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Eric Metaxas
Thank you for listening to this Podcast
Charlie Kirk
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Podcast Host/Announcer
Podcast 1, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. Today on the Charlie Kirk show, the great Eric Metaxas joins us for a candid conversation about President Trump and so much more. Email us your questions. Freedom charliekirk.com consider supporting us at charliekirk.com supportcharliekirk.com support. Get involved with TurningPoint USA@tpusa.com tpusa.com and this conversation with Eric Metaxas happened at the great Liberty University on the heels of the Falkirk center for Faith and Liberty. Enjoy. This conversation with Eric Metaxas exclusively aired right here. Buckle up. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Eric Metaxas
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are
Charlie Kirk
lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
Eric Metaxas
I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. Done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point usa.
Podcast Host/Announcer
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. Hey, everybody.
Charlie Kirk
Welcome to this conversation with the incredible and the amazing Eric Metaxas.
Eric Metaxas
Thank you very much.
Charlie Kirk
So. So, Eric, you recently, we won't say any names in a conversation as to why was it Christians or conservatives shouldn't vote for Trump. You were on the opposite side.
Eric Metaxas
I was on the opposite side. I was at John Brown University in Saloam Springs, Arkansas, and there was kind of a panel, you know, discussion. You can't call it a debate, but effectively, I guess it was that with David French. And we were socially distanced, like, you know, a thousand feet across the stage from each other. And when he was speaking, I had to wear a mask, and when I was speaking, he had to wear a mask.
Charlie Kirk
Are you kidding me?
Eric Metaxas
And guess what? It worked. No one died. So thus far, fingers crossed, no one died.
Charlie Kirk
And you were 900 yards away.
Eric Metaxas
We were 900 yards away. I had to use a very powerful scope to see him, but it was an amazing experience. And I advocated that Christians not only should vote for Trump, but must vote for Trump. And he advocated the opposite. And a good time was had by all.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, so what? So the essence of his position, we get these emails a lot on our podcast, is that Christians should not justify Donald Trump's actions or worse. I'm just trying to build out where's here's the issue.
Eric Metaxas
If you really demonize somebody in the way that they've demonized Trump such that he is patently a monster, then you say, I can't vote for a monster. I can't vote for Hitler. I can't vote for a man who is publicly cruel and who is a liar. And I would agree with that. Right, except it's preposterous. Whatever they cite is either at best subjective or utterly false. And so when you call somebody a liar, he is a liar. What is a liar? And when Barack Obama says, you can keep your plan, if you like your plan, you can keep it. So is he now like he's a liar forever, like he's just branded as a liar? The idea that Trump speaks hyperbolically, comedically, nobody who doesn't understand that will be able to deal with it. And the mainstream media has become ultra serious, so serious that they can't appreciate nuance or inflection, whatever that it's happened to me. You know, you crack a joke, like half the time I'm speaking semi jokingly and you realize people are going to interpret it in a flat footed way and they're going to say, you said that, you said you declared Jesus was white. It's like, no, that was kind of like a setup for like a punchline of. But they don't care. So articles get written that of course is Trump's life. So whatever he does gets so twisted. So, so the argument is not an argument. I mean, if you are convinced that he is the Devil 2.0. Well, I guess I wouldn't vote for him either. But I think that the facts or the points that folks like French make just strike me as pure subjectivism, that they just don't like the cut of his jib and they, they inflate it into him being some kind of a Pol Pot figure now.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, but was it policy focused at all or was it all personality?
Eric Metaxas
Well, that's the issue. In other words, it didn't strike me as being policy focused. It struck me as, for example, one big thing that he did, which I was not prepared for because it strikes me as just so crazy. He, he inflates the boogeyman of, of the alt right and, and on. And I just thought, what, what are you talking about? I mean, we have antifa and BLM mobs burning down America and you're bringing up this thing that, I don't know anybody that, you know, they say, oh yes, there, there are alt right riots and they're all right, you know, talking about. Well, that's what I'm saying.
Charlie Kirk
It's like dates, locations, names, people.
