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Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast 1, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
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Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, I interview the great Senator Tom Cotton, total American hero who is standing for our country. Listen to our sister episode Live update from Chaz. You guys are going to learn a lot, and it is bone chilling the information that was provided. Email me your questions. Freedomcharlickirk.com, get involved with Turning Point USA, tpusa.com, tpusa.com It's a great country. We have to save it. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go.
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Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
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Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
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I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
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I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point usa. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives. And we are gonna fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this special episode of the Charlie Kirk Show. I am joined and honored to be joined by a true fighter in the United States Senate. It is hard to find fighters right now. I did a whole episode on that. But we profiled Senator Tom Cotton in one of our episodes where we said, where are the Republicans? Because he's one of the few Republicans that are fighting right now. Senator, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
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Hey, Charlie, it's good to be back on with you. Thanks for the introduction and the kind words.
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Absolutely. So. Well, first, tell us. You kind of made headlines, I think it was two weeks ago, where you dared write a piece in the New York Times opinion section. It didn't go well for them. I think it went fine for you. Can you tell us a bit about this?
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Yeah, sure, Charlie. The New York Times has made themselves a laughing stock, although at root, this is not a laughing matter because it gets set fundamental principles about freedom of expression and inquiry and free debate in a democratic society. But if you and all your listeners recall, a couple weekends ago, the last weekend of May, peaceful protests had been hijacked by many rioters and looters, really, anarchists and insurrectionists who were burning churches, defacing memorials to war dead, who were looting businesses by the thousands across the country. And I made the very simple point first on television, that our police are the first line of defense against this kind of civil unrest. But if the police are outnumbered or if they need backup, or they have politicians, local elected politicians who won't allow them to do their job, then the military is there to provide that backup. First the National Guard, and if necessary, the active duty forces under the Insurrection Act, a law that is over 200 years old and has been used repeatedly throughout our history by President Eisenhower to desegregate Little Rock Central in my state, or JFK to desegregate Ole Miss, University of Alabama or George bush during the 1992 LA riots. So we actually contacted the New York Times a couple weeks ago about a different related, but different op ed. And the New York Times asked me to flesh out my argument about the use of federal troops to quell domestic unrest. I said I'm happy to do that. And we published op ed. It was on Wednesday, June 3. The title of it was Send in to the Troops. I would note the New York Times has publicly acknowledged they chose that op ed, which is a little further than what I called for in the op ed itself, but they chose the title. And then they had a complete and utter revolt from a woke progressive mob of their young newsroom staffers who by the hundreds began on social media or internal slack channels to denounce the decision to publish my op ed. Now here's where it gets really interesting. The editorial page editor and the publisher both defended the decision to publish my op ed in public. But I guess it got a little too hot for them inside the newsroom because within a few hours they backpedaled and they apologized. They said they shouldn't have published it. They implied there are factual errors in it, even though to this day they have not pointed out any factual errors. They claim that they were going to redress the situation and make changes to their editorial page processes and even that myop ed didn't meet their standards. Now, I would concede it didn't meet their standards. It far exceeded their standards because their standards are normally nothing but left wing conventional wisdom. And ultimately the publisher fired the editorial page editor again for publishing an opinion in their pages that he initially supported and which has the support of 58% of the American people. So again, as I said at the outset, the New York Times has kind of turned itself into a laughing stock over this matter. But this is not really a laughing matter because free inquiry, freedom of debate is so central to a self governing democratic society.
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Well, and so now you could say, Senator, that you officially broke the New York Times, which is Yeoman's work and a gift from God. And it was incredible to see.
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Well, maybe I just expose once and for all just how broken the New York Times is internally. And since then, Charlie, it seems like the New York Times now has an official policy that they have to write at least one article or op ed a day about me because I noticed they continue to write more and more every single day. But like I said, I think not just conservatives, but even kind of old school traditional liberals who disagree with a lot of my political views and your political views, but will defend our rights to express those views and advocate for them in the public square, are deeply disappointed in what is one of the most elite, the most prestigious institutions of the left in our society. But again, it's not healthy. It's not healthy that you can't express an opinion that is grounded in law and grounded in history and has the support of the majority of the American people in one of our nation's flagship newspapers. And you continue to see that around the country now with the so called cancel culture, whether it's taking Gone with the Wind off HBO or threatening to pull paw patrol from television because it has a police dog on it. You know, the spirit of the woke mob increasingly is demanding conformity, even uniformity to progressive dogma that's spread from the social justice seminar on classrooms about which you've spoken so much and on which you've done such good work into the workplace and into the culture at large. And that is a real risk for robust debate about ideas that have always underpinned American debate, democracy.
