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A
My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro American student organization in the country, fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're gonna end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You gotta stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Turning Point USA College chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life. And I encourage you to do the same. Here I am, Lord.
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B
Use me.
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A
Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble gold investments@noblegold investments.com that is noblegoldinvestments.com.
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B
all right. Welcome to the Charlie Kirk show. It's Monday, April 13th. I am remote on assignment, but Blake is holding it down at the Y Refi studios back in Phoenix, Arizona. Blake, how we doing?
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C
Howdy, Andrew. Quite a weekend, huh?
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B
Quite. Quite a week. You know, I just feel like we just need to have that ready to go every Monday, because it seems like just about every weekend these days is quite a weekend. We've got Swalwell news, we got Pope news, we got Trump is Jesus news, we've got blockades in the straight of Hormuz news, we've got all kinds of stuff. So why don't we get right down to it? Uh, Blake, you have lined us up with a great guest to help explain this blockade after the peace negotiations broke down in Islamabad, Pakistan over the weekend with J.D. vance leading the charge there. Blake, the floor is yours.
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C
Yes. All right, let's jump right to him. So we had this guy on right after the election to talk about the shipbuilding crisis of the U.S. navy, which we're hopefully making some progress towards resolving. John Conrad.
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D
Afternoon, guys. Thank you for having me on.
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C
Hello. Welcome back. So John is an expert on merchant marine shipping, and he's had a lot of opinions. And right when this was announced, I messaged him and I asked what he thought of the President's plan to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, which we were previously concerned about Iran mining and blocking. And so it's a Bit of a pivot. But, John, why don't you just tell us what you make of it?
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D
Yeah. And I apologize for my casual attire today in the hotel room. There's the biggest naval conference in the world next week in D.C. and before I headed out to there, I had to get out on the Pacific Ocean. I think a lot of these admirals and bureaucrats are stuck in the Pentagon in D.C. they don't remember the harsh environment of the ocean. They haven't been out there and tasted the salt water. So I wanted to get out there and I got a little sunburn on my nose. But with the Strait of Hormuz, what's happening is the Iranians put some mines down. We don't think there are very many mines, but even a few mines is going to send the commercial shipping companies haywire because of insurance and the insurance ties to London, and they don't want to take those risks today. So some ships have been transiting through what people have been calling the Ayatollah toll booth, going through the way up north in the Strait of Hormuz, hugging the coast of Iran. But Iran's, I don't wanna call it a parliament, a body of bureaucrats has said that they are going to toll the ships that go through the Strait of Hormuz going forward in the future. And this would have a inflationary impact on the entire world economy. So Trump announced yesterday that is not okay. They tried to negotiate previously. J.D. vance flew to Pakistan to try to come up with a deal with Iran. They turned down that deal. So Trump says, hey, if you're going to do that, we are going to blockade all ships going to and from Iran, choking off their economy and putting a lot of pressure on the regime.
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C
Okay, but I guess, what do you think of, first of all, are we able to do this safely? Does this make sense strategically? And where does it lead? Because I guess what feels strange to me is if the problem was previously that we couldn't transit the strait safely, I'm not sure how we necessarily get closer to ending the conflict by saying nobody gets to transit the Strait.
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D
Well, Trump has said that allies in neutral countries are able to transit the strait. You know, we did this a minor. Trump called it a blockade. It wasn't really a blockade in Venezuela where they took the shadow tanker ships that were entering and exited Venezuela. We had coast Guard teams, along with our boarding teams from the military, go on, land on helicopters on these supertankers and seize them. Except that was not a blockade. That was a lawful enforcement exercise. These ships were not flagged, they were not part of the international system and that came under a law enforcement bent. This is different. A blockade is an act of war. If you start stopping all ships that are coming into and out of Iran, that is not a, that is not a law enforcement. You do not need the Coast Guard. We think that this is the reason that Marines are probably there on their amphibious ships that they can start boarding these ships and diverting them. But it's Iranian ships, it is not Qatar, uae, other ships from Europe and Asia that want to go in and get oil from other places in the Gulf. This is very specifically on ships going to Kharg island and potentially bringing weapons from places like Russia and China into Iran.
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C
Alright, but I guess the rational thing, you say we have it open to neutral countries that aren't going to pay Iran's toll. But this doesn't necessarily get us closer to the issue because in addition to mines, we aren't. We also worried that they could shell shoot at these ships and if they do that, are we able to protect them?
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D
Well yes, I realize I didn't answer your last question. This is not as dangerous as people think. We have brand new mine sweeping ships, the littoral combat ships in the area. We have four of them. Each of these ships have two minesweepers that can sweep these mines. We know the general location of these mines and we can divert around them. But like you said, the real danger is these flying drones, the Shahid drones and Iran does have ballistic anti ship missiles. Two things I want to point out, and first is the Iranians sent all these drones to the Houthis in the Red Sea and they were able to damage ships. But out of the thousands of drones and missiles that were shot in the Red Sea, most of them were the Iranian. They were only able to sink one ship with those drones. These ships, especially the tankers are double hulled. They have water tanks on the side. So if you penetrate, you gotta penetrate steel then water, then into the fuel. It is dangerous, it can cause an explosion. I don't wanna undermine that, but we have not. You know these reports that drones make ships obsolete is false. We have seen very little effectiveness. We know it takes a lot of drones, we don't know the exact number. We think it's between 7 and 10 to launch, to actually hit a ship. And like I said, only one ship has been sunk. But these destroyers, the US Navy destroyers are excellent at shooting down these drones and missiles. When the destroyers were in the Red Sea they were able to protect 100% of the ships that they convoyed. We know from President Trump. Note that over 100 drones and missiles were fired at our carrier in the beginning of war and we shot down 100% of them. The problem is each destroyer only has 96 missiles and once those run out, it can take, you know, two weeks to get to Diego Garcia, reload and come back. So it wasn't a lack of capability that it was dangerous for US Navy to transit. It was we just did not have enough destroyers in the region. These are the world's best platforms, but we needed time to get more in.
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B
There was a great clip, Captain John Conrad, that I saw from Tom Sauer on Fox this morning talking about the underwater drones that we have to get rid of these mines. I'm going to go ahead and play it and get your reaction to it. Clip 13 and in order to hunt
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E
for those mines, we've got some of the most sophisticated unmanned underwater vehicle technology that's led by EOD Mobile Unit six. We've got got some excellent technology and there's even better technology that's on the way.
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B
So these are underwater drones that are actually going out, I guess, hunting the mines, maybe. Do they explode them ever? Is that part of the goal? Or are they just trying to identify where they are so you can create a route around them?
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D
Well, Tom's a good friend of mine. He was a good friend of Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobic. He is the expert in this. He is a former Navy udt. So he was a Marine first, then went to Naval Academy, became a surface warfare officer, then a udt. What is udt? Underwater Demolition Team. So the first step in any mine clearing is you have to find out exactly where the mines are. So we have these littoral combat ships. They sent out these two remote control piloted boats that Towson are arrays like your fish finder, but on a bass boat, but a lot more advanced. And they're going to map where each of the mines are. And then they can send underwater drones to get a picture of it to go around and identify the type. And then depending on the type, they can either send a sort of a kamikaze like submarine drone to go and explode it, or they can send these UDT divers. These guys dive with the Navy SEALs. The they are the experts in explosives. And another fun fact is all of the explosive teams in the army, in your local SWAT team, all the guys who deal with explosives, bomb disposal, they are all trained by the Navy UDT school in Florida. So these are the premier guys who it's one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, but they can actually dive down and try to either set explosives on the mine, swim away and explode it, or potentially disconnect the triggering fuse.
