Transcript
A (0:00)
Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast 1, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Hey everybody. Today we give you the Halftime Report, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. And I have three very concrete ideas of how Donald Trump can defeat Joe Biden, of what he can do, not on a policy side, but on a campaign side. And I reveal the greatest underutilized asset for the Trump presidency and in American political history. You're gonna be surprised. Maybe you'll be surprised, maybe not. Comes up later in the show. Email me your thoughts. Freedom charliekirk.com get involved with Turning Point USA on over 2,000 high school and college campuses across the country. TPUSA.com Type in Charlie Kirk show to your podcast provider. Charlie Kirk Show. Hit that subscribe button. Make sure you're subscribed. We're doing two episodes a day. Give us those five star reviews. And finally, if you want to win a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine, do exactly that. Subscribe five star review, screenshot it and email us at freedomarliekirk.com freedomarliekirk.com Big episode in store. Biden, Trump. It's the Halftime Report. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
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Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy, his spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point usa.
A (1:31)
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives. And we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Legacy Box is a super simple mail in service to have all your videotapes, camcorder tapes, film reels and pictures digitally preserved on thumb drive, DVD or cloud. I love Legacy Box. All my family's archives, my ancestors that fought in the Civil War and that fought in the Revolutionary War. Now I have all their pictures on Legacy Box. Are your family's memories trapped on an old camcorder tape or film reels? Was your favorite childhood memory caught on film or videotape and maybe it disappeared and you're regretful for that? Well, do something about it by going to Legacy box. It's legacybox.com Charlie and get 40% off your first order. You just mail it in, they catalog it, send all the originals back to you and a digital file. Do you need to rescue your recorded memories, but haven't had any time to know where to start. Do you want these irreplaceable moments forever? Have them digitally preserved so they stand the test of time and can be passed down for generations to come. Get back perfectly preserved digital copies on a thumb Drive. It's legacybox.com Charlie buy today to take advantage of this exclusive art offer. Send in when you're ready. Legacybox.com Save 40% while supplies last. It is about halftime in the 2020 race, so use a sports analogy. Let's give the halftime report an honest analysis of how the Joe Biden campaign and the Donald Trump campaign is trending. Now, understand, we really don't have a presidential campaign, for lack of a better term. We kind of have a presidential referendum. I'm President Trump. We're going to dive into that and so much more. And look, it's important to realize that the 2020 race is not even in its final phase. But I think it'll be kind of helpful to take that kind of halftime report. We're right before the convention. For all intents and purposes, the convention is the most important part of the kickoff of a campaign. You kind of have this long, drawn out summer where candidates go back and forth. But even that is not happening because Joe Biden is deciding he doesn't want to campaign at all. And he's actually winning in a lot of different polls because of it. I have doubts about some of those polls, but I think it's fair to say that Joe Biden is definitely able to benefit from the lockdowns and the virus and the race riots because he's not in power. It is kind of a referendum on how awful America is, not necessarily a referendum on President Trump. So here's how to assess the race and what each candidate ought to do going forward. We are gonna go through Joe Biden, what he's doing right, what he's not doing right, some vulnerabilities for Joe Biden. We're gonna go through Donald Trump, what he's doing right and some things that he's not doing correct so far. His campaign, that is this race was always going to be difficult for President Trump. We knew that in 2020 that they were going to throw out everything they possibly could. Different accusations, big revealing books, the John Bolton book, the President's Niece. We knew all this sort of stuff was going to come to a point of intersection. That is, before the Chinese flu or the Chinese coronavirus or the China flu and the killing of George Floyd, fnf. If you Will the flu and Floyd. So we'll just kind of call them the virus and the race riots, for lack of better terms. We knew that President Trump had no chance basically of winning the popular vote. He didn't win it in 2016. He is probably more hated in states like California and New York than he even was in 2016. And you look at those states like California, New York and Illinois, they are more committed to defeating him in 2020 than they were in 2016. Now, if you do not have the popularity to win the popular vote, then you have no margin for error in certain specific states. You have to thread the needle. You have to thread the needle in Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Iowa or some combination of those states. We'll go through the different combinations it's going to take for President Trump to win in 2016. Now, mind you, it's possible for the President to win the presidency again without winning Michigan. It is harder and harder to win the White House without winning Florida. And we'll kind of go through those combinations. Now, mind you, polls in January are not votes in November. But going back to January, the president was nearly tied or barely behind Joe Biden in those states. Now, polls have President Trump down 8, if not 14 points. I don't believe those polls, but I believe they're about half right. So I think President Trump is down a couple points in the key states. Now, look, a significant number of people in those close swing states wasted their vote in 2016 by voting for a third party candidate. This is a very important point that a lot of Democrats, a lot of left wing socialists, they voted for Jill Stein or they didn't vote at all, or they voted for a third party candidate, which in some ways created the space for President Trump to