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The Rubin Report
Charlie Kirk’s Best Moments on The Rubin Report
03:56:31
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” shares every appearance of Charlie Kirk on “The Rubin Report.”
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- [00:00]
Dave Rubin
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Charlie Kirk
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Dave Rubin
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Charlie Kirk
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Charlie Kirk
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Dave Rubin
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Charlie Kirk
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Dave Rubin
Included with prime time. Hey guys. So as you can see, I'm in New York City today. I actually came for the 911 memorial which was yesterday, which was very, very moving. And I think as most of you know, I, I lived in New York City during 9 11. My dad saw the second plane in obviously, of course to the backdrop of what happened here that I think is a national tragedy that I don't think we can even grapple with just yet. The assassination of my friend Charlie Kirk, it's just, it's just very grim. I did Fox and Friends this morning and everybody there, you know, they, they knew Charlie, they, they loved Charlie, they respected Charlie. Charlie guest hosted Fox and Friends not too long ago. So I had a very sad moment with Ryan Kilmeade, with Lawrence Jones, who I was on air with. And you can just feel the, that the vibe has shifted in the country really. And actually President Trump, I was wondering why they much security outside, which I thought was just relative to what's going on here. And then of course President Trump actually went on this segment right after me. And now it sounds like they have apprehended who they think the killer is. So that's good. But there's, there's just a shift guys. And I have to say, you know, I'm walking around New York City alone at the moment. I had a lot of security with me yesterday and I, I lived here for 20 years. My formative years were all here. I've never felt that it's not safe to walk around New York City. And for the first time, I, I feel a little bit of that, which is very bizarre. Anyway, so we won't have a normal show today because of this, but we will post the clips again. I was on Fox and Friends this morning. I'll be on Piers Morgan this afternoon. I was supposed to be on Gutfeld tonight, but then because of the breaking news and everything, they canceled his show yesterday. So the one that they were supposed to air yesterday will air tonight. And then I think I'm on Martha MacCallum this afternoon and a few other things. But the, the country's at an interesting point right now. We're at a turning point, actually, which is, are the. Are the worst forces going to be emboldened? And you can feel a lot of anger and you could see why that could happen, or is there a chance that calmer heads will prevail? And what do we do? I mean, we know what the left is. They're not turning around. But what do all of the rest of us do? That's going to be the challenge. So. All right. Happens to be a beautiful day here. And I was also thinking to the backdrop of all of this that if this freaking communist wins, like, I don't even want to come back to this city again, the city that I spent 20 years in, which is insane. Which is absolutely insane. So I'm going to try to enjoy some. Some cool, crisp air and go to my favorite pizza joint and, you know. All right, guys. Joining me today is the founder and director of Turning Point usa, a student organization for young conservatives which advocates for free markets and limited government. Charlie Kirk, welcome to the Rubin Report.
- [04:09]
Charlie Kirk
Glad to be here. Big fan. It's great.
- [04:11]
Dave Rubin
Young conservatives. I thought there was no such thing. That was like the yeti or the unicorn or Falkor or something.
- [04:18]
Charlie Kirk
There's more of us than you might imagine. It's not all conservative. Some are libertarians, some are free thinkers, independents, people on the center right. We just had that amazing conference that you were nice enough to come down and speak at in Florida. 2,600, 700 students from all 50 states. And it was so funny. I couldn't pay the media outlets to cover this thing. You know, I was calling up the New York Times, Washington Post. Here we had, you know, thousands of students giving up their winter break to come here from, you know, you and me and the best speakers, you know, that advocate for freedom. And none of the media outlets and the traditional media outlets covered it. But it's amazing. There is a revolution happening on These campuses, but it's not against, you know, conservatives, all this. It's a new train of thought that we want freedom, we want smaller government, but it's also fighting the culture war, which is for free speech, for diversity of ideas, and really against what these college campuses have created.
- [05:13]
Dave Rubin
Yes. So you're in the thick of a lot of the things, obviously, that we talk about here. So first, I just want to talk briefly about how we met, because I think it's kind of. It kind of shows sort of how you operate and why Turning Point has taken off. So we had met about a month and a half ago at the Horowitz Freedom center event in Palm Springs. Were you a panelist there or were you speaking?
- [05:33]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, I was a panelist and just kind of helicoptering around of a lot of friends that, you know, attend that conference.
- [05:38]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. So you were there, and everyone was like, oh, you gotta meet Charlie Kirk. You gotta meet Charlie Kirk. We met for two seconds. You said a couple nice things about me, and you're like, you know, we're doing this, our gig in Palm Springs in a couple weeks. Why don't you come down and talk? And immediately we worked it out, and your guys sent me the paperwork the next day, and it was done. And I think that does illustrate something, because we're gonna get into some of the issues that we agree on and some of the things we disagree on. But basically, you were like, look, you're down for free speech. That's the main thing here. And I want my audience to hear.
- [06:09]
Charlie Kirk
You talk about, well, you're a rational thinker, which is really rare to find in California. I'm kidding. But, no, I mean, I'm a big fan of the show, and I watch a lot of your interviews, and I know you're. You know, you have a huge following amongst young people. And, I mean, I met you, I was like, yeah, let's get you on board. I've always been a gut player, for better, for worse. It's got me into a little bit of trouble at times, but I think net it's been positive. You just have to. You have to go with your gut and make quick decisions and similar. That's where I met Candace Owens, too, who's now doing a wonderful job with us. And it took me about 45 seconds until I offered her a job.
- [06:40]
Dave Rubin
Literally. I think it happened right in front of me. And then you walked up to me.
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Charlie Kirk
That's right.
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Dave Rubin
Candace was like, I just got a job. And you were like, let me do something with you. And I was just like, all right, look, this guy's obviously open to some different people.
- [06:53]
Charlie Kirk
Totally.
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Dave Rubin
In the scheme of what's going on.
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Charlie Kirk
You need the diversity of ideas. Right. If you're in a room where everyone thinks exactly the same, that would be a university. So you need the diversity ideas, and you need to be able to challenge your viewpoint around a broader theme of freedom. That really is okay to have that sort of discussion.
- [07:13]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. So to. To illustrate that point. So then about. I think it was the week before Christmas. You guys do this. Was it the largest conservative college group?
- [07:24]
Charlie Kirk
We're waiting for someone to correct us. We've done some research. We have never found anything even close to have 2,650 students from all 50 states. No one's really found anything even comparable of size. So we call it the largest until someone corrects us.
- [07:38]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, well, you had some protesters out there. You know, they show up all the time to everything. But there was true diversity of thought there. It was also sort of a Rubin Report reunion for me because Prager was there and Gutfeld was there, all my best friends and Candace was there, obviously, and a whole bunch of other people. Trump Jr. Was there. Just a series of people. I went up there and I talked about being gay, married, and I talked about being pro choice, and a bunch of other things that if you were to poll the average conservative, that perhaps they're not for, I think, gay marriage. Maybe it's a little different at this point, but I got a standing ovation. And everywhere that I went.
- [08:17]
Charlie Kirk
Multiple times.
- [08:17]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, yeah, a bunch of times. And everywhere that I went for those two, three days that I was there. And by no means was this just me. I mean, Ben Shapiro came out. It was like.
- [08:26]
Charlie Kirk
It was like Elvis. It was unbelievable. Yeah.
- [08:28]
Dave Rubin
I was gonna say it was like the Rolling Stones appearing seriously nuts, but that happened to everybody. I went for breakfast. I need coffee before I talk to people yet. Literally, there's a line of 100 people.
- [08:38]
Charlie Kirk
They just start popping up. It's like they start swarming.
- [08:40]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, but that said something to me, beyond the politics, that there's something else going on with young people right now where they actually, as the young people say, they're really woke to what's happening here.
- [08:52]
Charlie Kirk
Well, and it's that diversity of ideas that I think illustrates what makes our organization so unique. So a reporter came up to me, and he was totally dishonest guy. He's like, well, this feels like a Donald Trump rally. And I said, how could you possibly say that? Sure, we have Trump Jr. We have Gorka. We also have Austin Peterson, who ran for president in the Libertarian Party.
- [09:10]
Dave Rubin
I love Austin Peterson.
- [09:11]
Charlie Kirk
We have Rubin, who is not a leftist anymore, but he's somewhere out there he believes in freedom. Right. We have Ben Shapiro, who literally led the Never Trump movement.
- [09:20]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [09:22]
Charlie Kirk
We have a huge diversity of ideas and each speaker was respected, was given standing ovations, was challenged appropriately. And I think that really says something about this new conservatarian movement that we're helping create, which is we don't have to agree on 100% of conservative dogma. Let's just get the big stuff, right? The big stuff. Is America a great country? Yes. Is free enterprise a good thing? Yes. You know, is freedom something that we should really embrace as a general idea? Yes. Is socialism bad? Yes. That's just pretty much the main key points. And the rest of the stuff we can argue and disagree with. Respectfully.
- [09:59]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. When did you wake up to some of this stuff? Just tell me a little bit about growing up and your situation.
- [10:05]
Charlie Kirk
I was a crazy, crazy kid growing up, grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Always was a conservative Republican growing up around a lot of leftists and liberals in my public high school. And I was just.
- [10:17]
Dave Rubin
How were you? Young and conservative?
- [10:19]
Charlie Kirk
Because I loved history and I was always contrarian. Right. So I'd always be challenging my teachers. My parents were generally Republican.
- [10:25]
Dave Rubin
Right.
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Charlie Kirk
They weren't necessarily political, but they were center right. O'Reilly Factor watching, you know, Republicans that I always used to say. And then I would always just challenge teachers that would say that, you know, all conservatives want to do is kill poor people and, you know, pollute the environment. The typical talking points. Right. And being the kind of, you know, rebel, I guess you could say I'd always challenge the teachers and say, well, no, Ronald Reagan lifted more people out of poverty than your crazy social programs at Jimmy Carter. It drove them nuts. And I found enjoyment in it. And, you know, the further down that rabbit hole you get, the more you read Milton Friedman, the more you understand the foundational principles and ideas. At a young age, I just became on fire for politics and for economics. And long story short, I started this organization when I was 18 instead of going to college and ended up being a wonderful decision and helped really place myself in a movement that was waiting to be grown. And this is something a lot bigger than just politics. This is the fight for the soul of the country. And it has to start on college campuses. And it's really the struggle for our generation. And it's really, if you divide it, it's, do we want, do we believe America is the greatest country in the history of the world and do we believe freedom's a good thing, or do we want to go a completely different direction that looks much more like a European socialist democracy that does not honor civil liberties, that does not honor private property, and really deteriorates everything that made America a great place? That's the decision our generation has to make.
- [11:49]
Dave Rubin
It's kind of funny, you're sort of like the non Silicon Valley version of like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, the guy that didn't go to college.
- [11:56]
Charlie Kirk
Quite flattering.
- [11:56]
Dave Rubin
Didn't go to college or dropped out of college, but now you're talking to college. When did you realize that that was the place that this battle had to be fought?
- [12:05]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, the first couple years of starting Turning Point usa, it started as kind of a generic student organization. But just like any good innovator and entrepreneur, I listened and I learned and I realized there was such frustration amongst self identified conservative libertarians on campus that were not being properly channeled and organized. They felt as if they were being targeted and that they were being suppressed and their ideas were not being allowed to be heard. And we made a decision at Turning Point after a couple years is let's not just fight the political war, let's double down and fight the culture war. And we can be the champions of free speech and we can be the ambassadors of freedom. Where really you see these campuses, I call them islands of totalitarianism. You know, their idea of diversity is a group of people that all look different, but they think the same. That's not diversity. And so Turning Point has benefited tremendously over the last couple years of really being the champions of free speech and also saying, hey, we're not Republicans, we're not conservatives, we're not libertarians. You can call us all that stuff, that's fine. We have members that are across that whole spectrum. As long as you believe in freedom, you believe America is a great country. Welcome aboard.
- [13:12]
Dave Rubin
Do you think the idea of having that kind of wide tent is part of the appeal? Like, I think people are so sick of the labels and all that was cool. I spent actually most of the weekend hanging out with Austin, but part of it also hanging out with Tommy and Candace and a whole bunch of other people. And I was like, there really is. And then Allison Stuckey was there and a couple other people and I was like, wow, these people actually really do think different things.
- [13:35]
Charlie Kirk
Totally.
- [13:36]
Dave Rubin
And my libertarian side usually goes to kind of where Austin's at But I was like, we were all having dinner after and having.
- [13:42]
Charlie Kirk
But that's a great thing.
- [13:43]
Dave Rubin
And I was like, this is great. We're having real discussions about.
- [13:46]
Charlie Kirk
We're really digging into this and there is that disagreement. But if you put them all in a room, they get the big stuff. Right, Right. You know, do we believe that free enterprise has been a net positive for humanity? Do we believe the Constitution's a great political document that should be preserved, protected and better understood? Do we believe America has been a wonderful, you know, net benefit for humanity, you know, over the last 200 years? They probably agree wholeheartedly and all that. It's the other stuff where they start to have little philosophical differences. But that disagreement is not being found on the left right now. If you disagree with one core tenet of leftist dogma, you're ostracized, you're kicked out. And that shows they're not a diverse political movement. The new modern American left. They're extremely intolerant of differing opinions. And I don't have to talk for you. I mean, I'll just let you take.
- [14:31]
Dave Rubin
This now you're acting as my agent. But listen, I would gladly, I said this when I had Shapiro on last week. I will gladly give the exact same speech that I gave to you guys a couple weeks ago. I would love to give that exact same speech to any progressive or democrat.
- [14:45]
Charlie Kirk
And you got a standing ovation. Yeah, but I'm not gonna give MAGA hat wearing students. Right, but you give that speech to the Young Democrat Socialists of America conference coming up in a couple months, you'll get boos and you'll get, we shouldn't hear things we disagree with, you know, Bolshevek, you know, forever these people have translated into total authoritarianism.
- [15:09]
Dave Rubin
Do you see a moment where both of the movements where you would argue the conservatives sort of lost their place, thus lost the culture war and where the left sort of went bananas.
- [15:18]
Charlie Kirk
Do you see things? Yeah, I think the left has gone bananas just by default of their positions, really. Inside of every leftist is a totalitarian waiting, you know, screaming to get out. Is a great quote I always use is because when you argue for total government power and total government control of health care and schools and private economic decisions, that can easily be translated into the monitorance of personal capacity decisions.
- [15:43]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [15:44]
Charlie Kirk
That translation is quite simple. And I always say to a leftist that says, well, I believe in, you know, civil liberties, but I also believe in government run schools and healthcare. And this I say, if you don't trust the government to help, you know, to monitor your own personal life. Why on earth would you trust the government to run all these other institutions? Where I think conservatives have gotten it wrong over the last 30 years is where conservatives have become mislabeled. And sometimes some conservatives believe this to want to do social engineering. I think I'm an evangelical Christian, I'm a pro life conservative. But I also believe government should have barriers in trying to instill those values upon society. I think the best persuasion and the best capacity for good is done through churches and local community movements and individuals persuading individuals and writing books and doing podcasts, not through government doing massive social engineering programs. So I think that's where conservatives have lost their way, and that's where the left is currently trying to stake their claim.
