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My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro American student
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organization in the country, fighting for the
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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
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possible and have as many kids as possible.
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C
Go start a Turning Point USA College chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter.
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Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist.
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D
I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
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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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C
Use me.
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Buckle up, everybody.
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Here we go.
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Noble Gold Investments is the official gold
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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@noblegoldinvestments.com that is noblegoldinvestments.com. all right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. It is Tuesday, May 12th. It's heating up here in Phoenix, Arizona. We're at the Y Refi Studios. How we doing, Blake?
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E
We're doing all right.
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A
We're doing all right. Well, we're going to get the show started off with a bang here because we have none other than the great Senator Mike Lee from the great state of Utah. We got to get into what's going on with fisa, what's going on with the Save America Act. We have so much to get into. And our audience is a little confused, Senator, about these two different topics. We're also going to talk about uvu. You got mentioned in some radical literature that's being passed around that campus. And we're gonna be getting into that the second half of this hour. But, Senator, let's start with fisa. FISA is confusing for a lot of people. Does it spy on Americans? Does it not? The President used to be against it. Now it seems like he's for it. What's going on here with fisa?
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C
First of all, FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act. And it's designed to allow us to keep tabs on our foreign adversaries, people operating outside the United States who are not citizens of the United. In some circumstances, it can be and occasionally has been used as against Americans. Now, FISA 702's authorization now is set to expire in about a month on June 12. And Section 702 specifically was originally enacted in 2008 to make it easier for the government to get vital intelligence about foreign governments and their agents. The problem is that it has also allowed agencies like the FBI and the NSA to gather with some regularity and search through the private communications of American citizens without a warrant. In other words, there are some communications from US Citizens that end up getting incidentally collected. This term, incidental collection is the term that they use. Describe the fact that sometimes you'll have a phone call or other communication between a US Citizen and an agent of a foreign power, and if they can then search through their database for everything that a US Citizen has said, that's kind of problematic because you could target U.S. citizens. So we want some protections in there to protect U.S. citizens. There ought to be something, something akin to a warrant that's required before you can query the FISA 702 database for information specifically on a particular US citizen. And so if we don't have that, this could create kind of a Fourth Amendment and run.
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A
Right, so explain to me. This is very interesting here because we've got this clip here with John Solomon and Sean Hannity. Sean's got his new show, and they're talking about President Trump's own perspective on this. And I think this is what's confusing a lot of people, Senator. So I'll play the clip and get your reaction on the other side. SOT1, three of the four Pfizer warrants
- [04:28]
C
signed by James Comey himself. You had to verify the authenticity of it to sign off on it. And he signed three of the four of them. Fast forward a little bit. All the people that signed every FISA warrant eventually went before Lindsey Graham. Yeah. All of them said, knowing. Ask the question. Knowing what we know now, would you ever sign that FISA warrant? Knowing what I know now, of course not. But they knew at the time. They kept the spreadsheet. This is one of the big stories we broke on your show. I remember spreadsheet.
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B
They went through every sentence of the dossier.
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C
90% were either disproven, unverified, or unverifiable, meaning that there was no possibility you'd ever.
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A
When you have an intelligence product that's
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C
90% unverifiable, it's garbage. It literally is garbage.
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A
All right, so listen to their language. So this was when they were spying on President Trump's campaign. James Comey, they're saying he signed a warrant. Are they misspeaking there? Is it not really a warrant? Or, you know. So my question is, you know, they obviously knew that this intel was bogus. They signed it anyways. They got some authority, authorization to do it. What is that authority and authorization compared to what you're calling for now?
- [05:40]
C
Yeah, no, I could be mistaken, but I believe they're talking about other sections of FISA that aren't necessarily 702, because 702 is directed specifically at agents of a foreign power, at people who are operating outside the United States and who are noncitizens.
- [05:56]
A
There's also FISA Title one. Maybe that's what they were talking about.
- [05:59]
C
Yes, exactly. But the abuses of FISA 702 of FISA generally have been rampant and significant. And as a recent report from the Brennan center for justice has highlighted, FBI agents over the years, including some recent years, have searched in the FISA 702 database for the communications of protesters across the political spectrum, of members of Congress, of a congressional chief of staff, a state court judge, multiple US government officials, and some journalists and political commentators, and 19,000 donors to a political campaign. It's also been abused at times for individual agents who decided to use it to vet romantic interests. One guy used it because he suspected that his dad was cheating on his mom and so he did a FISA 702 query for his dad who was a US citizen. Somebody else used it to vet potential tenants in his rental properties. So as you can imagine, all these things cry out for reform and we need something akin to a warrant requirement. We shouldn't just rubber stamp these vast domestic spying powers for the same deep state that has targeted President Trump and members of Congress and countless law ablighting Americans across the country. So no MAGA Republican ought to support giving a loaded gun back to the swamp.
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A
No, I totally agree.
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C
702 without reform.
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A
I completely agree, Senator. I'm trying to get clarity here because the 702, it looks like it's authorized by the FISA court, reviews and approves topical certifications and procedures submitted by the attorney general and DNI to ensure appropriate targeting. The FISA Title 1 is the Intelligent community attains an individualized probable cause warrant from the FISA court. Okay, so that's kind of the two buckets we had that graphic up. 702 does not require a warrant currently. And that is the key, I guess, reform that you're, that you're hoping to get in place here.
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C
Yes, yes. And to be clear to when you pursue a FISA 702 investigation, there is a type of order that backs that up. And we're not taking issue with that. What we're taking issue with is the ability, once you have accumulated all that information, which will necessarily include incidental collections of communications from US citizens that were incidentally swept up into that same investigation in order to query the database specifically to see what a US citizen has said. That's where we need something akin to a warrant that says, look, we need to look at this. It's related to the investigation, here's why we think it's relevant. Let us go do it.
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A
Yeah, I mean, why do you think just in 30 seconds here, Senator, why do you think President Trump has. It just sounds like he's singing from a different song sheet all of a sudden on 702.
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C
Well, it's not unusual at all for any President of the United States to resist efforts to restrict the executive branch in its ability to do certain things. That's not unusual, especially in a hyper technical, hyper specialized context like FISA 702. They've got people, presidents of both parties have people coming to them every day within their own administration saying we need this, we don't want it to be undone. And usually what they're focusing on is that FISA 702 does do good things and I don't dispute that. But we need to protect Americans here.
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A
Senator Mike Lee, I think we did a pretty thorough job on FISA702. I agree with you that no MAGA can, no conservative candidly should be supporting warrantless surveillance of Americans. I understand the national security importance of it, but we gotta have some checks and balances. And by the way, we cannot forget how it has been weaponized against us. They will do it again, they will do it again, even with checks and balances. But at least we have some stopgaps. Senator, I wanna turn our attention to the Save America Act. You have been one of the leading voices pushing this, pushing to nuke the zombie filibuster actually make senators deb debate on the floor. We haven't seen the progress that we wanted or that you wanted, but you've been doing an amazing job pushing that forward. I'm going to play a clip though from Kamala Harris here and get your reaction. Sat 13 to your point about poll taxes, literacy taxes, this is not new in our history and it's an agenda that has been in play since we got voting rights. And, and to fast forward to today, yes, it's just, it's more of the same. What they will do is basically, to your point rev, to register to vote, you're going to have to Prove your citizenship by a passport or a birth certificate. So it is estimated that over 20 million Americans don't have a passport or access to a passport. And to get one is at least $100, if not close to 200, which is, in essence, a poll tax. Right. Is the Save America Act a poll tax, Senator Lee?