Eric Metaxas
It's just, it's just absolutely. And then another big talking point is that, you know, Trump's main man, you know, Steve Bannon, said that he wanted, you know, to Breitbart to be a platform for the alt right. And it's kind of like that's the qed. And then I have to kind of point out, well, okay, by the way, Trump fired Steve Bannon, number one. Number two, I don't even know what you're talking about, even if it were true. So it's become. It. It's. I'm not kidding. It's. It's a fiction. It's a narrative. This is kind of where the left is today. But it's, it's a huge fiction. It's a huge narrative filled with emotion. There's no real arguing with it because logic is almost kicked away as a, as an oppressive patriarchal Western concept.
Charlie Kirk
That's exactly right.
Eric Metaxas
And so it's gotta be about somebody insulted my daughter who is black, and therefore every other Trump supporter must also be racist. And, you know, on and on and on. And you can't argue with that.
Charlie Kirk
That's very dangerous. Group identity, almost the generalization.
Eric Metaxas
Well, of course it is.
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Charlie Kirk
So here's where I'm at on this with some of these conservative never Trumpers. There's not that many of them, actually. The data shows that Trump's the most popular Republican president running for reelection, even more so than George W. Bush ever since Ronald Reagan. So they're just louder and they're given a bigger platform because of how much the media hates President Trump. And so there's nothing new about this idea of, you know, Republicans trying to play righteous, self righteous about it. What I'm, what I'm just trying to square here is for those people of the world, the David Frenches, I think, and I don't want to impose too much of it, it's almost a pseudo intellectualism that they have though, that, that's,
Eric Metaxas
that's another way to talk about it. In other words, it strikes me because I grew up in a working class environment. I, you know, by going to Yale and living in Manhattan and traveling in these circles, I feel like I'm, I can speak, I'm bilingual, right. So when Trump speaks with his hyperbole and his almost like a Jackie Mason humor shtick and the bluster and whatever, I get that language, right? I don't, I don't read it like a dull PBS intern would read it, you know, and I think that what happened is what Trump has done is he's flushed out. You also see this in the Christian faith that you flush out those people who want their thing to be respectable. Now, there's nothing wrong with that per se, but they are unwilling ever to ally themselves with someone they find somewhat embarrassing socially. In other words, if you, you know, if you're not a beltway intellectual, if you can't parry with George Will or Ross Douthat or whatever, they don't, they don't, you embarrass them. And so in a sense, they have the same elitist view of the so called deplorables.
Charlie Kirk
Yes, that's exactly right.
Eric Metaxas
That Hillary Clinton did. And that's, that's where I think this is broken down. That's, you can almost see that these are the people who, they were fashioning for themselves a kind of intellectually respectable conservatism. Now we know it's intellectually respectable, but the point is that everyone who adopts it doesn't need themselves to be intellectually respectable.
Charlie Kirk
I think there's a level deeper here though, that Trump has signaled a shift that some of these pseudo intellectuals on the conservative side have been sort of wrong about a Couple things. And not just sort of wrong, but very wrong. And especially on the issues of international trade, middle class exporting. Not just, not just exporting jobs, but livelihoods overseas. 15 million jobs.
Eric Metaxas
No, no, this is, this is, what I'm saying is like he has, but
Charlie Kirk
he's so dogmatic about it.
Eric Metaxas
But he has thoroughly embarrassed them. That's right, he's humiliated them. He has pointed out that the so called Republicans have been as bad or worse or no better than the Democrats on some of the most fundamental issues. Which, you know, I've heard people over the years say, oh, both parties are the same, both parties are the same. And I've said, well, you've got to be kidding. That's not true. That's not true. Then you realize like on a lot of stuff that is precisely correct. If you're willing to play patty cake with the satanic monster called China, Communist China, and you're willing to be seduced by the free market as though it is a God, that if we introduce the free market that suddenly they're going to sprout tricorn hats and muskets and they're going to recite the Declaration of Independence. The free market can't do that. You need virtue. That's exactly right. Which is why we're at the Falkirk center here. If you take virtue out of the free market, if you take virtue out of the democratic process, the whole thing breaks down. But none of them knew that. The Democrats didn't know it and the Republicans didn't know it. And that's why today we are where we are.
