REWIND — Charlie at 18, Newly Unearthed

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Charlie Kirk Show

Episode: REWIND — Charlie at 18, Newly Unearthed
Date: October 3, 2025
Host: Charlie Kirk
Guests: Jack Roser, Lane Schoenberger

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Overview

In this special "rewind" episode, listeners hear from Charlie Kirk at age 18, soon after founding Turning Point USA. The conversation, originally featured on Champion News Talk Radio, dives into Charlie's formative experiences challenging progressive narratives in high school, his critique of the education system, the early mission and methods of Turning Point USA, and the broader culture war over America's founding values. The tone is unapologetically conservative, focused on mobilizing young people toward activism and civic engagement, and takes aim at perceived progressive biases in public schools.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Charlie Kirk’s Early Critique of Public Education

• Progressive Agendas in Schools

  • Kirk recounts his discomfort with politicized teaching and curricula:
    • Teachers pushing alternative agendas, downplaying the relevance of founding documents, and relying heavily on progressive texts (00:44–01:44).
    • Example: The local school board nearly removed all pre-1860 US history, labeling the Constitution and Declaration of Independence as "irrelevant" (02:24, 02:33).

    “They tried to remove for our US history classes everything before 1860 saying it was not relevant.” — Charlie Kirk (02:33)

• Curriculum Bias & The Role of Paul Krugman

  • Kirk critiques the adoption of Paul Krugman’s economics textbook, claiming it contains inaccuracies and indoctrination:

    “In it was factually incorrect data... It said the Reagan tax cuts did not accelerate economic growth.” — Charlie Kirk (04:09)

  • Kirk frames Krugman as partisan and ideologically unsound, and challenges the objectivity of materials used in public education (04:08–05:08).

2. Parental and Public Engagement

• Lack of Parental Involvement
  • Kirk laments minimal parental awareness and engagement in school board decisions and education policy.

    “Parents have not been involved in school boards like they need to be. They do not run for school board. They don't show up to the meetings.” — Charlie Kirk (03:34)

3. Shifting Attitudes Among Youth

• Preference for Socialism Among Students

  • Kirk describes a survey revealing substantial confusion and favoritism toward socialism over capitalism among local students:

    "28% said capitalism, 40% said socialism. The rest said they don't know the difference..." — Charlie Kirk (05:41)

• Government Seen as the Solution

  • He details how progressive/collectivist history is taught, conditioning youth to see government as a necessary problem-solver (05:41–06:24).

4. The Founding and Approach of Turning Point USA

• Origins & Methods
  • Kirk founded Turning Point USA at the end of high school, quickly expanding to dozens of chapters nationwide (07:54–08:11).
  • Outreach strategies included:
    • Heavy use of social media (12,000 Facebook “likes” at the time)
    • Student-led columnists and website advocacy
    • Innovative community engagement events, like debate tournaments and three-on-three basketball games:

      “It’s innovative, it’s new, it’s fresh... Not many think tanks think to do a basketball tournament.” — Charlie Kirk (08:39)

    • Civic engagement without direct campaigning for candidates, focusing on education and activism

5. Issues of Focus: Debt, Deficit, and Accountability in Education

• Prioritizing Fiscal Issues

  • Kirk frames the national debt and deficit as moral issues for his generation, calling excessive government spending socialistic:

    “We think that it’s immoral. And we do call it socialistic behavior. Absolutely.” — Charlie Kirk (11:18)

• Education Reform and Teacher Accountability

  • He argues for private sector reforms and enhanced teacher accountability, noting high teacher salaries with little oversight in his district (11:15–12:05).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On True Fulfillment:

  “If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful.” — Charlie Kirk (00:03)

• Faith Commitment:

  “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.” — Charlie Kirk (00:43–00:46)

• On Teacher Salaries & Responsibility:

  “50 teachers in the District 214 area earn $150,000 or more with no accountability... Even the students believe that’s excessive.” — Charlie Kirk (11:15–12:05)