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B
So Captain John Conrad from gCaptain.com it seems like what I'm hearing you say is the naval vessels, the US Navy vessels can deal with the missile attacks as long as they can keep them reloaded, restocked, and that we can successfully sweep these mines and do this blockade. It seems like the military capacity is there. Am I hearing you that that would be your general assessment?
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D
Absolutely. And what's brilliant about this particular campaign is they are going slow despite enormous pressure from the Europeans and others, particularly the kind of shipping cabal in London that runs this insurance and the International Maritime Organization, the UN Body. They're pushing the military to go fast. But Trump is saying let's go slow, let's get the right equipment in, let's take our time. Let's not put any forces in danger. Trump said, I believe it was last week that only 10%, I believe less than 10% of US military capabilities have been surged to the Persian Gulf. So we're doing this methodically, we're doing it slowly. And yes, some of the world is going to suffer higher prices. There are going to be fertilizer problems. But we've also seen that the US has the excess capacity. You have a line of supertankers coming to the Gulf to load oil in Texas and otherwise.
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B
Yeah, we're getting reports that there is over 121 ship well, 121 ships, empty oil tankers headed right now to the Gulf of America. 61 of those ships are supertankers that can carry up to 2 million barrels of oil each. So that's pretty. That seems like a lot of supply is going to be coming out of the Gulf of America. Let's talk. So we've dealt with the military side of this, John. What about the trade side? Right. So we're hearing that Asian countries are actually coming to America to refuel to get the oil tankers filled up. What does this mean geopolitically? How reliant is Asia to in this moment until the strait gets cleared on U.S. oil?
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D
Well, the important thing is the Supreme Court tariff decision, I think, is absolutely critical to all of this. So that we all know the Supreme Court said that the tariffs were illegal, but they didn't say the president can't institute tariffs. They said he cannot use specific mechanisms. So this is causing a major reset in tariff negotiations, we have to go back and renegotiate with each of these countries. And every day the straits close, and every day they're reliant on us for oil, natural gas and other supplies. Kind of gives us better leverage on these trade negotiations. But the one country that is suffering the most from this is China. They bought oil from Venezuela, they bought oil from Russia and Iran. And those sources are being closed off because we've established a new government in Venezuela. We have this blockade in Iran, and we've given the green light to Ukrainians and other European nations. We're not doing ourselves to go after Russian ships. There was a Russian LNG ship two weeks ago that exploded in the Gulf. I don't think we participated, but we're saying, hey, if other countries want to do that, go ahead. So we're getting a lot of political economic leverage in the entire world here.
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C
So, Captain John, when we had you on for the first time, it was right as the new administration was starting and the topic was shipbuilding, military procurement, as you said. Our biggest choke point in this obstacle with Rand, for example, is just our ability to make enough missiles to shoot stuff down. And similarly, I know another choke point is do we have enough ships to send them where we need them? Just tell us has in one minute. Has there been progress on that in the first year and a half, roughly, of the of the second Trump administration, or is there hope for additional progress?
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D
Yeah, it's a pure numbers game. These destroyers are the best, so we have 74, but 1/3 are in maintenance. One third are being worked up for redeployment. So you only have 24, and half of them are in the carrier, so we only have 12 available. The most important thing in this entire equation with hormone is getting enough shift ships. And we have a merchant marine crewing crisis. So the Navy had to lay up 17 Oilers and ammo resupply ships. We are making progress. President Trump continues to push it. I've taken several trips with Pete Hegseth. They are pushing it from the top, but there is a lot of administrative pull on this. We had the executive order for shipbuilding. We had the maritime action Plan. It's uncertain. We now have a 1 trillion dollar defense budget, and a lot of this is the biggest shipbuilding budgetary allocation in modern history. But we still haven't done the actual orders. We're still getting tripped up on a lot of the bureaucracy. And quite frankly, there are Marxist forces and other forces within The Pentagon, within D.C. the Trump battleship would be the ideal weapon for this, but they're pushing back.
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B
Charlie had an absolutely relentless passion for learning. I saw it up close and personal, and every waking moment, every spare moment that he could. He had a book open, he had a podcast open. He had a Hillsdale online course open. He was always diving into new ideas, absorbing information, studying up, and sharpening his skills. That's why I love Dr. Arne. At Hillsdale College, they shared a deep understanding that learning is the key to shaping your character, creating courage, and changing lives. Charlie never stopped learning, and neither should you. Through Hillsdale's online courses, he spent time studying the classics, the American founding, and the enduring truths of the Bible. Now it is your turn. With Hillsdale's free online courses, you can follow in his footsteps, learning from real professors and challenging yourself with rigorous coursework that's free and accessible to anybody who's willing to learn. A great place to start is their brand new course on logic and rhetoric. Learn from Hillsdale professors how to speak masterfully, make a powerful point, and see how clear thinking leads to better decision making and more effective speech. Don't wait. Go to charlieforhillsdale.com to enroll today. It's completely free. This is a real good one, by the way. Logic and rhetoric. Pick up the mic, carry it forward. Learn like Charlie. Start right now@charlieforhillsdale.com okay, so really quickly, we gotta talk about. We're gonna get to Swalwell in just a second, but we gotta talk about what happened to Savannah Hernandez. She is a TPA Frontlines journalist and she was brutally assaulted this weekend in Minneapolis. So this happened on April 11th. So two days ago, she was filming outside of the Whipple Federal building, an ICE facility in Minneapolis, during an anti ICE protest. So she was getting B roll. She was doing it lawfully when a gentleman named William Scott Kelly, known online as the Woke Farmer and already, by the way, under investigation for Federal investigation for January 2026 incident when he stormed city's church. You guys will remember that incident. So this guy's a total troublemaker. He's back at it again because apparently we weren't able to keep him behind bars while his case is getting prosecuted. So this gentleman spots Savannah filming and pointed her out to the anti ICE protesters, activists, leftists, I'd call them a mob. The. So next thing she knows, she's getting assaulted, screamed at, and then pushed to the ground violently by that gentleman right there. Who we'll get to in just a second. That is Ostrushko. Gentleman named Chris Ostrushko. There's a Whole family. They shoved Savannah from behind, knocking her to the ground. Paige Ostrushko blew a whistle aggressively in her ear at close range before making physical contact. And Diana Ostrushko participated in the mobbing and confrontation. Multiple people swung at Savannah during this incident. She reported injuries including broken glasses, a headache, and a stiff neck. I personally called her as soon as I tried to call her immediately when I saw the footage, I couldn't get through. And then I called her a little bit later, got through. She was pretty shaken up, but just really upset as well that this happened. It should be peaceful to be able to go be an independent journalist on the ground and get B roll. You should not have your life at risk. And the fact that these thugs, these quote unquote activists that are actually thugs and militants, come after somebody like Savannah, who does it the right way, who's minding her own business, was just trying to get B roll, should insult and inflame all of your anger. The Hennepin County Sheriff's Office has confirmed that the three Struzco family members will be charged by complaint in connection with the assault. A fourth individ, Lorenzo Amadeo Garcia, was arrested and booked for obstruction of the legal process. That apparently, that's Paige's. Ostrusko's boyfriend, Harmeet Dylan, has chimed in, saying she's on it, which gives us an indication that the DOJ is looking into possible federal charges. It's a shocking piece of footage. And if you guys want to play that again, because she was trying to get away, she said, leave me alone. I'm just getting away. And they kept coming after her. And then a grown man who probably outweighs Savannah by three times, thought it was okay to violently push her to the ground. Look at these people. She's just trying to ignore them. She's trying to go about her business. She's trying to walk away, and they wouldn't let her. And they're, by the way, what they're doing to her ears right there is assault as well. I just want to make that very clear. When you blow a whistle in somebody's ear, you could damage their hearing permanently, forever. So don't let that slide off without. Without notice. So there was a couple people that apparently tried and attempted to help her. Thank you to them. But all the same, this should have never happened. It's an outrage. All of these people involved in assaulting Savannah Hernandez need to go to prison. And I do not trust local authorities to do this the right way. This would probably end up With a slap on the wrist, they'll be let out like this dewoke farmer guy, William Scott Kelly, to go out and harass people, intimidate and assault people again. So I sincerely hope that the federal government, the doj, presses federal charges against these thugs because what happened to Savannah Hernandez is unacceptable. And it's unfortunately part of a longer trend. It started, it started a long time ago, but obviously what happened with Charlie will change the lives of so many of us forever. We cannot allow this type of violence to go unmatched, unanswered, unaccounted for. So I hope that all these thugs end up in prison for a very, very long time. And I hope it sends a message loud and clear across the country that if you want to attack journalists, you're going to go to prison. You. You will be held accountable. Like, I don't know if you saw this story of. I'm sure you saw this story over the weekend. If you have thoughts.