- [11:29]
C
No, no. In no way, shape or form is it a poll tax. And this is. She's speaking with reckless disregard for the truth. Look, she's either flat out lying or she's been badly misinformed by someone who is lying. Obviously, if she had bothered to read the Save America act, she would see the text beginning at line 22 of page 12 of the bill, which makes clear that even if you don't have any of the documentation that you need to establish citizenship, you can at a minimum, just swear out an affidavit saying, here's where and when I was born and why I was a citizen at the time of my birth. Or if you're not a natural born citizen, how and when you became naturalized, that then shifts the burden to the state to disprove your citizenship. It's very, very easy. Now, she says, meanwhile, unless you have A valid current U.S. passport or, you know, some other documents, you're out of luck and it's going to disenfranchise people. That's just a lie. It's just a flat out lie. Remember, the Save America act secures our elections by doing two things. Requires verification of citizenship with registration and ID to vote in American elections, in elections for US Federal office. Now, these provisions are massively popular among the American people who, unlike Kamala Harris, understand what the bill actually does. 83% support voter ID, 95% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats. 74% support proof of citizenship requirements. And that includes 90% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats. 59% of voters support passing the Save America act this year before the 2026 midterm election. So look, the only place in the country where the Save America act is even remotely controversial is among Democrats in Congress. And that's because they're lying about it. And many of them have been misinformed. But we've got to overcome their obstruction. And so we've got two options. We can either force the Democrats into a talking filibuster. We wait them out. We wait till they're exhausted, either physically or exhausted, the number of speeches they can give under Rule 19. Then we pass it by a simple majority. Or alternatively, after getting physically tired, they negotiate face saving Changes that will make them comfortable with it. That's how they pass the Civil Rights act of 64. Or alternatively, we can just nuke the filibuster and pass the Save America act by a simple majority. I strongly prefer the first option, but inaction is not an option here. We've got to do one or the other.
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E
Well, but Senator, as you say, it's, you know, we can dunk on Kamala all we want. We can say it's only Democrats who oppose it, but there is a Republican majority and we've speculated on all those options for getting the bill through. We've, we get emails a lot about this and they're always asking, okay, why hasn't it passed? Why haven't any of these things been done? It seems a lot of conservatives think that they're getting played on this by Republican leadership. And is anything going to happen to disabuse them of that notion?
- [14:34]
C
Look, we continue to hear assurances from Leader Thune and his office that we are gonna get back to the Save America Act. We have been tied up on working on DHS funding, which we're still working on, and we'll be working through the end of next week. And we've got a reauthorized FISA between now and June 12th. But sometime in the next few weeks, this is gonna be ripe again. We're going to have the opportunity in the moment where this comes back up. Now, you do raise a very important point in that we've got some Senate Republicans, not very many, but a few who have been naysayers. And I hate to say this, but I can predict something here sometime in the next week or two, specifically because I'm doing this interview with you right now and I'm saying the things that I've said. You're going to see a left wing swamp rag like Politico or Punchbowl run a half dozen quotes from anonymous Republican senators who don't want to fight for the Save America act, complaining that I keep talking about it. That is a guarantee. But you know what? I'm not going to stop talking about it because the American people are with us. The American people deserve this. President Trump wants it passed. In fact, he's identified it as his top legislative priority as it is mine. When Chip Roy and I set out to write this thing about three years ago, we knew that it needed to happen. I don't know that either one of us foresaw the extent to which the American people would latch onto it and realize the urgency of it. And we're thrilled by the public outcry. We're equally surprised that in the Senate we still have opposition from Democrats and unfortunately from a few Republicans. We're going to overcome that, though, because as we keep talking about it, it's going to be harder and harder for the naysayers to continue to push back.
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A
Senator, I've only got another 90 seconds here with you. I want to turn your attention to uvu. Obviously, this is a campus where Charlie was assassinated on September 10. And there is an article out of the Cougar Chronicle. We're going to speak to this lead editor next. And it's, you know, inside UVU's extremist student groups on campus. And the article details pretty shockingly how after September 10th, it's gotten worse on that campus, including images of you, signs depicting you as a KKK leader and the like. It's shocking in general, but to see it out of Utah. What is your reaction to that? And you know, what can be done?
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C
Well, it's offensive and I think it's odd. I mean, I've never had anything to do with the Democratic Party. And of course, the Ku Klux Klan was the enforcement wing of the Democratic Party. And so it seems like they're clueless about this sort of thing. The same people who call Republicans Nazis, ignoring the fact that Nazis and other fascists are at bottom, socialists. But look, all these things show that left wing political violence seems to be growing, especially on many college and university campuses. And it's being promoted by progressive media, in many cases politicians as well, who dehumanize half the country by calling them Nazis, which provides something of a permission structure for antifa or other zealots and Hamas sympathizers to hurt their enemies. And by hurt them, I mean physically do them harm.
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A
Yeah, well, Senator, we gotta do something about these. Universities are getting out of control, even in Utah. Senator Mike Lee, thank you for joining us. We appreciate your time. We'll have you on soon. If you've been listening for a while, you may have noticed something new. Andrewandtod.com is now part of Union Home Mortgage. The parent company changed, but Andrew Del Rey and Todd Avakian didn't. I have known these guys for years, literally, and they're amazing, amazing, amazing patriots, great Christian men. Same people, same values and the same honest advice now backed by a national lender. And right now, a lot of homeowners are wondering if there's an opportunity for them in this market. Everybody's asking this question. With rates and home values constantly shifting, it's a smart time to review your mortgage and see what options you may have. You might be able to refinance, lower your payment, or consolidate debt. But it all starts with understanding what's possible. That's where Andrew and Todd come in. With over 40 years of combined experience, they walk you through the process from start to finish, and they make it easy. Start with a free refinance review today. Go to andrewandtod.com that's andrewandtod.com or call 888-8881-172888-81172 andrewandtodd.com Amazing guys. Check them out, please. All right, very important topic here. We're going to welcome in Kimbal Kahl. He's a lead editor for the Cougar Creek Chronicle and he's just published a really important story about the increased activity of some pretty radical, seemingly, I guess you would say, inclined to violence, even or at least violent ideation at UVU. Of course, UVU is where Charlie was assassinated on September 10th last year. Kimball, welcome to the show.
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D
Hey guys, thanks for having me on. It's an honor to be here.
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A
Yeah, it's an honor to have you here. You've done a really important piece here and you've documented some of the crazier posts. The discord chats, protests give us the 30,000 foot view. So you went to document what's actually happening, happening at UVU's campus. What did you find?