Charlie Kirk
And if I were to use a term, tracing back or contact trace back, that's not probably the right term. It's FaceTime, but whatever. Little probably too soon to use that. But going back 40 years ago, you had strict libertarian ideologues pairing up with corporate interests and they believe that change came through laissez faire economic trade policy, when in reality that's fine. But if you're exporting into a civilization that does not believe in the western ideal, made in the image of God, then that change is actually just going
Podcast Host/Announcer
to make them richer and give them
Charlie Kirk
more of what they already have.
Eric Metaxas
And it's also going to give them more power to oppress the weak.
Charlie Kirk
What they already have is tyranny. So they're tyranny more effective, okay?
Eric Metaxas
And that's precisely commercialize their tyranny. And it's. And again, if you make an idol of the free market, you say we're going to take morality out of it. Okay, so let's say you can manufacture ovens for the Nazis to burn Jews. You're going to make money. Are you going to be bothered about the morality of it? Well, most people would know that that's the dirtiest money. That's the devil's money. I won't take that money. But what happens when you're dealing with China and they have Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps being treated? I mean, look, the ones that are not murdered for their organs. I mean, this is so horrific, it's almost impossible to believe. Murdered for their organs so that the Chinese government can make $500,000 off of a human being that they've murdered. Okay, that's happening. So do you. Do you trade with someone like that? Do you trade with someone that is using those people? They don't murder as slave laborers? Do you buy Nike shoes? Do you go to NBA games? If you don't have those conversations in a culture like this, we deserve to unravel ourselves. We don't deserve the freedom and the prosperity.
Charlie Kirk
We're only having this conversation because of Trump. No one else was willing to have that conversation.
Eric Metaxas
Precisely.
Charlie Kirk
And I came from that old school of conservatism in my early years of the David Frenchites, which is, you must worship free trade economics as if it is dogma of religion. You can never question it. The U.S. chamber of Commerce must always be correct. They've never been wrong.
Podcast Host/Announcer
How dare you.
Charlie Kirk
You know, Trump's the worst thing ever because he's calling out China for what they're doing. And then you actually take a drive from Manhattan to Milwaukee and get off the expressway and then just go into these old towns in Ohio and Indiana where there were these destroyed factories. And they said, that's a good thing because we have Ricardo's law of comparative advantage. Don't you understand?
Podcast Host/Announcer
Like, okay, so we get piles full
Charlie Kirk
of plastic and the church there. Then go visit the church and go through the registry in 1980 and go through the registry now. That's now for people of faith. David French is one. He should look at that. The registry in those churches, down 90%. So it's not just the factory closed, it's the entire. It's the entire middle part of the country, the faith. And then. So they say, well, that's far too materialist of you. They say, oh, no, the materialism doesn't play that big of a role. You're trying to tell me when you just tell 600 people earning $30 an hour your jobs are now In Wuhan. Go find something else to do. And you do that for 15 million people, that's going to land perfectly.
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Eric Metaxas
Well, you know, it's a funny thing because if you believe in the free market, you know, you have to deal with the morality at some point you bump into, you know, is, is cruelty to animals, is cruelty to human beings. What are the things that bump up against this idea of a pure free market? And if China isn't all of those things rolled into one times a billion, then what is there? So how is it conceivable that only this president had the courage and the wisdom to see this and to, and to begin to deal with it? I mean it's, it's. If he did nothing else, that would be magnificent.
Charlie Kirk
Well, and he's done so much more than that. And also, I mean he's exposed the fraud of the Republican party, of being purchased by the tech companies, of being an incestuous swamp within Washington D.C. literally. And you wrote a whole book called Donald Drains the Swamp.
Eric Metaxas
Yeah, a whole book Satire. Yeah.
Charlie Kirk
Which I think is, I don't think we do enough satire.