• On Engaging Apathetic Youth:

  "We host a three-on-three basketball tournament...they leave with our T-shirt and a little bit of literature...That's how you get college kids engaged in politics." — Charlie Kirk (08:39)

• On Parental Activism:

  “Parents have not been involved in school boards like they need to be.” — Charlie Kirk (03:34)

• On Progressive Narratives:

  “The kids start to subconsciously feel that oh, the government solves every problem.” — Charlie Kirk (05:41)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:03–00:48 — Charlie Kirk’s introduction, personal philosophy, and statement of purpose
• 01:44–02:39 — Kirk’s critique of history curriculum and school board attempts to remove founding documents
• 03:34–04:22 — Parental disengagement and the rise of progressive materials in education
• 05:08–06:24 — The image of socialism and capitalism presented to students; student survey results
• 07:54–09:27 — Turning Point USA’s founding story, early organizing tactics, and outreach strategies
• 09:47–10:41 — Event-based activism, unique student engagement (e.g., Ultimate Frisbee, basketball tournaments)
• 11:05–12:05 — Focus on debt, deficit, and teacher accountability

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Conclusion

This episode offers a raw look at Charlie Kirk’s mindset as a young activist, highlighting his formative experiences in challenging educational norms and launching Turning Point USA. Kirk’s early focus on confronting progressive ideologies in schools, leveraging social media, and finding untraditional ways to mobilize youth typifies the movement’s later approaches. The conversation is peppered with strong critiques of public education, impassioned calls for parental and student activism, and warnings against creeping socialism — all articulated in Kirk’s distinctive, provocative style.

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 going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You got to 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.

[Jack Roser]

Good morning and welcome to another great edition of Champion News Talk Radio, brought to you by ChampionNews.net we are your choice for the conservative voice today. Our founder, Jack Roser and myself have Charlie Kirk with us. And Charlie Kirk is a young man from Turning Point. He's the founder of the organization. And, Jack, how are you today?

Well, I'm fine, but they've seen me before, but they haven't seen him. And this guy is a mover and shaker of young years. But marvelous experience you've done with your life. And I understand that you're a bit of a critic of the school system. Well, what is the matter with you that you're criticizing this system that has made you so wonderful?

[Charlie Kirk]

Well, you know, it's not all because of the school system. There have been some very good teachers. And through my years at Wheeling High School, I enjoyed my time. But there were a lot of times where I felt that the teachers were pushing an alternative agenda and that our textbooks were written in certain ways to make us think things that were not true. They were trying to remove the founding documents from the US History classes. They said they were not relevant. They really spent a lot of time on the Progressive Era. And our economics textbook was written by Paul Krugman from the New York Times, and in it was factually incorrect data. I stood up to my teacher several times and I tried to get other students to do the same.

[Jack Roser]

Now, I have a question for you. What do you mean they removed our founding documents?

[Charlie Kirk]

They made a motion to try to remove it. It did not pass in the school board, but they tried to remove it from our US History class.

[Jack Roser]

Specifically our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence.

[Charlie Kirk]

They tried to remove for our US history classes, everything before 1860 saying it was not relevant.

[Jack Roser]

That's stunning to me.

[Charlie Kirk]

Now it did not pass. It was. Did not make the news, of course, but it showed that some people found that our founding documents no longer had relevancy in our schools, which is really concerning.

[Jack Roser]

That is extremely concerning. Why? What was the teacher's reasoning, Charlie? For our founding documents not having relevancy to our country right now?

[Charlie Kirk]

Some educational people in our district said that we need to have a more progressive view of our country and that everything post 1860 was more relevant to what kids need to be learning. And I found that alarming. And again, that wasn't all the teachers in the district, but it was a select few and even a few if they are teaching that way. It's very concerning.

[Jack Roser]

Now you may or may not know this. What was the parental involvement in something like that? First of all, the awareness level of parents and then the involvement.

