← The Charlie Kirk Show
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody. Today on the Charlie Kirk show, conversation with my friend Dinesh d'. Souza. You guys are gonna really enjoy it. We dive into the future of the Republican Party. What has surprised us about the Biden era and what exactly is populism? If you like what we are doing on this podcast and you want to get behind us, please consider Supporting us@charliekirk.com Support our editors, our researchers, our fact checkers, our other hosts. They all are able to do what they do. When you Support us@charliekirk.com Support, maybe you say, I want to help the next generation. I want to get behind what they're doing, and I want to make sure that what I hear on this program is heard by millions of other people. Well, that's made possible by those of you that support us, especially monthly@charliekirk.com support, we're going to give away a couple signed copies of my book, the Maga Doctrine. All you have to do is subscribe to the Charlie Kirk show and email us the proof of your subscription. Freedomarliekirk.com, a screenshot. Will do. And if you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, start a chapter, get engaged, get involved, go to tpusa.com getinvolved. That's tpusa.com getinvolved. And if you're an adult that just wants to help us out, go to tpusa.com, lots of options there. Dinesh D' Souza is here. Buckle up, everybody here. Here we go.
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B
Charlie.
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A
What you've done is incredible here.
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B
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
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A
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
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B
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.
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A
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. Are you guys sick of all the cancel culture? Stand with one of the fighters, Mike Lindell. Right now, I want to talk to you about how MyPillow has changed so many people's lives. I know people that use MyPillow. Made in America, by the way. And they say they're sleeping better, they're a better person, and it's just a game changer. For a limited time, Mike is offering his premium MyPillows for his lowest price ever. You can get a Queen size premium MyPillow for 2998 regular, $69.98 and that's $40 savings. Kings are $5 more. Not only are you getting the lowest price ever, $29.98 for a queen size premium, but Mike is extending a 60 day money back guarantee to March 1, 2021. So right now, support the good guys. Support the people that are trying to cancel. Go to mypillow.com and click on the Radio Listener Square and use the promo code Kirk. You will also get deep discounts on MyPillow products, including the Giza Dream Bedsheets, the MyPillow Mattress Topper, and MyPillow towel sets. Or call 800-876-0227 and use promo code Kirk. Support Mike Lindell. He's a good American. He's fighting hard. Go to mypillow.com promo code Kirk. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show. With us today is the latest addition to the Salem Podcast Network alongside the Salem Radio Network, a friend of mine and one of the clearest thinkers, and quite honestly, someone who understands the left better than anyone else, Dinesh d'. Souza. Dinesh, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
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B
Charlie, it's great. Good to be with you.
- [03:20]
A
Your podcast is terrific. I encourage everyone to check it out and to subscribe to it. I don't say that about every podcast because usually I'm always telling people to subscribe to our own, but I really mean that. Dinesh, can you help make sense of what is now basically the first two weeks of the Biden presidency? What do we know today that was a little uncertain before he got sworn in? What are we not surprised by and is there any good news at all?
- [03:44]
B
Well, Biden was projected during the campaign as kind of a unifying figure, as somebody who would go beyond the divisiveness of Trump, somebody who would introduce a new tone and a set of new policies. Now, what Biden has shown is that I think on the policy front, not so surprising. He's really doing the things he said he would do. And there are people who are surprised, some dismayed. I saw a very odd social media post by a union that had supported Biden, claiming that he was a friend of the working man. Another bitterly disappointed he's cutting oil jobs and our people are going to be out of work. I'm like, really? You're the guys who did this? You're kicking your own butt. Could you be so dumb as to not know this? You enabled this guy so are you really all that shocked now? I do think that the unifying rhetoric has turned out to be a ruse, an illusion. What he really means is he wants. And the left wants to unify against us.
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A
That's right.