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Well said. And the interesting part of the New York Times to close the point is they actually invented the modern day op ed in 1970 as a reaction to Maoist groupthink that they thought was imbalanced in the conversation in the country and they wanted contrarian ideas at the New York Times in 1970. And 50 years later a senator from Arkansas exposes that they don't want that anymore. In fact, if you do not check all the boxes of the swarm of social justice activists, they will try to fire you. They will try to make your life miserable. But the more they attacked you, Senator, the more it means you're doing a great job.
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Yeah, and Charlotte, I mean, the point about Maoist thought I think is very relevant here. I mean, the New York Times apparently had a virtual town hall with hundreds of its employees a couple days after my op ed published. And it sounded like a struggle session from the cultural revolution in which the grown ups, the authorities, the publisher and the editor had to prostrate themselves in front of the children and seek absolution. And in the end, the publisher only got absolution by metaphorically exiling the editor out to the hinterland, as they did in the Cultural Revolution. Again, it's this spirit of left wing conformism that you saw in the Cultural Revolution, brought first to the classroom in America and now increasingly exposed to the broader society.
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Yeah, and for people that don't know the Cultural Revolution, it was basically between 1966 and 1976, which was a huge sociopolitical movement in China that really created the Chinese Communist Party as we know it today, where they did massive book burnings and just abdicated so much authority to the most radical elements. I want to tell you about an amazing Father's Day gift. It's Legacy Box. Legacy Box is a super simple mail and service that has all your videotapes, camcorder, tapes and film reels be digitally preserved on a thumb drive, DVD or the cloud. I've used Memorybox. You put all of your film reels, all of your pictures, all of your memories with your father or any of your family members. You're able to track all of them and you send them into Legacy Box. They upload all of it onto a cloud or a DVD or a thumb drive and then you're able to use it however you want and they actually send back your originals as well. Legacy Box helps bring new life, new to your old media by unlocking those family memories and putting them on a modern digital format that's easy to use with Legacy Box. For me, I was able to put my family's photos, my family history, into an easy to upload disc and send it to every one of my members of my family. The process from start to finish is so easy. You pack and send and then your team digitizes everything by hand and then you enjoy it. Legacy Box is the world's largest digitizer of home movies and photos and has helped over 750,000 families do digitally preserve their past. Get started preserving your family's legacy today. Go to legacybox.com charlie to get an incredible 50% off your first order buy today to take advantage of this exclusive offer. Send in when you're ready. Legacy Box is great for someone that you love, a father, or could be good for yourself. That's legacybox.com Charlie that's legacybox.com Charlie Get 50% off your first order. Legacybox.com Charlie so Senator, kind of on this theme of erasing history, you represent a wonderful state, the state of Arkansas that has, let's just say, a current conversation going right now on whether or not to remove statues and what the stance should be on whether or not we should have any sort of icons from the Civil War. My position is that we should not give an inch to the people that wish to revise our history and delete our history completely. And I say this, Senator, as someone who was raised in the suburbs of Chicago, who many ancestors and many generations prior my family fought on the Union side of the Civil War. That does not, I think, in any way, my opinion, think we should completely remove it from our history. What is your position on this, Senator? Because it seems as if the more we give in to the left, the more they're willing to take. I'd be very interested on your take on this.