- [16:36]
Dave Rubin
Is there anything that you think government does well?
- [16:39]
Charlie Kirk
No, No, I think government is a necessary evil. I think it's necessary for providing for the national defense, because that is something that, whether we like it or not, you have to delegate some of our personal freedom to, you know, have some sort of a civil society. But government by its essence, if you read what Milton Friedman has said, they're incentivized to be inefficient. They're incentivized by definition to not be able to provide the best possible good or service for the individual. So, look, the private sector does everything better, whether it be the inefficiency at the post office or how Medicare is bankrupt, Social Security doesn't serve the people, you know, effectively. Everything government touches goes to crap. And the private sector is, by definition, more efficient, because if you don't do it well, you're not going to exist much longer.
- [17:25]
Dave Rubin
What do you think is the best way of getting that message across? That government just doesn't do things well? Because I think it's just so built into people, partly because our education system screwed up or whatever, that they just feel the government should just do things. So I saw Bernie tweeted the other day this video of all these millionaires saying.
- [17:44]
Charlie Kirk
And I responded to that.
- [17:45]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. So I retweeted it, which got like 20,000 retweets, because it was like, it's all these millionaires saying, we should be taxed more. We should be taxed more.
- [17:54]
Charlie Kirk
Intellectual hypocrisy.
- [17:55]
Dave Rubin
Such lies. It's like, well, a. What's stopping you from paying employees?
- [17:57]
Charlie Kirk
That's what I said. Just send more money to the irs, numbskull.
- [18:01]
Dave Rubin
Right, exactly. But it's like. But, okay, so. But yet Bernie's tweet gets something like 50,000 retweets. And not that it's all about retweets and all that.
- [18:08]
Charlie Kirk
No, but it's true. He has high engagement with this, but.
- [18:11]
Dave Rubin
To me, it's just lazy thinking.
- [18:12]
Charlie Kirk
It's. It is lazy thinking.
- [18:13]
Dave Rubin
If it's so virtuous, if it's so virtuous to keep giving money to the government, why do you need the government to tell you to do it?
- [18:19]
Charlie Kirk
And really, at its core, if you look at the philosophical difference between really, the culturally Marxist left, which is what they're becoming, and the free thinking, individual, libertarian, conservative right, which is the new intellectual position that is growing quicker than even the left, we might want good things to happen in society, but don't tell me to do them at gunpoint. And the left, on the other hand, I don't think their intentions are very good. I think they want permanent political power. But Bernie Sanders, for example, he is so convicted that he is right. He wants to use the absolute authority and unlimited power of the state to put a gun to your head and say, you have to have a 70% tax rate because someone is starving on the street. I would rather live in a society that has the same tax rate for everyone, 10%. And we dig deep. We say, are we going to take care of that person on the street through charity, through private philanthropy, and through being better people. And if you look at when socialism is implemented, you see the moral disintegration of society. You look at Spain, you look at France, you look at Europe, they don't have anything as private philanthropy anymore. Private charity has disappeared in Europe because government takes care of it. And I think that is such an important point to make. So going back to your question, how do you illustrate this to a young person? You ask the fundamental question, do you trust the government? That word trust is so important because in that word trust, it really feels personal, right? Do you trust the government? 99% of young people will say no. Then you ask the next question, then, why do you want to make government bigger? And they'll say, I don't. Well, then you're not a socialist. You're not a leftist. Then let's talk about how we can really shrink the size of government and put power back into the hands of people. And it's important to note also, even though you think government might want to do something, it doesn't mean federal government has to do it. Local government is much more accountable to the citizens than some bureaucrat in D.C. that you're never going to meet. And so those are Arguments that we found to be very effective.
- [20:15]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned intentions, and I always try my best not to impugn intentions of others. I think that especially on the left right now, obviously, I think these people have a lot of bad ideas. Now, of course, some of them have bad intentions, but most of them don't. Most average people don't wake up thinking, I'm going to do bad things. They actually think they're doing good.
- [20:35]
Charlie Kirk
Most of them, yeah.
- [20:35]
Dave Rubin
Do you think some of their leaders actually have bad intentions?
- [20:38]
Charlie Kirk
Without a doubt, yes. Absolutely. Not all of them, but some of them. And you look back to the original writings and the original thought process behind the Great Society, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who bragged on multiple times that the implementation of the Great Society and all the social programs around it will keep African Americans dependent and keep them voting for generations, documented in the presidential record. Lyndon Baines Johnson said that. And so I think the Democratic Party is full of people with great intentions, but its leaders have realized and calculated that if they can keep the government programs continuing for just long enough, not getting people out of poverty, but keep people surviving within poverty, they will have a permanent political base. So if you ask the question, if African Americans actually rose out of poverty and saw their wages get higher and their schools get better and their communities flourish, are they going to keep voting for government welfare programs that are the basis of the Democratic Party? Absolutely not. They're not. They're going to break out of that. So I think the intentions of the Democratic Party, the followers, I'm never, ever going to impugn them. I'm not going to call them deplorables or anything like they call us. I think most of the followers of the Democratic Party are actually really good people. But the leaders, we must question their motives. Because if you look at the failures of the welfare system in this country, it is undoubtable that they're protecting a system that benefits them politically.
- [21:52]
Dave Rubin
Is this also partly why the media is going so hysterical right now? Like, have you noticed just in the last couple weeks, we've shifted a little bit out of Russia hysteria, but now it's about Trump's mental capacity. And it's like you can see how they coordinate it. I mean, you really, if you just.
- [22:06]
Charlie Kirk
Look, I'm telling you, they got like a group text message chain going. I'm telling you, they got like John King, Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow. I think they're all just group texting. I'm not kidding. I want to know that how far.
- [22:16]
Dave Rubin
Down that conspiracy theory. Can you go.
- [22:18]
Charlie Kirk
I mean, we. When you start to have all three television stations open of CBS this Morning and cnn, you know, with Cuomo and MSNBC this Morning Joe, and they're talking about the exact same thing. Literally, the segments are literally produced the same. I don't think that's a conspiracy. There's got to be some sort of talking points memo they send out early in the morning.
- [22:35]
Dave Rubin
But does that show you a talking points memo or just general group think?
- [22:38]
Charlie Kirk
No, I think it's general group think, but I also, I think they understand that they have to be coordinated to be effective, which there's nothing, I think wrong with that. Effectively, we conservatives do the same thing without even realizing it. You listen to Rush Limbaugh, you listen to Dennis Prager, and you listen to Sean Hannity. The talking points are usually quite similar because, you know, you watch Fox and Friends in the morning, that kind of sets the agenda. And I'm not attacking the Democrats for being that. But if you look at why the media is going so far off the rails, it' sthey will never accept the fact that this presidency is actually large, in part, a wonderful success is that the president is fulfilling his campaign promises. We're seeing unprecedented economic prosperity, and you're seeing people's lives actually get better. And so they have to go down to this tabloid journalism and report on this fake book. They have to continue down this Russia hysteria. Because if this president succeeds, which he is, and he will, what else do they have? They have gone so far all in that this guy is a psychopathic nut job, they will lose all institutional credibility and political relevance.
- [23:40]
Dave Rubin
You know, it's funny, right? When Trump started the campaign, I kept saying that if you keep calling this guy Hitler, you are painting yourself into a really bad corner.
- [23:49]
Charlie Kirk
And it cheapens Hitler, too. Think about that. Hitler was one of the worst mass murderers in human history who killed 15 million people. And they have people once a week on those networks equate him to the rise of the Third Reich. What does that do? Is it cheapens the evil of Hitler. And isn't that one of the worst things you could possibly do when we're trying to educate the next generation? Everyone's Hitler. No one's Hitler. Then maybe what Hitler did wasn't that bad. Maybe Hitler was democratically elected and had a Supreme Court that kept him in balance. You see what I'm saying? You know, it cheapens the evil of the Nazi empire. When they start to make these comparisons to Donald Trump and Hitler, it's really.
- [24:26]
Dave Rubin
And also the way this stuff just goes downstream, I mean, because then you start calling all your intellectual opponents Nazis, then you say it's okay to punch Nazis. Well, where does that end? Can we punch the Nazi's wife? Can we blow up their car?
- [24:36]
Charlie Kirk
Exactly. I'm called a Nazi all the time. And I mean, it's one of the most intellectually just dangerous arguments to make. When everyone becomes a fascist, even though there is no evidence of that, what really has your political movement become?
- [24:52]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, where the words freedom and liberty and the words that I now use a lot of, how did they get so mucked up that they started feeling wrong, you know what I mean, in the cultural relevance of things?
- [25:05]
Charlie Kirk
Well, I think it's starting with the misrepresentation of what freedom and liberty really is. I mean, the left tries to be the movement of freedom. A lot of young people that follow Bernie Sanders actually think they're on the side of freedom. They think that Bernie Sanders is fighting for political freedom and economic freedom and that he's going to fight for the little guy when in reality, when his ideas are implemented, which he's an open socialist, the power always gets concentrated at the top. The rulers are the ones that get rich. The people that have the best connections, the best lobbyists are the ones that benefit tremendously. You look no further than Venezuela or Cuba or anywhere where socialism is tried. It's the poor people that voted these guys into power that are worst off. And so we have to be able to make the argument freedom is not only a really cool thing, freedom is not only a great idea, but it actually works. Like freedom, when implemented, actually makes people's lives better. You know, freedom would be a difficult argument if it was not only, like, really cool to make the argument. Like, yeah, you could do whatever you want to do, when you want to do it, how you want to do it. That would be great. But we actually get to make the argument that in practicality, freedom is the greatest thing to make people's lives better for innovations, for medical advances, for technological, you know, prosperity, nothing comes even close to allowing freedom to ensue.
- [26:21]
Dave Rubin
So what do you say when someone says, I hear this all the time, you know, well, if the government doesn't do these things, these social programs, or if the government takes away food stamps or whatever it is that we just don't know if the private sector or churches and synagogues, whatever else, we just don't know that that'll pick up the slack. And then if that doesn't happen, we end up with this Permanent class of under economically underserved people that have no.
- [26:50]
Charlie Kirk
Way of getting hurt. So fundamentally disagree with that. And so this is where the worldviews, I think, collide is where the left, they try to build this. I think a lot of it is trying for guilt.
- [27:00]
Dave Rubin
Right?
- [27:00]
Charlie Kirk
They actually want to help as many people as possible. They feel so bad that people are suffering, they want someone else to do it for them. So the first thing I do is I challenge them. How much money are you giving to charity? How much are you doing to actually help the homeless guy in the side corner? Then what if 10 million people did what you did? Secondly, never underestimate the good that Americans will do when people are in need. Hurricanes, natural disasters, famines, fires. Americans always step up. Americans voluntarily gave $500 billion away to charity last year. Imagine if our tax rate was 10%. Imagine if there was really a national rallying call to double our charitable efforts. We can easily give away trillions of dollars. Wow. Trillions of dollars. That's the size of the welfare state. And I would make a compelling argument that local churches, charities and municipalities do a heck of a lot better job of serving the people than a federal government bureaucrat. A lot better, you know, sending money to Washington, D.C. is that actually going to help the poor single mother in Miami? Or is going to the local Catholic church and getting $5,000, which might be a lot of money to you, actually going to help them? A lot more than sending that $5,000 to Washington, D.C. i will argue fiercely against someone who says that a government bureaucrat is gonna help an underprivileged individual better than a private charity or individuals helping individuals.
- [28:11]
Dave Rubin
So you said a couple nice things about Trump. So I wanna get into some of the specifics on that, please. But, so one of the things that I've said is that Trump basically was the bull in the china shop, and he just went in and just upended everything. And I actually think that right now that's a net good because there were a lot of. Of bad things happening before and there's some fertile ground for good ideas. So on that level, I'm for what's happening. When I had Eric Weinstein sitting in that chair, he said that he would have preferred it to be a panther in a china shop, meaning it would have just knocked over a few things, maybe not the whole thing. I don't think that that exists. That was the point of our disagreement. I just think it just doesn't exist where you get to selectively choose which things are going to be Knocked off the shelves and all that. But Seb Gorka was speaking at the Turning Point event. Gorko, yeah, Gorka, he really, Gutfeld was doing this whole thing about how he sounds like, trust me, he was doing it backstage.
- [29:03]
Charlie Kirk
And he continued on stage, just didn't stop.
- [29:05]
Dave Rubin
But Gorko was saying how Trump was the. I think he said the icebreaker, going to the glacier, basically. And what I noticed, though is there was a theme with the speakers where everyone basically acknowledged that there are issues with Trump. I don't think anyone went up there and said, this guy is the perfect thing or this is exactly how we wanted it. But there was a sense of this was the only way it could have happened. Is that basically where you fall?
- [29:31]
Charlie Kirk
So I'm one of the few outward and vocal millennial Trump supporters out there. Not few, I should say. In kind of this world of conservative punditry, if you will, everyone tries to hedge, right. And there's some good and some bad. And I've obviously gone all in. And I'm glad I have. And I'm happy to walk through, you know, the philosophical, you know, reasoning for that. So, look, Donald Trump was never supposed to be President of the United States. Just look, going back a little bit, running in a crowded field of Republican candidates, announcing the day after Jeb Bush announced his candidacy, which I think was no coincidence. And I think he saw Jeb Bush announce, like, screw it. If that guy's running, I'm running. Took down the Bush dynasty that had $110 million to spend and then took down the Clinton dynasty, took down the media dynasty, and way that's totally unprecedented. And if you look at the values that he represents, in my personal opinion, he is one of the best chances Western civilization has to continue. He believes America is the greatest country in the history of the world. He's been a fierce critic of socialism. His visit to Poland was a 40 minute critique of the fall of the USSR. He believes that the Constitution is the greatest political document ever written. Look no further than his appointment of Gorsuch and these circuit court judges. But more than any of that, he believes that America as an idea must be preserved, protected, and advanced. And is he an imperfect vessel? Of course. We're all imperfect vessels. Does he tweet things that I might not always agree with? Yeah, sure. But the ideas that he's implementing, I would make a compelling argument. He's the most conservative president in a hundred years, even more so than Ronald Reagan. He is doing more bold reforms and he's fighting to do what he said he was going to do, even in the face of unprecedented opposition, whether it be the embassy, moving to Jerusalem, opening up our natural resources, getting out of tpp, getting out of the Paris climate Court agreement. This is stuff that is not supposed to happen. Right. Do you think Jeb Bush would be doing this? I mean, give me a break. No way.
- [31:21]
Dave Rubin
So basically, do you think he was the last chance for conservatives? I say that, but I kind of think that's a compelling argument that. No, that if you look when McCain ran or Romney ran, Romney was against women with his binders of women. They said McCain was racist, blah, blah, blah. That, to me, the most compelling argument is that none of these guys. You think Marco Rubio would have somehow beat Hillary.
- [31:42]
Charlie Kirk
I know.