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C
The most important thing is, yeah, this is, this shows exactly why it's so important. The change we made in the White House, which is this sort of thing has been happening to citizen journalists like Savannah, like others, mind me, who's the Asian guy who would go to all of the antifa things? He would always get attacked.
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B
Joe.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Cam Higby.
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F
Yeah.
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B
All these disorder. They've all been attacked.
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C
They'll get things thrown at them. All this stuff happens all the time and it's always treated as no big deal. These people never face consequences for it. Sometimes you even end up with. The government will end up saying, oh, actually we arrested you in an illegal way. And they'll, they'll make settlements with these people, give them money, basically bankroll them. And what's been going on in the background, we actually have. The federal government for the first time has gotten serious convictions of antifa activists, terrorists, whatever you want to call them. And that's hugely important. We actually can have confidence that something will happen to these people, whether it's at least bringing them up in court, making them have to defend themselves. But hopefully, yeah, we get convictions. We hold them accountable for this crap.
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B
Yeah. And here's the dirty little secret, is that a lot of these judges, a lot of these prosecutors in Hennepin county, they don't care about Savannah Hernandez. They think of her as a troublemaker for trying to document anti protests in Minneapolis. They want these thugs to get off. And so you're going to see slaps on the wrist. You're going to see this and that. No to Blake's point. This is why having a new administration in Washington, having an actual DOJ that wants to aggressively prosecute crime like this vigilante streets is so important. So I don't want to hear everybody whining all the time about oh, I don't like what President Trump's doing when it comes to this kind of stuff. What do you want? The alternative would be disastrous. So we are praying for Savannah. She's going to be on Laura Ingram show tonight and we support her. We're working with her closely, we're working our in house legal team is working on making sure everything's all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed here, giving her the best support we can. Our team is on it as well as with security. So rest assured Turning Point is on it. And anyways, we just pray for her safety. You know, this happens by the way, this happens. Like we, we mentioned Cam, Higby, Nick, Soar. Now Savannah, when you get to a certain prominence and a level of being known, these anti ice protesters, they create lists so we gotta make sure that they are safe out in the field doing this important work. And anyways, I've talked to Savannah continually over the weekend and she's doing okay. I mean I called her on Sunday just to check back in with her and she said, you know, my body hurts. That shouldn't be a thing. Okay, we're glad she's gonna be okay, but this should not be a thing. And the fact that the left has so glorified violence against conservatives has so justified in their own minds that it's okay to go after a conservative journalist. Journalist. Just because of the fact that she works with Turning Point or the fact that she believes differently than them. It's not okay. It's un American, it's diabolical, it's evil, it's from the pit of hell and it will continue, it will get worse until these people are held accountable. So I just want to say thank you to Harmeet Dhillon at the DOJ for chiming in on this publicly. And we very much look forward to charges being filed in this case because they need to be. There is another example of just how ruthless the left truly is. And that is of course Eric Swalwell. Blake, have you ever seen an op be executed with such precision and velocity as what just happened to Eric's Walwell?
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C
Honestly, the main one that comes to mind is the opt to get Joe Biden out, which was pretty similar. When they really feel us clinging to power hinges on this question. They're a little better about getting their ducks in a row, as it were. And that's what was going on here. We love to hype up. Wow. You know, they're so scattered. There could be two Republicans who finish in the top two in this primary because there's only two Republicans in their system, five or six or seven Democrats. And Democrats saw the same thing and said, we've got to get rid of one of these, and we have stuff to take out. Swalwell, Bam, vaporized.
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B
Well, and let's just be very clear. So Swalwell has been accused, and I believe credibly accused by multiple women of sexual assault, even rape allegations by former staffers. Okay? Here's the dirty little secret. This is not new. We've known about these rumors about Eric Swalwell for a long time. Okay? The fact that this was laid out, as it was by the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN and then everybody hopped on board was truly impressive. I mean, it's terrifying, but it's truly impressive. When the Democrats want to take out somebody politically, they. They know how to do that because they're staffed by a bunch of former CIA color revolutionaries, and they know how to do it. So this happened so quickly. All right, so, Blake, I have a theory about this Melania Trump press conference last week, and then how that kicked off Swalwell, because what Melania did is she surprised everybody. She goes on offense when it comes to the Epstein survivors and the victims there. And she says, we want to hear from them. We want justice for them. They should be able to testify before Congress. Let's get this hap. Let's get this done. Now, this. This surprised everybody because it wasn't a telegraph move. It didn't. There wasn't President Trump being asked about it kind of hinting about this. It just happened. The White House press corps was surprised. It put the. The Democrats on defense because it made them have to answer the question, do they really care about justice, or do they really just want to get President Trump? Meanwhile, as I mentioned before, this Swalwell news has been hanging in the background for a long time. A lot of people have known about it. As a matter of fact, you know, our friend Steve Hilton in California, he's been hearing about these rumors for a long time about Swalwell. So everybody knew about it. The question was, when were they going to deploy the assault? When were they going to deploy the story? You got Melania Trump putting him on defense. They go, hey, listen, we want to own the moral high ground. And Be supportive of survivors. So what did you see? The story drops. You got his bff, Ruben Gallego, who's like, buddy, buddy with Swalwell. It's. That's another thing you gotta know. Gallego is a real peach out of Arizona, and he's. Best buddies endorse Swalwell. He comes out and goes, oh, I'm so sorry. These are really serious allegations. And I just. I condemn him. And I. I'm going to take away my endorsement of Eric Swalwell. You had Adam Schiff saying similar things up and down the board. Democrats pounce. By the end of the weekend, there was 50 former staffers that called the allegations against Swalwell credible, and they wanted to see justice done. Now you have Swalwell being called to resign from Congress. Dropping out of the gubernatorial race was not good enough. So now he is being. There's calls being made up and down the Democrat Party political apparatus in D.C. calling for him to step out of Congress. Now, to be clear, he denies these allegations. Blake. Of course he denies them. But the allegations have been there for some time. Certainly the Feng Feng allegations loom large over Swalwell's head and have for many years. And so I believe that this was something that Melania Trump maybe inadvertently triggered for the Democrats. They were gonna do it. It's just a matter of when she forced their hand. I mean, agree or disagree,
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C
it's a convoluted theory. I guess it's possible. But I think anything like this, and. And you look at the ways that something strange about it, the fact that, like, big pieces of it leaked out via Martin Shkreli, I thought that was really strange. I think it'll be. Maybe we'll never know the full story of how this, like, op came to be, but I'd love to know more about it. But I think the biggest reason they probably did it now is I think they've just had that steadily building dread about the California race. It wasn't settling. None of the candidates were dropping out. None of them were pulling back. None of them was pulling ahead. And I think there's just that degree of ruthlessness that made them say. Someone say, all right, we've just. We've got to pull it. We've got to do it because. And on top of that, it's good to be the governor of California. You get to be the head of. As we know, we're going to have Chris Ruffo on later this week, it is the biggest pile of corruption probably, arguably in the entire world that you can Control this patronage piece of. To give out billions in Medicaid funds, billions here, billions there.
