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Hey, everybody, where do we go from here? My impactful conversation with the great Eric Metaxas right here, right now. If you want to get behind our program and give us a little bit of backing, little support, it's charliekirk.com support. It helps us enormously. Charliekirk.com support this episode is brought to you advertiser free. Thanks to you supporting us, Eric Metaxas and I chat about what's happening in our country. Buckle up, everybody. Here we are. Go, Charlie. What you've done is incredible here.
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Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are
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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.
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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.
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As most people know, I process grief through dance. I just rent a dance studio, I put on the unitard, and I express my grief privately. But since this is a program, we're not gonna be able to do that. So I thought, let me see if I can bring somebody on who can help me figure out what's cooking right now. And I thought, hey, what about Charlie Kirk? People said, you'll never get him. His head is so big. He won't talk to anybody at your level. I said, you know what? With God, all things are possible. And Suzanne and I sought the Lord, and anyway, we fell asleep and I woke up and here's Charlie. Charlie, welcome. What's going on? What's new, man?
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We're here. I do have some people say I do have a big head, but for different. Literally. So here we are.
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Literally is fine. Literally is fine. We just did an hour talking to Kevin McCullough, and I've been saying a lot about this stuff. There are a lot of questions people have. So let me just throw it to you without much of a question. What are you thinking? Where are we?
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I think after the certification of the Electoral College votes, unfortunately, it's all but inevitable that Joe Biden's gonna be next President of the United States. I think that anyone tells you anything different is not looking at any constitutional provisions that can still be done. I've been really upset, Eric, about some people that have really amassed a massive following dealing Hopium. And that is where people just make stuff up where they're saying, give me
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an example, Give me an example.
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I'll give you a great example that President Trump was in Texas yesterday, that he was there to try to plan some sort of market.
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Before you get into that, I just wanna, I wanna tell you, here's the good news, Charlie. Most people are not, like, sipping from that straw. You're so deep into that world. No, no, no, I know there's people there. I'm not saying there aren't a lot of people, but I'm saying in the scheme of things, like, I hadn't even heard about that. So I know that there's that kind of stuff. I'm talking about bigger level stuff.
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There are people out there that have amassed massive followings over the last couple days and weeks and months just saying that it's certain that Donald Trump is going to serve a second term. And I've always wanted the process to play out in a constitutional way that hopefully would benefit the President. I mean, I'm a friend of his and I'm an advocate of his. But I also just think that a lot of people were misled throughout this process. And so at this moment, we're 13 days out and it looks like Joe Biden's gonna become president.
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Okay, well, then I wanna say this. I haven't said this, but I am definitely at least partially guilty of what you just said. In other words, this is what I'm trying to process because we all process reality differently and we all have different people that we give credence and authority to speak and so on and so forth. And for many reasons, it didn't seem possible to me that Biden could win. I would say that part of the equation is that if you're as convinced as you and I and others were that the election was not legitimate, then you have to believe that we can uncover the malfeasance and that we can never certify somebody who in fact was not elected by the American people. So it's a little confusing is what I'm saying.
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No, and I wouldn't put you in that category, Eric. You and I sat down about a month ago and you were very clear about the odds and the probability and that this would take, you know, a supernatural, divine intervention. I wouldn't put you in that category. I was talking about people that were talking about just really, I think dealing in half truth, saying that you don't understand Donald Trump is going to 100% serve a second term. I mean, you and I were hanging around some of those people during that time. In early December. And I was trying to tell people it's not looking good. You know, these states are certifying, they're not even holding hearings in these state legislatures. So look, where are we? Absent a God sized miracle in the next 13 days, I don't know constitutionally how it would work at this point.
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I'm really more guilty of that. You don't need to be aware of it. But in other words, I want to confess it in a sense that is without any question, at least part of what my thinking was. And we don't need to focus on that. But I just want to say that this is really complicated. I don't want to get into that too much with you, but let me just ask you a couple of point blank questions. Do you think, for example, Mike Pence yesterday did the right thing or not? And if he didn't do the right thing, how wrong was it?