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B
So they kind of envision an America in which everybody comes together and there is a Republican Party. They're not saying they want a one party state, they want a Republican Party of their choosing. It's really funny because it's almost like they want to get to pick the Republicans who represent the other side. And they've decided that, like, Mitt Romney is just fine, the Cheney woman is okay, but no, Josh Hawley's unacceptable. Ted Cruz is unacceptable. Now, so far from Republican voters getting to choose who represents us, evidently we've got to turn to our political opposition to make our selections for us. It's a very weird situation.
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A
Yeah. Their definition of unity is the absence of meaningful opposition is an opposition that actually understands how they operate, that can organize, that can communicate effectively. They want a controlled opposition, basically, that will do what they're told, that will go through the kind of motions of opposing, but we'll keep them in perpetual political power basically forever. And that is why the Trump MAGA movement is such a threat to their power, which is why they're trying to do everything they possibly can to squelch it and to destroy it. And so, Dinesh, can you walk us through? It's been a couple weeks, a lot of executive orders, a lot of jobs being killed. Are you surprised by anything, or is everything just falling into place as you thought it would be?
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B
No, I mean, I'm very dismayed by what is happening to America. And I almost think that things are gonna have to get a lot worse before they get better. And what I mean by that is that. Well, first of all, what I mean is that we can't tell people that this is a critical election. The American dream hangs in the balance. This is the most important election of your lifetime. And then after the election go, oh, we were just kidding. The American dream is not hanging in the balance. Things aren't gonna be that bad. Biden's gonna turn out okay. We'll get through this. No, sometimes you don't get through it that well. Sometimes there are important aspects of American exceptionalism that go down the tubes. Sometimes people have to look around and see that things that they took for granted are being wrecked in front of their eyes. And then they wake up and go, wow, I didn't really sign up for this. I didn't see it. Going this bad and that's when you have a resistance, you have uprising. That's how Republicans are gonna sweep the House and Senate if they do is because people look around and they just don't like what they see.
- [07:17]
A
Yeah, I think that's, I think that's a good point. And the Democrats strategy currently seems to be we are going to rule with an iron fist, change the way elections actually operate and it's irrelevant what the people actually believe. Through mass amnesty, through HR1, through the addition of states, through more Supreme Court justices. They want to change the way we govern ourselves more than actually just change public policy, tax rates or social benefits. They want to change the way that we actually elect and appoint leaders. Can you talk about the threat that that poses to our country of if we do not fight or stand up against the actual infrastructure of how we appoint our leaders, that we could be in some serious trouble?
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B
Well, when we look at periods of American history, we see that there are times when America has been kind of a one party state. So when the early in the 19th century when the Federalist Party essentially collapsed, Jefferson's party, the so called Democratic Republicans were the only party left and they were overwhelmingly the majority party even though the Whig party developed a little bit later until the Civil war. Then from 1932 to 1980 the Democrats were kind of a one party state again. You'd have a Republican like Eisenhower who'd sneak in there, even Nixon. But remember they were kind of carried by the Democratic tide. They offered only token resistance to Democratic and liberal policies. So the Democrats are very unhappy that from 1980 until now America has had divided government. Typically one party may have the presidency, the other party has the Congress. There's enough block and tackle that neither party can really do whatever it wants and they want that. You may almost call it Reagan in a regnum to come to an end. It would stretch from Reagan to Trump. And they would like to inaugurate a new era beginning now and continuing let's say for the next 40 years in which the only type of Republicans are sort of Mitt Romney Republicans. They're known to be graceful losers. So they kind of walk into the ring and then pretty much fall flat on their face at the end of the first round and the Democrats jump up and down and declare victory. That's the kind of political version of America that they're after.
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A
Right. So what do you think would be more effective? The Republicans embracing the tactics of the Democrats and getting better at the machinery of elections and ballot harvesting or do you think that we should fight and change the laws and ban ballot harvesting. Which tactic do you think Republicans should take?