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D
You.
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C
You run a giant funnel of money from the federal government and from the suckers who still live there. And that's a big prize to be won. And I don't know that they need. I don't know that they need that much of a push from the first lady or anyone else to take out someone.
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B
No, I don't think they needed a push. Don't get me wrong. I think the timing and when you look at the messaging on the back end, where one by one, they all said, we support victims. We, you know, we believe these women. We are the party that supports victims. And so they. It was very clear to me from a messaging angle what they were trying to do. They were trying to reestablish high ground, the moral high ground when it came to supporting all victims. I mean, it was just. To me, I saw right, right through it. Here's what else is interesting. Tom Steyer, the billion billionaire entrepreneur and former presidential candidate, he's running as a Democrat. He has now moved into first place on the betting odds for who is to become the next governor of California. Now, what was interesting is that Swalwell was doing remarkably well for a rather unimpressive gentleman. So he was doing remarkably well. He was a problem for Democrats. And the fact. Here's my last point on the Swalwell op. I mean, because it was ruthless and brutal and absolutely coordinated. Make no, no. Make no ifs, ands, or buts about that. But here, here's what's interesting as well, Blake. In the Democrat Party, if you are a straight white male that has some compromise on you, if there is oppo research on you, they will absolutely take you out without a second thought. If you get in the way, you will become expendable as quickly as humanly possible. And, you know, this is a point that Danny made on our team. So give him a shout out. You see him sometimes on our. On our AMAs. On Friday, Danny said, you know, he said it kind of shows how strong President Trump is here, that the Democrats have worked multiple ops like this and they've never been able to take out President Trump. They took out Swalwell in the matter of about 48 hours. That's how powerful President Trump and the. In the coalition behind him is. So, I mean, a very revealing weekend here in many ways.
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C
Yeah, I mean, I do, I do. I agree. It is very. It's something you love to point out that he's the most hated man in the world. He has the most enemies of anyone in the world. Certainly the most resources have gone into his destruction of anyone in the world. And then when you look at what they've offered up, they've offered up extremely, those extremely flimsy harassment cases that they ran with, with Eugene Carroll and then
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B
they changed the laws and then they
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C
have to change entire laws and invent entire new legal theories to bring pretty weak prosecutions against him. It is pretty remarkable when you look at over a decade of attempts at this point and how much of a failure they've all been.
- [35:49]
B
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- [37:24]
F
Hey, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me on, Andrew. I'm excited to be joining you guys today.
- [37:28]
B
Yeah, I mean it's, it's a pleasure to have you. Joshua, you are a thoughtful guy. I hadn't heard about you until, I don't know, probably the last three, four months, something like that. Been really impressed with your commentary and have gotten to know you a little bit. You are a former church planner turned podcaster, thinker. Now you're, you're, you're wading into political and cultural topics more and more. So you kind of have that theological bent, but now you're getting more and more into the commentary space, and I think you're really good at it. And, you know, we got to talk on the phone last week, and I was like, you know, we just need to come on and have this conversation. We are going to get to what we plan to talk about, Joshua, which is this sort of taxonomy, as you refer to it, about the, the coalition as it stands. But, but first, President Trump just sort of, you know, he called an audible over the weekend, attacks the Pope, Pope Leo, and then posts a, now an infamous meme, an AI generated meme of him as Jesus. He's denying that we now have clips of that. So we will get into that in just a second. But, you know, it's that standard outrage. And by the way, I should say Blake is Catholic here, so we're gonna get his take on this as the, is the, the Catholic on the panel here. But President Trump says he is. This was not what his plan was. What. What clip is that? I, by the way, I thought I had the clip ready to go. He denies it. He says he was a Red Cross. It was a picture of him as a red Cross trying to heal people. Joshua, were you outraged? Did you resonate with the outrage about his Jesus post?
- [39:02]
F
Yeah, I mean, I saw some defenders, some Christian defenders jumping on and, you know, they're like, there's some good plan trusters out there. I love the plan trusters. And we'll get into that taxonomy we were talking about here in a minute. But basically saying that, no, this wasn't Trump pretending to be Jesus. This wasn't him posting an image of him as the Messiah. Ultimately, what, in fact, what they did is they actually pulled up a bunch of different pictures of popes dressed in that garb. So basically, they were arguing that what he was actually doing was going to, going to battle against the Pope. He wasn't claiming to be Jesus. Now, like, the little powerful hands there that he's got in that photo, to me, it seems like that he is doing the comparison to our Messiah. And I'll tell you what, when I first saw the picture, I just, I hated it. I hated it so much, I didn't like it at all. It screamed blasphemy, honestly. And here's the thing, though. I take everything that Trump posts on social media with a grain of salt. I know that he's trolling. I know that he's messing around. And here's the thing. I know that. Well, here's the thing. I don't know Donald J. Trump's heart, but he does not strike me as the type of man who is in love with his savior, Jesus, the type of man who is in full submission to Jesus Christ and his law, who wakes up every morning and goes to the word of God as his ultimate and infallible authority. He doesn't strike me as that kind of guy. So I'm not necessarily expecting him to behave like a regenerate Christian. This is the kind of thing that I would expect from, you know, like, Trump is kind of a 90s Democrat, which in today's terms is, you know, you're a radical, far right extremist because of the way the Overton window has shifted so much. So, I don't know. I saw it, I didn't like it. And I think it's good for us as Christians to voice that and make it very clear that, hey, we are not going to accept blasphemy from our president. Okay? We're not gonna accept that. You need us.
- [40:56]
B
Okay.
- [40:57]
F
I'm very thankful for so many of the things that Trump has done. In fact, I believe that he has done more for Christians than any other president in my lifetime, which he kind of outlined in his post in that. Where that picture originally came out. So I can be thankful for that. But I can also call him to account and say, hey, this is not acceptable, El Jefe. We do not want blasphemy on our X feeds from our civil magistrate, the highest civil magistrate in our land, the President. The President of the United States. So that's kind of where I'm at with this whole thing.