- [31:42]
Dave Rubin
Or Jeb would have somehow beat Hillary. So that putting aside some of my reservations for a moment, this was the only way that any of these ideas were gonna get.
- [31:52]
Charlie Kirk
That's correct. So we play out the alternative scenario. Hillary Clinton is president and she has control of the Senate and control of the House, and she's just advancing this radically destructive Obama agenda instead. Donald Trump, for any of the disagreements people might have around him, the results really speak for themselves. The economic prosperity that we're seeing Right now, the $6 trillion of new wealth created in this country. But even more than that, I'm telling you, there was a referendum on the ballot. And I was there in Wisconsin, I was there in Michigan, I was there in Pennsylvania with Donald Trump Jr. For weeks on end. The people that showed up to vote, that didn't vote in 30 years, do you know what they were really voting for? They were voting that America is the greatest country in the history of the world. And here's finally someone who's going to fiercely defend it against the permanent political class. That's important, because who else to represent that permanent political class than Hillary Clinton? Like, she was the worst person the Democrats could have put up in a change election. Here's someone whose husband was impeached, who constantly cheated on her. She's the most uncharismatic possible person to put up. And here's a guy who, you know what? He's going to blow it up. Great. That's who I'm going to vote for. And you look a lot of what he's doing, he has shrunk the size of a lot of these federal bureaucracies, and he's fighting a lot of these entrenched media and political establishments that, honestly, I never thought we would see such a champion against. Which brings me great satisfaction what do.
- [33:11]
Dave Rubin
You think about the intellectual side of Trump? I get what you're saying that the broad ideas of freedom and America and liberty and those things. And I basically agree that he does understand those things. In terms of just like the intellectual or philosophical side, do you think he really has an understanding of the issues or do you think that maybe isn't even important?
- [33:29]
Charlie Kirk
I don't think it's that important. I've spent considerable time with him and his family, and I can say this, his understanding of why America is the greatest country in the history of the world, why free enterprise matters, and actually how to benefit countries as a whole is just as good, if not better than some of these politicians that might be able to recite all these intellectual and things, philosophical quotes. Because this is a president that, you know, what he's been through bankruptcy trials, he's been through hiring and firing hundreds of people and, you know, you running a business and me running a business that develops character in someone, you just got to say making payroll, dealing with regulators, minus versus some of these senators that have been, you know, orators and thinkers their whole life. Give me a break. Right? So I have a deep amount of respect. It doesn't bother me that, you know, CNN says, oh, he talks at a fourth grade level. Give me a break. You know, seriously, he talks the way that the guy in northeast Iowa has been waiting for someone to talk to in a while. So I completely dismiss that as an argument. And I look at what he's accomplished as a person, which is totally amazing, and what he's fighting for every single day. And he gets the big stuff correct. He really does. And I challenge some of my, you know, critics on the right. Who else in that field of 17 Republican candidates would have nominated Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, moved the embassy, advocated for the greatest, you know, middle class tax cut in American history, not backed down on some of these core issues. It's really. If I would have said, here's XYZ candidate, let's just pretend this is, you know, in the Republican primary and in the first 11 months he would get this done. Most conservative pundits would say, where do I sign? You know, seriously, you know, and he has advanced more conservative, pro freedom libertarian ideas than any of these candidates. Most of these candidates would have.
- [35:04]
Dave Rubin
So then what do you make of the conservative class that hates him? So I'm talking about like the David Frum crew, that whole French, the rest of these guys that really just hate him. Even though I agree he has put forth a lot of the ideas that they've been yammering about for the last 20 years.
- [35:21]
Charlie Kirk
I mean, look, I have a lot of respect for those publications because of their history. I'm just, I'm challenged. I'm really wondering, is it a personal vendetta they have against this guy? Is it a personality disagreement? Because policy wise and implementation of the people he's put in place to make decisions, the cabinet positions, I mean, this is a much more conservative president than George W. Bush and remarkably more effective than HW and already in 12 months, much more consequential than Ronald Reagan. And so I'm wondering, the ball's in their court, right? Because to be so hypercritical, just automatically against someone who is fighting for your ideas every single day.
- [35:59]
Dave Rubin
I understand.
- [36:00]
Charlie Kirk
Just I'm really wondering, is it a personality disagreement or is it kind of just I don't want to be wrong type of thing? Like I'm cheering for his demise because I'm a po. I've opposed him for so long.
- [36:09]
Dave Rubin
I think it's also I just want to be liked by mainstream, which, which.
- [36:13]
Charlie Kirk
Is the other thing, right. Like I've now created a whole new form of enemies I never thought possible, which is like these rabid, welcome to my world, you know, seriously, these rabid media elites that are like, oh, he's close to the Trump people, we must try to destroy him. I'm like, alright, fine, whatever, you know, and the hatred for this man is uncalled for.
- [36:32]
Dave Rubin
Is there anything that he's doing that you're not happy with? So I'll give you, I'll give you.
- [36:35]
Charlie Kirk
So that's a great question.
- [36:36]
Dave Rubin
So I'll give you something just in the last 10 days and I think.
- [36:39]
Charlie Kirk
You know what you're gonna say and I'll probably agree with you.
- [36:40]
Dave Rubin
Okay, so in the last 10 days, so he basically instructed Jeff Sessions we.
- [36:44]
Charlie Kirk
Were gonna agree on that.
- [36:46]
Dave Rubin
So to me, state's rights, if you care about that Constitution that you said he loves so much and all those things, the state, states should be able to make laws that they want and the federal government should not impede on those laws.
- [36:55]
Charlie Kirk
I agree.
- [36:56]
Dave Rubin
We have something called the 10th Amendment, et cetera, et cetera. So in a case like this, what's happening there? How is there such a disconnect between the ideas of freedom that you laid out so eloquently and then what Sessions is doing in practice?
- [37:09]
Charlie Kirk
I can't explain it well and I won't defend it because I don't agree with it. Look, I'm a big Defender of individual freedom and liberty. And I get a lot of hate from my socialist conservative friends when I argue for decriminalization of drugs. I've never done drugs in my life, and I don't plan to. But if someone wants to do it, cool, right? Whatever, you know, put whatever you want to put in your body, as long as it doesn't harm someone else. So this is something that I think they're actually not making the correct decision on. But you know what? I'm happy to say it. I've said it publicly. And, you know, if I find someone like Jeff Sessions who gets most of the stuff right, he's been great on guns. He's been great on some of this other stuff. But I don't think he's correct on this marijuana shoot. And I don't think he's correct politically. It's just the majority of Americans don't agree on this issue. And to go after people that are peacefully doing business, that's really what they're going after, is the financial transaction side. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That's not on the correct side of economic freedom. But you know what? Disagreement is a healthy thing.
- [38:00]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [38:00]
Charlie Kirk
And we need to challenge our cabinet officials and challenge our leaders when we don't see eye to eye with them. And I think this is something that I think runs in the face of some of our core beliefs and tenets.
- [38:11]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. It just seems like so ideologically inconsistent. He's been fighting for states rights. He's been fighting for states rights in the. Look, even now you've got people on the left fighting for states rights.
- [38:22]
Charlie Kirk
Ridiculous.
- [38:22]
Dave Rubin
Which makes no sense because now they're trying to defend sanctuary cities.
- [38:26]
Charlie Kirk
So now they're for states rights and.
- [38:28]
Dave Rubin
Against the federal government. Right.
- [38:29]
Charlie Kirk
Doesn't make any sense. But I will say this. I think a lot of it is stemmed from this kind of old holdover war on drugs that Ronald Reagan declared in the 1980s, which was an abysmal and total failure. Right. The statistics speak for themselves, that, you know, the war on recreational marijuana has not been a net benefit for the taxpayer or for society in general. Again, I come from the general worldview that the greatest change does not come through government policy or through government bureaucrats. And so to be intellectually consistent, I won't defend penalizing people that are peacefully selling, you know, cannabis to other people, whether it be for medically or recreationally. And here's the thing. I went to high school in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. This is the story I Always tell people, say, charlie, you're a conservative. How can you possibly hold this position? You know, that's always at these Tea Party groups, which I love. I love the Tea Party.
- [39:12]
Dave Rubin
I love these people, right?
- [39:13]
Charlie Kirk
But they're my, you know, I call them like the hardcore group, right? Like they're the Alex Jones, you know, flag carrying people that are really hardcore. They're really big in the conspiracy. And, you know, there's. They're always asking me, charlie, how can you possibly be on the side of decriminalization of marijuana? I said, listen, I went to high school in the north of the suburbs of Chicago, okay? I remember after football games, like, kids had backpacks full of marijuana. Now, marijuana is illegal in Illinois, marijuana is illegal in Cook county. And there were cops in our halls looking for it all the time. It was not working, okay? Let's just put it that way. The kids who wanted it found it. The kids like me who didn't want anything to do with it just walked away. What other better illustration of freedom than that? You don't want to engage with it. Just walk away. Find somewhere else to do it. We didn't need to pay, you know, the DEA or FBI units to go do locker room raids of something that kids were recreationally and peacefully doing. I'm not a proponent of it. I would support a charity to try to educate students not to do it because I think it, you know, had a net negative. But why is it government's role to socially engineer us, especially when it's a non lethal substance?
- [40:15]
Dave Rubin
I always think it's so interesting. Like, look, now I'm in California where it's now recreationally legal, but I have a medical marijuana card. Had to hurt my knee playing basketball a couple years ago. The place is right over there. I'd like to walk you in there just to see what's going on.
- [40:29]
Charlie Kirk
I've been in them before. Look, you're not gonna persuade me to do it, but I think I'm not gonna try it. I think it's fine, like, whatever.
- [40:34]
Dave Rubin
I just think it would be fun to go in there with you and see what was going on in there.
- [40:37]
Charlie Kirk
I'd wear my MAGA hat too, but.
- [40:39]
Dave Rubin
That would not go well in la. No, no, no, let's not. I don't need to get a hate on here. But I think it's funny because anytime that I ever bought weed illegally, like when I lived in New York City, just get it from whoever the weed guy was. I don't even know who the weed guy was.
- [40:52]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, Exactly.
- [40:53]
Dave Rubin
But I Never once in 15 years or whatever, I never had the guy selling weed say, hey, you want to buy crack? You want to buy coke? You want to buy that? And yet we can go to prescription place. You can go to a psychiatrist, totally. Who will push every drug, and it's.
- [41:07]
Charlie Kirk
A hundred times worse. And it's chemically addictive. Yeah, right. So, look, I know plenty of people that have had stories that tell me, Charlie, if it wasn't for medicinal marijuana, I would have gone to narco substances and I would have been in a really a worse place.
- [41:20]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [41:20]
Charlie Kirk
And so, fine. But that's the core tenet of freedom. And I think what you're seeing here is most of our turning point followers would find sympathy with my argument. And this is. Okay. This is a natural change in a political movement as time goes on. And the fact that Jeff Sessions holds that position, maybe he has an experience that I haven't experienced. Right. That is really personal to him. Maybe he's seen, you know, marijuana do something horrible to a family member or people in local community, Alabama. I'll disagree with that.
- [41:47]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, probably not.
- [41:48]
Charlie Kirk
Right? Like, whatever. I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt because I think he's generally a good person. I always try to give the benefit of the doubt when people hold these positions. I just think it's not the right policy. But you know what? In 20 years, you're going to see the conservative libertarian majority, similar to Rand Paul, advocate for this, and then we'll be able to point out the hypocrisy of the left, say, okay, hold on a second. Like, we're cool with people being able to sell what they want to sell long doesn't harm someone else. Why are you trying to tell me I can't frack this oil field in the Permian Basin?
- [42:15]
Dave Rubin
Right, right. If you want to have, like, an intellectual consistent.
- [42:17]
Charlie Kirk
If you want to be intellectually consistent.
- [42:19]
Dave Rubin
Right. All right. I want to do one other thing on the social stuff, and then we'll move over to some other. I'm cool with. No, I know I said, listen, I never thought. I love the disagreements, but you immediately sat down. You're like, anything. Let's go. All right.
- [42:30]
Charlie Kirk
Seriously, challenge me.
- [42:31]
Dave Rubin
Here we are. So. Well, I don't think this one will be too much of a challenge, but I think it's an interesting. It just shows how things have shifted. So at the Republican convention, Peter Thiel, an openly gay man, spoke. Great man, spoke before Trump. He said, I'm a proud gay man. Got a standing Ovation. Then Trump gets up there, talks about.
- [42:49]
Charlie Kirk
And points him out.
- [42:49]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, right, points him out.
- [42:51]
Charlie Kirk
And he said it makes me very happy, was the exact quote. He said he has a little. Makes me very happy.
- [42:56]
Dave Rubin
That thing with the hand. Okay, but that, the fact that there's been such a wholesale shift in the. That, that even right now, Ted Cruz or the guys that you might consider a little more of the Christian conservatives, which I'm one of them, Mike Huckabee. Right. Okay. So where you come from, basically, as far as I can tell, don't really see this as an issue anymore. Is that a fair point?
- [43:17]
Charlie Kirk
I think that's correct. And so let me dive deeper and also pose a hypothetical to some of the leftists watching this. Peter Thiel, openly gay man, gets a standing ovation at the Republican National Convention and then pointed as the, you know, pointed out by the candidate. Do you think that an evangelical pastor that was pro Israel, that might be a Democrat, would have even been allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention or given a standing ovation? They booed God when he was, when that was mentioned.
- [43:43]
Okay.
- [43:44]
Dave Rubin
They literally did.
- [43:45]
Charlie Kirk
What is the shift here? The shift is the Republican Party is beginning to realize, hey, we're the party of freedom. Like, it's cool if you want to do that. And I think it's a real sea change because even if you see Rand Paul beginning to, you know, endorse more of those, you know, favorable drug policy positions on the side of freedom or gay marriage, you know, you're starting to see a sea change where it's becoming the soul searching the Republican Party has been doing over the last 30 years is what's the one thing that ties our party together? Freedom. Freedom, freedom. And I think that's why you're starting to see that. And the left, they can't reconcile what ties them together. Oppression, you know, like it's the oppression Olympics. It's like, who suffers more? You know, And I think that's a really good thing. Segue to one final point is what I think is the position that needs to be articulated better is I have no problem if, you know, gay marriage, whatever. Like, I believe marriage, one man, one woman. That's my own personal position.
- [44:38]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [44:39]
Charlie Kirk
But I'm never going to tell government to have someone live a life. I think it's cool you're married. I think it's great. And you should have all the same tax benefits, adopt children. It's great. Right.
- [44:45]
Dave Rubin
But I feel the same way about you.
- [44:47]
Charlie Kirk
Well, it's fine. It's like Whatever. But that's more of like a generational perspective. Here's where I think conservatives need to really fight hard, and I think you agree is the religious liberty stuff is are you going to force a Christian baker to make a cake for a gay couple? That is not the same thing as being cool with gay marriage. And the left is trying to make a moral equivalency argument of the civil rights of the 1960s and someone having to violate their religious conscience to make a cake for a gay couple because they want to have fascism where you can go into a private company and say you have to produce a product or service because we have a certain lifestyle. That's dangerous and wrong. And I think that's where the fight needs to happen. And that's where I think we can actually win converts over.