Eric Metaxas
No, it's. Look, it's a. I've written three humor books, Donald the Caveman books. And they're meant to in a way explain all this stuff on the simplest level so that people realize I'm not crazy. This is what is happening. But even a kid can understand it. And there's nothing vile in the books. So you can use them as kids books because they look like kids books. But I think that most Americans kind of get this. They get this stuff and I think, you know, people are willing to give stuff a pass for a number of decades and then at some point the evidence is in. I mean, when you look at the Democratic run cities and the trillions that were spent, you know, the war against poverty, at some point you look at it and you go, this has failed. We now know this has failed. And black Americans have been, you know, treated as suckers. And now there needs to be a reckoning. They need to reject it.
Charlie Kirk
So to shift gears for a second, you had a great interview on Tucker Carlson about the church there. There are some pastors that come out and they say that the church has been the number one arbiter of white supremacy in our country. And you refuted this really well. What was your argument? I mean, look, you were terrific.
Eric Metaxas
There are several arguments. I'll simply say this. When I saw that church using the language.
Charlie Kirk
The New York based church.
Eric Metaxas
Yeah. Yes. Well, look, they're a Jesuit, lost church already. But I'm saying that when you see the Church of Jesus Christ using certain kinds of woke language, okay, when they talk about white supremacy, white nationalism and so on and so forth, white privilege, it is no different. It is exactly what the Nazis did to the churches in the 30s. They did not say, we want to abolish the church, come and worship Satan, deny God. No, no, no, no. They infiltrated because they said, we're going to use these gullible people and we're going to ride along with them for a while or we're going to let them ride along with us for a while to stay out of trouble. It's kind of like paying, you know, protection money. It's like you, you play ball with us, you put your Black Lives Matter and your flag and your rainbow flag outside of that and we'll, we'll leave you alone. But the point is, the people that are asking them to do this are themselves Marxists, cultural Marxists who do not believe in God, who do not believe in the dignity of the individual, do not believe in that. We're made in the image of God. So if you go along with this, which the German churches did and which many American churches are doing, you're riding on the back of a tiger. This tiger intends to eat you, not to make friends with you. And so this is Something that is so ugly because if you're an atheist, you don't even have a reason to believe racism is wrong. Think of the irony of this. In other words, it's only the churches that said, we're made in the image of God. We have to abolish the slave trade. We have to abolish slavery. We have to work to abolish, you know, the Jim Crow laws and so on and so forth. That all came out of the churches. Martin Luther King knew that. And since the 60s, we've gotten a different narrative. It's the 16, 19 narrative. And the, the ignorance of the churches to buy into this thinking they're. They're somehow playing along with somebody who will help them. They are signing their own death warrants. And it's the death warrant of Western civilization. Let's face.
Charlie Kirk
Well, the Bible built Western civilization, thank you very much.
Eric Metaxas
That. That's exactly correct. I think I said that on that show. It's kind of funny because that's the point is like you reject that and you reject God. Then you tell me, on what principles are you going to build your civilization except power and blood?
Charlie Kirk
But the horrific irony is the churches in the Bible built Western civilization. Now churches are actively involved in destroying Western civilization.
Eric Metaxas
Yeah, well, some churches, and I would argue those churches aren't real churches. You know, they're sort of. They're the phony churches. They're the same churches that operated when Wilberforce was fighting the slave trade. And they, The Church of England, for example, owned plantations in the West Indies. In other words, you know, there's this thing called hypocrisy. And it's existed in the church from the beginning. You know, Judas was pretending to be on board. There has. That has always existed, but it's always been the role of real people of faith and lovers of truth to speak up as clearly and loudly and courageously as. As they can. Bonhoeffer did. They didn't listen to him. The question is today, will people in the churches wake up to what's being done to them by the atheist left? And, you know, that remains to be seen.
Charlie Kirk
And it's being, it's being infiltrated at the very highest level. And you're seeing there's the black square taken, the racial penance movement.
Eric Metaxas
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's absurd on many levels, but I think just the whiff of it, just the fact that it smells like what happened to the churches in the 30s in Germany Ought to be enough for people to say, I don't trust this.