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D
So we found that since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, it seemed as though the left wing student body has gotten even more radical. We found that there was even in the direct aftermath, clubs organizing and mobilizing to not take advantage of the opportunity, but to honestly perpetuate the extremist rhetoric that I think led to Charlie Kirk's assassination. So one of these is the Civil Disobedience Club is what they call themselves. They're an official UVU club. They are on campus as a chartered club and they organized in the very days after the assassination. And some of the things they've been involved with have been protests against a memorial for Charlie Kirk, protests against ICE and DHS coming on campus for a career fair. They've been some of the, they've been responsible for some of the more radical rhetoric. And we were able to obtain screenshots from within their club, discord of them ideating on violence, talking about violence against other conservatives, and even offering to train each other on how to use firearms to defend themselves from quote unquote fascists. But there are also Some other students and groups involved with this as well.
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A
Yeah. And I noticed that there seems to be an appeal for the expression Bella Chow, which is obviously the expression that was written on one of the bullets found that belonged to Tyler Robinson where he had etched certain expressions on the bullets. And you know, you guys actually, I guess confronted or you found this clip of somebody confronting a gentleman on campus handing out pamphlets and he says he's glad that Charlie was is gone. At least we'll play the clip and have your reaction. Sat 12.
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B
How's it going?
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A
It's going good.
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B
So I'm just curious, why are you guys writing Bella Chow on the sidewalk?
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A
Because we're against fascism. You're against fascism. So what does Bella chow mean? It's an anti fascist anthem. Okay. Does that have anything to with do
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D
do with it being written on the
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B
bullets that killed Charlie Kirk? It has nothing to do with that.
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A
Okay, so that's just a coincidence.
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C
Everything to do with it being an
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anti fascist anthem long before anything happened to Charlie.
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B
I cannot like that.
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D
Was Charlie Kirk a fascist?
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A
Yes, absolutely.
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B
He was.
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A
I'm not sad that he's gone. He wasn't a good man. He wasn't a good person. He wasn't a good Christian anyway.
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D
And you're glad there was a murder on this campus.
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A
That's fascinating.
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B
I'm glad that he's gone.
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A
Shocking. Glad that he's gone. So that's a really important insight into the type of people we're dealing with here.
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E
You can even see it in his eyes, the tenor of his voice. You can always tell. These are absolutely psychotic people. This is a guy who just hates a ton of other people, wants them dead, wants to take their stuff. All antifa people are like this at heart. They are nasty, vicious, disgusting people, without exception.
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A
Who is this guy Kimball?
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D
Well, we think he's. According to some of our sources, he's the president, or at least last semester's president of the Civil Disobedience. Civil Disobedience Club. We know for sure he was in the leadership of the club and was involved with founding the club. And he's not the only one who has these opinions. Unfortunately, we. We have evidence of lots of other students and some that aren't even members of the club that share these same ideas. And I personally see it as a university failing in their duty to produce citizens who can go into society and produce and be productive. When a university produces students like this or allows students like this to leave their university with a degree, I see it as a fundamental Failure of the institution.
- [23:46]
A
Kimball, you included in your report this. It was like, I guess it's an X chat. And the, you know, flat ranger UT posted it. And then he kind of follows up the post and said, it's really funny how much I pissed you off by recording this. And then there's an account here, CadazzleUSA says Bella Chow. Connor, what is this a threat? Is this a death threat to the person that recorded this?
- [24:16]
D
I think it's certainly fair to interpret it that way. That's how some of the UVU TPUSA members are interpreting it. We know for sure that, well, we suspect the student is, or this, this X user is a student because he knows the name of the, of the individual who was confronting that, that president. We saw earlier. And we know for a fact that this isn't the only instance of UVU students, particularly members of these clubs, using Bella Chow against conservatives. We have also reports of Bella Chow, the song, being played near TPUSA tables when they're on campus, which is extremely inappropriate.
- [24:53]
A
There's this other group, it looks like national sds. What is that group?
- [24:57]
D
So SDS is the Students for Democratic Society. They are a group that can trace back their roots to the civil rights movement and they recently have had a resurgence. They're a far left wing student group. They're nationwide. They have chapters in a lot of different universities. And recently they've made their mission to try to kick Turning Point USA off of campuses around the country. So their Instagram put out a call for chapters of SDS to find ways to kick. Like they use the words kick TPUSA off campus. And they also use the word smash their charter and smash their events, which is pretty aggressive rhetoric. As soon as this post was, was posted on the national SDS Instagram page, you saw the local chapter of SDS at UVU immediately target a TPUSA fundraising event that the local TPUSA chapters were doing with a local Dave's Hot Shaking restaurant. And they spammed this restaurant with calls with, they review, bombed them on every platform they could get their hands on. And they made it really difficult for this business to do their business in this community for a couple weeks there. So we see, we see SDS as a national organization trying to militate against conservatives. And we see these local chapters taking up that call and trying to fulfill it as best they can.
- [26:10]
A
Yeah, and I'm going to show something. It's not graphic, it's disturbing. Incredibly. I want you to. I'm going to only show it briefly but this is the kind of stuff that's getting shown on Discord chats. And it's a picture, it looks AI generated of special beam cannon is what it says with Charlie. And what am I looking at there?
- [26:36]
D
You're looking at students in the CDC Discord server. So this is their official club server mocking Charlie Kirk's assassination. And this is not the only instance we have of that happening on campus and within these group chats. But you see, you know, you see them delighting in Charlie Kirk's assassination and making light of it.
- [26:57]
A
Was there any indication, Kimball, of the. Because I'll never forget, obviously now it's seared into my memory. Ahead of that event at uvu, I noticed, Charlie noticed that there was a disturbing amount of controversy around his visit, which leads me to believe that there was already a radicalized element very much active and present on campus. Do you have any reporting on these Discord servers being very active, being militant before 9, 11 or 910?
- [27:30]
D
We do have some screenshots that we didn't release yet. We. We have further evidence that we will be releasing soon. But some of the things we were able to collect were different organization chats, preparing to violently protest Charlie Kirk's visit and, and some were planning on throwing water balloons down from the balcony and, and doing other things like that. So far, we haven't uncovered any evidence that anyone in these student clubs knew about the assassination attempt. But we do know that they were planning some violent resistance to it and were stopped basically by security not allowing people on the balcony. Fortunately, although unfortunately, that security did not stop. Tyler Robinson.
- [28:13]
A
Yeah, it's. It's a really strange phenomenon. And in some ways, I liken it to what happened after October 7th. Right? You got Hamas, that kills over 1200 Israelis. And it seems to embolden people, these vicious acts of murder, in that instance, terror. It emboldened, you know, the protest movement, this pro Palestine Palestine movement in the United States on college campuses and internationally. And you see the same at UVU's campus, where they've almost become more vitriolic, more vile, more violent. This ideation talking about getting trained up in guns. The trans community wants to get trained up in guns. In your reporting, it's a very troubling phenomenon that when something so vicious and vile and evil happens in their midst, that instead of being cowed by it or rethinking their lives, they see it as a rallying cry to double and triple down on evil. I want to talk about this, though, and Blake, I'd love Your input on it as well. This phenomenon that we witness when something terrible, vile, evil happens, something so tragic, something so just awful in every conceivable way, and yet instead of kind of taking a step back, maybe moderating their tone, their rhetoric, their signage, their discord servers, they're getting increasingly aggressive, increasingly vitriolic. Did you get any sense of why or how that is?