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Maybe it's time for the Democrats to grapple with their history of being the party of secession, slavery and segregation. Let's remember the Republican party was founded in the 1850s on the explicit anti slavery principle. That's why Abraham Lincoln helped found the party. That's what he campaigned on in 1860. And ultimately, that's why he was willing to go to war to preserve the Union, to ensure that slavery ultimately would reach its ultimate extinction. As he always put was, the Democrats who wanted to secede, wanted to defend slavery and then reinforce segregation for decades after the Civil War. Look, every state has its own way of grappling with that history. It's a critical part of our history. My state, for instance, has decided to replace two statues in our Capitol. And the U.S. capitol listeners may not know this. Each state gets two statues in the Capitol. The state government makes that decision. For a long time. Ours were fairly obscure politicians from Arkansas, I think from around the turn of the last century. One of them came to the fore recently because a descendant of his was running for political office and they were segregationists. And our state legislature decided, you know what? We'd rather make a change. We'd rather have something that reflects our more recent history. So they voted last year to replace those two statues with one of Davy Bates, one of the Little Rock Nine, who helped desegregate Little Rock Central, and with Johnny Cash, an Arkansas native. And that was a decision made by our state, and it's a decision for them to make. And if other states want to do that, that's fine as well. But we cannot again have something. This is more like, not the cultural revolution, Charlie, but the kind of Jacobin mobs you saw in the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, with Democrats trying to compete for who's going to be the Robespierre. I mean, look at what's happened in our streets in the last week, Charlie. A statue of Matthias Baldwin was defaced in Philadelphia. Matthias Baldwin was a devoted, committed, passionate abolitionist for decades before the Civil War. Look at what happened in Boston. The Robert Gold, Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Regiment was defaced as well. The 54th Regiment was the first African American regiment that fought for the Union cause after the Emancipation Proclamation. Their bravery and skill in battle was memorialized as well in the famous movie Glory. Yet you have these violent mobs out defacing apparently anything that is more than a couple weeks old. I mean, look, it's not just happening here either. It's happening across the Atlantic. Look in the United Kingdom, where statues of Churchill have been defaced and Boris Johnson had to board up one statue of Churchill to prevent it from being further defaced or destroyed. I mean, it goes to show what happens, Charlie, when you have a bunch of students studying social justice and not history. Because if they think Churchill's bad, what do they think about the other guy on the opposite side? Under no circumstances can we capitulate to these mobs that are out defacing against statues about which they know nothing and in many cases celebrate great and noble causes. I mean, look at all the statues of Christopher Columbus that have been defaced or destroyed in recent days all across the country. In many cases, these statues were paid for by immigrant American or, I'm sorry, by Italian American immigrant associations at the turn of the last century to celebrate their part in the great American story. Yet statues are being defaced. Statues are being destroyed by angry mobs that know nothing of our history.
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Is it in Seattle or is it in the Capitol Hill autonomous zone, the world's newest country?
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Yeah, well, that I do want to ask you about that because. And before I do, I just want to make a point. You served in the United States military, Senator, and thank you. And I look at this entire removal of statues, particularly in the American south, as a war on the South. If you look at the statistics of the US Military enlistment, the United States military is disproportionately populated with Southerners that step up to serve their country. Despite about 36% of the US population coming from what would be called the south, about 44% of all military recruits come from the South. And I think it is Malibu and Manhattan's ivory tower way to kind of condescend down on the South. And I think it's so outrageous and it is anti American and it is wrong. But I just wanted to get, get that in. So, Senator, what should we do about Chaz? Capitol Hill autonomous zone. We have a new country, I guess, Charlie.
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It's an example that, I guess the Democrats are still the party of secession 155 years on since it's a bunch of far left Democrats in Seattle that have declared an autonomous zone. It is often been portrayed over the last few days as a source of great comic relief of something to laugh about. Some of these videos you see online of them having debates about how they're going to govern them themselves are pretty laughable. I will say this, though, it's not really a laughing matter because just imagine being one of the innocent citizens who's caught inside that six or eight block area, who has an apartment there or needs to work there, and you're subject to the whims of this mob that has occupied part of downtown Seattle and they're holding your livelihood and even your lives at risk. I think the mayor of Seattle and the Governor of Washington have been totally feckless. At a minimum, they should shut off services to this area and ensure that they can not stay there in any kind of comfort or ease. So they should have shut off the water, they should have shut off sewage, they should shut off electricity. I would say probably set up a perimeter around the so called autonomous zone as well to ensure that people are not bringing them food and water and other essential supplies. Look, you can't set up what you consider to be some Marxist commune in the heart of a capitalist democratic country and then hope to be supplied by the democratic capitalist country. Obviously, once people have kind of burrowed in with barricades and defensive positions, you want to try to minimize the violence and minimize any potential bloodshed. But it shouldn't be something that we condone and we should take every step, like turning off essential services and like stopping the resupply so the authorities can get control once again of their streets and innocent citizens, our fellow Americans, who want nothing to do with this, can get their life back under control.
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Yeah, that's well said, but they want help from the outside, Senator. But they said only send soy vegan and gluten free snacks.
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Again, it is a source of great comic relief, don't get me wrong. But it's not so funny for all those people, all those innocent Americans whose lives have been upended, whether they live in it or they used to traverse it, or they're supposed to work there, or their businesses have been destroyed. And that's why it's so disappointing to see the mayor of Seattle, the governor of Washington. I understand they're far left wingers, but I assume they're not anarchists or not actually secessionists. To allow this to continue for as long as it already has, when there's easy and relatively non violent ways in terms of, to get them out as well, in terms of shutting down essential services or setting up a broader perimeter to prevent resupply from going in.