- [41:27]
B
That's fair, Josh.
- [41:27]
F
I'll let you follow up.
- [41:28]
B
Yeah. Now, you see, this is the thing I wanted to bring you on, on this, because I'm too close to it, and I feel like I just. Anytime Trump does stuff, I kind of just. I know what he's kind of getting at, and I sometimes lose the outside enough perspective for it. I just knew it was a troll. You know, he trolled Muslims a little bit last week, and he's. He's even posted pictures of him dressed as the Pope. Like, I just. To your point, I don't take it very seriously, but I understand that a lot of people were upset, upset, and a lot of them were my friends. And I should say that he took it down. And here is his. Which is noteworthy. He took it down. Here's his response to it was asked by a reporter. Yeah, SOT 21, Mr. President, did you
- [42:12]
C
post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ?
- [42:15]
G
Well, it wasn't depicted. It was me. I, I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross, as a Red Cross worker there, which we support. And only the fake news could come up with that one. So I, I had, I just heard about it and I said, how do they come up with that? It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.
- [42:42]
B
All right, so we could either take that or leave it. Blake, I'm sure I kind of know where your head's at on that, but I took it as him responding, kind of as a slap back, clap back after his, you know, comments on the Pope. So you're the Catholic here on the panel, Blake, Tell us what your. When he started going after the Pope, what was your reaction to that?
- [43:05]
C
Well, I mean, I don't think it's a secret. The Pope has taken a lot of left wing sounding views on a lot of issues, which I'm frustrated with. He just, it's one thing for the Pope to say things that agree with progressives, but what's been annoying with this one is he does say them in ways that basically just sound indistinguishable from, let's just say it, like angry libs on the Internet. I mean, he says this about, I think, I think he may have literally said like, no human is illegal or something comparable to that. On migration stuff. He's planning to go to Lampedusa in the Mediterranean on the 4th of July, which is where a bunch of the migrants from Africa land while going into Europe. We've had bishops and cardinals coming out and saying, yeah, the Pope, the President's policies on immigration are bad because turnout at Mass has gone down and it's like rational to ask, okay, well, how many of those guys are telling any of their parishioners that they have a duty to obey the laws that tell them they shouldn't illegally be in America? All of that is frustrating. That said, the Pope is. He's the leader of a church with a billion people, whether he's a perfect one or not. We've had a frustrating Pope before. I don't think it's a person worth. I don't think it's, I don't think it's becoming of a President to feud with the Pope. It's not like he can ever face him in an election. It's not like he can beat him in the midterms. I just, I think the president is combative, but overall, I don't like it. And on the first thing, I really don't like the post he made. The president, I don't think, spends a lot of time contemplating religion, so he may not think much about what it looks like. And the image was made by someone else. It was made by. I believe it was made by Nick Adams, who's kind of a colorful figure who likes posting stuff of that nature. So I don't think he thought that hard about it. I'm glad he did delete it. But as you say, he shouldn't be doing that. We should expect better of him. We should not have a president who gleefully blasphemes the faith of, by far the vast majority of his supporters.
- [45:10]
B
There was a post here by Matt Esteson. I'm just giving attribution, Somebody on X, he says, if you understand Trump, you know, he's not saying he's Jesus or God. He's passing on the overzealous adoration of whoever is in his fan base that creates the meme that says, see? People love me. And he's not attuned to the sensibilities of Christians who actually read their Bibles. Personally, I'd advise him to take it down and not do that again for his own good. I think that's probably like, the right read. And he took it down. All right. He took it down. All right. Joshua Hames, we talked about this taxonomy of the base. Okay, so just lay it out for our audience. I thought it was smart. I think it helps us understand the dynamics that you're seeing play out in the coalition. The floor is yours.
- [45:53]
F
Okay, before I do that, can I add one little closing note on. On course, our discussion that we were just having? Okay, so. So I. I'm your friendly neighborhood Christian nationalist, and so I always want to go to the word we can, and then I'll transition right into that taxonomy. But I. I appreciate Donald Trump so much for all that he's done for Christians. However, I want to issue this warning from Scripture because you mentioned exactly what I have noticed as well, which is even his thought process may not have been blasphemy. It was just, people love me here. I'm putting it out there. They're praising me. I'm putting it out there. And so I want to read Acts, chapter 12, verse 21. On an appointed day, Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to the people. And the people were shouting the voice of God. The voice of God, not a man. Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not give glory to God, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. Now, I read that because I really like Donald Trump and I want him to. I want to see him in heaven. I want to enjoy company with him in eternity. And so my hope and prayer for him is that he would hear this warning to see what happens whenever we try to soak up the glory for ourselves and we don't give it to our maker. Because honestly, I believe that the only way that we can heal our nation is not with Christless conservatism, but we must look to Jesus Christ and give glory and honor to him. So that's that. And then let me go ahead and lay out this taxonomy for you.
- [47:25]
B
No. Amen. I love that. I love that. And it's spot on, Joshua. It's spot on.
- [47:29]
F
Awesome. Awesome. Okay, so we were talking about this on the phone the other day, and I'm kind of pulling from an episode of Orin McIntyre's show that if you haven't checked him out, guys, he's awesome. I really appreciate him and his guests. They laid out an attack town, a taxonomy that I'm going to kind of help. Well, that I'm gonna. I've kind of aped it for myself and kind of been using it lately. So essentially, if we want to understand what's going on in the conservative movement, this conservative civil war, as it were, the podcast wars, it's helpful to have categories. Now, they lay out a few categories. I'm gonna give them some different names just because I like it better. So basically, we've got the neocons, we've got the Patriots, or the plant entrusters, and then we've got the dissidents, and then we've got, well, they call them the Maroons. I'm going to call them the Accelerationists. For those of you who don't know, the. The term accelerationism is basically the idea that we are going to accelerate the. The tensions in our country so that it all comes crumbling down. We burn it down so that we can rebuild something, something good and true, from the ashes.
- [48:36]
B
Right?