- [29:53]
D
To me, I think I get the sense that these students saw the assassination of Charlie Kirk as a victory for their cause. And I know that's, that's. It's insane to think that they saw the assassination of a husband and a father and a really peaceful, America loving guy as a, as a victory, but I think they did. And I think we saw that in a lot of the immediate reactions to it online in the days and weeks after Charlie Kirk's assassination. I will never forget as someone who. I wasn't there personally, but it was right down the road from my university, byu, and I had many friends there. And it deeply impacted me personally as someone who started a TPUSA chapter at my high school. I just remember the depression I sank into when I saw the level of jubilation online from certain people. And I think those people are the same people running these student organizations at uvu.
- [30:45]
A
Blake, I just. What's behind that impulse?
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E
I. Yeah, I guess, yeah, that's actually a good question to ask. Like, what do you. I mentioned that when. With the video you showed where it's. You can, to me at least, it's just so obvious that someone like that is bad news. They don't behave the way a normal person behaves in conversation when talking about politics. They have this hateful lust towards violence. Do you, do you, do you back me up on that? Do you agree with that? Do you see this in a lot of these creatures on the radical left? There just seems to be something off about them.
- [31:25]
D
Yeah, there certainly does. You saw this in a recent video that went viral of a woman wearing a shirt that said Make America Kind Again, viciously beating an effigy of Donald Trump with a bat at a protest. I think a lot of people have this sort of deep mental, like cognitive dissonance that helps, that makes them feel like they're virtuous when really that what they're promoting is deeply, deeply immoral.
- [31:51]
A
Yeah, and I think that's right. And you see it reflected, it's a topic we've discussed on this show multiple, multiple times now, but it bears repeating, is that there is a dehumanizing language and ideology wrapped in Kind of a grotesque moral projection that's coming out of the left where they are wrapping a rationalization for violence, political violence, in a moral framework that no Christian could ever recognize, that nobody in traditional Western culture would recognize where they believe that it's justified. And you saw that in that clip that will be played where he's saying, I'm glad he's gone. What he's saying underneath that is that I'm glad Charlie was murdered. I'm glad that this person that I disagree with politically was taken out. And I have a moral framework that justifies that. And the polling reflects that. Increasingly on the left there are people that believe that it's justified. We've showed the poll again and again, but YouGov economists did a poll just after Charlie's assassination, September 13th through the 15th. I would have presumed that people would have been shocked and horrified by what happened at UVU and that that number would have dropped. Perhaps it did, perhaps it went up. I don't know. Based on your reporting, maybe it just sort of revealed what was already there. But it showed just under 30% of 18 to 39 year old self described progressives believe that political violence is justified. And only about 3 to 5% depending on the cohort of the same age group of conservatives believe the same, which is still too high candidly, but it's not 30%. And we see that this Bella Chow becoming a thing that they all see. There's the graph. You can see that far left blue node up at the top there. Nearly 30% of 18 and 39 year olds believe political violence is justified. And I think that's what your reporting has just revealed here, is that instead of even giving us the I'm sad it happened, he didn't deserve it, that shouldn't have happened. They don't do any of that. They're just like, Bella Chow, let's go learn how to use firearms. Fascism is coming, is knocking at our door. What do you think they are consuming, Kimball? UVU and maybe in Utah, across the country. But it does seem UVU has a particular problem here. What are they consuming? What are they telling themselves to radicalize them like this?
- [34:19]
C
This?
- [34:19]
D
Yeah, you make a good point. That at my university, which is right down the road, Brigham Young University, we don't see the same level of violent rumination. I think what they're consuming are what Jonathan Height and Greg Luganoff described as like the three great untruths that my generation is learning, the untruth of fragility. These, these kids are being taught from a young age in the education system that they're fragile and that opinions or ideas that they don't like are harmful to them. They're also being taught the untruth of emotional reasoning, that when they think with their, with their heart instead of their head, they can be right because they feel right. And if it feels right to do something, then it is right that that's what morality is based on. And then they're being taught the untruth of us versus them. They're being taught that the world is divided into good and bad people and the bad people are the people that disagree with them. And, and that if those bad evil people are, are defeated, then they, they are the good guys. We have a joke where we call some of these clubs the anti, the anti bad guy, good guy clubs because they think of themselves as revolutionaries against evil people. They, they don't have the moral ability to, to understand the nuance that there are good and bad ideas everywhere, that everyone has a little bit of good in them and a little bit of bad in them. They see themselves as good and virtuous and others as bad and evil. And so that allows them to justify violence and ultimately murder.
- [35:37]
A
Kim McCall, lead editor of the Cougar Chronicle. I think that was well stated. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for your reporting.
- [35:43]
D
Kimball, thank you.
- [35:46]
A
How much are life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness worth to you? This is the question America's founders had to answer. You see, for more than 150 years, America's 13 colonies governed themselves until Britain declared they had no right to self rule. So ordinary people had to make extraordinary choices and risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to fight for independence. And against all odds, they won. And in victory, they built one of the most stable and lasting republics in human history. Now experience the American Revolution like never before, thanks to our friends at Hillsdale College. Revolutionary America, a new documentary from Hillsdale Studios and narrated by Tom Selleck, brings the founding of our nation to life through the voices of those who lived it. Alongside insights from leading scholars and commentator. I'm telling you, Hillsdale has outdone themselves with this. It's amazing. You, you've got to check this out. You've got to, frankly, you got to buy tickets to see this film. So please, please, please, it's something you could take the whole family to. You could take your friends. I mean, listen, at a time when history is often distorted in schools and classes and media, this is your chance to see the stories that really happened and ask yourself what would you risk for freedom? Face the decisions our founders grappled with in Revolutionary American, a Hillsdale Studios film only in theaters May 31st through June 2nd. So get your tickets now by going to Hillsdale Edu Revolution. You do not want to miss this opportunity to see this on the big screen. Hillsdale Edu Revolution to locate a theater near you and buy tickets for Revolutionary American one more time. That's Hillsdale Edu Revolution. Want to change our topics here, but it is related and we've got Miranda Devine on the show to help us discuss it. Trump's counterterrorism strategy targets violent left wing extremists with transgender ideology, among other things. The strategy focusing on left wing groups reverses the Biden era concentration on right wing extremism. Miranda Devine, you were at the New York Post, a very celebrated author, the big guy, laptop from hell. Welcome back to the show, Miranda.
- [38:02]
F
Thanks a lot. Thanks very much, Andrew and everyone there.