- [45:32]
Dave Rubin
Do you think also that technology is the answer to some of those problems? Oh, totally. It kind of sucks. I did in my Prageru video from.
- [45:39]
Charlie Kirk
Last year, which was excellent.
- [45:40]
Dave Rubin
Thanks. I mean, that was the line that really caught on. Because I don't want to force that baker to do something. Just as if there was a. We could use any example here. But if there was a Jewish artist who had a website that they take commissions for paintings, I wouldn't want the government forcing them to paint neo Nazi paintings.
- [45:57]
Charlie Kirk
It's exactly the same thing.
- [45:58]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [45:58]
Charlie Kirk
And would you want to force, you know, a Muslim wedding hall to have to host, you know, someone that is a great critic of Islam? Right. That would violate one of the tenants, one of the pillars of Islam. Right. But for whatever reason, the left is way overstepping their bounds and the circuit court of California has lost their freaking mind. Seriously. Where they don't realize the slippery slope that they're engaging in here, where if you have a private business with their own private conscience, they should be allowed to accept and deny business as they see fit. Especially if it's business that takes pre planning, such as a wedding cake or photography. The only argument they might make is if you're running a fast food restaurant. But you know what? If someone wants to be a racist or a bigot, they have that right. No one's gonna go buy products from them anymore. Right. That's how you win arguments without having to use the government gun on people's heads. Which again, I think that's the argument that we have to make. But if, look, if a gay couple wants to get married, that's cool, like whatever. That's the law of the land. Move on to bigger battles like religious liberty and freedom all right, let's shift.
- [47:06]
Dave Rubin
A little bit to some religions. Okay. You are a Christian conservative.
- [47:10]
Charlie Kirk
That's correct.
- [47:11]
Dave Rubin
Just that phrase triggers a certain amount of people. So first off, what is a Christian conservative?
- [47:16]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah. Which always stuns me. So I do a lot of campus tour. I'll tell you a quick story. A lot of campus tours. And I go through my litany of what I call hard truths told by Charlie Kirk. And I'll say, socialism is the greatest killer of humanity in the last 100 years. And I'll say free enterprise is the greatest economic system ever. And then I'll say three words, and it drives them so crazy. I say, God is real. And it's like they just start shaking the left. They don't know how to handle it. And half the place loves it, half the place hates it. I don't know why that's so triggering. So I'm a Christian first and foremost. I believe, you know, Jesus Christ is the son of God and he came down and we, you know, he died for all our sins. And we have a good documentation of that, and we could debate and discuss that, whatever. But as a Christian, you know, I believe that, you know, we are called to try to advance the kingdom of God and the ministry of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible and as peacefully as possible, obviously. Right. So that's how I try to live my own personal life and make my own personal decisions. As a conservative, I'd say.
- [48:12]
Dave Rubin
Let me pause there for a second. So I don't see you proselytizing religion, though, in the public way. I've heard you speak before and I've never heard you push that.
- [48:21]
Charlie Kirk
I say it every so often when asked, but I look at my speaking no different than sometimes doing a job. Right. So a plumber electrician is not going to tell every person he turns around the corner like, hey, have you heard the great news of Jesus Christ? You know what I mean? So you have to. You don't want to be too offsetting and off putting. But I also try to, you know, through my. Some of my platforms, you know, talk about my personal beliefs, no matter how triggering it might be to other people. And on my campus tours, I try to, you know, advance. But of course, I could probably do a better job of it. But with that being said, I would consider myself more as a conservatarian, which I find to be a new breed of ideology which you and I talked about. And some people have already been labeling themselves as such. And I find no contradiction between my Christian worldview. And my political philosophy. In fact, I find great amount of synchrony actually between what I believe theologically and what I believe spiritually and religiously to. Also what I advocate for politically, which is essentially the non aggression principle. And, you know, believing in productive people and free societies should be able to make your choices as you see fit, as long as you're not harming someone else.
- [49:27]
Dave Rubin
How did Christians end up as so much of the butt of what the left hates? Because you can open up every day another buzzfeed article mocking, isn't it? Horrible white Christians and Mike and huffpo and the.
- [49:42]
Charlie Kirk
They all love me, by the way.
- [49:43]
Dave Rubin
Oh yeah, they must love me.
- [49:44]
Charlie Kirk
The fact I'm a. Yeah, it's nuts.
- [49:47]
Dave Rubin
But how did that happen?
- [49:49]
Charlie Kirk
Well, so I think what happened is that Christian conservatives fell for a trap that they really should have rejected, which is we might hold these truths very near and dear to our heart, theologically and biblically and spiritually and religiously. But I think where the line was crossed is in the 60s and 70s and 80s where we tried to impose those beliefs through government policy, where people then inherently have a rejection to it. Similarly, how people are rejecting the left imposing their crazy worldview upon us. Right. I think that was a big mistake because it created this kind of counter revolution, which is I don't want to have to live the way some Christian in Alabama wants me to live. Does that make sense? So it's the imposition of those values through legislation and government, which is something I don't necessarily support. Right. So I try to always advocate for every one of my political positions through a secular worldview, because that is the vast majority of people and that's the actual. The government system that we have all decided to create. We do have a separation of church and state and we should support that. With that being said, I can still have my own personal opinions, my own personal, you know, ways to go about changing public policy. But when we start to say we should support this law because it's the Christian thing to do, that is, I think, beginning that has turned people off for the last 30 years.
- [51:05]
Dave Rubin
What does it say also about Christians that, you know, we talked about gay marriage before that there was a shift. There actually has been a shift. Now you're basically arguing it's a political shift or a utilitarian shift. You're sort of giving me just the realist argument.
- [51:19]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah.
- [51:20]
Dave Rubin
But is there something else going on there too where there is some relation to tolerance? To tolerance in the truest sense?
- [51:26]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah. And this is the other problem with Christians and me being a card carrying member of this community and I try my hardest and I fail is, and I'm around a lot of these Christians and I sometimes fall into it. Is this legalism, right? Is that I'm somehow better than you because I'm a Christian. And I really think that's done such a disservice to the Christian community, especially the Christian conservative community. It's this sanctimonious approach to lifestyle that I find to be really off putting to a lot of non believers. And people say, well, I don't want to be a Christian because they're always going to talk down to me or they're going to make me live by this time set of beliefs or they think they're better than I am. It's the number one critique I get. It's not that oh, I don't believe Jesus Christ is actually the son of God or I don't believe the Bible. You know, those are actually things I think that can be ironed out. It's more so like I've always been talked down to or when I was a young kid, I was in Catholic school and they gave me these 15 things I couldn't do. And because of that I rebelled and rejected. So I think this idea that actually Jesus Christ advocated for, which is, hey, I dined with the tax collectors, I was best friends with the prosecutor. Like I never thought that they were any better than my disciples, right? And of course I don't live this out the best I should. But where Christians have gotten it wrong is this fierce fire and brimstone legalist, thou shalt all homosexual. You know, like that's wrong man. That's not, that's not what the teachings and the evidence we have of Jesus Christ's life ever taught us. He was welcoming, he was tolerant, he was accepted, he had standards, he was fierce when it came to eternity and the standards of God. But he wasn't afraid to go chill with tax collectors which were considered like the lowest form of individual possible in the Middle east during that time. And so I think we as Christians can learn a lot of that in modern society.
- [53:07]
Dave Rubin
Listen, when we wrap this thing up, you want to go have lunch with some prostitutes?
- [53:10]
Charlie Kirk
I mean if they want to hear about the good news of Jesus Christ, but even so, right, Sometimes some people are like, like, you know, but the point being is we should, we as Christians have to do a better job of not being the sanctimonious moral conjecturers which we get labeled that so much.
- [53:29]
Dave Rubin
So when you see a guy like Shapiro or a guy like Prager, Prager's more.
- [53:34]
Charlie Kirk
They're my heroes. I love them.
- [53:35]
Dave Rubin
Prager basically a secular Jew at this point, but grew up orthodox. Shapiro, obviously is an observant, religious, observant Orthodox Jew. You guys basically, from what I can tell, agree on pretty much everything. Politically, you're obviously more Trump than Shapiro is. And Prager's pretty Trump on any given day. Prager definitely is more pro Trump. But does any of your religious differences. I know that doesn't matter to you in terms of policy, that's very obvious. But just in terms of, like, your humanity or the way your worldview, does any of that matter to you?
- [54:03]
Charlie Kirk
You know, I've had wonderful discussions with Dennis Prager about what he believes theologically. And I mean, look, first of all, I think Dennis Prager is like the Yoda, the conservative movement. He's, like, unbelievably brilliant. I know, exactly. He's fantastic. And same with Ben. I mean, I listen to their stuff every single day. And Prager University does a heroic job, but it doesn't bother me at all. But I always challenge. Right. So I challenge religious and observant Jews with some pretty good questions, I think, because I'm very big in the apologetics of the New Testament and the Christian, the evidence for Christianity. I ask questions. I'll say, do you believe Paul existed? Do you think Paul Osiris existed? And they'll say, yes. I'll say, don't you think it's kind of, like, weird that a Roman Jew dropped his whole amazing lifestyle and went all in for this Jesus Christ thing and then got persecuted, put in jail six times, and then reverse crucified? Like, would someone do that if they actually didn't believe this? That's a provocative question, obviously.
- [55:02]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [55:02]
Charlie Kirk
But I love that, and I love that kind of, you know, discussion. And look, Paul said very clearly in the New Testament, bless the Jews. You know, these are your brothers. There is no New Testament without the Old Testament. So we agree, you know, with the Jewish people and all that. And look, I think we need more Jews to actually become more observant and to understand the roots of the Torah and the roots of what God commanded through Moses and through David and the major and minor prophets. And I have such great respect for them because they've done a great job of, I think, awakening people that there are, you know, Jewish conservatives out there and it's okay to believe these things.
- [55:37]
Dave Rubin
Well, it's interesting because as someone that doesn't come from this From a religious perspective, I agree with the wider principle that you're pushing here, which is that some of these minority communities. So in this case you're talking about Jews, but you referenced black people earlier, which I want to talk a little bit about how you're working with Candace, but now I see it with the Asian community. I don't know if you just saw in the last couple of days, there's this email that got leaked from Google where they basically were saying, we're gonna hire people but not white men or Asian women will be treated like white women or something to the effect like this lunacy.
- [56:09]
Charlie Kirk
Horribly racist too.
- [56:11]
Dave Rubin
It's the real racism.
- [56:12]
Charlie Kirk
It's the real racism, though. It's this kind of like there's this ranking of oppression Olympics. Like somehow your skin color makes you somewhat more, you know, worthy of a position in a company or in a university because you've been through more just because you look different or.
- [56:28]
Dave Rubin
The scary part, especially for the Asian community, is that your skin color and the way you look is. Makes you less worthy because you're gonna work real hard and you're gonna make.
- [56:36]
Charlie Kirk
The right decision, make all the right decision. I mean, make no mistake, it's like an anti Asian American worldview that the left has now essentially embraced. It's like, oh, they've been successful enough. Now we must discriminate against them so we can help the. It's like, it's, it's lunacy. But going back to your point of the Christian conservative kind of worldview, I think there's a lot of us that hold these beliefs very personal. But also that's kind of where we draw the line is we have these personal beliefs and they're going to dictate how we want to live individually. But how do we advocate for a society that allows the most amount of people to advocate for their own personal beliefs, whatever they might be, as long as it doesn't harm someone else.
- [57:14]
Dave Rubin
So your basic argument, and I think you hit on this a little bit earlier, would be that part of the reason that Europe is crumbling, which it is crumbling.
- [57:22]
Charlie Kirk
The west is crumbling, except for America.
- [57:24]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, I mean, so we're taping this. It's gonna go up next week, but we're taping this. Today is the three year anniversary of, well, Charlie Hebdo was a couple of weeks ago. Three years. But today was the day that they finally caught the guy. And then there was the shooting at the kosher supermarket in the Paris suburbs and all that. Today a different supermarket was burned down. I mean, this is. This is still happening in Paris right now, and this is happening all across Europe. We know what's going on in Sweden and all this. Your basic premise would be that if they had held on to some of their Judeo Christian values instead of trading them in for. What do you think?
- [57:56]
Charlie Kirk
Secularism, essentially statism.
- [57:58]
Dave Rubin
Right, but yet you're also a secularist, which is an interesting.
- [58:01]
Charlie Kirk
Well, no, but I don't think it's contradictory because I would make an argument that actually the separation of church and state found in America has helped the church. We still have the highest church going rates. Rates in the West. We still have the highest levels of private philanthropy. We have more churches opening than ever before. The evangelical community is growing in most states. As Alan Dershowitz would say, the separation of church and state has been the best thing for the church because it's not imposed upon people, it's not mandatory, as you and I both agree. When, as soon as you start to tell someone to do something, it becomes a lot less sexy and appealing and actually you want to rebel against it, you want to reject it. I would argue Europe, through their social welfare programs, have deteriorated the church. As soon as they start to say government is going to take care of people, government is going to be the most important thing in your life, government's going to fix these vastly complex social problems, then all of a sudden, the church and the individual becomes far less significant. As Dennis Prager says, the larger the government, the smaller the citizen. You're seeing that play out in France and Spain and Portugal and Italy, where you have individual philanthropy disappear, where you have business startups totally evaporate. And the final point is what it really lends itself to is more dangerous ideologies to take form, such as radical Islam, which is, I think, one of the most dangerous, widespread ideological movements happening in the west that no one is talking about. And here's what I can understand. I mean, you're a gay guy. I would probably be worried if I start to see radical Islam start to take root in Europe. Right?
- [59:28]
Dave Rubin
You're a Christian. I'd be worried, too.
- [59:30]
Charlie Kirk
No, I mean, trust me, I'm on that program.
- [59:32]
Dave Rubin
Okay.
- [59:33]
Charlie Kirk
They want us both dead, my friend.
- [59:34]
Dave Rubin
Right?
- [59:35]
Charlie Kirk
I mean, and that's something I find to be horribly inconsistent with the left is they try to be the champions of all these minority groups and all these supposed oppressed groups, yet here they are kind of joining forces with countries and movements and, you know, theocratic fascists in the Middle east that give homosexuals flying lessons on the top of Buildings.
- [59:55]
Dave Rubin
All right, so then how do we. I spend, I think, a good chunk, especially the first year of this show, trying to talk about radical Islam, making a distinction between radical Islam and the nominal Muslim person who practices their faith privately. However, they do, just like most people. I try to separate Islam as a set of ideas worthy of criticism, as Christianity is and Judaism is and Republicanism and all of that. Okay, versus people, versus criticizing people and treating people differently. I think a lot of people in our space have tried to do that, and you don't get a lot of credit for it. But okay, fine, I don't need bonus credit. But how do we talk about radical Islam in an honest way?