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I love that return to secessionism. That's very well said. So, Senator, last time we sat down, you were. And I want to give our listeners kind of fill them in on this and they can go back in the archives and hear it for themselves. You were one of the few lawmakers that were warning about the severity of the virus. And you were one of the first people to call out China's role in it. In fact, I remember I tweeted in support of you in early February because you were calling out on how, you were calling out the Chinese Communist Party and how they deceived the international community and how they were misleading investigators. And you've been totally vindicated and proven correct. Can you just give us a little China update What are you hearing in the US Senate? Are we going to have real accountability against the Chinese Communist Party? Because despite everything that's going on domestically, I want to make sure we do not keep our eye on off the rising threat of China and also just what they did to our country and our civilization. They must pay for this.
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Yeah, Charlie, they must pay indeed. And I can tell you the opinion in the U.S. senate, I think increasingly reflects public opinion that China is responsible for this pandemic. China needs to be held accountable and that China is not a friend, it's not a partner, it is an adversary. And we need to treat China as an adversary. So the President and the administration have taken some good steps since we last talked. For instance, by prohibiting American technology going into foreign manufactured microchips that are destined for China. That has had the effect of perhaps stopping Huawei's expansion into Europe. I know the British Parliament, in front of which I testified a couple weeks ago, is now beginning to reconsider Boris Johnson's decision in January. We would welcome that development in Germany. They're not certain that they can move forward with Huawei technology either. We have our defense bill that just passed the Armed Services Committee last week. It'll be coming into the floor in the next few weeks. It has many provisions designed to check Chinese ambitions. For instance, I have legislation or I have a measure in that bill that would make sure that our airmen and other service members are protected in countries that use Huawei or ZTE technology or other at risk telecom vendors. On other initiatives, I'm working with Josh Hawley and Lindsey Graham to amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities act to make sure that we hold accountable those Chinese officials that were responsible for this pandemic. We did something similar for the 911 victims. I'm also working with several Senators on trying to reshore critical industries like pharmaceutical manufacturing or medical goods and medical supplies or semiconductor manufacturing through a mix of direct support for that effort and also tax incentives too, and ultimately prohibitions on Chinese sourced products. I do feel that we're moving in the right direction. A lot of these are steps we should have taken many years ago. But China's irresponsible and reckless behavior in unleashing this pandemic on the world when it comes to have been merely a local health challenge in Wuhan has opened a lot of eyes.
B
Yeah, well said. I want to tell you guys about one of my favorite partners on the Charlie Kirk show, pcmatic. Pcmatic is a white list next generation antivirus system designed to build the wall around your computer to stop modern threats like ransomware, independent testing, AV test have said that pcmatic is a top performer in the cybersecurity industry. The Chinese Communist Party and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are trying to get into your computer right now. And if you listen to the Charlie Kirk show, you've probably just made yourself a bigger target because we talk against the Chinese Communist Party. So build a wall around your computer. It's pcmatic.com Charlie. PCMATIC's competition is made in foreign countries, many where the viruses originate. Pcmatic blocks annoying and malicious ads for hassle free web browsing and makes your computers faster and more reliable even after years of use. PCMATIC protects Windows computers, including XP, Vista, Windows 7, 8 and 10 Windows servers, Macs, MacBooks, Android phones and tablets. PCMATIC is $50 for five devices for one year with a 30 day money back guarantee. And if you act now, PCMATIC has offered my listeners a free month of security protection with the purchase of an annual license. To access this offer, go to pcmatic.com charlie go to pcmatic.com Charlie. Well, in the couple minutes we have remaining, Senator, can you just kind of give us a little political update where you see things trending? A lot of conservatives feel like we're on defense right now. They are looking for people that have courage. You're one of those people, one of the few people that are actually fighting right now. Can you just give a status update to so many of our listeners, especially younger listeners, that just feel like we've been perpetually on defense for the last couple weeks and months?