- [38:06]
A
So you have been doing some reporting on this change of policy and I saw it percolating in the news and I think it's extraordinarily noteworthy and important Report tell us in broad strokes this change, who's leading it and what does it entail?
- [38:23]
F
Well, it's being led by Dr. Sebastian Gorka, who's President Trump's new counterterrorism czar. And it's a departure from the very sinister Biden administration's national strategy on counterterrorism because it it instead of going after Catholics at traditional mass or parents at school board meetings, I mean, I'm only slightly exaggerating there. The Biden administration was going after domestic terrorists, which Joe Biden told us repeatedly was ultra maga, semi fascist people who supported Donald Trump. And this time Gorkha has reorientated counterterrorism under President Trump's orders from last September. He signed a document to say that this should happen. We're looking at hard threats against national security that would be cartels, Islamic extremists and domestic terrorists, but actual violent actors
- [39:25]
A
that include explicitly antifa, antifa and trantifa, it looks like. Here's a tweet from Andy Ngo. He said leftists and liberals are raging that the new U.S. counterterrorism strategy names antifa and trantifa for the domestic terrorist threats that they are. This is a huge, huge topic for us, obviously, because Charlie was assassinated by somebody that had a romantic relationship with a trans identifying person in Utah. It's something that we've seen. There was the armed queers of SLC There was recent reporting out of Denver of similar groups arming up. There was a report just last segment that we did with the Kruger Chronicle in Kimball Call where he's pulling discord chats of other trans activists getting armed, learning how to shoot their rifles and this sort of thing. This is an epidemic that people I don't think focus enough on is just the violent ideation that seems to be prevalent in this community. Miranda, is this something that Sebastian Gorka and others seem to be fully cognizant of?
- [40:36]
F
100%. And it's explicitly mentioned in this new counterterrorism strategy. I'll just quote it to you. As real threats were ignored or underplayed. Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies. So they are extreme. Explicitly looking at this, and I would just say that you said it's something we haven't focused on previously. In fact, it was actively ignored under the Biden administration and by the media, which downplayed, lied and police hid things. Like one of the transgender shooters who shot up a Christian children's school. His manifesto was kept secret for a very long time for no, no reason, because other manifestos come out immediately. It's just to, I don't know what, you know, appease. Appease terrorists, I guess.
- [41:48]
E
It's just very interesting. It's very refreshing. I say I want to read the exact quote from it where it just, it says in the strategy, in addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, we're prioritizing the rapid identification neutralization of violent secular political groups who are anti American, radically pro transgender and anarchist. And it would be fascinating. I wish it was longer. It's only a 16 page strategy and it really only mentions the left a handful of times. But I would love to see a document building this out because it does strike me as a new threat. If you go on discord, which you can easily do, you can find these things. You will find these, these groups and they really feed on each other in a way that a lot of online groups don't, that the, they get radicalized by. It's very common online that you can see this on Reddit where you'll see transgender people say like they want us dead. They're committing genocide on us. It's this extremely hyperbolic rhetoric and it's unchecked. And on top of that, it's sort of like they're almost getting this weird Letdown, where we're suffering from the fact that we won't this culture war topic. And they were kind of above criticism. They were almost a sacred thing for a few years, and then suddenly it's like they're getting yanked away from it. It's almost like a political version of the way they flip out if someone misgenders them.
- [43:11]
A
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. We've got this B roll here of Ermia Fanayan. She's the leader of Armed Queers slc. Miranda. I don't know if you can see it, but you know, she's posing with what looks to be some sort of large rival. I can't see it. It's far enough away. She's posing with Elizabeth Warren. So these are politically connected people that are celebrating an armed resistance to Blake's point, of what they consider an existential threat to their future existence.
- [43:44]
F
Yeah, look, I was doing a column recently and I need to expand on this, but in the course of my research into the Southern Poverty Law center, which is now under indictment for funding neo Nazi groups and so on, which I believe they were doing to sort of drum up extremism on the right that didn't exist, that was shrinking, that was going away if it ever was a big threat. But at the same time, they were defaming and smearing and putting on their hate list people like Charlie Kirk, who are moderates, who were conservatives, but who posed a threat to the left wing project, to the revolution. And so, you know, Charlie, as you know, was placed on the Southern Poverty Law Center's hate list shortly before he was assassinated, basically putting him putting a target on his back. I would anyway, when in the course of my research I found just I have to back this up. So I'm just telling you the preliminary research, but there was a transgender, you know, one of these armed queer activists who was involved in the Southern Poverty in Utah, who was involved in research in the Southern Poverty Law center around Christians and around Turning Point usa. So that was in the early days of sort of a pilot project in Utah. I find that extremely disturbing and I obviously need to back that up, but I have no reason to believe that it's not true.
- [45:31]
A
Yeah, it's a deeply concerning trend and we've been seeing it a lot and it's starting to come into focus now, and I'm so grateful that Sebastian Gorka and others are now focusing on it. Miranda, I want to play this. This was from Charlie was murdered on a Wednesday, and by Monday we ended up doing the show in the White House. J.D. vance graciously hosted the entire show that day, and he interviewed Stephen Miller. And I'm going to play this clip because it's something I think about a lot, and I know it's something Stephen thinks about a lot. I said this before, but there's repeating. The last message that Charlie sent me was, I think it was just the day before we lost him, which is that we need to have an organized strategy to go after the left wing organizations that are promoting violence in this country. And I will write those words onto my heart and I will carry them out. If people ask me, you know, what emotions I'm feeling right now, and this
- [46:33]
B
is something people say, I mean, you
- [46:35]
A
kind of know the answer. There's incredible sadness, but this incredible anger. And the thing about anger is that
- [46:42]
B
unfocused anger or blind rage is not
- [46:44]
A
a productive emotion, but focused anger, righteous anger directed for a just cause, is one of the most important agents of
- [46:52]
B
change in human history.
- [46:54]
A
So that Stephen Miller, something I've thought about a lot, Miranda, that Charlie's final text to him was talking about the need to go after these left wing groups. It begs the question, Miranda, though, because something Blake and I have talked about is so much of this ideology is diffused, it's decentralized, it's across discord servers.
- [47:14]
E
In fact, I would say this might be a particularly strong case of it. We were talking in the break about who a lot of these radical transgender are. The ones who have done shootings. And a lot of them are. They're troubled men who have kind of fallen for a mental social contagion. A lot of them are on the spectrum.
- [47:33]
A
They're highly medicated.
- [47:34]
E
Yeah, they're highly medicated. Transgender leaning individuals are a lot more likely to be autistic. They're vulnerable to taking a lot of things highly literally or taking things to an extreme that most people wouldn't. So they're the ones who hear rhetoric that says they're killing us, they're committing genocide. And normal people hear that and they filter out. They go, okay, they're saying something extreme to make a rhetorical point or get a rise out of people. These individuals take it literally. And we can look at the alleged shooter in Charlie's case where he has these text messages where he says some hate can't be negotiated with. And he seems to have been this quiet guy, but then he seems to have been radicalized in some extreme direction by what he was reading on the Internet.