- [09:45]
B
Both, in other words. What I think is in the middle of the game. You always play the game the way it's being played. Now, a good example, by the way, of how it is played that way is a California Republicans lost a whole bunch of seats in the midterm election because the Democrats did ballot harvesting. And so what the Republicans did this time in places like Orange county and in the Central Valley is okay, listen, why don't we set up some ballot deposit boxes at gun stores, at churches, at places where conservatives congregate. We'll do some ballot harvesting of our own. And we won a whole bunch of those seats back. This was the case of the GOP playing the other side's game. And so I see nothing wrong in doing that. It's not inconsistent of us to do that. It makes no sense to say, oh, we're better than that. Guys, let them harvest. We're not gonna harvest. Let them use the deep state against you. We're never gonna use the deep state against them. Let them pack the courts. We're never gonna pack the courts. If we concede to this one sided apparatus, then not only will they win every time, but it emboldens them to do more because they know we're never gonna do to them what they're doing to us.
- [10:49]
A
And it's not illegal. It's just using the laws on the books to try and win elections. They break the law. We are not talking about breaking the law. It's just if you're able to ballot harvest, why, why shouldn't we ballot harvest? In our fast paced world, it's tough to make reading a priority. At least it used to be. @thinker.org, t-h I n k r.org they summarize the key ideas from new and noteworthy nonfiction, giving you an access to an entire library of great books in bite sized form. Read or listen to hundreds of titles in a matter of minutes. From old classics like Dale Carnegie's how to Win Friends and Influence People to recent bestsellers like Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life. I have used thinker.org, @t-I n k r.org and I really enjoy it. So go to thinker.org Charlie when I'm driving to and from the studio after a long day of work, I just flip open and a book on thinker.org and you can do it at thinker.org Charlie and I try to learn something new every day. If you want to learn something new and challenge your preconceptions, expand your Horizons, go to thinker.org, T-H-I n k r.org Charlie to start a free trial today. Dinesh. I want to talk about just the future of the Republican Party and what's happening in real time. We have the Liz Cheney types and we have Adam Kinzinger types that kind of want to purge the party, be that controlled opposition that you talk about. Can you speak to the philosophical direction that you want to see the Republican Party go in? This is something that people are wrestling with right now. What is the political and philosophical direction you want to see us go in?
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B
So if we flashback to 1980, when Reagan first ran, Reagan said, I am running on five big ideas. The first idea is the idea of the individual. So individualism, upward mobility. Number two, the idea of the family. The idea that the family is the nucleus of moral education for the young. It's the best place to be raised. It's within a family, not outside of it. Third, I'm running on the idea of the church, the idea that the spiritual life is important and it's the source of our moral values. Number four, the local community. And fifth, the country, patriotism. So if you think about those five themes, first of all, they're themes that most American dreams are built on. They're widely popular, all five of those key ideas. I don't see Trump as a departure from those ideas at all. He might have emphasized one more than the other. His language may have been different. Instead of speaking, for example, of patriotism, Trump was a little more the rhetoric of nationalism, of America first, but it's appealing to the same chords. So the bottom line to remember, I think, Charlie, is that the traditional Republican Party, I'm not talking about the rhinos, but the traditional Republican Party and the MAGA movement are in sync. They're different temperamentally, they're different culturally. They fight a little differently, they speak a little differently. Maybe some of them work at different jobs, but their values are not fundamentally different. And therefore, it's, I think, imperative that we don't fork and move in separate directions, because we'll be much weaker. This is not a parliamentary system where two parties can ally together and form a ruling coalition. This is a case where if you have a Republican and a MAGA guy running against each other, we will lose the election pretty much every time, even in red states.
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A
That's right. I agree with that. So can you help us unpack what Is populism and should the Republican Party embrace it? We've done a history of populism on our show. From William Jennings Bryan to Theodore Roosevelt to even some variations of Kennedy and Reagan. They had some populist inclinations. Is populism dangerous? Is this something that we should run towards or is this something that we should try to avoid?