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I called for him to use the power that was vested in him as President of the Senate to at the very least send back those results to the state legislatures. He could have given a two to three sentence statement saying, in the power vested in me granted by the United States Constitution as the President of the Senate, I am asking for further clarification if these are truly the set of electors that are sent by the Arizona legislature, the Georgia legislature and the Pennsylvania legislature. Because I'm being presented with two dueling sets of electors. And so what really bothered me is that Senator Klobuchar, who was kind of the person who was in charge of reading this off in the evening, she said that these electors are true and authentic. Well, they were presented with two sets of electors. And based on the precedent of 1960 with Richard Nixon, the President of the Senate can choose a separate set of electors than that which is certified, even absent objections from that of Congress. So look, the Vice President, United States, Mike Pence, was under a lot of pressure to do what he did last night, and that's what he ended up doing. I was trying to tell people, though, and this is what frustrated me, Eric. I was like, he's probably not gonna do what you want him to do. He's not gonna do what I'm calling for him to do. And I always met with people that said, no, you don't understand. He's 100% going to send this back down or count it for Trump. I was like, I don't know who I know these people. I don't know what kind of line of communication you're in. And so now we're Gonna deal with a lot of fallout, Eric, of people that are all of a sudden probably going to see absent a God sized miracle. And you know, I'm holding out for it. You know, that can happen. The God of the Bible. But I'm just saying constitutionally, he's been chosen by the Electoral College and certified by Congress. The measures are kind of there.
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I guess I still wanna understand though, with Mike Pence. But you're saying that if you had been in his shoes, you wouldn't have done what he did yesterday. You're saying that he was under tremendous pressure. Who cares, Charlie? Leadership is doing the right thing. So my question is, did he do the right thing?
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I have to be very careful the way I answer this because I don't know what it's like to be Vice President of the United States. I don't know if there were other problems.
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Oh yes you do.
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But I'm just, I don't like this Monday morning quarterback of, you know. But I will say this. I don't think constitutionally he acted with courage or clarity. I don't. And I think that he very well could have sent it back down to the state legislatures or not counted those electors at all. And here's my other opinion though, Eric. I knew this wasn't going to happen because he said it wasn't going to happen.
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Right.
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He's not a guy that's into kind of the surprise and the drama of the moment. And I would have liked to have seen him over Christmas say, look, as the President of the Senate I'm meeting on January 6th, I am not going to accept electors from these six states until I get a roll call vote from the state legislatures to, to, for you to tell me under Article 2 that these are actually the electors that you wanna seat. And those meetings never happened. Eric, I just wanna be very clear here that a lot of these certifications happened through Secretary of States that were very Democrat and weak Republicans, specifically in Georgia and some of these other states or in Nevada with a Democrat governor, a lot of these state legislatures were out of session. They were clamoring for the ability to be able to at least hear from these witnesses. And, and for some people, and this is, by the way, Mark Levin completely agrees with this analysis, that it all comes down to the state legislatures and especially how this election was actually conducted was an unconstitutional election. They were changes in the election law. So the Pennsylvania Constitution clearly states that mail in balloting must be limited, it must be rare. But the Pennsylvania state legislature passed a law unconstitutionally for Just everyone to have a ballot. The Supreme Court didn't hear a lot of this. And so they didn't hear any of it actually. And that was the main complaint of Senator Josh Hawley. And so if you go back to the framers intent which a lot of these people were hiding behind against their objections, opposing the objections in Congress, they said the founders never would have wanted this. Like no, you don't understand. They gave a lot of power to the state legislatures. The founding fathers gave a lot of power to the state legislatures. Remember until I think it was the 17th amendment, senators were elected by the state legislatures. That's the way that used to get elected. It got into the direct election of senators. State legislatures were involved in how electoral votes were actually be split and divided. And so the founders, they believe that is the true form of citizen grassroots local government. And so I think that Mike Pence very well could have sent it back down to the state legislatures. Do I think that this last minute kind of kerfuffle getting into that was the right move? No. I mean a strategic plan should have been launched in early December that the President if they would have said in early December, hey, when those come to me, unless I have a roll call vote from the state legislatures that are affirming that these are the right electors, I'm not going to count them. And so why didn't he do that? I can't comment on that. I don't know. I don't know. That would be pure speculation.
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You're saying that it's effectively his job to do that.
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It would be pure speculation. I know that he was under a lot of pressure from a lot of people to turn the page and keep things as is. If I were to give him the argument of the benefit.
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What people? When you say that, who in the world are we talking about? Like people that.