- [60:36]
Charlie Kirk
And I do. There is a differentiation that needs to be drawn. But we also do need to talk about the broader implementation of an Islamic government worldview. Right? So Islam at its core has always been and will always be tied into the state. And as soon as they can demonstrate that they can be a majority in a country and not be a theocratic government, then I'll start to cede some territory against that. So, for example, Saudi Arabia, right? So if you are Christian in Saudi Arabia, you lose your head. If you're a Jew, they'll find your family and kill all of you. There's something wrong about that. Right? So I think we need to draw a great critique of that same in Iran, which is Shia, and Saudi, which is Sunni. And there's something really, I think, not correct about in modern society that you have obviously a Muslim majority country and, you know, there's no Christians and no Jews and no churches and no synagogues. There's something very intolerant about that. However, people that want to reform Islam, I'm your biggest advocates, right? People that want to go through a reformation of, you know, Islam and try to differentiate that, no, Islam does not have to be tied to the state. And yes, Islam can be tolerant of Christians and Jews and gays and the modern feminist movement, and they should be allowed to vote and drive and, you know, be able to make decisions they see fit and not have to wear a full hijab. I want those Muslims to succeed. I'm frightened that the more radical voices, which are in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, are actually getting more. More of an audience. They're creating, you know, sectors of Europe that are quite troubling that are advocating for the advancement of these more dangerous ideologies that support honor killings and don't think women should have the right to drive or to vote or to be able to have Representation in any sort of form of government. And so I think a broader critique of Islam needs to be put forth because they've been doing it against Christianity for the last 100 years. I walk into a lecture hall and I hear about how horribly intolerable and Christians are and how they're terrible people. Fine, hard. Stop. You go to the Vatican, a woman is allowed to wear shorts and, you know, a cutoff T shirt. You go to Mecca and you're a Christian, you get your head cut off.
- [62:41]
Dave Rubin
I mean, you literally can't go.
- [62:42]
Charlie Kirk
No.
- [62:43]
Dave Rubin
You literally not allowed to say you're not allowed.
- [62:44]
Charlie Kirk
They're literally not allowed. So there's a discussion that needs to happen where a broader reformation is necessary, but the more radical voices of Islam are actually succeeding. Right now, you look at the most viral members of the YouTube community in the Sunni, you know, Saudi region, though, they're the ones that are advocating for a holy war and the extermination of Christians. They're the ones that are really taking root. We have to support, we have to reinforce, and we have to really encourage the more the reformist Muslims to get a broader, you know, platform. But I'm just not seeing it.
- [63:16]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, I mean, I've tried to do a little bit of it here.
- [63:18]
Charlie Kirk
No, you've done a great job.
- [63:19]
Dave Rubin
I've helped some reformers and some ex Muslims and things like that. But the problem, the problem is that they're constantly undercut by their own, supposedly their own people, the left. Every time one of them talks about this, they say you're a sellout or you're evil or whatever.
- [63:33]
Charlie Kirk
But it does beg the question that the center of their faith is the most intolerant city in the world. Someone's got to take a broad stand against that, and maybe we'll see it in the next hundred years. But Hamad bin Salman, the new crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is trying to do some more, you know, modern changes. But you're also seeing extraordinary radical voices in Saudi Arabia continually rise up. You're seeing protests in Iran, which is great. But then you're seeing a lot of the Western world not stand with these protesters. See, President Trump has done a great job with it. Obama, who is totally silent. So look, Islam in general, there's wonderful Muslim friends that I have and productive members of the American community that embrace this idea that you can hold your beliefs without having to have them pushed through a state, which is great. But you're also seeing the exact opposite, with the Muslim Brotherhood taking further root in Egypt and in Turkey. You're seeing Saudi Arabia want to continue its influence throughout the Arabian Peninsula. It's going to be a conflict of ideas. And it's the largest religion I believe in the world. Correct me If I'm wrong, 1.2 billion people. Christianity is right up against. But I would argue that Islam has a lot more power in countries than Christianity does. It's a reformation that needs to happen.
- [64:39]
Dave Rubin
So is the demographic time bomb in Europe. Is it already too late?
- [64:43]
Charlie Kirk
It's troubling. It's very troubling. So as a byproduct of supporting social welfare programs in the 60s and 70s that deteriorated the influence of the Catholic Church and in Protestantism throughout Europe, and really just kind of making people so apathetic towards private philanthropy, apathetic towards value creation, entrepreneurship rates disappeared, and you really created a lazy European society. I hate to say it, but they are not highly productive people. They take the month of August off. They have very little ambition. They're a. Okay, being average. That's not the society I want to live in. America's always been aspirational. We've been the most productive. We've been the risk takers. We've been the entrepreneurs. So because of that, they've laid themselves to be remarkably vulnerable to a takeover culturally and demographically. And you're starting to see that with the millions of relocations from the Middle east of people that don't hold these views that the Europeans hold. And honestly, they come from a background, whether it be Syria or Jordan or Yemen or Oman. Yemen. There's a huge humanitarian crisis happening. They've known nothing but government being Islamic. And so they inherently support that. But if they want to go through a reformation and they can demonstrate they can do that, great. I'm not seeing that, though. I'm seeing vast demographic clashes happening all throughout Europe.
- [65:52]
Dave Rubin
There's also an interesting generational piece to this, which is that you find that a lot of the older people that came from those countries, you know, 30 years ago, they actually are more Westernized and their children are. Now they're sort of making up that there was something imaginarily great about Saddam.
- [66:10]
Charlie Kirk
That's correct.
- [66:10]
Dave Rubin
Where their parents were or we need to.
- [66:12]
Charlie Kirk
We need to reform the caliphate. Rebuild the caliphate. And very dangerous. Right. And so you look at the Reformation that Christianity rightfully went through in the 1500s and 1600s and 1700s, it's. As soon as you embrace the idea of personal freedom and individual liberty and you try to restrict the state. So put yourself in the seat of the Founding Fathers. They Intentionally removed any sort of mention of Christendom in the Constitution, which ended up being the best thing for Christianity, which created the most Christian nation in the world, which is America. Think about how ironic that is, right? Whereas Europe didn't always do that. They actually created these theocratic governments that led way to, you know, horrible conflict and, you know, ethno nationalism. And eventually in the 60s and 70s, like I mentioned, the huge proliferation of the welfare state, which was the worst decision Europe ever made. They turned a highly productive people into a mediocre, lazy society that rejected all sorts of religion and any sort of, you know, connection to higher being and has now led themselves to a demographic takeover that I think is for the worst. Some people think it's for the better. I just don't see any evidence of that.
- [67:19]
Dave Rubin
But.
- [67:19]
Charlie Kirk
But again, there's nothing. I get criticized as being a racist and all this. I'm not. I'm talking about a set of ideas that when implemented through the state, have proven to be extremely dangerous to human rights and to economic productivity and private property rights and really human, you know, human dignity.
- [67:36]
Dave Rubin
So when you've mentioned the phrase oppression Olympics a couple of times, which obviously I totally buy in on, which is from your video.
- [67:42]
Charlie Kirk
I stole it from you, by the way.
- [67:43]
Dave Rubin
Well, I think I stole it from Faizos I Al Mutar, and he probably stole it from somebody. So that's how these ideas get around. But this idea of this intersectional nonsense.
- [67:51]
Charlie Kirk
Which is all nonsense, how do you.
- [67:54]
Dave Rubin
Do you think that the average left person in America that says they're a feminist and they're for all. Do you think that they don't recognize any of the stuff that you just said about.
- [68:04]
Charlie Kirk
They obviously don't talk about it. They might recognize it. They might know about it. They might be able to answer it in a trivial perspective. But the question is here. So you're. There's the International Feminist Society, which is growing huge on campus, and I always challenge them. They advocate for women's rights across the world and they're like, right next to like the Muslim Student association, which is fine. They should be friends. That's okay. But why are they not demonstrating widespread protests against how women are treated in Saudi Arabia, but the International Feminist Society is protesting for. Against Israel. Yeah, it's weird, right? It's like, because intersectionality. It's like they have this weird construct that we must advocate against Israel because Israel is a friend of America and America hates women. It's like this weird, like, web that.
- [68:47]
Dave Rubin
Yes, America hates women.
- [68:48]
Charlie Kirk
I need like this Big map, like where they kind of try. It doesn't make any sense. But where is the outrage? They say there's outrage when I challenge them. Oh, yeah, we're really outraged about it. Yeah, okay, sure. But no, where's the Oprah Winfrey's? Right. Where's the Hillary Clintons who spoke multiple times in Saudi Arabia and took millions of dollars from them?
- [69:06]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [69:07]
Charlie Kirk
Where women can't drive. Where women can't. Well, now they can drive, and that's going to be a real disaster. No, it is, because all of a sudden, just wait for the imams to get their hands up there.
- [69:17]
Dave Rubin
Wait, what do you mean?
- [69:18]
Charlie Kirk
Oh, because they're going to have a total religious clash about this. Because Hamad bin Salman said by decree that women can drive and there's going to be all these religious fundamentalists that are not going to let to happen, and it's going to be a total conflict. They were bragging that women are allowed to go to movies now like that to show you how medieval Saudi Arabia is. Right? But anyway, Hillary Clinton made this, like her pinnacle point of her campaign is like, I'm going to really have good relations with Saudi Arabia. Her foundation took tens of millions of dollars. Here was a woman that ran on the idea of like feminist representation, Right? And she can't critique Saudi Arabia once.
- [69:52]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [69:52]
Charlie Kirk
But she critiques Israel for the settlements.
- [69:54]
Dave Rubin
Right?
- [69:55]
Charlie Kirk
So I think there's unbelievable hypocrisy there. But it's not just Saudi Arabia, which I'm focusing on. It's Egypt, it's Iran, it's Iraq, which is changing. It's Syria, it's Jordan, it's Oman, it's Yemen. The only countries that get it right are Qatar.
- [70:07]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [70:07]
Charlie Kirk
And maybe the uae. But you have a geographic disposition of hundreds of millions of square miles where women cannot vote, women cannot own property, women cannot start businesses, women cannot serve in government. Men have total and absolute control over society. Gays, they asked Ahad Majad, they said, how do you. How do you treat.
- [70:27]
Dave Rubin
We don't have any.
- [70:28]
No, yeah.
- [70:28]
Charlie Kirk
How do you treat gays in your society? We do not have homosexuals in our country. That's great. Where's the LGBT international society protesting against that? Right? It's like they have this kind of like handshake, like, we're not gonna mention this. It's all good. That can't stand anymore.
- [70:42]
Dave Rubin
Right? And then what country do they hate the most? Of course it's Israel, where they.
- [70:46]
Charlie Kirk
Where gays are openly productive members of society. I think they can marry in Israel. I'm not sure, but the west has been the best to women and to gays, and yet they want to destroy the west, which doesn't make any sense to me.
- [71:02]
Dave Rubin
By the way, you mentioned settlements a minute ago. I think that Jesus guy you referenced before lived in a town called Bethlehem. And where is.
- [71:07]
Charlie Kirk
He was born in Bethlehem.
- [71:08]
Dave Rubin
That's in the West.
- [71:09]
Charlie Kirk
Bethlehem. Yeah, exactly. Jesus of Nazareth. Minor details here, right?
- [71:13]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, but history, though, is just lost on people, right? Is that, like, to me, that's. That's one of the most interesting things, that people don't know basics about history.
- [71:21]
Charlie Kirk
Well, even it's the basics, but it's just like the ignorance of understanding, the blessings we have to live in Western civilization and how unique what we really have here as a country, and it's being taught in our universities how America's a racist, xenophobic, imperialist, horrible country. And you really have to try. It takes effort to try to make that argument because America has been one of the greatest, if not one of the greatest ideas ever implemented in human history and civil society. It's had more respect for human rights. It's had more economic productivity. We have freed more people from serfdom and from bondage than any other country. We voluntarily sent our citizens and our civilians and our soldiers to die for the freedoms of others without asking for anything in return. You look at the Korean War, we send, you know, our boys from Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina and Florida to go die in the Korean Peninsula, 50,000 of them, so that South Korea can exist. We ask for nothing in return. If we were imperialists, we're the worst imperialists ever. Right. And so yet it takes the effort to really look at history and say that we're a horrible place. And this is what the modern American left is trying to do is like, remember when I said in the beginning of the video, we have a choice. We can either go the way of Europe and totally fundamentally transform this country and embrace a set of ideas we've never had, or we can defend, respect and advance American ideas here and really try to make the 21st century the greatest we've ever had.
- [72:42]
Dave Rubin
Is there an inherent risk in some of that, though, that, yes, there are things like South Korea that work out.
- [72:47]
Charlie Kirk
There's also. Oh, we talk foreign policy. Sure.
- [72:49]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of instances.
- [72:51]
Charlie Kirk
Like, sure, we've had tons of blunders. I mean, Iraq war was a total mistake. It was a disaster.
- [72:56]
Dave Rubin
So that's just the inherent risk in this space, even though that was sanctioned by the Way by Congress and the Senate and the United States.
- [73:03]
Charlie Kirk
Sure, it wasn't actually an effective war of authorization. It was a conflict. But so what I meant there is a broader point that throughout the 20th century, America has stepped up and fought for the freedom and liberty of others without ever asking for something in return. I would argue that Iraq was a horrible response to 911 that had nothing to do with the actual existential threats against the homeland. That was George W. Bush trying to rectify a mistake that his father didn't actually make, which was take over, you know, Saddam Hussein's empire. We got next to Nothing. We lost 30,000American troops. We spent $2 trillion we didn't have, and we helped create ISIS to boot. So imposing American ideas worldwide is not something that I would ever advocate for. But when the chips are down, for example, you know, in World War II and, you know, the Nazi empire is on the March and they're 16 miles away from Moscow, and, you know, Winston Churchill is on his hands and knees begging FDR to send troops, then we send, you know, half a million ground troops to go through Normandy. We stepped up, right? And we helped push back European fascism. So look, there's been a lot of mistakes. Some of our incursions in Central America were total disasters. But net positive America's, you know, decisions throughout the 20th century have helped, you know, advance human freedom and release people from bondage.
- [74:18]
Dave Rubin
So to that end, you must love what Trump's doing with the U.N. right?
- [74:21]
Charlie Kirk
Oh, it's fantastic.
- [74:22]
Dave Rubin
Nikki Haley is a freaking all star. I mean, I would love to.
- [74:24]
Charlie Kirk
Here's what I love about Nikki Haley. And to my leftist people watching this, how can you not recognize she is everything you pretend to advocate for? No, no, seriously, she's a daughter of an immigrant, she's a minority, and she's Indian, like from actual India.
- [74:38]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [74:38]
Charlie Kirk
Which is one of their, I think, oppression Olympics groups.
- [74:41]
Dave Rubin
Right? Well, you saw this thing like a couple weeks ago where they were trying to mock her for using the name Nikki. And it's like that's what her parents called you idiot.