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B
Populism is a term that's a lot like nationalism. And what I mean by that is that these are terms that, first of all, they have a left wing and a right wing application. So today, for example, people identify nationalism with the right. But Castro was a nationalist, Mandela was a nationalist, so was Gandhi, so was Mao Zedong. So these are people who did what they did in the name of their country. Even Stalin, Lenin was a little bit more of an internationalist, at least at the beginning. But Stalin was a vigorous nationalist. His phrase was Mother Russia. So nationalism is not ideologically by itself left or right. Neither is populism. So populism, by and large, you could almost call it a revolt of ordinary people who feel that some established structure is not responsive to them, is not working for them. Again, you can see how this can easily come from the left or from the right. To some degree, you could say Occupy Wall street was a populist movement because it was ordinary people who felt like, I don't have anything to do with the stock market. Somebody's making millions, if not billions of dollars. It's certainly not me. And this is a system that appears to be a money system rigged against me. Now you notice echoes of that on the left and on the right. Now the populism on the left and the right is different. So, for example, I would say right now, in the context of this Reddit gamestop controversy, that Bernie Sanders doesn't like Wall street because to him it's too capitalist. I don't like Wall street because it's not capitalist enough. It breaks the rules of capitalism. It games the system. It's too much of heads I win, tails you lose. So we' sort of populist in a sense, but coming from a very different direction.
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A
I think that's a great analysis. The question is, what do we do with all this pent up populist energy? We know it's here, we know it's not going anywhere. I think your description is correct where people are upset or dissatisfied with a preexisting power structure that is disenfranchising them. But I think we see, Dinesh, that people are increasingly distrustful their institutions and that populist energy is not going away. Smart Democrats are gonna try and wield that. Should Republicans do the same? And if so, towards what policies?
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B
Well, I think we need to integrate populism, temperamentally, emotionally as well as policy wise into the Republican Party. That's the key to the party's future. The by the way, our future. For a long time we protected these Wall street tycoons. And look, half of them have turned them. More than half of them have turned their backs on us. They've given oodles and oceans of money to Biden. They even say things like, yeah, Trump would have helped my pocketbook, but I'm voting my values. This is Leon Cooperman, the billionaire investor. So I'm sick of these people and I say to I basically think they've turned our backs on us. We should turn our backs on them. Let the left deal with them. If they think they've got friends in the Democratic Party, good luck. Let's see if you can still keep your ranch and keep your yachts and keep your penthouse apartments, because you're not gonna get any help from us. No, I think the Republican Party needs to be a party of the working class, white, black and Latino, of the middle class, of middle class values. It's gotta speak in ordinary language. I mean, part of what made Trump so remarkable is he was a billionaire, but he talked about like a guy who worked in one of his own hotels. And pretty much, it's kind of funny, when I'd go to New York and I'd stay in any hotel, I would basically meet lots of little Trumps, guys who talk like him, they even argued like him. They had the same sort of reasoning and they didn't like to, you know, they had a certain dismissive attitude. And so I saw the Trump personality ingrained in all these guys all over the city, and I thought to myself, wow, they deserve representation. They need someone who fights for them. And that someone should be the Republican Party.
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A
Yeah, I mean, it's almost as if Donald Trump, when he was walking job sites, they rubbed off on him and he became more like the blue collar worker despite being a multi billionaire. And because of that, this is something that the ruling class detested. They didn't like that he did not use all of the correct policy positions and arguments from the Ivy League schools. And quite honestly, Dinesh, I think he liberated a lot of conservatives to think differently about issues. A great example is in the conservative world. You know, back 10 years ago, we would never have a robust discussion ever about criticizing big tech or corporate interests. I think President Trump liberated that conversation, or at least saying, hey, has every trade deal we've ever done been spectacular for the American worker? And we were not even allowed to talk about that prior to Trump? In reality, it's more nuanced. Like, some have been good trade deals, some have been really, really bad, and some have actually disenfranchised entire parts of our country. And President Trump deserves such credit for that, for changing the kind of conversation there. And so we did a podcast about the gift that the Republican Party is missing. And that is the, as I mentioned, the energy of the populist movement. And it's growing. And I completely agree with your observation and your analysis there. What do we have to do, Dinesh, to make sure, though, that all of a sudden that does not somehow manifest itself into a Leninist style revolution where we lose the principled conservative nature of things? Where all of a sudden we're willing to forsake the separation of powers and checks and balances and what has made our country so exceptional? How do we channel that energy properly directed, while also keeping true to our constitutional republic roots?