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Yeah. Well, I will say this so you know, when you're the incumbent, you're inherently defending your own turf. And we have a lot of incumbents up for reelection this year, most importantly Donald Trump, but also many of the great senators that we elected in 2014 when we won back the majority from Harry Reid and the Democrats. So in that regard, we are defending our terrain in places like Colorado and in Georgia and in Iowa and in Montana. So one thing your listeners can do is certainly help out all those senators who have been very effective conservative leaders for the last five and a half years, like Joni Ernst and like Steve Daines, in addition to the President, of course. I believe as we move on from what is truly a once in a century situation with this pandemic and then a terrible recession and the economy gets opened up in more and more states and we see the kind of great economic news that we saw a few days ago with the best in the history of jobs reports going back almost 70 years. And we get into the later summer and fall, more Americans will concentrate on the choice between Donald Trump and the choice between Joe Biden. We had eight years of slow, sluggish economic performance under the Obama Biden administration. Donald Trump and a Republican Congress helped Americans create the strongest economy that we'd had in 50 years. Of course, we're in a recession due to a once in a century pandemic, but we can rebuild it just as strong as we did before. Or you can take Joe Biden and you can have the kind of slow, sluggish economy that we had for eight years under Barack Obama and Joe Biden. I think that'll be a clear choice for Americans. I also think that the kind of lawlessness we see on the streets in Seattle or the rioting and looting that we saw a couple weeks ago, that many Democrats celebrated or refused to even try to confront if they were in local office and had control of these cities is not going to redound to the Democrats benefit. Americans understand and respect protesters and demonstrators. They have zero tolerance for rioters and looters and they don't want weak politicians in charge at a time when there is domestic unrest. So I do believe that once we get further and further from the peak of the pandemic, that we will continue to see more and more people recognizing that we have a clear choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And in the end, Donald Trump's going to get reelected and we will hold on to the Senate.
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Yeah, it's well said. Well, Senator Cotton, thank you for being so generous with your time. Please keep fighting. We need more like you and you fight for what's right and for what's good and for our country. So God bless you and thanks again for joining us.
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Thank you, Charlie.
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Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening, everybody. Please get involved with Turning Point USA. Go to tpusa.com tpusa.com, email us freedomarliekirk.com, get engaged, get involved. For the first 20 people that subscribe to the Charlie Kirk show, give us a five star review screenshot and email us freedom@charliekirk.com get a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine. Thanks so much everybody. Fight for America. God bless.
Episode Date: June 16, 2020
Special Guest: Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas)
In this episode, Charlie Kirk interviews Senator Tom Cotton about his recent controversial op-ed in The New York Times, the ongoing culture war over American history and monuments, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle, and the threat posed by China. The conversation dives into free speech, cancel culture, Democratic Party history, the proper response to civil unrest, and the United States’ stance toward China in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
[01:35–06:54]
“It’s not healthy that you can’t express an opinion that is grounded in law and history and has support of the majority…in one of our nation’s flagship newspapers.” — Sen. Tom Cotton [06:03]
[06:54–08:28]
“It sounded like a struggle session from the cultural revolution… grown-ups, the authorities, had to prostrate themselves in front of the children and seek absolution.” — Sen. Cotton [07:37]
[11:35–15:18]
“Under no circumstances can we capitulate to these mobs that are out defacing statues about which they know nothing and, in many cases, celebrate great and noble causes.” — Sen. Cotton [14:53]
[16:29–20:12]
“You can’t set up what you consider some Marxist commune in the heart of a capitalist democratic country and hope to be supplied by the democratic capitalist country.” — Sen. Cotton [18:16]
“They said only send soy vegan and gluten free snacks.” — Charlie Kirk [19:24]
[21:08–23:17]
“China is responsible for this pandemic. China needs to be held accountable and…is not a friend, it is an adversary. We need to treat China as such.” [21:23]
[24:53–27:23]
“I do believe… that we have a clear choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden… Donald Trump’s going to get reelected and we will hold on to the Senate.” [27:06]
“The spirit of the woke mob increasingly is demanding conformity—even uniformity—to progressive dogma… That is a real risk for robust debate about ideas.” — Sen. Tom Cotton [06:16]
“It is Malibu and Manhattan’s ivory tower way to kind of condescend down on the South… it is anti-American and it is wrong.” — Charlie Kirk [16:08]
“Free inquiry, freedom of debate is so central to a self-governing, democratic society.” — Sen. Tom Cotton [05:59]
Charlie Kirk and Senator Tom Cotton’s conversation offers a pointed conservative critique of recent political flashpoints—from press freedom and the role of protest, to the rewriting of history and the challenge posed by China. Sen. Cotton navigates both culture and policy arenas, warning of the dangers posed by unchecked left-wing conformity and the “woke mob,” while outlining specific legislative and administrative efforts to counter international threats and protect American freedoms. The episode combines policy detail, historical perspective, and culture-war rhetoric, all in the signature assertive style of both Kirk and Cotton.