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No, we're just talking about senators, friends of his. And let me give a benefit of the doubt argument to Mike Pence, one that I do not share and I do not agree with just to. Cuz I do consider him a friend and he's been very good to me and I think he's been very loyal to the President throughout the presidency which is, I think he's afraid. Constitutionally this is the best case argument just so we're clear and other people can speculate. And I don't like doing that because that's, you know, that's not evidence based stuff. But this I do have evidence for. I think he's afraid that he might set a precedent that the vice president all of a sudden might be able to end or do something in an election. Now, I actually have the opposite opinion here. The opposite opinion is you might be right, Vice President Pence. The Supreme Court has never ruled on this, especially since the Electoral act of 1877. Wouldn't you rather have the Supreme Court rule on you doing this than a future Democrat vice president doing this? Wouldn't that be a better set of circumstances so that we can get clarity from the United States Supreme Court that this is actually. Cause there's actually some confusion of what the president of the Senate can do? Because Thomas Jefferson, 1800 used a lot of unilateral power to put electors in his direction. Richard Nixon did in 1960. So we have some precedent where all of a sudden the vice president, the president of the Senate, is kind of able to act in an authority of his or potentially her choosing. So wouldn't we want that clarified now when we have a Supreme Court that's constitutionalist in nature? So you kind of left the question open, Eric. Now the question is kind of unanswered where all of a sudden, now, God forbid, one day, you know, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris become president, which looks increasingly likely and looming. Well, let's say we defeat them in 2024 and Kamala Harris is still vice president, which is unlikely, cuz we all probably know exactly what's gonna happen from there. But let's say it's a Democrat vice president. All of a sudden they're gonna say, oh, as the president of the Senate, I can do whatever I want to do. It could have clarified it. It could have showed exactly what the parameters are. And that's what a lot of us were looking for, is at least show us that you are willing to constitutionally fight this thing out at every single measure imaginable.
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This is to me, a perfect example of how 80 million Americans can vote one way and nonetheless have their will thwarted. So people wonder, hey, how did that happen in Germany? Why didn't they speak up? Whatever. You know, I really think that this is an example with the mask mandates and this kind of thing, of how it's not so simple. It's not so simple because we want to know, what can I do? What can I do right now? Who is leading? Ultimately, Charlie, one thing that I'm learning is that it is about leadership. It is about leadership. You need people to take control of the narrative and to speak into it. And in many ways, Trump is an absolutely, unprecedentedly great leader. In other ways, not. But I think mainly he is the problem though. And this often happens when you have a really great leader. You don't have much of a bench. Like there's Trump and then there's, I don't know, Mitch McConnell. It doesn't seem to me that there have been voices. Maybe he has sucked all the oxygen out of the room and prevented those people. I don't really know. But that's what I'm trying to puzzle out. And I guess I wonder what the President is thinking.
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Look again, absent a God sized miracle, Joe Biden is gonna become President. And I wasn't that blunt about saying this prior to the certification of Congress, I was holding out the constitutional measures that could have had, you know, an 1876 election. But you know, I just wanna be very clear here. Look, we have a good bench. We have Governor Ron DeSantis, we have Governor Kristi Noem, we have Josh Hawley, Senator Ted Cruz. And I think you're gonna see a lot of amazing voices. You have the new Lieutenant Governor in North Carolina who's a total superstar. And so look, new voices are gonna emerge. I lived through this. I got my political start in a moment just like this, Eric. And this is something I have to remind people. Cuz what the President did, which is so unbelievably positive is he brought millions of new people into politics and they were actually disinterested, uninvolved or Obama supporters back in 2008. So now me at 27, I can now play historian. So let me tell you what's about to happen, okay? When Democrats have unified government, they're going to reach too big, okay? I'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen right now. They are gonna try to go way, way too big and they're going to fail with a lot of it. We now have to pinpoint though what fights matter most. Number one, the continuation of the Electoral College. Number two, no more seats on the Supreme Court. Number three, no new states. Number three is the one that we really gotta look out for. So if we're smart, we should go ask Joe Manchin right now. On the record, do you support adding new states to the union? I have a whole very provocative argument that I think that Joe Manchin should run for Senate Majority Leader and all the Republicans should support him, therefore not allowing Chuck Schumer becoming Senate Majority Leader. So I'm going to come out with that publicly today. I guess I'm breaking it exclusively. Eric. I did come up with the idea, but it's actually so patently obvious. But then here's the other thing that's gonna happen, Eric, is that we're gonna start to get. It's gonna get worse before it gets better. They're gonna crack down on us like never before. There's gonna be a lot of indictments, investigations, deplatforming, censoring, loss of hope. And then things will. Then we're gonna have to rally and we're gonna have to find some momentum. But for anyone who now says, well, the country is over, it's lost, then go to Paris, okay? I have no time for you right now, okay? I'm gonna fight for every single inch of this country. And if you're all of a sudden gonna be these people, that there's a direct connection of the people that were dealing in Hopi, like, give me the Hopium. And now the people that want nothing to do with it, it's over, it's done. Fine. Yeah, go to Brussels. Okay? I want nothing to do with that. We gotta fight.
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No, I. And you, boy, you know, I agree with you. This is the. What I find interesting is that what are the parameters of fighting going to be going forward? I mean, look, I'll say it again. If this election was stolen, which we believe it was, that's just huge. It's impossible for me to recognize Biden as the president. In other words, I actually think because of what I have seen, that he becomes technically the president. But we've never. If he gets sworn in, we will never in the history of this country have a president with a bigger asterisk next to his name. It's way bigger than the name. That's. To me, the problem is trying to figure out how you deal with that. And what happens. Charlie, we just got a minute. What happens if. Well, first question. Will we be able to. To uncover the fraud? Number one. Number two, if we can uncover it, what are the processes for doing that? And then what would happen if we determine Trump won six months from now?