[Charlie Kirk]

It was minimal. And parents have not been involved in school boards like they need to be. They do not run for school board. They don't show up to the meetings. Just the fact that Paul Krugman had economics textbook approved and put into our public high schools is inexcusable.

[Jack Roser]

Who is Paul Krugman and why is he relevant to this conversation? What type? Who is he?

[Charlie Kirk]

Okay. Paul Krugman is a nationally known Nobel Prize winning economist from the New York Times. He writes a daily column. He also wrote the book Conscious of a Liberal and he's a renowned collectivist.

[Jack Roser]

Obama was given the prize from the same organization.

[Charlie Kirk]

Right.

[Jack Roser]

The rape judgment wasn't so good there either.

[Charlie Kirk]

And the school board decided to put Paul Krugman's textbook into the public school system where in quote, it said the Reagan tax cuts did not accelerate economic growth.

[Jack Roser]

Really?

[Charlie Kirk]

Public schools. I wrote a piece for Breitbart.com exposing this lie in our public education school system. And it encourages the progressive train of thought into our students. And it's unfortunate because if a young person wants to get into economics, they're probably going to look at Paul Krugman as a credible figure. But he's not economically viable. His statistics do not add up. And he writes for a very partisan news source, the New York Times. He should not be in our public school system and we need more students. He's a propagandist, very similar to it. He said that 911 was a stimulus and created jobs. He thinks that a broken window creates jobs. This is not. This is an economic myth called the broken window fallacy. And it's what is being taught in our schools and unfortunately being pushed onto fellow students.

[Jack Roser]

Well, I do know that some of the textbooks, I have a 15 year old son and I've got a lot of friends whose kids go to even some private schools. But they talk about communism versus capitalism and capitalism is somebody having the whole cow to themselves. And communism is where everybody shares this cow. Do they embellish in theory? In theory, do they make communism and socialism sound like a more desirable way to live where it's just fairer?

[Charlie Kirk]

Well, they do put a very big emphasis on the progressive era in the early 1900s where they say that oh, there's a problem, there must be a government to fix it. For example, you know Upton Sinclair's book the Jungle. You know, we had all the terrible meat factories. Well then we had to create the fda. We had an unstable currency, we had to create the Fed. So the kids start to subconsciously feel that oh, the government solves every problem. And we did a poll in our high school in the local area which economic system would be most prosperous to create wealth for the middle, lower and upper class for all people over the next hundred years. 28% said capitalism, 40% said socialism. The rest said they don't know the difference between socialism and capitalism.

[Jack Roser]

Really?

Which was really the more intelligent answer, Right?

Well, yeah, at least yeah, I'd rather have them not know because there's opportunity for education.

[Charlie Kirk]

That's exactly what our group is doing is getting these kids understanding the morality of free markets, the immorality of excessive borrowing.

[Lane Schoenberger]

This is Lane Schoenberger, chief investment officer and founding partner of Y Refi. It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us. His endorsement means the world to us and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come. Now his hear Charlie in his own words tell you about why Refi.

[Charlie Kirk]

I want to tell you guys about yrefi.com that is yrefy.com why refi is incredible. Private student loan debt in America totals about $300 billion. Why refi is refinancing distress or defaulted private student loans. You can finally take control of your student loan situation with a plan that works for your monthly budget. Go to yrefi.com that is why refi.com do you have a co borrower? Why Refi can get them released from the loan. You can even skip a payment up to 12 times without penalty. It may not be available in all 50 states. Go to yrefi.com that is yrefy.com let's face it, if you have distress or default to student loans, it can be overwhelming because of privacy. Loan debt. So many people feel stuck. Go to yrefi.com that is yrefy.com Private student loan debt relief yrefi.com.

[Jack Roser]

So your group, what is specifically, what does that mean? You have a group? What is that?