- [48:36]
F
It's too broken. Our system is too messed up. It's too corrupt. So we need to accelerate the process by which we destroy it. So that's the Accelerationist. Now, what I would say is that, okay, and we can put people in those categories too, so people can kind of wrap their mind around it. So the neocons, that's your like your Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz types, they're going to be Super Zionists, very, you know, they're going to be hawks, Warhawks and they're going to be. Yeah, so we've got the neocons then we've got the, the Patriots or the plan Trusters. And they are a very important part of coalition. Now what I would argue is that maga, the coalition that really got Trump elected and, and really the coalition that is going to be the future of this country if we're to have a, a future with light at the end of the tunnel anyway, it's going to be the Plan Trusters, the Patriots and the dissidents. So in the plan truster category, that would have been like Charlie Kirk. He would have been, he was patriot down the line. He was going to take what the president is doing and you know, usually try to not in a negative way, but spin everything in the positive light. But that's not, not to lie to anybody. It's essentially just to, yeah. Keep everyone believing in the project and marching forward. And that's actually really, really important in any political coalition. So then you've got the dissidents and I would put like a Matt Walsh close to the dissident category or even Tucker Carlson would be in that dissident category. And they're the ones who are going to hold politicians feet to the fire. They're going to say, I voted for you, I'm supporting you, but you need to give me something in return. We expect you to fulfill on your campaign promises. And when you don't, we're going to let you know. All right. You told us that we weren't going into foreign wars. You told us that we weren't going into, you know, endless wars in the Middle East. And so we are going to hold you to that. So that's kind of the dissidents, they're not jumping off the Trump train entirely. They are, they're holding, they're holding, holding out hope. Let's say that they can, by holding their politicians or the administration's feet to the fire, they can kind of steer the administration. And then you've got the accelerationists that would be like the Fuentes types, the ones who say it's all broken, it's all corrupt, it's so bad that we literally have to vote for Democrats. Okay. Now what I would say is what's going on right now is there is a concerted effort from both sides, from the accelerationists on the far right and then the neocons, which are just basically classical liberals who, you know, the, The. The progressives want to drive our country off a cliff at 90 miles an hour. The neocons want to go 35 miles an hour, but they're going to the same place. They are both trying to peel the other two categories away from each other, even though those two middle categories, that is the coalition that can save the country. And I truly believe that. So the neocons are telling all the Patriots, look, look, they're all betrayers, right? Look at them. They're all just. They're all just like Candace Owens, right? They're all just like. All the. They want to label any dissonant and they want to, you know, basically tie the Candace Owens noose around their neck and say it's just like they're just like them. But they're not just like them, right? And so they're trying to peel them off and bring them over to the neocon side. And I believe this is an op. I believe that this is actually very intentionally being done because they know, the neocons know that if the patriots and the dissidents get together and form a coalition that we could win. We could actually win, but separate, we will lose to the neocons. They have so much institutional power. They have so much. Yeah, institutional power, frankly. And money and. Yeah. So anyway, and then the accelerationists are doing the same thing on the other side. They're telling the dissidents, like, look, Trump is bringing us into the foreign wars just like he said he wouldn't. It's all corrupt. We gotta burn it down. They're all Zionist shills. We gotta burn it all down. And so really, they're trying to pull the most important coalition apart. And so that's the taxonomy. It's been really helpful.
- [52:29]
B
I think this is really helpful. Just a structuring, a framing ideologically to understand that both sides want to sort of like peel apart the center of the coalition. And, you know, and by the way, they want. They want the Patriots, the plan trusters, which would be like a Michael Knowles, which would be, you know, like you said, what Charlie. The role kind of Charlie played before to be labeled as a neocon. So when we. When we actually trust a little bit and give President Trump a little leash, a little leeway to get stuff done in Iran. Oh, you're a neocon, right. Whereas the. The accelerationists want to peel off the matt Walsh's. And see, see, like, hey, we told you so. He's just going to get us embroiled in the nether foreign conflict. The core remains the core, and it's super important, and I think it's important to understand the motivations of each of the four different buckets that you laid out so you can understand the news as it's coming to you and you can kind of, you know, chew the meat and spit out the bones, as it were. Blake, I. I haven't got you in on this. This thought, this is new. New for you, but I don't know if you have thoughts on this.
- [53:32]
C
I mean, nothing, Nothing really too much. I think he. I think he did lay it out very well.
- [53:36]
B
Okay, well, fair enough. Joshua Haynes. Easy. Tell us where people can follow you and how they can. How they can check out your stuff.
- [53:44]
F
Yeah. So Hames underscore Joshua on X. I have a lot of fun kind of throwing grenades on X. Rhetorical grenades, of course. And Reformation Red Pill is the name of my podcast. And you can find me on YouTube, Instagram, all of the. All of the social medias. Tick Tock has banned me once. They'll probably ban me again, but I'll just keep. Keep coming on there and getting banned again just because it's fun to, you know, go through that process again and again. But, yeah, you can follow me all over the socials.
- [54:10]
B
No, you see, see, here's why I like. This is how I. Why I like you, because I would put you in the dissident category. I probably am right between dissident and patriot, depending on the issue. And the truth is that our students are dissident, okay, A lot. That's where the energy is. And that's right. And they have some good points. Right. Because students have been in their generation has been left out of incumbent financial processes, buying a home, getting married. They're worried about their job, they're worried about AI. So these things need to be addressed. We need to make sure that the people with power actually have their feet held to the fire so that we get them addressed. All right. And Charlie was brilliant at navigating those and threading that needle. And so I love that your voice is emerging as a strong voice out there, Joshua Hames. I wish I had more time, but we'll have you on again soon. And you've been doing a little bit with Turning Point, so God bless you, man. We appreciate that as well.
- [55:04]
F
All right, God bless you guys, too. Thanks for having me on.
- [55:08]
B
If you're like me and you're tired of random stuff getting thrown into your supplements like artificial colors and sugars. You probably would love to know more about phytonutrition. Phytonutrients are the naturally occurring plant nutrients that are found in whole foods that give them their color, their taste, their smell. And the presence of these three things is a surefire sign that you're getting real phytonutrients. Balance of Nature's Whole Health System supplements are a value bundle that includes their fruits and veggies and fiber and spice supplements, which give you 47 ingredients of fruits, vegetables, spices and fibers and all of the naturally occurring phytonutrients that come with them. Every single day. Balance of Nature takes produce through a specialized vacuum cold process that stabilizes the ingredients. They are then powdered and packaged with no binders, fillers, or flow agents. So whether you've been on the fence for a long time or it's the first time you're hearing about them, I recommend that you go to balanceofnature.com and order the Whole Health System supplements as a preferred customer today, go to balanceofnature.com want to welcome to the show a guy that I have been following a lot online, and he's got a new book that is really, really timely and important, I believe, and that's Nick Friedas. His new book is called the Man Book. The subtitle is important too. A Point by Point guide to Sucking it up and Getting the Job done. Boy, if ever there was a message that the world and the country needed, this is the. This is the book. All right, Nick, welcome back to the show. It's good to see you.
- [56:40]
E
Hey, thanks for having me on. Great to see you guys as well.
- [56:43]
B
Yeah. So, Nick, why this book? Why now?
- [56:45]
E
Well, I, I call it my why do I get stopped at the airport Discussion. And whenever I go to the airport and someone kind of recognizes me and they're. They're gracious enough to come over and say something that they liked about maybe a real I did or, or some piece of content. I've noticed that a lot of it is surrounding this question of masculinity, of being a husband, being a father, being a soldier, all of those things. And so I sat down, I was like, you know, I'm just going to write out some of the things that I've learned over, you know, 27 years of marriage, 22 years of being a father, my time in Special Forces, being in the legislature, and. And so it's kind of an eclectic book. It's everything from how to successfully argue with your wife, which I stand by that title, by the way. You can successfully argue with your wife to kind of the difference between raising sons and daughters and the different things that they need from dad. Two other things that are a little bit more light hearted, like, you know, how to properly cook a steak. Spoiler alert. Anything above medium is just burnt and destroyed. And other practical things too, like how to properly kick in a door. Not just because it looks cool, because you never know when you might have to rescue a family member from a burning building. And you want to make sure you do it right and look cool in the process. So a lot of these things I've learned, again, a lot of. A lot of them from doing the right thing, but a lot of them too from doing the wrong thing and learning from it.
- [58:06]
C
Wait, what is the right way to kick in a door?
- [58:08]
B
Yeah.
- [58:09]
E
Oh, well, the first thing you got to do is make sure that the door actually swings in. Nothing looks more ridiculous when you got a. When a door swings out and you kick it, it's like you're going. You're going against it, right? And then you want to hit it right by kind of where the base plate meets with the. With the door, with the lock plate meets with the door, kind of just under the knob. You want to kick it right there because that gives you the best way to actually break it at its weakest point and swing it open. You kick in the middle of door, especially one of these, like, you know, hollow core doors, your legs gonna go right through it and you're gonna look like a moron. And that's what we want to avoid. We want to avoid you looking like a moron.