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Yeah. There really is no recourse to undo this constitutional certification. You could impeach the vice president. The president. Well, no, we can't, because we lost in Georgia. And by the way. We lost in Georgia, by the way, Eric, because of charlatans that told Trump supporters to stay at home. Just so we're clear, if the Trump supporters.
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So you're accusing Linwood of being a Hopium seller?
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No, no, no, Eric, we lost the Senate because of him.
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No, no. I guess that's what I'm saying, in a way, is that.
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And you brought up his name. I'm just being very. I'm just being very blunt because I don't like personalizing this stuff.
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But my question is, isn't it true that we didn't lose Georgia? Isn't it true that that was fraudulent? No.
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Yeah. There was probably fraud there, probably machines and all that. But again, we know that there was turnout that didn't exist, Eric. The people did not show up. So I mean, there were counties where the turnout was low. So you can, you can have the tabulation of votes and not. But when you have people that have emailed us on our podcast and they said, hey, I'm a election judge and on election day, we're a very Republican county, we had this many people turn out and we only had this many people go through the door. I'm gonna trust that grassroots patriot in Southern Georgia, like whether that stuff was tabulated correct or not. But I'm just talking about the volume of people that showed up.
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Yeah. Cuz Trump said we need to swarm them and we did. We need to win big. And if you don't win big, you lose. Wow, Charlie. The world is a better place because you're in it, my friend. It's a joy to have you on this program. It's a joy to know you. To be continued. God bless you.
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Thank you. Thanks, Eric. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us your questions. Freedom at charliekirk. Com. Get involved with Turning Point, Usatpusa. Com. Thank you guys so much for listening. God bless.
Podcast: The Charlie Kirk Show
Episode: Where Do We Go From Here? With Eric Metaxas
Date: January 11, 2021
Host: Charlie Kirk
Guest: Eric Metaxas
In this timely and candid conversation, Charlie Kirk joins Eric Metaxas to discuss the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential Election, the certification of Electoral College votes for Joe Biden, questions around election integrity, and the role of leadership in conservative politics moving forward. The discussion is frank, introspective, and marked by a sense of urgency about the future of conservatism in America, as well as a call to continued activism.
"There are people out there that have amassed massive followings over the last couple days and weeks just saying that it's certain that Donald Trump is going to serve a second term." (03:04, Kirk)
"Do you think... Mike Pence yesterday did the right thing or not? And if he didn't... how wrong was it?" (05:13, Metaxas)
"I don't think constitutionally he acted with courage or clarity. I don't. And I think that he very well could have sent it back down to the state legislatures or not counted those electors at all." (07:59, Kirk)
"Number one, the continuation of the Electoral College. Number two, no more seats on the Supreme Court. Number three, no new states." (15:22, Kirk)
"They're gonna crack down on us like never before... I'm gonna fight for every single inch of this country." (16:46, Kirk)
"There really is no recourse to undo this constitutional certification." (18:31, Kirk)
On “Hopium”:
"A lot of people were misled throughout this process. And so at this moment... it looks like Joe Biden's gonna become president." (03:04, Kirk)
On Mike Pence’s Actions:
"I don't think constitutionally he acted with courage or clarity. I don't." (07:59, Kirk)
On GOP Future:
"We have a good bench. We have Governor Ron DeSantis, we have Governor Kristi Noem, we have Josh Hawley..." (14:50, Kirk)
On the Call to Action:
"If you're all of a sudden gonna be these people, that there's a direct connection of the people that were dealing in Hopium... and now the people that want nothing to do with it, it's over, it's done. Fine. Yeah, go to Brussels. Okay? I want nothing to do with that. We gotta fight." (16:41, Kirk)
On Censorship and Hope for the Future:
"They're gonna crack down on us like never before... there's gonna be a lot of indictments, investigations, deplatforming, censoring, loss of hope. And then... we're gonna have to rally and we're gonna have to find some momentum." (15:53, Kirk)
On Impeachment/Recourse:
"There really is no recourse to undo this constitutional certification." (18:31, Kirk)
This episode offers an unfiltered, introspective reckoning with the 2020 election outcome and the challenges ahead for the American conservative movement. Charlie Kirk and Eric Metaxas navigate questions of leadership, constitutional process, and the emotional aftermath, while emphasizing the need for clarity, resilience, and a renewed commitment to activism within the rule of law.