win the White House, especially in states like Wisconsin and Michigan. If you tally the third party votes in Wisconsin, plus the amount that Donald Trump won by, which is about 8,000 votes if you add them together. If all of them voted for Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton would have won the state. Now, probably all of them won't do that again. But a third party voting individual will probably be less likely to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 than they did in 2016, because they're going to want to try to get rid of what they consider to be the biggest threat to America and the biggest threat to liberty and freedom and all the nonsense that the left propagates every single day. Now, you look at the two things, the virus and the race riots and the lockdowns, because the virus, they've done two very important things as it relates to the candidates for President Trump. It's done the following. It has allowed the press and his enemies to promote every negative personal narrative about him and his presidency that they have been pushing since the very beginning. The lockdowns and the race riots have opened up storytelling lines saying that he's incompetent, he's corrupt, he's racist, inexperienced, pettiness. All of the things that they have been throwing at him for the last couple years, all of a sudden are sticking more because of the pain that America is feeling. You could not have designed a better political climate for Joe Biden. I mean, if you were trying to design the perfect political ecosystem for someone who can't actually campaign because of mental decline, if you are trying to design a political, let's say, state of affairs for someone that is unable to give a speech. This lockdown culture that we are living through right now is perfect for Joe Biden. You see, the George Floyd race riots coupled with the lockdowns have allowed him to basically shelter in place to be in the candidate equivalent of the witness protection program. Every single day that the focus has remained on how racist America is or the Chinese coronavirus is a day where the media has allowed Biden to self isolate. Now, before looking at both of the candidates, there's a key fundamental difference to remember at the voters for each of these candidates. There are of course, exceptions to this general statement, so I'm going to be very careful before I say this, but we live under a bell curve. And the bell curve might be a little bit, let's say, dramatic, like something out of Salvador Dali painting, but a bell curve nonetheless. But here's the truth. The majority of voters for Joe Biden are driven more by a fear and hatred of Donald Trump than a love for Biden. And some polling reflects that that we're going to get into later in the article. While most of the President's voters are driven more by a love for him and not the hatred of Joe Biden, now the above contention makes Biden's choice for Vice President much more important than typically it usually is. It's already important for many reasons, some of which is Biden's imminent cognitive decline makes it seem that the Vice President is likely to one day soon become the president. Now, Joe Biden is pretending to be something that he's not. Joe Biden is using the old phrase, the ends justify the means. Basically, I'm going to lie myself to the top. I'm going to pretend I am a Moderate. Even though that Joe Biden is a radical. Even though Joe Biden is pandering to the most radical interests, the most radical elements of the Democrat Marxist base, the media is conveniently covering for him. Because the media alongside Joe Biden, they believe that no matter what it takes to assume power, that is what you should do. In some sense, it's actually really Machiavellian. And now I've used that term before, Machiavellian. What does that actually mean? Well, let's actually talk about a partner that we have here on the Charlie Kirk Show. It's called Thinker T H I N K R. A lot of you email me and you say, charlie, how are you able to read all these books? How are you able to get all these ideas internalized and then revert them back onto your podcast? Well, I do read a lot of these books and some of them I just go to very well done summaries. And that's what thinker.org does. So thinker.org, again, it's T H I N K R. We're going to have it in the show description, so you make sure you get the spelling correctly. But t h I-n k r.org Charlie, if you want to be able to access it, they're able to summarize certain books. And so one of which is a book I'm very familiar with, the Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. Now, you've probably heard that phrase before, Machiavellian. Well, it literally is actually named after a person. So Machiavelli wrote two books that he was very famous for. The book he was most famous for was called the Prince. It was written in the late 15th century and essentially this was during a time of a lot of turmoil in Italy. Italy had a ruling class that was continually in upheaval. Niccolo Machiavelli, he theorized in a book called the Prince. What is it that actually makes a good leader? Now, there are two huge takeaways from this book that you probably have used when describing politics before. You just might not know they're from the book the Prince by Machiavelli. And some of it is very applicable to Joe Biden. So here's some of the key insights from the book. Number one is that the Prince and he puts forward this theoretical idea of what does a good ruler mean? And he actually uses Christian ethics. So this is a Christian ethic book intersected with politics. And he says, what does a good ruler embody in that person he calls the prince. So he says the Prince cannot be all virtue and no vice. He must learn to use necessary vices strategically. So he makes the argument that even a good ruler must use the sword, must be unafraid to spill blood every once in a while. He says that princes who appear liberal will appear mean. Now, not liberal in the way that we know it, but meaning open minded. Those who are mean will be remembered as liberal or as open minded. And it's kind of a counterintuitive truth. Machiavelli also argued in the Prince that it's better to be both loved and feared. But if you must choose, being feared is more effective. So you've probably heard that thought exercise by maybe a teacher or a parent or a politician. Would you rather be loved or feared? Well, that comes from this book. That struggle of love versus fear in leadership comes from the the