- [74:48]
Charlie Kirk
Imagine if a Republican said that they'd be marching. She's totally self made. Her father literally owned convenience stores. Started as a state senator, ran as an insurgent for governor, twice elected, eradicated the Confederate flag from her state capitol, balanced the budget, created South Carolina into this unbelievably prosperous state in a very complicated political state. By the way, by the way, they always said, you know, the south is so racist. Well, they out twice elected, you know, a woman minority Governor of a state that you call, you know, the new, you know, Confederacy. Anyway.
- [75:18]
Dave Rubin
What about that Tim Scott guy?
- [75:20]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. One of the only. There's only two African American senators, and one of them's from what they call one of the most racist states in the country. That's beside the point. Then she gets selected by President Trump, who supposedly hates women, but he has him represent us in the UN to go fiercely fight against all these globalist forces at the UN Cuts aid to Pakistan. She is what the left is supposed to love, right? She is this absolute embodiment of modern day feminism, yet they hate her.
- [75:45]
Dave Rubin
Did you see this tweet the other day by the Democrats? You know, the official.
- [75:49]
Charlie Kirk
Oh, yeah, all the check marks.
- [75:50]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, women.
- [75:51]
Charlie Kirk
How about qualified woman?
- [75:52]
Dave Rubin
But, well, that, of course, that's like the blanket response. But the best was. So it was like, you know, minority women, brown women. The amount of people who just wrote, all right, you're endorsing Nikki Haley. And it's like, man, you guys, this is what you idiots have created.
- [76:08]
Charlie Kirk
That's right. I can't tell you. It's really interesting because so many of our Turning Point members and our Turning Point students, I say, why are you conservative? I'm a student. I'm not conservative because of the left. I left the left because of the left, because they have lost their freaking mind. Like, if they were just like normal Democrats and didn't say the stupid stuff and intersectionality politics. And, like, they argued like, well, we can run government better, but free enterprise is a good thing, but flawed. We need to perfect it. And, you know, if they actually had some humility for it, instead of just like embracing cultural Marxism and doing the oppression Olympics, I think you might still be on the left. Instead, they've created the greatest gift. Thank you, liberals for doing this, Leftist. Because now we have, like, former Bernie Sanders supporters running our chapters because they are now cultural Marxists that look at people by the color of their skin, by how much value they have in the world or how great. You can understand someone's, you know, degree of suffering, which is everything that Martin Luther King argued against, which is everything that has fundamentally created this country. And so thank you, leftists, for helping create this movement for us.
- [77:10]
Dave Rubin
Are there any good Democrats left?
- [77:12]
Charlie Kirk
Oh, sure there are.
- [77:12]
Dave Rubin
Look, I have my issues with plenty of Republicans, and I'd be more of a Rand Paul Republican and a libertarian.
- [77:17]
Charlie Kirk
Welcome aboard. Join the, you know, I call them the Sith Evil Empire. You could join the resistance. The real resistance.
- [77:23]
Dave Rubin
The real resistance. I mean, look, the stuff that I like about Rand. Rand Paul, obviously, is all the libertarians.
- [77:28]
Charlie Kirk
Of course.
- [77:29]
Dave Rubin
Sadly, in that collection of 18 people that were running against Trump, he was seemingly on the wrong stage. It just. The party had nothing to do with, at that time, what he wanted. Even if, as you've said before, Trump may be doing a lot of those things right now. Would show you how complex this whole.
- [77:43]
Charlie Kirk
Very complex. But the question I think you had was about the new generation. Any good Democrats?
- [77:49]
Dave Rubin
Is there anyone now that you think.
- [77:50]
Charlie Kirk
Sure, I'm still looking for that kind of like, blue dog Democrat to rise up and be like, you know, I'm a Democrat that is pro choice, which I disagree with, whatever that is, you know, all these things. But I still think America is a great country and we need to, like, rid our country of antifa. Alan Dershowitz is probably the only one I could think of right now who's. By the way, he's getting kicked out of the Democrat Party.
- [78:12]
Dave Rubin
I mean, the abuse he's taking. I'm saying this every week.
- [78:15]
Charlie Kirk
Since when has it been a bad thing to be antifa Alan Dershowitz? I mean, the guy is freaking brilliant. Like, you might disagree with him, but he's like the smartest lawyer and human rights attorney that you could possibly find. And now the Democrats being like, he's being paid by the Trump campaign. Like, are you kidding me?
- [78:30]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [78:30]
Charlie Kirk
I mean, he's brilliant and they're kicking him out.
- [78:33]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, it's pretty.
- [78:33]
Charlie Kirk
I love that, man. So, yeah, there are some good Democrats out there.
- [78:35]
Dave Rubin
Charlie, I suspect we could do this for a couple more hours, but if you want to, I'm only gonna ask you one more because I want this on the record on this show, because when it happens, it should be that I asked it first. You're going to run for something.
- [78:47]
Charlie Kirk
No, I'm not. No, not for political office. I want to be a commentator and a movement driver.
- [78:57]
Dave Rubin
Does that have anything to do with the clown show that running? Is that a guy like you, who you obviously have a great understanding of the issues, you have a consistent line of thought whether I agree with you on everything.
- [79:07]
Charlie Kirk
Far too principled.
- [79:09]
Dave Rubin
No, but there's something to be said for that.
- [79:11]
Charlie Kirk
I think so.
- [79:11]
Dave Rubin
I mean, that goes to what Gorka said about.
- [79:13]
He's the icebreaker. Right.
- [79:15]
Charlie Kirk
But in all reality, I love what I get to do. Seriously, like, every day, I get to create a movement, help facilitate a movement, not create and say what I want to say and be able to, you know, have conversations with you on all this stuff. I've met very few Congress people or senators or governors that actually enjoy what they do. Seriously. And it's always about meeting with lobbyists or kowtowing to leadership and fundraising. It just makes me sick to my stomach thinking about that. But let's pretend it was a great gig, which some of them seem to like it. I don't know why. They like the corruption or something. Is that really the place where I can do the most amount of good for my worldview? And I would say probably not. No. I'd say, look, Turning Point's doing a great service for the country. I think right now I love what I get to do. I have some influence in helping shape this policy and this agenda. And that doesn't seem like fun to me. It doesn't seem like that would maximize my amount of happiness.
- [80:07]
Dave Rubin
No. All right, well, I think it's on the record now. It's on the record. I still suspect there will be a little movement there.
- [80:13]
Charlie Kirk
I hope I don't talk like a politician.
- [80:16]
Dave Rubin
I think we're doing a gig together in New Hampshire.
- [80:18]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, that'll be fun.
- [80:18]
Dave Rubin
Not too long from now. So when we get there.
- [80:20]
Charlie Kirk
And Candace will be there, too, and.
- [80:21]
Dave Rubin
Candace Owens will be. Oh, you know, just real quick, let's just finish talking with Candace about Candace for a moment. So when I met you that day, I referenced that literally a minute before you had. I saw it from a distance. You and Candace talked for about two minutes, and then she walked over to me and she's like, I just got a job with Turning Point. Charlie wants me to help talk to the black community and blah, blah, blah. She's quickly becoming an all star in this space. I think she escaped some of the YouTube madness, which I'm somewhat aware of. And you may have seen my insane debate with her and Blair White and blah, blah, blah. But she's quickly becoming a real powerhouse, total powerhouse. Because the black community has needed more, you know, the Thomas Sowells and Larry Elders and David Webb's and whoever, Alan west, whoever else there. It's a different generation. She's coming at it from that young place. It's kind of beautiful.
- [81:09]
Charlie Kirk
She's unbelievably talented. I've spent a considerable amount of time with her now, minus the five minutes I hired her. But she's a passionate, driven person. Look, broader than that. She, like all of us on our team, believe and understand there is a movement happening in this country. And it's something the media will not report. It's something palpable when you Experience it. You saw it in Florida. There's something happening in the story. There is something crazy out there, and it's almost quasi spiritual political. There's something happening because the left has tried for far too long to suppress the movement of ideas and free speech and dialogue and discussion. But what Candace believes, which I'm in full support of, and I want to help her in every way possible, is that the African American community has been totally disserved, for lack of a better term, by the modern Democratic Party, and that they are disproportionately more poor, they're disproportionately in worse circumstances than people of every other, you know, ethnic, racial group. But why is that? It's not because America is a more racist country than we were in the 1960s. In fact, no one with a straight face could possibly say that. Yet African Americans are poorer today than they were in the 1960s. So what happened? To use a Hillary Clinton term, America did not get more racist. America got significantly less racist. There's still racism in this country, but a lot of it has been eradicated, if not reversed. What happened is that we as Americans supported one of the most, you know, I would say, contentious political and social programs, which is the Great Society, where we deincentivized the black community from making good choices. We incentivized women to stay single and have babies. We destroyed public sector education by reinforcing the public sector teacher unions and disallowing school choice and rewarding bad teachers and keeping communities perpetually poor. We, I think, really did a disservice by starting this war on police in the last couple years, which most police officers are there for the betterment of the communities that they police. And we have started this narrative that America is somehow an inherently racist country and African Americans are poor because we're a racist country. The data does not reflect that. It's because we have created a set of government policies and ideas that have not incentivized African Americans to continually make good choices that break out of poverty. And as Ben Shapiro says, you make these three choices. You get married before you have kids, you graduate high school, and you get a job. You can break out of poverty in this country, and you can look to all three of those things. We have government programs that either discourage or deincentivize every one of those choices, especially for African American community. And Candace, growing up from a poor family, growing up as a, you know, African American woman in this culture and this society, can talk about it a lot better than I can I can only talk about it from an outsider. She's an insider. Which in today's time, unfortunately buys you a lot more institutional credibility, which it really shouldn't.
- [83:54]
Dave Rubin
Right. I mean, that's the irony. It's sort of using identity politics against itself, which you almost.
- [84:00]
Charlie Kirk
Which you almost have to do. Because if, for example, I always say this. If I say free enterprise is the greatest way to solve poverty and Candace says it, it doesn't make it any more. Lesser. True. Just because she's a black woman.
- [84:09]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [84:10]
Charlie Kirk
Truth is truth, no matter who says it. But the left somehow has a value, you know, a lot higher of certain people saying it. But you know what? If identity politics is what we have to play, then so be it. And Candice understands that, especially on college campuses, black students will listen to her a lot more likely than they'll listen to me. And I believe that she can continually build a movement around these core set of ideas and values and principles. And she gets it because she used to be one of them. She used to be a leftist. She understands who these people are, and she understands how to fight them and how to persuade. And we're lucky to have her as our director of Urban Engagement @ turning point USA.
- [84:41]
Dave Rubin
I know you don't like drug references, but when I had her on, I said, you know, for me, it was like the red pill was like. I was, like, slowly drinking it like tea. She said, she snorted it.
- [84:52]
Charlie Kirk
All the power to hurt you as long as it doesn't harm someone else. Do whatever you want to do with your life.
- [84:56]
Dave Rubin
I wanted to end with you in a slightly awkward position with one of your employees.
- [85:00]
Charlie Kirk
There we go. That seemed like it's very good.
- [85:02]
Dave Rubin
Well, listen, you're doing great stuff. I'm looking forward to getting out on the road with you. And, well, you're doing.
- [85:08]
Charlie Kirk
I'm awesome.
- [85:08]
Dave Rubin
You know, my mouth hurt at the end of that week because you were smiling so much. I literally, at one point, I could not smile anymore.
- [85:14]
Charlie Kirk
Candace said, weren't our students just great? I mean, they were just.
- [85:17]
Dave Rubin
And by the way, speaking of standing ovations, I mean, Candace got a massive, massive ovation. She.
- [85:23]
Charlie Kirk
I mean, but here's the thing. That's the diversity of ideas, is we will give a standing ovation to people even if we don't agree with what they have to say. Completely.
- [85:31]
Dave Rubin
Right?
- [85:32]
Charlie Kirk
And that's. The left won't do that. It's like, get out of my room. Get out of my. Get out of our, you know, lecture hall. And it's a movement around True tolerance and true discussion of ideas. And we're going to win.
- [85:43]
Dave Rubin
All right, well, to find out more about Charlie's 2028 campaign for presidency, follow him on the Twitter arliekirk11. Hey, I'm Dave Rubin and this is the Rubin Report. If you're new here, click the subscribe button and make sure that the bell is solid to get all notifications. And more importantly, joining me today is the founder and president of Turning Point usa, the largest conservative college student organization in the United States of America, as well as the host of the Charlie Kirk podcast. Charlie Kirk, welcome back to the Rubin Report.
- [86:18]
Charlie Kirk
Thanks, Dave. Glad to be here.
- [86:19]
Dave Rubin
That was the longest intro I've ever.
- [86:21]
Dan Harris
Hey, this is Dan Harris, host of the 10% Happier podcast. I'm here to tell you about a new series we're running this September on 10% happier. The goal is to help you do your life better. The series is called Reset. It's all about hitting the reset button in many of the most crucial areas of your life. Each week we'll tackle a topic like how to reset your nervous system, how to reset your relationships, how to reset your career. We're going to bring on top notch scientists and world class meditation teachers to give you deep insights and actionable advice. It's all delivered with our trademark blend of skepticism, humor, credibility and practicality. 10% happier is self help for smart people. Come join the party.
- [86:58]
Dave Rubin
Ever given.
- [86:59]
Charlie Kirk
Well, thank you for all enduring that.
- [87:02]
Dave Rubin
All in one breath. We're also basically dressed exactly the same here. Yes, we have some agreements, but we also have some disagreements. So there's gonna be an odd mirror.
- [87:10]
Charlie Kirk
I think we've actually started to agree on almost the big, every big thing over the last couple years.
- [87:15]
Dave Rubin
Well, a lot of the things actually. So you were on the show, what it's about two years already.
- [87:18]
Charlie Kirk
It was like January of 18.
- [87:20]
Dave Rubin
January of 18. So that's like over a year and a half ago basically. And I've gotten to know you quite well in the last year and a half. We've toured together, usually with Candace Owens, obviously, and I want to cover all new stuff here, but I do want to quickly just talk about Turning Point briefly, because when we do these events together, and I'm sure we've got some coming up in the fall, you always make a point of saying to the audience a, if you've got questions and you disagree with us, come up first. So we always take questions from people that disagree with us first and we treat them as respectfully, as humanly possible, or at least as respectfully as they treat us. But also me and you have some disagreements, and we go up there and we talk them out. So how is it that so many people on Twitter think you're a fascist?
- [88:07]
Charlie Kirk
What a strange concept.
- [88:08]
Dave Rubin
How was that for a segue? You see how I did it?
- [88:10]
Charlie Kirk
Very good. It was right into it. What a strange concept to hear the other side, to give people a platform that you totally might fundamentally disagree with, then have a conversation about it, see where you might be able to build consensus, find the disagreements, then find why you disagree, which is super important. Do you disagree because you have different data inputs, or do you disagree because you have different philosophical inputs? Two totally different things.
- [88:33]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [88:33]
Charlie Kirk
So, for example, someone might say, well, I want universal healthcare because it works so well all across the world. Well, okay, let's talk about that. And you can maybe deconstruct some of the failures of socialized medicine. Or, I want universal healthcare because I believe healthcare is a right. That's different, right?