- [20:15]
B
Well, I got a bunch of thoughts, but I'll just give one or two and maybe go from there. The first thing I want to say is that one of the things that struck me about the Trump phenomenon was the fact that not only did Trump have this affinity for the working class, but the working class guy's affinity for Trump shows that the working class doesn't mind having elites and having leaders, and it doesn't even mind gold plated apartments. And it doesn't mind all this extravagance. It doesn't mind Trump playing golf or Trump having a yacht, as long as they're convinced that these elites keep their welfare in mind.
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A
That's such a good point.
- [20:53]
B
And that's critical because it really shows we can't think of the Republican Party going down, going into the future without elites. We need elites, we need really smart guys, we need smart lawyers, we need constitutional scholars, we need people we can put on the Supreme Court. We need all that. Now. The second point I wanna make is that I do think that one of Trump's weaknesses is that he would state a position, but he wouldn't explain it. It's almost like he assumed that you know where he's coming from. And this applied even to things like he talk about Biden family corruption. He'd say, like, you got a $12 million check for Moscow, but he didn't set the context and say, listen, basically the Biden Family has been a ripoff operation for decades, and it's operated by taking family members as bagmen. And there are disclosure requirements that apply to Biden, but they don't apply to the two brothers and the son. And so they're the ones with the suitcases of cash. And when they bring it home, they all sit around the dinner table and split the loot. Some goes to the big guy. So then the American guy goes, wow, is that what's really going on? So one of the benefits and one of the strengths of Reagan, and if we go back and watch, say, Reagan's Evil Empire Speech, 1982, Reagan doesn't just denounce communism. He lays it out. He says why it's bad. He gives a little bit of the history of it. He quotes Solzhenitsyn. He kind of takes you into the Gulag. And. And that way people get it. In other words, it's using the educational function. Now, again, I'm not saying that Trump has to do this all by himself, but I'm saying that we on the right need it. And if it's not coming from Trump, it's gonna have to come from somewhere. So you need Trump and you need the ordinary language, but you also need the educative function, particularly because this is not happening in the schools, it's not happening in the media, it's not happening in Hollywood. So if we don't do it, who's going to do it?
- [22:43]
A
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B
You have to remember that when there is success to be had, and this can be in politics at the top level, or let's take Wall street or take Hollywood, it's going to attract some very bad people. Lincoln actually talked about this when he said, how do we avoid the risk of a Napoleon using the political system to come to the top? But their point is not to be a shepherd, but to be a wolf. And in Democratic politics, the wolf always comes disguised as a sheep. In other words, the wolf never says I'm a wolf, that I'm here to eat you and be a predator and take everything you have. The wolf uses the language of democracy. I'm here for the sheep. That's why I'm here. Lincoln knew all this. Same with Wall Street. When you have oceans of money, huge piles of cash, you're going to get wolves of Wall street who come collecting. So what you need is. And the American founders are very good on this. They were like, you don't need exhortations to virtue. You don't need saying things like, we gotta get better people running for office. We gotta get better people on Wall Street. They realize the founders did that. This is gonna have very limited impact. You need institutional mechanisms that weed out the bad guys, that hold them accountable. So take something as simple as this. Nobody begrudges a Wall street guy who says, listen, I'm gonna acquire a detailed knowledge of American companies. I'm gonna be able to see which industries are coming up and which ones are gonna go down. And I'm going to put money into the ones that are coming up which will fuel those new ideas and new innovations and new companies. I'm going to have my drones take photos of the malls, the parking lots, to see where the customers are going. This is called market research. You're making educated judgments about the economy. This is totally different from this where you go ahead and put money in stocks, and then the next day you go on CNBC and you go, man, there's a lot of activity around these stocks, just the stocks you happen to own. And so you create a frenzy in which people start buying the very stocks in which you bought last week. You make a pile of cash, and then you go do it again the next week. I mean, that's the kind of guy that is basically gaming the system. And then they get really upset when people on Reddit are doing the same thing. Hey, you guys are coordinating. You're exchanging information. You're telling people what stocks to buy. Well, that's what you're doing on CNBC every day.