Prince, one of the most important philosophical and political books of our time. And Machiavelli argues that it's better to be feared than loved. Both are nice, but if you're nothing but loved, you will not be respected. It's the most vital of all though, to not be hated. So he kind of creates that third category. And so he even called, he creates this new term called criminal virtue. That a leader must be wise, strategic, brave, but also be ruthless. That if you are not ruthless alongside being wise, strategic and brave, you'll be feckless and you will lose power. He actually glamorized the political process, so much so that the Catholic Church banned this book for 200 years in Italy until the 1700s when it was allowed to be read again. It was actually considered to be heretical or be a piece of heresy. Machiavelli argued that you can't be good for all things. And the thing that he was most famous for out of all of it is that the ends justify the means. That you can lie yourself to the top. That if you are lying in the pursuit of something that is considered to be good, then therefore what you are doing is good. Now, it's very hard to justify the Christian ethic under that kind of decision making matrix. We have seen that using sin as a reason to justify something virtuous down the road is incredibly dangerous. It's pernicious by default and by definition. But this is what Machiavelli argues. And again, this is all made possible in a lot of different ways. Thinker.org, t H I N K r.org Charlie they have some other great books. Liberal Fascism, Right Sided History by Ben Shapiro. Why Nations Fall. So I encourage you guys to do it. Because if you want to explore really big ideas quickly and be able to connect to a lot of the philosophers that we talk about here on the Charlie Kirk show in eight minutes they have an audio version as well. You'll be able to get the big picture arguments of the Prince. Now, it's not a replacement of the actual book. I still encourage you going into these sorts of thoughts and these ideas. But for those of you in school that have to read these books quickly and maybe you're sidetracked because you have a job or you have some other things going on, or maybe it doesn't interest you that much, thinker.org is the place to go to explore big ideas. And that's exactly what Joe Biden is thinking right now is for Joe Biden. He believes the ends justify the means. I'm going to pretend to be a moderate. I'm going to lie to be someone that I am not so that I can attain power. Because he thinks he's going to do good once he's in power, which of course he isn't doing good. So here's what Biden needs to do. Understanding that he of course is employing Machiavellian tactics. He needs to basically become. He needs to become the best operator in a bunker in American history. If he is able to hide successfully from now till election day and the media will cover for him and Donald Trump is not able to flush him out, then he's going to get elected as president. United States. Only people deeply preoccupied with politics understand Biden's cognitive issues. Seriously, I've talked to many Democrats, I've talked about it before on this program that have no understanding at all that Joe Biden is actually in steep mental and cognitive decline. The press is not going to go after it. In fact, they're dismissing it whenever it is brought up. There's a really, really smart article that is written. I read a lot of things on the left as much as I can tolerate it as I can. I read a couple hours a day and I encourage all of you to do that as well. Which is why I am promoting thinker thinker.org Charlie which is reading is really important and making notes. And there's an article here which going to find perplexing that I'm citing it. It's from Vox.com, which most of what Vox publishes very well could have passed as meaningful propaganda from the Stalinist politburo. I mean, it's incredibly disastrous to a free society. But this article was really insightful and I've read it a couple times and it's really fair. It just is. And it says how Biden is winning. And so I was curious and it was written by Ezra Klein, who has an incredibly high IQ but very little patriotism. Awful mixture. You know, high IQ and resentment for the country is not a good combination for the betterment of a free society. But I've always considered Ezra to be really smart. I mean, there's no doubt about it. Ezra got really good test scores and has a high iq and someone told him they hate America early on. And he's never been able to shake that idea. But he wrote this article of how Biden is winning, and there's a lot of it. I'm going to quote from, I'm going to read one of them, and I agree with it. After the 2016 election, panicked, wounded Democrats settled on a diagnosis. Trump, for all his mania, bigotry and chaos, had given angry Americans something to vote for. To stop him, Democrats would need to match force with counter force, polarization with mobilization. They would need to show as much anger, as much populism, as much wrecking ball energy as he did. Biden is running and for now, winning by defying that diagnosis. That's really well put by Ezra. I have to say, a lot of the burn it all down energy by the Democrats, Biden is going out of his way to not embrace. And there's another part of this that I'm gonna talk about. But a lot of Biden's statement says we should tear down some statues. Now, he has some slips where he ends up showing his radicalism and his complete and total racism. When Joe Biden says that you're not a black person if you don't vote for him, I mean, that would be something that a slave owner in the antebellum south would say. But for the most part, Joe Biden is running a very careful, moderate campaign. Now, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, let's say, vulnerabilities in running a campaign like that. A lot of vulnerabilities and a lot of. There's a lot of chance there and a lot of risk. And it's not all in Biden's favor, but it's definitely the safe way to run a campaign. So I want to play for you an ad that Joe Biden is running on Fox News. It's a really good ad. I have Fox running all throughout the day and I've seen this ad a couple times and I turn it on and the visuals are pretty good. I obviously can't show you the visuals here, but the audio, it shows about uniting America and bringing America together. I can tell you from my dealings and my experience with a lot of suburban voters, this message is resonating with them. Play tape.