- [88:49]
Dave Rubin
Those are very different.
- [88:50]
Charlie Kirk
Totally different. And then you all of a sudden have a conversation, and then what happens after that conversation? You've seen it, Dave. I mean, you spoke with us at University of Connecticut. You spoke with us at UC Berkeley. You subbed in for us up in the Northeast. I think it was New Hampshire, right?
- [89:02]
Dave Rubin
Yes, yes. You and Candace didn't show for that one. That was the one that. I dealt with those lunatics myself. Thank you again.
- [89:08]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, of course. It went viral.
- [89:11]
Dave Rubin
It did go viral.
- [89:11]
Charlie Kirk
You did brilliantly. And, Dave, you'll, I think, reinforce this. Every time we get a chance to go to these campuses and have these conversations, there seems as if, at least with the individual student and the people in the room, there's a level of respect for at least our worldview and our position from even those that disagree with us. And we like to say that it's not that these students are opposed to our ideas, that they're not exposing them at all in the first place, and just being able to have this sort of marketplace of ideas. And you and I will disagree on some things sometimes, which is amazing. I mean, who wants to go listen to a bunch of people say, I agree. Me too. I agree. You don't want that.
- [89:51]
Dave Rubin
By the way, that's called college, right? That is called college, Sally. And we're getting into that because you and I are having a major issue right now with the big tech censorship stuff, which is. It's a personal issue for both of us as podcasters and YouTubers and the rest of it. But it's also a really serious philosophic issue. But, you know, one of the things that I always find most interesting at the events that we do is a lot of times there'll be like a crew in the back of the room that clearly is not there because they like us. But, you know, sometimes they'll sit there respectfully, but they'll kind of have a scowl on their face or they'll be giggling or whispering to somebody.
- [90:23]
Charlie Kirk
I don't know how to make of it.
- [90:24]
Dave Rubin
But then by the end, when you're expecting that, when you say to them, if you disagree with us, come up first, a lot of them just kind of leave. Because I think something does actually happen over the course of the hour, hour and a half when they go, whoa, these people that I'm heard of, heard or told are alt right or fascist or something, they're not all that bad. And then suddenly they feel sort of foolish.
- [90:45]
Charlie Kirk
Well, and what I love is that we're sitting on stage, we have you, we have the great Candace Owens, and they're here calling us racist, they're calling us bigoted, they're calling us backward thinking.
- [90:55]
Dave Rubin
Hey, homophobe, Homophobe.
- [90:56]
Charlie Kirk
Homophobic, right, of course, homophobic. Right. All these sorts of things. And all of a sudden they listen to this message of western classical, liberal ideas, of listening to other side and opening up markets. And the individual matters the most. We live in a great country. And Dave, I have to say, I am a robber baron of one of the things that you say. I've stolen it probably 30 times.
- [91:15]
Dave Rubin
So as long as you credit me.
- [91:17]
Charlie Kirk
Now about more than 50%, I'll credit it right now. I credit you sometimes, but I'll credit you right now, where you ask the audience, you say, who here has it worse than your grandparents? And no hand. I've never seen a hand go up.
- [91:30]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [91:31]
Charlie Kirk
And isn't that a great just kind of visual representation of how beautiful this country is?
- [91:37]
Dave Rubin
You know, there's one time, just in the last few months, so I've asked that question hundreds of times at this point, and literally nobody. Then about a month ago, I was at Santa Clara and I asked the question. It's even better. The guy raises his hand, he says that he's a Chinese immigrant to the U.S. and he moved here, you know, five or 10 years ago. And that he has it worse than his grandparents because the communists took all of his grandparents stuff. And I thought, wow, that's as good as it gets.
- [92:05]
Charlie Kirk
Well, that's it.
- [92:06]
Dave Rubin
That is as good as it gets.
- [92:08]
Charlie Kirk
But that Sort of argument is not made ever on college campuses through the traditional institutional professor and academic elites. Instead, the philosophical position that is predominantly put towards students, that America is a mistake, the ideas that you grew up with are flawed, but we have all the answers. We and our couple thousand professors in the academy, we're the smart ones, we're the philosopher kings that Plato used to talk about. Give us the power and give us the trust to how to run society and things will get better. And they focus on the inequality, they focus on the structural deficits. And of course, there will always be structures, structural deficits. If a society ends up eradicating them. I don't think that's going to happen in our lifetime. There will always be outliers, there's going to be people. But generally things.
- [92:56]
Dave Rubin
Well, you're going to have to kill a lot of people to do that, too.
- [92:58]
Charlie Kirk
Look at the Soviets. I mean, we only have to kill 60 million people to try to get to agreement. Well, that's hard to swallow. And it didn't even work after that. And look at Communist China under Mao. Anyway, so the academy is rooted. Not teaching the other ideas, but teaching their ideas, the monolithic ideas. And that's why what we're doing, and we love bringing you to campus, what we're doing at Turning Point USA is having so much resonance. I mean, we have grown so substantially since the last time you and I sat down. You see our conferences, thousands of students, they're growing exponentially, and we slow down.
- [93:36]
Dave Rubin
Was it your idea to just kind of also make them more fun? Because I speak at all sorts of. And there's definitely a difference between going to a Turning Point event in the way the crowd. It feels a little bit almost like you're at a pro wrestling match. And I mean that in the most. I mean that in the fun way. Because even whatever they're chanting, and sometimes they're chanting MAGA or whatever it is, it's like, they're not doing it out of racism. They're doing it out of, like, let's have some fun with some of this. And I don't even think all of them are pure MAGA people or anything. It's just like, oh, let's not make politics just endlessly painful and boring.
- [94:07]
Charlie Kirk
If I have to hear one more lecture from someone like, Nixon shouldn't have been impeached, like, okay, I got it. And that's fine, you can listen to those scholars. But the traditional conservative conference is just, here's a bunch of white papers. Here's how correct we are. Let's look at these charts. And then you say, okay, I agree, but what's happening is that we're also in a culture war. And you go to these Turning Point USA events, it's the music, it's the bright lights, it's the T shirt cannons. And all of a sudden you're having fun. And who's the. The left is anti fun. I mean, they're anti comedic expression, they're anti creativity. I mean, everything is. You're going to offend somebody. I mean, I'm surprised, I really am surprised. We have these T shirt cannons that they have not said that we are making fun of some sort of victims of some sort of shooting because we have T shirt cannons.
- [94:55]
Dave Rubin
Well, you just handed it to them.
- [94:56]
Charlie Kirk
Well, there we go. So they'll come after that with us later. But I'm joking, of course. But the point is that we try to make it high energy and we do. And because of that, our conferences and our events, you know, grow substantially.
- [95:08]
Dave Rubin
So what did the conservatives do wrong if these classical liberal to conservative ideas are the right ones? And I think I'm pretty much with you on that at this point. Where did the conservatives screw up that they lost the academy, they lost the media, they lost academia, they lost everything that led us to an entirely brainwashed generation of millennials and then a group of say, lefties that are older than them that just acquiesce to it out of sheer fear.
- [95:34]
Charlie Kirk
So we did two things majorly wrong. One on policy philosophy, which I think you'll find interesting, and then one just kind of structurally on like an infrastructure side of what we've done wrong. First of which I think that we lost a lot of young people and a lot of people that consider themselves liberals to this day, just over multi decades and multi generations of identifying themselves as that based on doing what we now accuse the left of doing, which is for many years Republicans in the 70s and 80s. And I'm an evangelical Christian, I'm a Bible believing evangelical Christian. And so I have, I think, some standing to say this. The right in America was telling people how to live their life. Not everyone, but boy did it sure sound like that was that this is the correct way, this is the only way. And then you're mixing, it's really close to mixing deeply held religious beliefs and government policy.
- [96:28]
Dave Rubin
Do you think they meant it in that that's truly what they wanted, say the evangelicals or the religious right, or that it was purely a political ploy? Because a lot of people look back to George W. Bush's reelection.
- [96:38]
Charlie Kirk
It's hard to say when they made.
- [96:39]
Dave Rubin
Gay marriage like this wedge issue, which I don't think George W. Bush specifically cared about gay marriage, but in that way it was a political tool, not necessarily an ideological tool.
- [96:50]
Charlie Kirk
It's tough to say. I mean, I will speak to the fact that I think conservatives today on the right, and you'll agree with this, we have the moral high ground because the ethos of the modern new conservative movement is don't tell me how to live my life. I won't tell you how to live your life. Don't take my stuff. I'm not gonna take your stuff. That's really the ethos of why we have the moral high ground.
- [97:11]
Dave Rubin
That's that libertarian side I keep telling you guys about. Just keep sticking with that and you're good.
- [97:16]
Charlie Kirk
I agree. And there's some things that I think, yeah, we'll get there, become more populous, but that's okay. With that being said, so where did we go wrong is we became the angry librarian in the room in the 70s and 80s. Don't have fun, Stop doing this. And again, as an evangelical Christian that believes these, I do believe all these ideas. That doesn't mean you have to put them forth in government policy, meaning that.
- [97:39]
Dave Rubin
You personally wouldn't want to partake in this, whether it's sex or drugs.
- [97:43]
Charlie Kirk
And that's, that's fine. Like for example, we've talked, I think, privately about drugs. I think you should be able to put what you want in your body. I've never done drugs. I don't plan on doing drugs. But why is it my problem that you're doing that? Right, so that's a personal versus policy versus kind of public policy.
- [97:58]
Dave Rubin
So when you talk to the more old school conservatives on that, because. So let's just forget all the other drugs for a second because I think there's a secondary thing when you talk about the highly addictive ones, but let's just talk about marijuana.
- [98:09]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, let's just talk about marijuana.
- [98:10]
Dave Rubin
So on marijuana, when you talk to the more old school conservatives, I simply don't understand the position because I get it, you guys wanna have a certain moral center that you don't wanna deviate against. I understand that, but that center then, I mean, this is what you're getting to. It then deviates from your states rights stuff, your limited government stuff. And it's like those things are in constant conflict. And why leave it to Chuck Schumer to say that marijuana should be a states rights issue. Like when I heard him say that.
- [98:40]
Charlie Kirk
I was like, ugh, you morons. Why give him that political win? And so here's my only contribution, I think, to the whole marijuana debate where I come from. People should be able to do what they want with their body, but when it starts to get into the glorification of the substance, that's where I'm gonna push back. And that's where you and I can have an interesting discussion. So will it make society a better place over the next 20, 30 years if more people are doing marijuana? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. I mean, if you're doing it instead of pharmaceuticals, maybe. But if you have a bunch of 14 year olds that are consuming edibles, I don't know if that's a great thing. Right. However, that doesn't mean that it should be illegal. And that's a really important thing. And that's where principles come in, is you can disagree with something fundamentally and still think that other people should be able to do it. That takes tolerance, that takes maturity, and that takes us. That's what a civil society is all about.
- [99:33]
Dave Rubin
So are you pleased then, watching the way conservatives have moved? Because when people say to me, oh, Dave, you always go to these conservative things and you know, they secretly hate gay people and blah, blah, blah, that's.
- [99:43]
Charlie Kirk
The most false, ridiculous thing I could possibly think here.
- [99:47]
Dave Rubin
Totally upset. Well, I never see it. I mean, I always say this like I can't find them.
- [99:51]
Charlie Kirk
Like, you can keep telling me I haven't found them. Yeah, I haven't. I mean. And Dave, let's talk about this for you. And I spoke at Louisiana State University in the Deep south in the Bible Belt, and you got a standing.
- [100:04]
Dave Rubin
I think I got more applause than you, for the record. I'm just saying.
- [100:06]
Charlie Kirk
Totally. And then we also had Candace Owens, who got standing over. I thought this place was supposed to be backwards thinking and bigoted. And I mean, I guarantee you we could go to University of Alabama, we could go to the Lincoln Reagan Day dinner in Alabama, and you would get that same sort of response. And so I haven't.
- [100:20]
Dave Rubin
I'm speaking at Liberty University in October.
- [100:23]
Charlie Kirk
Jerry Falwell is an amazing guy, and they're going to welcome you with open arms and you'll get a standing ovation from them. Now, they have a biblical view of marriage, of which I have. But your biblical view of marriage does not have to be what your public policy prescription for marriage is. Those are two totally different things.
- [100:38]
Dave Rubin
So then where. So just let's go back to the question Then where did the conservatives really get tripped up on this? So I'm glad to see it moving. I'm with you. It's moving. I get it. But where did they get tripped, screwed up? And how do you fix the remaining part of that?
- [100:50]
Charlie Kirk
So it's where the evangelical right began to take these deeply held religious beliefs and see how popular they were in certain parts of the country and then say, well, let's just make it into then our public policy platform. And that's not what the left is doing to us. They're now taking secular humanist, very, very kind of, I would say, morally transient positions. Now they're putting it in their public policy positions. They're doing it, and we're accusing them of it. Right now we're saying, you can't tell me how to. You can't tell me what bath I have to use this bathroom or this, or you can't tell me how to live my life. Wait a second. A lot of people on the right made a mistake of doing this back in the 70s and 80s.
- [101:31]
Dave Rubin
Do you get a lot of Republicans pissed at you when you acknowledge this? Because this is a pretty big mea culpa. I think, for an evangelical Christian and someone that's leading young conservatives, we shouldn't.
- [101:38]
Charlie Kirk
Be afraid to admit mistakes. I mean, if we think that we've done brilliantly as a country throughout the last 30 years on every issue, I mean, come on, that's a foolish position to have. And if you look at it, William F. Buckley was super libertarian on certain issues. Really libertarian. I mean, he was for the legalization of marijuana. I mean, William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review, is for legalization of marijuana. And that's a position a lot of people, you know, are surprised to hear. And yeah, do I get a lot of backlash. I get disagreement. But I also, and I qualified in a very certain sense that I hold these positions, but there has to be in the way that you create public policy. If every single individual says, I'm gonna have my worldview get put into law, you have what? You have leftist chaos. You have California, where you have all these little sub tribes lobbying for the most lunatic minority oppression Olympics, as you call it, policy positions. And that's a really dangerous thing.
- [102:40]
Dave Rubin
And then you see how it ends up working. Because my parents were visiting for the last week, and my dad was amazed at the amount of tent cities we've got going up in all of these places, these progressive utopias that are supposed to be the friendliest to poor people and everything else.
- [102:54]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, and so, anyway, so that's the one thing I think that concerns conservatives are getting better at now. I really do. And I think President Trump has done a great job of this. I have to say. He's done a great job of this. He has been anti dogma. And I love being. I love the idea of crushing pre existing dogma or at least challenging it, because if some dogma is good and it should be upheld, there's some things that should be so. For example, one piece of dogma in our society is hard work is a good thing. Okay, that's good. Great, let's keep that. But then there's other pieces of dogma that just declare war in every country that looks at us funny. Really? That's what Republicans should believe. Like after the horrendous Iraq war and the endless Afghanistan war, we should still just be war happy and trigger happy at every corner. I don't think so.