Charlie Kirk
So a lot of. There's churches. A lot of churches are still closed, as we just mentioned. A lot of churches are funding the BLM Incorporated nonsense. And this all kind of comes to this idea of whether we want Western civilization to continue to exist. You wrote a phenomenal book about this. Can you just take a step back? What is the west and why is it so important we preserve it?
Eric Metaxas
Well, let's think of it this way. I mean, being Greek, I'm very happy to say that the west in a way is the, the confluence of Athens and Jerusalem. Right. You have a lot of good things that came out of.
Charlie Kirk
And Scotland.
Eric Metaxas
Yeah, I forgot Scotland that you, you
Charlie Kirk
have a kind of being, being a Kirk.
Eric Metaxas
I know, I know, I know.
Charlie Kirk
Can't forget our. We don't want.
Eric Metaxas
We can't go too far afield. I'm just going to stick to Athens in Jerusalem. But, but the point is that something happened that results in what we call Western Christ, Christendom, which was, you know, one of the greatest cultures in the history of the world. And that out of that came this thing we call the United States of America and others. The idea that we can govern ourselves and be genuinely free. It was discovered fairly recently. It was put into practice, you know, fairly recently. And it has created an opportunity so that an infinite number of people could be raised out of poverty. There's no zero sum game. We're able to create wealth. We're able to spread freedom. It's a magical moment in history. And we've seen the full flower of that in the United States of America. And in the last 60 years, people have begun to try to undo the whole thing and to discredit the whole thing. And that's what we're fighting now.
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Charlie Kirk
and the tragedy is that so many people are being taught that everything around us is not just bad, it's the worst thing ever, that the west was a mistake. It's a colonialist exploitation experiment must be destroyed at all costs. And this is where you get Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
Eric Metaxas
Yeah, all of these people should move to North Korea because they, they will see how some of them would actually
Charlie Kirk
enjoy that if they were in charge.
Eric Metaxas
Well, no, but I mean that's the whole point is that if you want to, if you want to play that game, in other words, you have a choice between truth and liberty or this ugly, cynical, ultimately satanic game where some people will have the power and they will make all the decisions and everyone else will be ruled and governed from above. That's the choice. Now if there were another choice, which they sometimes pretend there is some kind of supposed off socialism or something, I would say, well, maybe, but the fact of the matter is there is not. And these people animated usually by a kind of just pure emotional anger against something, maybe it's daddy, maybe it's, I don't know what it is, but they have allowed themselves to be angry and to point the finger at others and in effect to scapegoat others rather than say, I'm the problem, I'm a sinner, I need God, the problem is somebody else. Obviously the Nazis did that with the Jews. It's happened through history.
Charlie Kirk
You find someone Chinese, right?
Eric Metaxas
So you find someone to blame and you demonize them. And we know how that goes and that's the path that the radical left has launched us on. And if we don't fight it with everything we have, we will lose, you know, the greatest country in history which show which gives the most promise and opportunity to those who are without, to those who are not flourishing. In other words, if you actually care about the poor, if you, if you believe Black Lives Matter, you must speak against the organization called Black Lives Matter. You must vote for the president who is going to create opportunity and jobs. And that's the great irony.
Charlie Kirk
What we've been given, and it's a gift we've been given by generations prior to us, is more in jeopardy than ever before. And the real unfortunate part of it is that it's so self inflicted, is that it's so internal and it's going to be one of the first times we've seen in, you know, modern. The modern era where it's not conquest, it's not anything but. It's just an internal.
Eric Metaxas
But it was. But it was predicted by Abraham Lincoln,
Charlie Kirk
you know, that Nietzsche also predicted.
Eric Metaxas
Well, Nietzsche comes after Lincoln.
Podcast Host/Announcer
I know.
Eric Metaxas
So he stole, just like Biden stole.
Charlie Kirk
Nietzsche predicted the communist carnage, is that right?
Eric Metaxas
Well, that. That I didn't quite know, but I guess the reason I.
Charlie Kirk
Death of God.
Eric Metaxas
Oh, yeah, no, no, definitely.