- [28:03]
A
Not only that, they hire public relation firms. They write open letters against CEOs. They do all sorts of things to bring down share prices. And it's interesting. I think the critique against short selling is one that is probably legitimate. However, short selling in and of itself is not really the issue here. For example, my friend Wilt Chamberlain mentioned this from Human Events on a previous discussion we had. I thought it was a brilliant point. I think you would like it, Dinesh, which is, we actually thought of short sellers as heroes back in the time of the big short, when they were shorting the housing market, they were, by definition, contrarian. They lost a ton of money when they were shorting the housing market. Until they didn't. We looked at them as almost clairvoyant traders that were trying to get ahead of the curve. Whereas now the short sellers are the opposite. Now the short sellers are actually the predominant power structure. Now the short sellers are the guys with the capital, with the resources. And the contrarian were the people, were the people that were actually trying to drive up the price against the wishes of the short sellers. And so the instrument itself of short selling is not necessarily where the criticism should be. I know Elon Musk had some criticism towards it, and I think that there's some very valid concerns there. But your point is well taken, which is that the anger has stemmed from people say, you can't manipulate our manipulated market. You do this all the time. All the time. You guys are exchanging information with winks and nods, bringing prices down. And also, a great example of market manipulation, just based solely and purely on reputation, is whenever Warren Buffett makes a serious stake in a company, it goes up artificially. He knows this, by the way. He knows that when Berkshire Hathaway, because of his proven record, makes a placement in any company, other retail investors are going to get behind Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. Why? Because it's just the reputation. It's like he must know something. I don't know. I'm also gonna get behind it. It's almost this herd mentality that immediately steps in. How is that any different than someone on Reddit saying that, well, I think this is a good idea and a couple million people get behind it. So, Dinesh, what do you think the Gamestop saga teaches us politically, if anything?
- [30:16]
B
Well, I think what it teaches us is that we have to think of creative new ways to fight. And the Reddit people are geniuses in this respect. I mean, I agree with you, of course. There's nothing inherently bad about short selling. It's making money on a stock that's projected by you to go down. And people, of course, that's the same thing as making money on a stock that you project to go up. But here's the key difference. If you bet on a stock and you say, I'm going to buy it at $10, because I think it's going to go up and the stock plummets to zero, you stand to lose a maximum of $10.
- [30:48]
A
That's exactly right.
- [30:49]
B
Stock price can't go below zero. But now look at the opposite. Let's say you take a stock that's $50 and you're projecting it to go to 10. And so you short it. Right. There is theoretically no limit to how high it can go, and you're going to owe the difference. So let's say the stock goes up from $50 to $500. Well, you're $450 in the hole. And if you're operating on borrowed, leveraged money. So the Reddit people figured this out. They figured out that the short sellers are immensely vulnerable, and because there's theoretically no limit to how much they can lose. And so a financial crisis is created by making a stock artificially go in the opposite direction from what they're betting. They're betting down. If we can push the stock up, we can literally put these guys out of business. And they came very close to putting massive hedge funds like Melbourne Capital out of business. And they certainly gave them an incredible body blow from which I don't think they're going to be recovering very soon.