- [48:19]
A
So how do you deal with something that's this Decentralized, and this diffused through social media.
- [48:26]
F
Well, what the counterterrorist strategy says and what Sebastian Gorka told me when I interviewed him last week. That interview will be out tomorrow morning. He says that they will use all the tools, I'm quoting here, constitutionally available to us to map these groups at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent. They're also going after, he said to me, the funders of these groups, because they don't operate in a vacuum. My theory has always been with all these, whether it be Antifa back in the Summer of Love 2020, or it's morphing into this transgender extremism, I don't think it's an accident. This is really political. Political actors, malevolent, sinister, political, shadowy actors who are preying on the vulnerable. You know, I do think that you just described who a lot of these transgender individuals are, and they really are to be pitied because their problems have been weaponized to use as a political weapon, because I guess they're protected, that they. The other sort of politicization of it. They have become sort of a protected category of violent extremists. And you see that with, you know, formerly august media institutions like the New York Times publishing stories in which they deliberately confuse and blur the fact that these people are transgender or that, you know, a woman, they say, who shot up a classroom is actually a man. You know, they. They won't do that. And this is all conspiring to confuse and blur the boundaries between crime and mental illness and somehow excuse this as not a trend. We're not allowed to see that there's a trend. We just have to think, oh, that's just some isolated crazy. But I don't think it isn't, and I don't think it's fully organic. I think that the unique vulnerabilities of these people make them the perfect patsies, the perfect killers.
- [50:55]
A
There's an article here that I'm reading right now. It's from the Denverite, and it says Denver's Queer Gun Club is booming, part of a national trend. And the subhead reads this Miranda. Fears of political violence are pushing some Denverites to learn to shoot. And these quotes are really interesting where it says, you know, Mazzotti, who is queer, is fearful of mass shootings. She's worried about government violence, and she's lost faith that the US Will ever pass gun control laws. So she's decided that learning to use a gun herself was the next best thing. Considering everyone has a gun. I don't think pepper spray would scare people away. And it says that's common across the membership of Pink Pistols, whose local reach has doubled in the past few years. So the narrative that the Denverite is spreading is that these people fear for their lives so much that they're getting armed because they think the government's gonna come after them. I mean, perhaps this is sort of the Alex Preddy, Renee Goode narrative out of Minneapolis, spreading ice. There seems to be a lot of overlap with anti ice rhetoric with these groups, but it does seem that they're teaching themselves. They're working themselves into a lather, to Blake's point. And they're taking it very literally that they think the government's gonna come after them or conservatives are gonna try and kill them, which there doesn't seem to be any proof at all of either point.
- [52:25]
F
But it doesn't matter because it just feeds into the sort of left wing soup that Donald Trump and his administration and any conservatives, anyone who supports him, are fascists and are out to get you and will pull you out of your bed and, you know, throw you in a dungeon just because you're transgender. But, you know, to do something serious about this is you do have to go follow the money, the classic story. And, you know, Sebastian Gorka mentioned specifically this multimillionaire, maybe billionaire Neville Roy Singham, Fox Digital has done very good work tracing his funding of a lot of these radical groups. Now, this is someone who made his money in the United States and now lives in China. So you have to wonder also, what kind of a role do our foreign adversaries play in sort of whipping up unrest and discord in social media platforms?
- [53:30]
A
Yeah, Miranda, we got to wrap it up there. This was fantastic. Great update on a very important topic. We appreciate you making the time. We'll talk to you soon.
- [53:39]
F
Thank you. Bye Bye.
- [53:43]
A
In honor of America's 250th birthday, our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom are inviting you to commit to five days of purpose prayer for America. Since its founding, America has been sustained by the prayers of its people. Through our highs and lows, Americans of faith have turned to God for wisdom, guidance, and strength. And so, as we Prepare to celebrate 250 years of freedom, ADF is asking believers like you and me to join them in dedicated prayer for our country. Thanking God for how he has worked in the past and asking him to prepare us for what's ahead, commit to pray for America by signing up today. For the next five days, you'll receive daily text messages and emails with specific prompts and insights about the issues facing our country and how you can pray about them. Visit joinadf.com Charlie to sign up to pray today or text pray25083848 that's pray25083848 to opt in. Without further ado here. Very excited. This is something we've been planning for a little while. This is is Lane Schoenberger who is the chief investment officer of yrefi. I got it all in Chief Investment Officer, which is a heck of a title by the way. You guys have been such a great partner of Turning Point. Charlie loved you guys. You guys had a really special connection, a really special bond. So it's an honor to have you in the studio, Lane. You guys do so much over at Y Refi, so just tell the story about your company and all the great work you do.
- [55:20]
B
Oh, thank you and it's a pleasure to be here. So thank you for having us.
- [55:23]
A
It's an honor, really.
- [55:24]
B
Me, you know, and you know, being friends with the Turning Point crew and with Charlie has been remarkable on so many levels and it's a real joy. So you know, why Refi. What we discovered was there's a problem in this, in the world that it doesn't, it doesn't choose sides, right. It's, it's the student loan problem. And you know, as of right now, we're in a situation where student loans are $1.85 trillion.
- [55:52]
A
Is it that high now?
- [55:53]
B
It's that high. And you know, back. I'll just give you a quick timeline. If you look Back in history, 2006, 2007, total student loan debt was about $685 billion, which sounds like a lot of money, but compared today, it's nothing. And during the Obama administration, education finance was all brought back into the Department of Education and the problem exploded and now it's 1.85 trillion, most of which is federal. However, there are a lot in private student loans into the billions. About 200 billion of that is private student loans. And what's really interesting is, and the reason we created YREFI is we discovered that there is a, there's a situation out there where, you know, federal loans, there's all kinds of options to help people defer payments, get their payments down under income driven repayment plans, different options for them to for put in forbearance. But when it comes to private Student loans. There are no options for these borrowers if they go into default, delinquency and ultimately default. The. The option is garnishment of wages after a court hearing. It's. That's the end. That's the outcome. And what we discovered is that, you know, there's a problem here. There's a broken system that someone needs to fix. So we came up with a way to fix that problem. And it's working just beautifully. And that's, I think, one of the reasons Charlie loved it.
- [57:12]
A
You almost said beyond your wildest imaginations or expectations. You almost said it because it really is. It's a remarkable thing because it's working so well because so many people desperately needed it. And okay, so I visited your offices and you know, David gave me a tour around. It was remarkable. You've done the same with Charlie. I didn't even realize it when they're showing me the video here and we'll show it in just a second. But you guys really impressed upon me the fact that these students or the parents of the students call you and they're suicidal sometimes or they're so depressed they can't get out of bed because of this broken system. Just dive into that piece of it a little bit.