Charlie Kirk
And he said sort of what comes after this is not good.
Podcast Host/Announcer
Like he wasn't. It wasn't celebrated.
Charlie Kirk
It was a eulogy. It wasn't.
Eric Metaxas
Right.
Charlie Kirk
Anyway.
Eric Metaxas
No, the only reason I bring up Lincoln is because Lincoln gave a speech in the. In the Springfield Young Men's Lyceum, I think it was. He was a very young man, you know, not much older than you, and he gave a speech where he talked about the slow artillery of time. He basically makes the case that if we the people don't keep the Republic, in the words of Ben Franklin.
Charlie Kirk
Franklin, if you can keep it.
Eric Metaxas
If we don't do that, we will destroy ourselves. But there is no way anyone else can destroy us. It has to come from within. So Osgin has wrote a book called the Free People's Suicide that it must be by suicide that we destroy ourselves. So that's simply to reiterate what you said.
Charlie Kirk
So any books you're working on currently? Got another?
Eric Metaxas
Yes, sir.
Charlie Kirk
Are you allowed to talk about it?
Eric Metaxas
I have a book. Yeah, I have a book coming out in February which is a literary memoir. It's utterly apolitical and it's not. It's only slightly spiritual. It's the story of my life from birth till the moment around my 25th birthday when I had an utterly miraculous Jesus dream that changed changed my life completely and forever. But I wanted to write a book to reach out to people who wouldn't read. Like a spiritual memoir. Just a. It's just a story of growing up as the son of European immigrants. My dad came from Greece, my mom came from Germany. And there's a lot of humor in it. There's a lot of crazy stories and stuff. Growing up in that. In that world and then going to a place like Yale and not really fitting in. The title of the book is Fish out of Water. A Search for the Meaning of Life.
Charlie Kirk
And the fact is it's like Man's Search. It's like Viktor Frankl with less tragic.
Eric Metaxas
With more jokes.
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, with a nicer start.
Eric Metaxas
But. But the Fact is that it's the story of my life. And I hope what it does is it gives people an opportunity to see what it's like just to grow up in America and the American dream. But then to realize if I don't know the meaning of it all, I can't enjoy it. I have to know, what is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of my life? Does life even have meaning? And at Yale and those kinds of elite institutions, they. They sort of teach you that life has no meaning, but they don't have the courage.
Charlie Kirk
Well curated nihilism.
Eric Metaxas
Exactly. They don't have the courage to explain it or to say it because it's too nasty. So they just sort of, you know, pretend that it's not true or that, you know, on the weekends we've got alcohol and sports and get a really good job, and in a few decades, it'll all be over. So my book is. Is meant to be my story.
Charlie Kirk
Your book, Miracles is unbelievable. Seven great men, and then you have seven other great men, right?
Eric Metaxas
Seven more men. Seven men, seven women.
Charlie Kirk
Do you have seven women yet?
Eric Metaxas
Seven women exist, of course. And seven more women is being worked on.
Charlie Kirk
And you have Bonhoeffer.
Eric Metaxas
Yes.
Charlie Kirk
And then if you can keep it.
Eric Metaxas
If you can keep it.
Charlie Kirk
I always get that. And the last best hope. I mean, Prager's book, I get them confused all the time.
Eric Metaxas
Well, and of course, that's. He. He ripped that off from. From Lincoln. I ripped my quote off from Franklin.
Charlie Kirk
Eric, you got to go to the stage. God bless you, man.
Eric Metaxas
Thank you so much.
Charlie Kirk
Thank you.
Podcast Host/Announcer
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In this episode, Charlie Kirk sits down for a wide-ranging discussion with author and commentator Eric Metaxas at Liberty University, following a Falkirk Center event. The two deeply examine the phenomenon of Never-Trump conservatism, its roots in American intellectual circles, the cultural clash around President Trump, and the existential stakes they see for Western civilization and the Christian faith. Along the way, they reflect on political hypocrisy, the dangers of group identity, the transformation of American conservatism, and what it means to fight for the survival of the West.