- [31:45]
A
So, Dinesh, can you comment on how the Biden administration, which is primarily funded from Wall street, was quick to send in regulators, possibly make phone calls, allegedly from Janet Yellen to these firms, about how we have now seen, and this is something you've warned about, but how the Democrat Party has become a corporatist party more than a socialist party. It seems as if the Biden administration was eager to try and defend these hedge funds, their activity, and the collusion of amongst all of their different choices and their actions.
- [32:16]
B
Yeah, I mean, on my podcast a day or two ago, I was just reading the speaking fees that were being paid to Janet Yellen, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America. And then, of course, Citadel, the very hedge fund involved in this whole Reddit gamestop controversy. And what you notice is that they're paying massive. A single speech, $175,000, two speeches, $320,000. Now, obviously, this is not based upon anything Janet Yellen is actually saying. In fact, you can get what Janet Yellen is saying for free on YouTube. So the reason that they're paying her is it's almost like a down payment, an advance payment, saying, hey, this is somebody who could be in a very responsible position in government. And at that point, we're gonna make sure it's somebody who's gonna return our phone calls, listen to what we have to say, and be very well aware that a great deal of money has changed hands in her favor and. And from our pocketbooks. And we do expect some sort of return on that investment.
- [33:17]
A
In return, they now get special protection from the Treasury Department, the securities Exchange Commission, and more. That little investment is just pennies on the dollar versus the type of benefit that they now get long term. Dinesh, I want to finish on this one particular topic here that has been a lot of people have been talking about, which is just looking at the last year with the shutdowns, with the virus, with the pandemic and our reaction to it. It's been a very difficult year for a lot of people. And just you look at it, just about a year ago, the rumblings of the Chinese coronavirus were just starting. I remember watching on TV a year ago, the week of the super bowl, when then Health and Human Services Commissioner Alex Azar came up and said, the Chinese coronavirus does not pose a threat at all. And now we know actually what happened. Dinesh, just looking at this from a historical lens or even just, you know, just a philosophical or political lens, what do you think the biggest lessons of the last year have been? What do you think we need to say we learned this that we did not know a year ago?
- [34:27]
B
Well, what we learned is that the epidemic was deployed worldwide as a massive political weapon, almost a mother of all bombs to drop on the world economy. Now, in America, its motives were twofold. One is to wreck the Trump economy, which was a necessary prerequisite to getting Trump out of office. I think Trump would have been invincible if he had the Trump economy of, let's say, February of 2020. So they needed it. It was a gift. Jane Fonda called it God's gift to the left, and it was God's gift to the left in that respect. But it was God's gift to the left in other respects. It gave the left a chance to justify tyranny in the name of a virus. So they were able to suppress fundamental civil liberties and do it over a fairly long period of time and kind of get people accustomed to being under control like that. And they also got a taste of it themselves, and they liked it. So when you look at somebody like Gretchen Whitmer, now, the ordinary American doesn't see a tyrant. She's kind of a pleasant looking, middle class American mom, you know. And when we think of a tyrant, we think of, like some guy like Stalin with a toothbrush mustache and a big Cossack outfit, right? But to me, if you think of Gretchen Whitmer, she's really a very ancient type. I mean, in a small village anywhere around the world, 100 years, 300 years ago, she would be like the town, you know, nitpicker, you know, and her husband would cross the street and run away. Her kids would run away from her, and her neighbors would avoid her. But she would only exercise her tyrannical domain over a small number of people. But when you make her in charge of Michigan, suddenly she has the police at her behest. Suddenly this tyrannical impulse takes on a whole macabre aspect it didn't have before. And so this is the 21st century face of Western tyranny. It's not gonna look like it does in China or Russia. It has its own American component. Gretchen Whitmer's part of it and Cuomo's part of it, and so are many others.