- [58:41]
B
I love it. I love it, man. Okay, so I was. I forget who we were talking about. Blake, you'll remember I was saying that, oh, it was Jonathan Keeperman Lomas. And we were talking about the political side of what it means to be an adult, be a man and how much of our politics seems to. And our. You could, you could take this into cultural commentary, you could take this into church debates, you could take this into all the different areas that you kind of delve into on your Instagram and your YouTube, which, by the way, are must follows in my opinion. I think you're doing a great job, Nick, but it just feels like this infantilization of American discourse where we're getting. It's like the quality and the thoughtfulness of the debate is going down. The quality of the. And the thoughtfulness of our Disagreements and the way we handle them are degrading, they're devolving, they're not getting more elevated. And I just happen to think that a lot of people need to be called up higher. We need to be calling people up to be an adult, to behave like an adult in public, to behave like an adult when you're a politician, when you're a congressman, when you're at the state level, like you've done in Virginia. Am I wrong? Is that sort of a core problem that you're noticing?
- [59:55]
E
Yeah, there's five categories that I kind of talk about with masculinity. That's the, the most important, which is your spiritual, your relationship with God. It's where you get your identity, your sense of, of objective morality, objective truth. But then there's also the emotional, the physical, the professional and the intellectual. And one of the things I, I tell guys in this book is that it's really important that as a man you be seen as being capable of giving wise counsel. It doesn't mean you need to be a subject matter expert in every topic. Nobody can achieve that. But if you want to be the sort of guy that your children think that they can go to and, and get wisdom, and then you need to continue to develop yourself intellectually. And one of the things that you, you do that with this critical thinking, it's through argument, it's through debate, it's through not getting caught up and just ad hominem attacks or just screaming or yelling at people or insisting that we're going to do it this way because I said so. The better job you can do explaining your positions, your values, your belief, the more like, I mean, forget the random arguments you're going to have on X, right? Those can be fun sometimes, they can be distracting at other times. I wanted to make sure that the things that I held the most dear in my life, I could properly explain to my kids, that I could teach them how to defend it, that I could answer tough questions that they might come home with. And I always wanted them to see dad as a person that they knew was going to give them the truth, but was also going to be an explained in a way that made sense to them. Because the goal is not to just tell them to believe what I believe because I say so. The goal is to adequately equip your children so that when they leave your house, the beliefs that you, you handed to them are now theirs. They believe in them, not because dad said so. They believe in them because they're true and you're not going to be able to do that if you're engaging in the sort of debate that we see too much on social media these days, where it's just yell louder or, you know, make little quips or whatever it is. You need to be intellectually rigorous in your pursuits if you're going to be the sort of man that other men and your children and your wife can trust.
- [61:44]
B
Yeah. And I, I love that on the, the COVID of your book here, Nick, and apologies as I look down, but it's that you said you have flirt with your wife.
- [61:52]
E
Yes.
- [61:53]
B
Make a steak, go to church, win a fight. You know, this doesn't seem very Christian here, Nick, but I actually disagree with what I just said totally. Yeah. Choose a whiskey, run for office, and kick down a door. Yeah, explain that. Because, you know, winning a fight, I think, you know, I was asked to sort of disavow President Trump as a podcast a couple months ago, and it was kind of about his more muscular tone and style. Gosh. That that debate has come back to the fore today with some of his comments about the Pope, about his Jesus meme and all that stuff. But explain, explain that why sometimes we misunderstand that masculine Christianity and sometimes the tendency is to feminize these things.
- [62:37]
E
Oh, no, we have this tendency in the west because. Because we've elevated tolerance as, like, the chief ethic in our society. We have this boy band vision of Jesus that we preach in our churches. That is, quite frankly, it's heretical. It's not just incorrect, it is so incorrect as to be heresy. Now, was Jesus kind and compassionate? Absolutely. But he was also incredibly capable, and he was willing to use judicious violence when necessary. When he went into the temple and he's thrown over tables and he's using a whip to keep people out, I guarantee you they were not thinking that was tolerant Jesus, and yet he was still righteous in doing so. Why? Because of the reasoning behind it and because of who was actually the subject of his anger. And so it's important for Christian men to understand that you have an obligation to be dangerous. Not for your families, not toward the innocent. Right. But on their behalf, you have an obligation to be able to protect and provide. How are you able to effectively do that if you're not capable of being dangerous? If you're the sort of man that can't win a fight.
- [63:41]
F
Right.
- [63:41]
E
Then that's the sort of man whose wife, whose children, whose community has to depend on other men to protect them. And quite frankly, that's pathetic. And you're not going to see that anywhere in the gospel. Yeah, there's times when men are called to sacrifice, but they're called to sacrifice for something great, not because that's their only option. They're called to sacrifice because they need to actually defend something that's worth defending. And quite frankly, I think right now young men are at a point where they're completely rejecting this woke up feminist approach. They do not buy the lie that masculinity is toxic. But by the same token, they're not satisfied with this answer that you've got to be strong and bold so you can just get whatever you want. Men want to be noble.
- [64:21]
G
Why?
- [64:22]
E
Because God put that on our hearts. And in order to be noble, in order to be honorable, you want to work to develop yourself intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and yes, physically. You want to be physically capable of protecting the people that you love. And so this idea that to be a Christian is to be weak is, again, it's not just incorrect, it's so incorrect as to be heretical, in my opinion.
- [64:43]
B
Well, I think you're getting to the core here. And Blake, feel free to chime in, but the core here is that we see this with young men when they kind of give in to nihilism, this opt out culture. Explain. We just have about a minute and a half in this segment, but how do you talk to men when they're prone to opting out? The burn it all down vibe? What. What is the key to getting them to re engage?
- [65:09]
E
Well, the first thing I do is I admit to young men that they're actually dealing with a very unique point in history. Because never before in world history, even when things have been bad, have you seen this sort of assault on masculinity and the things that masculinity prizes. But the only way to defeat that is to stand up and choose to be something else. You have to choose to be the hard man in the weak times that will bring about the good times. You have to choose to be that. And the number one way that I have seen it throughout my life, when things have been good, when things have been bad, is I don't get my identity and being a Green Beret, I don't get my identity and being a business owner or a former member of the House of Delegates. I get my identity in Christ. And that way, when things are even bad, I understand it's bad. I never expected to be anything else. But I know who I serve. I know what my purpose is. And I see that reflected daily in the Eyes of my wife and my children. And that's what I want young men to embrace. I want them to actually stand up and be the sort of men that God calls them to be, because those are the sort of men that will save this country.
- [66:04]
B
Yeah, and we've got a tweet up from Charlie here. He says for years, we let them wage war on masculinity and celebrate mental illness. And then we wonder why our society is weak and feckless in the face of evil. America needs more strong men and less men who think they're women if we want to survive as a nation. You know, you sound a lot like him sometimes, Nick. I think it's so important, Nick. You've got millions of followers on social media. You get to. To see the comments, especially on your YouTube and your Instagram. I mean, by the way, I just totally recommend people check you out there because you drop these little reels. And I think the wisdom in there is profound. It's oftentimes extraordinarily important. So thank you for making the time to join us today, Nick the Man Book. Okay, so what I notice on college campuses, Nick, is that you've got a massive. You touched on this right before the break, but a massive divide between the women and the men. The women have this kind of fembass, like, you know, I deserve to be waited on and I'm a princess. And then the men are like either the beta males that they're not attracted to, or they're just opting out. And you see, there's just a massive tension amongst sexes right now. What do you make of that, and what's the solution?