- [57:53]
B
So it's a sad but true fact. The borrowers that are calling are in a very, very bad situation, one that they have no way out of. There's no solution to the problem until now. And because of that, about 70% of these folks have a co borrower. So mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, someone co signed that loan with the borrower. So they're all looking for a solution. In a lot of cases, grandma and grandpa, whoever co signed that loan, they don't even know there's a problem until the collection calls start. And when that happens, it makes for very awkward conversations and families creates a tremendous amount of strife. And you know, I didn't realize how bad that problem was until we did our very first borrower testimonial where she explained to us that she was considering a suicidal option. That was. That was the choice that she was going for until we fixed this problem for her. And since then we've done multiple testimonials with borrowers where I've heard that multiple times. And it's not just suicide. It's things like I'm delaying the starting of my family, right?
- [58:55]
A
That's a huge problem.
- [58:55]
B
They're delaying marriage, they're delaying having kids, all of these things. This is just this massive roadblock that has been created for these Young people. And it's not out of choice. I mean, they did make the choice to take the student loan and go to get this education, but they didn't choose to get into the bad situation that it led to. Right. They came out of school, something went wrong. Right. So you know, at Y Refi, we've created some very, some, some unique things. At least we've been told it's unique. And what I mean by that is our student loan advocates are on those phones and they're taking those inbound calls and they never know what they're going to get. It could be someone who's just overwhelmed with the anxiety and pressures of dealing with this. So we've got resources. You know, there's the typical HR resources which we love. Our HR team, they do a remarkable job. But we put in house, we have an on staff chaplain. His job all day is to be there to listen, to consult, pray, talk, whatever they need. And then of course you give them other things like a ping pong table or a pool table. And you'll see it in the video, I believe, because they just need to go walk away and go smash a ball. Just do something to get to refocus. And then they go back to the phones. And I tell you, our employees absolutely love helping these people. And you can tell by the Google reviews, we're over 500 reviews, 4.9 stars. And when these people are writing in, they're writing stories.
- [60:14]
A
This is Charlie at your.
- [60:15]
B
That's Charlie at our office. Yeah, it was a great opportunity.
- [60:18]
E
It's one of the things I love saying that we say they have, you know, people you can call in the US I think being able to call real people in an office in the United States has become a secret weapon.
- [60:31]
B
It really has.
- [60:32]
A
Yeah.
- [60:33]
B
Really has. We don't have a phone tree. You call in and you immediately are connected to a human being right here in Phoenix, Arizona that wants to hear your story.
- [60:40]
A
Well, it's the type of company, by the way, where you see Charlie, he's driving up to the, to the office. But where I noticed that your staff lined up to shake his hand. Yes, that's the kind of company that you guys have. That Charlie Kirk comes into your office and they're so excited to see him and honored to have him there.
- [60:59]
B
Right. They were excited to meet him. And you know, we didn't make a big deal out of him coming beforehand. We just wanted everybody needs to focus on point. And when he showed up, we said, hey everybody, we just want you to know we Have a special guest in the office if you'd like to meet him. And it was just overwhelming, the response. Right. And Erica has come in since then. And it was the same story where we didn't make a big announcement. We didn't want everybody all distracted by anything. It was just, hey, Eric is here. Do you want to meet her? And it was this same thing as Charlie. Right. People just love to meet people that are out there doing good. And you know, the reason that Charlie and Eric both embrace and love what we're doing is we're helping fix a problem that. It doesn't pick sides. This is a problem that is for everyone that's dealing with this. Like everyone in the country knows someone with a student loan. You know, the statistics are 45 million Americans have student loan debt. And what the government doesn't really talk about is the fact that about 70% of their portfolio as a co borrower. Well, that makes it about 70 million Americans have student loan debt.
- [62:06]
A
Yeah, right.
- [62:07]
B
It's a big deal.
- [62:08]
A
Well, and you talk about the putting off a family formation, buying homes, getting started on the American dream. And so what we've seen sold to so many of these students and Charlie articulated the college scam so brilliantly, we've sold this false bill of goods where this will, this piece of paper is going to give you everything you hoped and dreamed for, only to find out you're saddled with this debt. You can't get a job in the field that you studied half the time. And then if you are lucky enough to do that, it takes the next decade of your life or more to pay it off. And that's only if you're lucky enough to graduate, which a lot of them don't graduate. A lot of students, students take on a bunch of student loan debt and they drop out and then they change careers. They change careers, the piece of paper means nothing. Eventually. Meanwhile, you've got plumbers, electrician, H Vac repair guys. These guys are building businesses where they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars. No student loan debt, family formation, buying homes, buying properties, doing all the things that, you know, we think that you should be able to do as an American. And so Charlie was dead set on that. So you found the perfect vehicle for the, for the perfect product at the perfect time. Yeah, let's go ahead. Oh, go ahead.
- [63:17]
E
Well, I was finding myself.
- [63:18]
A
I think it'd be.
- [63:19]
E
This might be too big of a question, and I don't want to put you on the spot, but you've been up close to it. You've mentioned why the government sector of student loans. I was wondering, do you have thoughts? How would you. If you could reset the student loan system from scratch, how would you do it so that we don't have a $2 trillion debt bomb for young people?
- [63:36]
B
The first part is you got to get the government out of the lending business. I mean, that step number one, get them out of the lending business, put it back into the private markets where it belongs. Capitalism will fix it. It always does. So that's step one, you know, and then what you got to do then is look back at what. What we've currently done to these students and come up with a solution. And what we're doing at Y Refi is working so well in the private market. If we could apply that model to the federal line, the federal portfolio, we could. We could wipe this problem out in short order. It just. We need. You know, it's the government, right? There's a lot of hands in that cookie jar. A lot of decision makers, a lot of decision makers that don't make decisions. We could go on and on about that. I don't want to waste the time here for that. But, you know, we've built something that's working exceptionally well. Borrowers love it. Investors love it. The lenders, servicers, agencies that hold the debt, they love it because it's working. It gets them paid quickly so they can move on, lend that money out to someone else. You know, to your point, Andrew, is right now about 50% of our portfolio is made up of teachers and nurses because they come out with all this debt, and then, you know, they find themselves starting at the bottom of the ladder and have to work their way up. They don't come out making substantial money.
- [64:45]
A
How long's the average payoff period of a nurse's student loan debt?
- [64:49]
B
Before why refi or after?
- [64:51]
A
Just before.
- [64:52]
B
Before why refi? Over 20 years, our average is 10.2.
- [64:55]
A
My gosh.
- [64:56]
E
I mean, it's terrifying when you look at it. Like there are people who, even if they make money, they pay, and they. They only cover interest. It just never goes down.
- [65:03]
B
Exactly. There's $300 billion of this type of
- [65:06]
C
debt right in the defaulted, about 45 billion. 45 to 50. Got it. Okay. So if somebody has private student loan debt, they're making casual payments.
- [65:14]
A
They're not a candidate.
- [65:15]
C
So we get people all the time. They're hanging on by their fingernails, but
- [65:18]
A
they're not defaulted yet.
- [65:19]
C
People could take them if they're early stages of delinquency or late stages delinquency, people will come with us. And so we run a full analysis so we know right away where they stand. Once we know where they stand, we structure. Every single deal is different for every borrower. What's the latest?
- [65:34]
B
We've taken someone right before a week before court.