- [36:30]
A
Yeah, I think that's a good observation, especially in this last year, how quickly we have allowed tyranny to spread in our country and to not confront it. You're starting to see some of these governors start to relax some of those draconian standards. You're starting to see them disengage from some of these ideas. However, I will say this, Dinesh, that I'm not sure the American people have fully learned our lesson here. I think that there has been, and this is, to my great disappointment, more people that enjoyed being taken care of than being free. That safetyism had become the predominant philosophy or the dominant viewpoint of the average American. And I think that we need to recognize that freedom is a value. And if you do not communicate the need for freedom, what it actually takes, which is responsibility and to be aware and to be alert, well, then freedom very well will be taken away almost instantaneously. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [37:31]
B
Well, I think that there are a few professions, the medical profession being one of them, the scientific profession more generally being another, where we are habituated to deferring to expertise. I mean, just think about it. Every time you go to see a doctor, he'll tell you something. You never go, well, that's a very controversial statement. Give me four reasons why you think that, and I'll give you three why you're wrong. You know, we don't do that. We just say, oh, yeah, okay, I'll take it. Okay. Give me the prescription. So, by and large, this is why I was talking about the godsend that nothing could have been better than a medical crisis where all you have to do is put out a bunch of guys in white coats and everybody goes, yeah, that's what the doctor says. So this was, in that sense, very helpful. To the left now. I Do think, though, that the fact that the government in a weird way, showed its impotence, I think, in being able to really look after people. I mean, just think about it. You send a pathetic $1200 check, another $400 later, you're promising another 1200. But people have been a year. I mean, if you had a small business essentially rendered dysfunctional people, you don't have your employees, it's very hard to get back on your feet. And the government goes, hey, here's your 600 bucks. You realize at the end of the day, it's only freedom, hard work, effort, entrepreneurship, that's ultimately what's gonna put food on our table and braces on our kids teeth and make a better life for us and our families. It's not gonna be some pathetic, measly provision made by the federal government.
- [39:03]
A
And even Governor Cuomo has said, quote, unquote, when I say experts in air quotes, it sounds like I'm saying I don't really trust the experts. And he says, because I don't. So that's amazing thing to hear from Cuomo now that he's been liberated from the Trump administration. I think the Democrats are going after Cuomo in a very serious way. Dinesh, tell us about your podcast, how people can reach it. I know you're working very hard on it.
- [39:27]
B
Well, it's really fun for me. And it came out of COVID in a weird way, a silver lining, because before the. Before that, I was traveling, halftime. I was on the road, speaking here and speaking there, meeting with investors, making movies. Very difficult for me to do a daily podcast. So this forced me to kind of hunker down. I'm trying to do a podcast that's very educational and also very varied in its content. I mean, just today's podcast, you know, I talked about Wall Street, I talked about Dostoyevsky, I talked about the idea of nihilism. I interviewed a young woman who has been banned by Sephora as a cultural, a Christian and a patriot. So I swing the whole gamut, and I do little comedy sketches. So it's a varied podcast. It's a lot of fun. It reflects my personality. It's available on Spotify and Apple and audio, and it's available in video, on YouTube and Rumble, and of course, also on Salem Now.
- [40:21]
A
Well, I love that. And we could do a whole nother episode on Dostoevsky. I can never say it right, but I believe one of his quotes is, to live without hope is to cease to live. Is one of my favorite quotes of his. But everyone check out Dinesh's podcast. You're doing a great job, Dinesh. Thank you for joining us today. Dinesh, and talk to you soon.
- [40:42]
B
It's a pleasure. Thanks, Charlie.
- [40:43]
A
Thanks, Dinesh. See you soon. Thanks so much, everybody, for listening. If you want to support our program, go to charliekirk.com support make sure you're subscribed to the Charlie Kirk show and send us in your thoughts and feedback at freedom. Charliekirk. Com God bless you, everybody. Speak to you soon.