- [67:17]
E
Well, I think it's been intentional. I think at the same time that men have been lied to about who they really are, they've also lied to women about who they really are are. And if you track this back to Mark and everything else, it makes sense. They want to disintegrate the family. And in order to do that, you have to convince men and women there's something other than what they are. And what's interesting is that they get lied to in. In two different directions. So men get told, you either need to be a weak beta male feminist or you need to be, like a barbarian, right? Just, like, be strong and powerful so you can get whatever you want. When the Bible says, no, you need to be strong and capable so you can be honorable and serve God and serve your family. Well, what do they tell women? They either tell women, you've got to be like a super girl boss Feminist girl boss, I don't need no man. Or they tell women, you got to be this, like, 1950s housewife aesthetic. Well, what does Bible say? Bible says. Proverbs 31. Bible says JL right? Bible says, no, no. You're supposed to be strong and capable and lift up and build your house and be entrepreneurial. But you're doing this also in service to your. Not just yourself, but to God, to your family.
- [68:22]
F
Right. Your.
- [68:23]
E
Her. Her children and husband will call her blessed. So once again, we get lied to in multiple different directions where Scripture gives us very, very clear directives. And what's amazing is when men and women actually stand up and they embrace those roles, they're far happier. They're happier in their own individual lives. They're happier in their marriages. They're happier with their children. Because this stuff works like, I believe in it. My wife and I got married at 19 and 20. We both came from houses of divorce.
- [68:50]
B
I.
- [68:50]
E
Immediate. I was in the military, which is not the most conducive environment to marriage in general.
- [68:55]
B
Right.
- [68:56]
E
And yet we've been strong this entire time.
- [68:58]
C
Why?
- [68:59]
E
It wasn't because we had everything modeled for us, and it wasn't because we did everything right every step of the way. But we believed what God said about who we were, both as a man and as a woman. And we believe in God, who said we were as a married couple and then his parents and I just. The most beautiful thing about it is this. God exponentially blesses faithful yet imperfect attempts. He knows we're going to screw up. He knows we're going to fall and trip from time to time. But when we get back and we attempt to be faithful, he blesses that attempt. And so I want men and women to both understand that the lies you've been told, regardless of what direction they come from.
- [69:33]
B
Right.
- [69:34]
E
It's a perversion of the truth. And what God says you are, when you really embrace who God says you are, that's where you actually find peace. That's where you find joy. That's where you find meaning. And in a country which is having an identity crisis, it's where you find an identity that just does not let you down.
- [69:51]
C
Yeah, that's. That's a really good testimonial. And I think.
- [69:55]
B
Yeah.
- [69:56]
C
You said you got married 19 and 20. I think similarly. One of my sisters got married at, I believe she just turned 21. And I think that's worked out tremendously for them when you're building your life together. But I guess, you know, the obvious follow up is what's your advice to I. Let's be frank. A lot of people like me, people who get into their 20s, their 30s, they're still not married. They aren't building from that base level at an early point. I think a lot of people, they feel. They feel somewhat amiss if they're that far into it and they're not sure where to start building up.
- [70:31]
E
I think part of it is making it a priority. Like, if you've made up like, I want to get married, then what I. What I tell both men and women is you have to think about, okay, who do I want to marry? What sort of person do I want to be married to? Like, for me, it was like, I want to be married to a Christian woman that wants to be a wife, that wants to be a mother, that shares values, that is also ambitious in the things that we want to do as a married couple. Okay, great. If that's the template of who I want to marry, then I got to ask two questions. The first question I got to ask is, would I be attractive to such a woman? If the answer is no, if I'm lacking, well, then I need to work, right? I need to. I need to continue to work. And then two, where am I spending my time? Am I actually putting myself in the proximity where such women are likely to be? So once I do those two things, once I'm continually working on being the sort of man that would attract that sort of woman, or whether or not someone is working to be the sort of woman that I would attract that sort of a man. Put yourself in proximity. And then the other thing, too, for young men out there, I. I think modern dating is garbage. I think when you are actually looking for the sort of wife that you can build a whole family with, I think you need to be honest about your intentions and say, look, I'm not here. I'm not going to try to play with your mind, your heart, or your body. That's not my role. What I want to do is I want to find someone that I could build a family with and, you know, we've spent some time together. I'm attracted to you. I'd like to talk to you about that. And you know what? If as we talk about what we look at our future lives like, as we talk about what you'd like to achieve, what I'd like to achieve. If we get excited about that conversation, great, let's continue it and see where this leads, needs. And if we don't, or if we discover that we have very, very different things in life. I'm not going to bug you anymore. We're just going to agree that we're good friends. We're not meant to be a married couple. And what that does is one. It relieves her the burden of being worried on whether or not you're gonna, you know, continue to pursue when she's not interested. But it also tells her what you're about as a man. And you're not there. You're not there to play games. You're serious. You're serious and you want to find your wife. And I've seen this work firsthand for people, and I think it's the direction we need to go. We need to reject what the modern world says about dating, what it says about sex, what it says about all of those things, and start actually embracing what works.
- [72:32]
B
Nick, I'm gonna throw a little bit of a curve ball to you here. What is your message? And maybe it's not author of the man book. Really, really important final question. What do you say to those men that have given in to sort of, I guess, scapegoat culture? Whether it's all about the Jews or they wanna. The accelerationists, they wanna burn it all down. Vote Democrats so they can build up. Up something more pure in this country. They're disappointed with the gop. What. What is your message to them? I don't know if it's a political question or if. If you want to take it spiritual, psychological. Floor is yours. Last minute.
- [73:04]
E
I think what it comes down to is that on some degree, on some level, they're gonna have to recognize what they've done is they've surrendered. And I. And I get that. Can it be tough? And it can be frustrated. And there's a point of the. There's a part of them that probably thinks, well, once it all burns down, then they'll miss me. Then they'll wish that they had the things that I was trying to bring to society. What I'm going to say is that never works out. That never works out the way you think. Accelerationism doesn't work out the way you think. What we need is for more man to stand up and be an example. Think about how who you admire in your own circle. Do you admire the people that just lay down and take it? Do you admire the people that try to burn it down with you? Or do you admire the people that stand up against all odds and fight because it is the honorable and noble thing to do you. And that's what I think you need to reach for. You need to reach for the honorable version of you that is fighting for that opportunity to serve God, to be able to serve your family, to serve your country. Because those are the things that I think give us true meaning and purpose. All this other stuff, it may feel good in the moment, but it ends up leaving you. Phil it ends up One of the worst forms of depression you can ever find is not when you are denied the things that you think you want or that you're owed. The worst depression is when you actually get the things that you are striving for and you find out it leaves you empty. Find your identity in Christ first and never doubt what your meaning and purpose is.
- [74:22]
B
Nick Friedas the Man Book thank you for making the time. Excellent.
- [74:26]
E
My pleasure.
- [74:31]
D
For more on many of these stories
- [74:32]
C
and news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.