All right, so this is available like everywhere. Books are sold from Target and Walmart, Amazon, Barnes and Noble books, a million, all the places, all the things. You guys are New York Times best selling authors. Real quick, your pitch to parents. Why do they need a book like this for their kids?

[Eric Newman]

Oh, man. You know, this started with a vision that we want to inspire young men and women to be prepared mentally, physically, spiritually to slay life's dragons. You know, we know the world is full of dragons right now. And our heart is that this story will inspire young people to discover their God given identity. To be a David versus a Goliath or a dragon slayer, to take on whatever dragons there are in their lives.

[Candice Lee]

Yeah. There's a line from one of the characters. And she says, you know, there's breath in my lungs. I'm here for something, I'm going to find out what. And we just want to connect young people to their purpose, to their destiny. And so that's why, you know, we've, you've heard the phrase pay it forward. We're asking people to just slay it forward. Think of somebody who needs a story like that. Because we believe that this can unlock identity and truth. And we are excited for families to discover that together.

[Andrew]

Let's talk about woke lib literature for this kind of age group. What are kids up against? Like, what are they reading in schools? Because it's so important that they have alternatives that are actually good. Exciting, daring, adventurous. I love that you have Bear Grylls involved in this. Who's Mr. Adventure? But what are they up against in schools?

[Eric Newman]

I mean, everything, you name it. You know, when, when we first started again, as we said, we just love these kinds of stories. You know, we're Goonies at heart. But when for us, as important as the story itself is why we're telling it. And we had come across, this is 14, 15 years old by now. We've come across this TED talk called the Demise of Guys. It's fascinating. TED talk. You can look it up. I think there's a book and it's two psychologists. And this is not from a faith perspective, this is just clinical psychologists. And they were talking about the incredible, incredibly rough trajectory of young boys becoming men and how immersive worlds of video gaming and online pornography and social media, how it's just wrecking havoc on a generation. And one of the big questions to ask is it touches on is the universal question that every young man, really all of us ask is, do I have what it takes? And when we read this like just utterly sobering statistic, we were like, this is why we have to tell this story. We have to tell this story. You know, I tell. It took us 15 years to get here. And one of the stories I tell often is that, you know, why, what kept you going? I took my son on a camp out, a father son camp out when he was 3. And he was, he was by far the youngest kid, but I thought, he'll be fine. And he wore diapers at night. He came out of the tent and all these other boys saw him and started laughing at him and pointing and said, you're a baby, you're a baby, you're just a baby. I was like devastated. I run over there to intervene and my son is laughing and he says, I'm not a baby, I'm a dragon slayer. And I was. I just stood there and I was like, oh, my gosh. All these stories I've been telling him, all the insults didn't stick, all the.

[Ari Fleischer]

The.

[Eric Newman]

The mockery, all that kind of stuff, none of it stuck because he knew who he was. And that's our heart. You know, it's like everything is thrown at kids nowadays from social media and school and who they are and who they aren't, but if they know who God calls them, like, none of that other stuff sticks.

[Andrew]

That is so true. I mean, life is a series of things that get in your way, that knock you down, that beat you up, call you names, accuse you of things. And it's how you respond that is ultimately going to define the person. And what is it? It's like life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you choose to react to it. And that resiliency and the courage, building that up in kids. I had a similar story with my son this weekend, actually. And he looked at me, he was scared to go on this ride. And he said, dad, I'm gonna choose to be brave. And he went and did it. And I was like, yes. You know, like, it's getting in there somewhere where I'm like, you gotta be brave, son. And he looked at me and he said, I'm choose to be brave. I'm scared, but I'm gonna choose to be brave. I'm so proud of him. And those are the lessons that we need to be getting through. Not that you're a victim, not that there's nothing you can do about anything. Not that, you know, ultimately your fate is sealed and all is awful. That's not the American spirit either. And I think that's, again, go back to Scouts. Scouts was about giving you agency and power over your dominion. And yeah, I think bad things happen, but ultimately we want young people to be the type of people that can overcome the obstacles that are thrown in their life. All right, Blake, final question to you. You're the scout. You're the Eagle Scout here.

[Blake Neff]

I guess a natural follow up. Is there going to be a sequel? Is he going to defeat other monsters?

[Candice Lee]

Yes, we are happy to say this is actually the first in a three book series. So it's the Order of the Dragon Slayer series. That's why you don't want to fall behind. You got to read the first one. But we are actually furiously writing the second one, dreaming up the third one. And we're so Thrilled to be able to take families on not just one great adventure, but a whole epic.

[Andrew]

So it's not going to take 15 years, though, right? We're going to get there.

[Blake Neff]

Might be referring to someone there.

[Andrew]

Yeah, well, they said it took him 15 years.

[Eric Newman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

We're, we're.

[Eric Newman]

It'll be out the next one will be out next summer sometime.

[Andrew]

Great. Great. Well, congratulations on your book. I think this stuff is so important. I wanted to devote as much time as we could in the show because we need stuff that feels like the 90s again. That's what I think. You know, it's basically like go back to, like, the way things used to be when we all had our sanity and before social media. Candice Lee, Eric Newman, congratulations. Check out the book. Get it wherever books are sold. Get it for somebody in your family or a friend. God bless you both.

[Candice Lee]

Thank you so much for having us.

[Andrew]

All right. God bless you guys. All right, final minute here. It's Cinco de Mayo, and I want.

[Blake Neff]

I'm gonna go have tacos today.

[Andrew]

We're gonna go have tacos. I'm not. Because I'm still getting over this stomach bug thing. I look, you know, maybe skinnier. Maybe that's the thing. I haven't eaten in, like two days.

[Blake Neff]

Well, you know, if you get, you know what they say, if you need to purge a lot of stuff from

[Andrew]

your system, just get sick.

[Blake Neff]

Get some. Or get some tacos. Well, listen, get some really spicy tacos.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Blake Neff]

I like a really authentic Mexican place that'll purge me.

[Eric Newman]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

So here's. Here's what I want you to do today in this final 30 seconds that we have together. The Democrats are going all in, hitting ice. I want you to go public today somewhere, whatever your preferred social platform is, and defend ice. That is your homework today. Defend the brave men and women that keep this country safe and secure. And go tell leader Thune that you want the Save America act passed. So we want New Mexico to be a Republican state. We want Nevada to be firmly in our column. So go say something nice about ice. They keep us safe and they're heroes. And I refuse to let them be defamed and maligned by these open border cabals that just want to loot our Medicaid funds. For more on many of these stories

[Eric Newman]

and news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.