Metaxas recounts a recent exchange with David French at a Christian university where he argued that Christians not only can but "must" vote for Trump, while French made the opposite case (01:22–02:18).
Media & Opposition Narrative:
Alt-Right and Policy Focus:
Elitism and Respectability:
Intellectual Respectability vs. Populism:
Virtue in the Market:
Exposing the Swamp:
Churches and Social Justice:
Kirk asks about churches accused of being arbiters of white supremacy. Metaxas compares American churches adopting "woke language" to how “the Nazis did to churches in the 30s,” warning that aligning with modern progressive causes invites destruction from within. (16:52–19:07)
Only those grounded in the belief that humans are "made in the image of God" have successfully fought for abolition and equality, he argues. He frames the current flirtation with anti-racism movements in parts of the church as “signing their own death warrants.” (19:07–20:17)
Defining the West:
Postmodernism & Self-Sabotage:
Scapegoating and Power:
America's Fate:
On demonization and political narratives:
“If you really demonize somebody in the way that they've demonized Trump such that he is patently a monster, then you say, I can't vote for a monster ... except it's preposterous.”
– Eric Metaxas (02:31)
On intellectual respectability:
“...these are the people who, they were fashioning for themselves a kind of intellectually respectable conservatism. Now we know it's intellectually respectable, but the point is that everyone who adopts it doesn't need themselves to be intellectually respectable.”
– Eric Metaxas (09:22)
On the need for virtue in the free market:
“If you take virtue out of the free market, if you take virtue out of the democratic process, the whole thing breaks down. But none of them knew that.”
– Eric Metaxas (10:06)
On trading with China:
“Do you trade with someone that is using those people they don't murder as slave laborers? ... If you don't have those conversations in a culture like this, we deserve to unravel ourselves.”
– Eric Metaxas (12:49)
On churches adopting ‘woke language’:
“It's exactly what the Nazis did to the churches in the 30s... You're riding on the back of a tiger. This tiger intends to eat you, not to make friends with you.”
– Eric Metaxas (17:17–19:07)
On the West:
“Something happened that results in what we call Western Christendom, which was... one of the greatest cultures in the history of the world. And out of that came this thing we call the United States of America.”
– Eric Metaxas (21:16)
On America’s internal threats:
“...if we the people don't keep the Republic... we will destroy ourselves. But there is no way anyone else can destroy us.”
– Eric Metaxas, paraphrasing Lincoln (26:35)
| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------| | 01:22 | Metaxas describes debate with David French | | 02:31 | On demonization and Trump-as-monster narrative | | 04:26 | Are Never-Trump arguments policy-based? | | 05:09 | Media narratives and the rejection of logic | | 08:06 | Elitism and “respectable” conservatism | | 09:41 | Trump exposes conservative errors on trade & China | | 10:06 | Morality and free market critique | | 12:49 | On the cost of ignoring virtue in commerce with China | | 16:52 | Churches, white supremacy allegations, and wokeism | | 20:57 | What is 'the West'? Metaxas on Western Civilization | | 23:33 | Attacks on the West; Foucault, Derrida, and postmodern left | | 25:25 | America's internal dangers and Lincoln’s warning | | 26:57 | Metaxas promotes upcoming memoir, Fish out of Water |
The episode is spirited and robustly conservative, blending satirical humor (especially from Eric Metaxas), urgent warnings about cultural and spiritual drift, and a sense of camaraderie between the host and guest. Tones range from humorous (referencing exaggerated panel social distancing, satire books) to deeply serious (on mass atrocities in China, American decline, and the survival of Western values).
In this candid, provocative conversation, Charlie Kirk and Eric Metaxas set out a worldview in which the fate of Western civilization hangs in the balance. Through discussion of Trump’s legacy, the failures of conservative elites, the moral bankruptcy of free-market fundamentalism devoid of virtue, and the dangers of woke ideology infiltrating the church, they aim to rally listeners to vigilance and cultural engagement.
This episode will resonate with conservative audiences concerned about Never-Trumpers, cultural Marxism, and the future of faith and the West—and offers memorable zingers and moments of reflection for all.