[Charlie Kirk]

Turning Point USA has turned into a national movement. It was launched June 5th. We have over 20 to 25 national chapters and we have 30 to 50 student columnists from all over the country that contribute to our website. We give them a platform of empowerment so they can write something, they can publish it, they can show their friends, their family.

[Jack Roser]

But let me ask you a question.

Did you organize that while you were still in high school?

[Charlie Kirk]

At the ends of high school and then throughout the summer, yes.

[Jack Roser]

Fantastic. But you have a website. How are you, how specifically are you reaching out to this percentage? I think it's 40% that don't know the difference. How specifically do you reach out to that 40% that's unsure and then re educate that other 40% that is obviously misled.

[Charlie Kirk]

We're doing it in three specific ways. Number one is Facebook and Twitter. Social media is extremely important. We have 12,000 likes. We're on the cutting edge of social media for young people. The second of which is in July. We're hosting hopefully one of the biggest debate tournaments in the Midwest. We're planning to have three to 400 high school debate teams come and debate fiscal policy. The third is a very innovative way that we came up with and it's to reach that 40% of kids that usually don't care about politics. We're hosting a three on three basketball tournament to get young people to come and play basketball. They leave with our T shirt and they leave with a little bit of literature. It's innovative, it's new, it's fresh. Not many think tanks think to do a basketball tournament. And that's the way we reach kids that are usually apathetic or they don't know because we go to where they are. And that's what's happening. Innovative and creative about Turning Point usa.

[Jack Roser]

So you're trying to do an outreach now. Do you ever, I mean, do you have things right affiliated with the school? Because I know there are some young folks out of the Will county area too that have a youth program and they reach out and they have meetings and they really try to. They actually. Do you walk precincts and things like that?

[Charlie Kirk]

No, we do not do specifically for any candidate, at least this last election cycle. And the reason is, is we go at it in a nonpartisan point of view. Now, we believe in fiscal responsibility, free markets, but instead of we encourage civic participation, we encourage people to be interns. A majority of our people in our group are interns for Joe Walsh or Congressman Dold. We love that. But also we educate in meetings and debates. Like, we hosted a debate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and we're starting a chapter there. We have 20 high schools and colleges. Representative. Where they have meetings and they gather and they educate their peers in innovative ways, like through basketball tournaments or one of the chapters they emailed me, they said, could we do an ultimate Frisbee competition for Turning Point? Like, how cool is that? Who would have thought of that otherwise? That's how you get college kids engaged in politics. You know, it's good to have the slideshow and the graphs, but we have to get them through the door first.

[Jack Roser]

But you get them through the door and you do this Frisbee thing and you give them literature. What's enticing them to even open this up?

[Charlie Kirk]

They give us their email. They have to like us on Facebook. They like us on Twitter. We tie them in perfectly because through social media, it's kind of you lasso them in and then you reel them in later. Because these kids have their minds going in so many different directions that once you tie them in, they're going to be educated.

[Jack Roser]

What topics are you mainly interested there? What topics are you.

[Charlie Kirk]

The debt and the deficit. We think it's extremely relevant to our generation. We're going to have to pay it off. And it's immoral.

[Jack Roser]

Do you relate that to socialism?

[Charlie Kirk]

We think that it's immoral. And we do call it socialistic behavior. Absolutely. And we also focus on education. We think that every student should have a chance to learn. And we think that teachers are not being held accountable in our public school education system. To give some perspective, 50 teachers in the District 214 area earn $150,000 or more with no accountability. And you ask these students, that'll be Arlington Heights, right? The Arlington Heights area, Mount Prospect, Elk Grove and Wheeling area. And most of the students even believe that's excessive. When the students believe it's excessive, you know that we need reform. And a lot of these. There are some great teachers that I've had in my life, but they're also teachers that take advantage of the system. And we need private sector reforms to make sure our education system is better for the students.

[Announcer]

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[Charlie Kirk]

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[Announcer]

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