- [65:37]
C
Oh, yeah, we regularly will have people
- [65:38]
B
have summons because their only outcome is garnishment of wages, you know, judgment and garnishment. That's the outcome.
- [65:44]
A
So.
- [65:44]
B
So if we can get to them before they get to that, it destroys
- [65:48]
C
their lives for many, many years to come. They got out of school, they fell behind and then never had a chance.
- [65:54]
A
They had bad credit. That was a cool, cool video, actually. I've never seen that before. All right, so Lane, you've got this. You're helping students, but you're also working on the investment side, which is what we're talking about lately, where you offer up to 10.25% fixed interest, which is, I was telling you in the break, I was like, I remember going to college, it was like, you got to assume a 6% rate of annual return over the long term. And. And I was like, well, what if you could get 10%? Like 10.25% is incredible. Tell us about that side.
- [66:25]
B
So, yeah, on the investment side, you know, we raise the capital that we need from private investment or investors, accredited investors. We don't take any institutional capital, no Wall street money. We want America to succeed at helping other Americans. So what we do is we've got five different investment options. One, a one year note that pays 6.5%, a two year that pays seven, a three year that pays 7.75, a four year at eight and a quarter, and a five year note at 10.25. Been paying these interest rates for years. What we do is we calculate interest daily and we make monthly payments of interest only to the investor. And then we give the investor a lot of options where they can turn that interest income on or off, up or down, as often as monthly. So tons of flexibility to the investor. There's a limited liquidity feature, so if the investor needed their money back early, put in a request at our. Well, if we approve it, we've never taken longer than 30 days to approve. But I have to say that you get your money back. And what we do is we give the investor credit for the amount of time they were invested as a percentage of what they agreed to. So, for example, if you're in the one year note and say six months in or 50% of the way through, you keep 50% of the interest up to that point in time. Same math. On a five year note, we have a roll up feature. So if you invest in the 1, 2, 3 or 4 year note, you can at the end of your term lock in your interest and roll up to anything longer and finish out that term at the higher interest rate. It's very, very again, all unique. And we've created this for the benefit of the investor. What did they want? We gave it to them. And we again we calculate interest daily and make monthly payments. And you know, I've given this example a few times because we've had it happen with other organizations where other investors rather where they, they want to give money to an organization. So a quick example. If you were to invest a million dollars, that kicks out about 8,500 bucks a month on average. Because again we calculate daily so it's going to vary month over month. Take out some taxes for that. Let's say it's $8,000 net to the investor after taxes. Well, we've set our system up where you can actually send that money directly to the organization of your choosing. So we've suggested, for example, maybe you split that payment, send 4,000 to Turning Point, 4,000 to your church. Whatever it is that you want to do, we can do that right there in our system. It's very, very unique, but it gives the opportunity for you to support not just wirefi, but other organizations that might be something important to you. Right.
- [68:47]
A
And it's important to remember all of this is helping the student loan.
- [68:51]
B
Right? Right.
- [68:52]
A
You know, people that are struggling to start their lives and in fact you dropped at the end of the. I, I'd not heard that before. 20 years for the average nurse. 10 point, would you say? 10, 10 and a half years.
- [69:04]
B
So for Y Refi, our average loan is 10.2 years. And you know, our longest loan is only 20 years. Our highest interest rate that we charge our borrowers is 5.19. Average sits around 4. Now this right here brings up the greatest question that we always get asked. Wait a minute. The math isn't mathing, right? Yeah, you just, you just said elaborate.
- [69:24]
A
Money laundering.
- [69:25]
B
No, no, it is not. And you know how you pay ten and a quarter when you're collecting four from the borrower? Doesn't make sense. Well, I'll just give you the quick answer and then I would encourage people to call in and we'll explain it in more detail. But long story short is we settle the debt at a discount with the existing lender service or collection agency, law firm call it 40 cents on the dollar. We then refinance that back to the borrower at 100 cents on the dollar. We're not going to give them a discount. We actually add in a 5% refinance fee. We're not going to give them a discount on the face value of the loan. You know why if we did, borrower gets hit with cancellation of debt, income tax. Now they have an IRS problem, so you don't want to do that to them. We do share the discount with the borrower. We just do it through a low fixed interest rate and a custom term built around their ability to pay. So the average interest rate hovers around 4%. Average term hovers around 10.2 years. Right. So we're sharing the discount. We don't underwrite our borrowers on fico, we underwrite them on real life. And with that we're able to, we escrow borrowers. While we're underwriting them, they're escrowing their payments with us so we can confirm they have the ability and willingness to pay us back. Right. So we share our discount with the borrowers and then we share, in essence, our spread with our investors. So it's not to the detriment of the borrower. That's why it works.
- [70:40]
A
This is why you're the chief investment officer. Because that's complicated math, but it does make sense the way that you're able to make it work. And I just, you know, you made this point that the capital capitalist system will find a way, it will find a solution. And this is, this is what you're talking about?
- [70:57]
B
This is what I'm talking about.
- [70:58]
A
Yeah. That there are solutions to our student debt problem.
- [71:01]
B
Absolutely.
- [71:02]
A
But the federal government has to get out of the way. By the way, another reason that it's a huge problem that the federal government is involved in student loan debt is because it's given these institutions the college cabal, as Charlie used to call them, blank checks to keep increasing tuition, keep building that new building, keep building that new stadium. All of that gets passed down to the students and their parents. And it creates this knock on effect, which again, we're having fertility issues, we're having lower marriage rates, we're having the, you know, lack of ability to buy their first home. All of these are connected, you bet there. And if you could just have some private entrepreneurs with some creativity come in and provide a solution, we could knock out a lot of this debt so much quicker.
- [71:46]
B
Well, here's, here's some interesting numbers right now. And this is why we're pushing so hard to raise the capital we're sitting on over just as of last night, just shy of $225 million worth of borrowers in escrow, Meaning borrowers there, those are. Those are new borrowers waiting for us to fund their loans. Right. We're moving through that process. We're working hard to get them approved. We're intentionally slow in underwriting. Gives us a chance to get to know them, a chance for them to get to know us, make sure we're going to work together. And it works very well. Now, I'll wrap up on this because it's kind of a fun thing. We created a program called Ignite. It focuses exclusively on trade and technical schools. And we launched it in October of last year. We had built it, and we were about to launch it, and we were about to share it with Charlie when all that happened. So I never got the opportunity, but I know he'd be very proud of Ignite because of the fact that it's literally focused on tech and trade. All about getting those kids through the education that they need, get them out into the trades, making money without a massive amount of debt. And we were able to fix yet another broken system.
- [72:51]
A
All right, so where do people find you?
- [72:52]
B
Go to investyrefi.com or call the 880Invest. Give us a ring there. Ask any questions. We're happy to talk about it. Explain the product, explain the mission, and just enjoy who we are and what we do.
- [73:07]
A
I love it. Lane. This has been an education. Lane Schoenberger, Chief investment officer of Y Refi. Check them out today.
- [73:14]
B
Thank you.
- [73:19]
C
For more on many of these stories
- [73:20]
D
and news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.