- [103:35]
Dave Rubin
Isn't it strange now how the media is sort of painting conservatives as the anti war party in a bizarre sense? So, like, Tulsi is like, you know, all against war, and now they're making it sound like she's a conservative.
- [103:49]
Charlie Kirk
I thought this goes back to what Dennis Prager talks about. The left has no principles and the media is the left. Whatever side helps them get power. And there's this, the mayor of Baltimore, she goes on television the day that President Trump correctly decided not to execute a missile strike that would have killed 120 Iranians. She says, well, this is a huge sign of weakness against President Trump. And I saw this, I said, only President Trump could get a Democrat, a Democrat to accuse him of not declaring a war on a sovereign code.
- [104:20]
Dave Rubin
Is that his gift more than anything else? If you were to, you know him, obviously, but if you were to whittle away everything else, is that the gift that somehow he has that pinpoint precision ability to find out what their weakness is and get them to use it against themselves constantly?
- [104:35]
Charlie Kirk
It's one of his greatest gifts. I think he has a lot of them. He's able to expose the hypocrisy within them so brilliantly. And even deeper than that, I think it's a very interesting thing. He's able to pull out the radicalism within the left and whether I think that's a good thing and a bad thing, think it's a good thing because you can see who they really are. I think it's a bad thing because then more people then become radical and.
- [105:03]
Dave Rubin
That sort of is where we're at right now. Right. He's kind of exposing the hell out of them. And actually, it's funny, every time he exposes them for something, I'm like, oh, that thing that I was talking about as a lefty, like when I still considered myself lefty, I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's the thing I was talking about three years ago. Now it's just burst forth for everyone to see. But it is a catch 22, right? Because on one hand you're exposing it. That's good sunlight. On the other hand, then it suddenly keeps us in this constant state of thought.
- [105:31]
Charlie Kirk
So then President Trump exposes the radical, which is good. So we can see who these people really are. We can see who Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, we can see who they really are and the ideas they hold, which is good. That's always a good thing. But then what happens is the media hates Trump so much, they modernize these ideas, they all of a sudden make it, oh, it's not that bad that Ilhan Omar says that some people did something about 9 11. It's not that bad that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez calls himself a socialist. And then they almost make it palatable and digestible. And you have more people than embrace these radical positions, and that's that. I guess that's where we are. I'm a little troubled by that. And I do want to make a really interesting point that I want everyone listening to this and watching this to think about, which is what makes this particular struggle versus leftist Marxism and kind of Western society values so unique. And my knowledge has never happened before, almost every one of these revolutions that we can point to over the last hundred years, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, every time that Marxists have taken over a government, and you see it through the universities, that's similar. But they were always pro nation state. Like the Russian Revolution, they were pro Russia.
- [106:44]
Dave Rubin
That's interesting.
- [106:44]
Charlie Kirk
You see what I'm saying? They were for the country. And so they were able to win over the countrymen because they're like, well, we love the country more, we want. This is so different. They're actually trying to assume power by being against the country.
- [106:57]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, this. The founding principles were evil. The founders were illegal. Let's take down all the statues.
- [107:02]
Charlie Kirk
It's anti Alinskyite. Alinsky talked about embracing and he was essentially telling people how to lie to get to power. That's essentially the doctrine of Saul Alinsky. But Alinsky talked about Using the main symbols and the main sayings of a country to get to power and never diminish them. Betsy Ross, oh, my gosh, forget about that. So Saul Alinsky would have said, Colin Kaepernick, you're a fool. You should have embraced the Betsy Ross flag and said she was a feminist and she would be upset with where America is today. That's what Saulinsky would have said.
- [107:34]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [107:35]
Charlie Kirk
We've never worked with this sort of insurgency.
- [107:39]
Dave Rubin
Do you think it's possible? I mean, the place that I've sort of gotten to them is, okay, so let's just say we disagree with most everything they say. Right. I don't. You know, I try not to impugn people's motives. I tend to think at this point that their motives are bad and that they really know that, you know, they're being owned. Every other day, you know, there's always some clip of them just saying something awful and not knowing what they're saying. Or they can't respond to a basic question, are you for left wing terrorism? You know, like, they can't say, no, I'm not for terrorism, et cetera, et cetera. How much of it do you think is just that they genuinely, and I hate to say this because this is not how I operate about people that I disagree with politically, but that they genuinely just want to create chaos, that they're the chaos makers. And then they'll have, say, the Warrens or the Bernies clean it up at a nicer level or something like that, but they're just on the ground just creating as much chaos as possible.
- [108:31]
Charlie Kirk
Depends who you're talking about. So if you talk about.
- [108:33]
Dave Rubin
I'm talking about those.
- [108:36]
Charlie Kirk
Talib, Pressley, Cortez, and I'm forgetting one.
- [108:40]
Dave Rubin
Omar.
- [108:40]
Charlie Kirk
Omar, yeah. So you have to first ask, the question is, do they want what's best for America? And that's a really hard question to answer. And it depends, like, what you mean by wanting what's best. But do you think. Here's another great. Here's a question. Do you think they're thankful to be in America? Do you think they're overflowing with gratitude? I don't get that impression. I get bitterness, it seems, if they're bitter, that when they're walking the halls, that they're committed. I mean, you see it in.
- [109:09]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, you see it, right?
- [109:10]
Charlie Kirk
That they're on a mission, that there's anger driving them, that there's something. They believe that this system that we're living in, this beautiful country with so much opportunity so much blessing, so much overflowing abundance for all people that they see something that I don't see and that you don't see. And of course we see problems, right? We see our inner cities ruined, we see all these sorts of things. But we also understand that on the moving average, this country's been unbelievable and continues to be. And the re embracing those ideas will make it more so. I don't feel as if that they're thankful to be in this country. And so there are always people though, in every major civilization like this that kind of, to use the joker term, just kind of want to see the world burn. And I don't know if that's them or not, but they sure sound like that at times. And I find it that they use every single instance of political exploitation opportunity to try to advance their own political agenda to get further into power. And it's a very dangerous position because any sort of cross examination of these people, they immediately accuse you of the most vile things you can possibly. Yeah, you're a racist.
- [110:17]
Dave Rubin
I mean, it's always, it's always, you're a racist, you're a bigot.
- [110:19]
Charlie Kirk
Which is too bad because I could.
- [110:21]
Dave Rubin
Not care less about their gender or their color ever, ever.
- [110:26]
Charlie Kirk
Look, when I criticize them, I'm not criticizing them because of their race. I'm criticizing because what they say in their worldview and they just happen to be that race.
- [110:35]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [110:36]
Charlie Kirk
You know, this is an afterthought. I mean, it would be the same thing if Adam Schiff was saying that. I mean, I've had plenty of fun at Adam Schiff's expense, by the way.
- [110:43]
Dave Rubin
Right, right.
- [110:43]
Charlie Kirk
I've had plenty of fun at Chuck Schumer's expense and Nancy Pelosi's expense. But the one time you accuse these other people, you know, Rashida Tlaib and Presley and Cortez, you accrue that squad, if you will. All of a sudden you're called these horrible names. And you know what's too bad about it is that there is real racism in the world. There is, but the more that that term is thrown around flippantly and just so kind of haphazardly, it cheapens real racism.
- [111:07]
Dave Rubin
So I know you don't want to help the Democrats, but if you were, say, a saner Democrat than them, if you were just a little more of a moderate. And it's so funny because now Pelosi, who really is pretty far left in.
- [111:17]
Charlie Kirk
And of herself, she's powerful.
- [111:18]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. But now she's being framed as the Centrist Democrat, even though she's certainly not the type of liberal, because her answer is always government that I would care about. But let's say there were a couple liberal. Are there any Democrats that you think are sort of more Blue dog, old school?
- [111:31]
Charlie Kirk
There's that guy that was on the stage from Maryland. Delaney. Yeah, he was. He talked about.
- [111:36]
Dave Rubin
He was just on the wrong stage.
- [111:38]
Charlie Kirk
I mean, he was talking about this country has been great to a lot of people. We need to get back to national service. He was saying some things I actually agreed with.
- [111:45]
Dave Rubin
So, okay, so then if you were talking to him, one guy, Right, So.
- [111:47]
Charlie Kirk
The one guy, maybe Hickenlooper, but then he said some nutty stuff. So one guy.
- [111:50]
Dave Rubin
Okay, but if you were talking directly to him and you wanted to help this guy regain the party, what would you tell him?
- [111:57]
Charlie Kirk
In some ways, I do.
- [112:00]
Dave Rubin
Even for a guy that wants Trump to obviously win again, of course I do.
- [112:03]
Charlie Kirk
But in some ways I want a functioning second party. Like, in some ways, I want a party that will step up and say, you know what we do want? Regulatory reform. You know what we do want? To fund our military. That would be nice.
- [112:13]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. Or we don't want open borders. How about that?
- [112:15]
Charlie Kirk
How about that? And I think Delaney could come to agreement with that. What would my advice be to him? I mean, you have to fight the radicals within your own party before you even focus on President Trump, because you got something very, very dangerous within your own party. And again, who am I to give advice to the left? I mean, I want President Trump to win in a massive landslide, and I believe he's on his way to win for many different reasons, this being one of the contributing factors, the fact of how radical the left has become. But it's not exclusive to that. But I don't think that's going to happen, Dave. I'm going to tell you why.
- [112:46]
Dave Rubin
Well, I've seen no evidence of it. You'd think that having Trump win an election might have caused a little self reflection.
- [112:51]
Charlie Kirk
So here's the question. When you and I go to college campuses, at Turney Point usa, with Turney Point usa, are the students more like the squad or more like Delaney?
- [113:01]
Dave Rubin
The students that come to us to.
- [113:03]
Charlie Kirk
Like us, or the radical protester types?
- [113:05]
Dave Rubin
Oh, no, of course, they're much more like the squad.
- [113:07]
Charlie Kirk
Of course, that's the leading indicator. Yeah, that's the harbinger. Whatever happens on college campuses will soon happen in the halls of Congress. The leading indicator of a culture is what happens on college campuses. Ilhan Omar Aoc they got educated on these college campuses, or lack thereof, or indoctrinated, they got radicalized. And then they get set forth and they're committed. They have their marching orders. If you look at a prototype of what the campus creates, the university, if there was a formula of what they're trying to put into the world, it is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Everything about her, constantly wrong, but never in doubt, consistently challenging our history, totally questioning any sort of power structure. At be no belief in national sovereignty at all. And chaos, chaos, chaos. That's the university. That's what they're creating.
- [114:03]
Dave Rubin
All right, so you don't want to help them that much.
- [114:05]
Charlie Kirk
I mean, I would like to see people like Delaney take root. But here's the other point. So here's the other thing that no one talks about, which I think is an interesting point, which is in politics, you're always kind of looking at, who's my base, how am I catering to that base? And so when Donald Trump ran for the presidency and he went down the golden escalator, he did something that actually made the radicals, that made Democrats become more radical. You say, how is that possible? He stole their base away from them. So he stole 10 million Democrats that are Catholics, that are union workers, that are electricians, that are middle class people that have voted Democrats since 1970, and now they're registered Trump people, and they go to the rallies. I mean, you look at the data that actually the Trump rallies, there's amazing percentage of registered Democrats.
- [114:53]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, it's bananas.
- [114:54]
Charlie Kirk
And they end up voting for Trump. They think nothing of it.
- [114:56]
Dave Rubin
Well, they're basically getting the disaffected Bernie. People that saw how corrupt the Democratic.
- [115:00]
Charlie Kirk
Party is, blow it all up. So then what happens if the Democrats all of a sudden have 10 million less Democrats? Mind you, Republicans bled a little. They bled some suburban voters, they bled some, you know, upper middle class voters just because they didn't like Trump's style. But the offset was generally positive in the states that really mattered, which were the traditional Democrats. Democrats look at their kind of roster, like, oh my gosh, we're down 10 million voters and then some lunatic proposes in a room. Well, instead of trying to win those people back, why don't we go win more people in Malibu and Manhattan? Oh, what a great idea that is.
- [115:31]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, yeah.
- [115:32]
Charlie Kirk
And then they start embracing these horrendous radical ideas as if they can get more people. Maybe they can. I mean, I've been proven wrong before, but somehow they can win another 10 million people around the Green New deal universal health care for illegals, complete and total open borders, shutting down people you disagree with, prosecuting people that dare say something critical of a member of Congress. Which Rep. Fredrica Wilson said, yeah.
- [115:57]
Dave Rubin
Oh, yeah, that was a real.
- [115:58]
Charlie Kirk
Or, you know, Dave, I've been done a lot of traveling. I have to say a kitchen table issue in Pennsylvania is making sure that the Boston Bomber can vote.
- [116:06]
Dave Rubin
They're all about it, right? Like they're one issue voters on that.
- [116:09]
Charlie Kirk
It's amazing how many people in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania come up to me, they say, charlie, whatever candidate makes sure that terrorists can vote, they got my vote. It's amazing. Of course I'm being facetious. The more they, what audience are they catering to?
- [116:22]
Dave Rubin
But does that tell you really how insidious this way of thinking is? Like during the first debate when they all spoke Spanish and to me it was the worst.
- [116:29]
Charlie Kirk
So cringey.
- [116:30]
Dave Rubin
The worst sort of pandering. It would have been like if this was 1940s and we had an influx of Irish Americans and they were up, oh, we're gonna give you all a potato. And Michelil is gonna, you know, it's like, what are you guys doing? But it's the worst sort of pandering and yet they keep going to it. So it's almost as if the ideology actually overrides what you're saying. Would just be sort of sound political, you know, maneuvering to win an election.
- [116:54]
Charlie Kirk
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Dave Rubin
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Charlie Kirk
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Dave Rubin
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Charlie Kirk
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- [118:05]
Charlie Kirk
So if you come from the acceptance that they're trying to deconstruct this country, then it all starts to make sense. Why would you want to have open borders? You want to destroy the sovereignty? Why would you want to give away stuff you can't?
- [118:16]
Dave Rubin
We're so horrible and we should let everyone in the horror.
- [118:19]
Charlie Kirk
By the way, this is what I can't understand. A couple things because you got me on this. The Democrats say we're this horrible country, the worst. Why the hell would you want to be president of that country? It's like, I hate this country. I want to be president of it. That's a really interesting.
- [118:34]
Dave Rubin
That's just how good they are.
- [118:34]
Charlie Kirk
Well, that's right. No, but they want to save us from ourselves. Right, because you're the philosopher king. That will save us. The second thing is this is. If we were really this racist, bigoted, homophobic, horrendous country, why are millions of people trying to come here? And just from a more broad standpoint, we take in half the world's immigrants every single year. We take in a million legal immigrants every single year. We're the most accepting, generous, benevolent country ever to exist in the history of the world. I think we're overly generous at times, actually. I think our generosity actually has come back to bite us at times. I think that Trump has brought rational self interest back to the conversation of the nation, nation, state.
- [119:07]
Dave Rubin
So just real quick on the immigration stuff, and then I really do want to get to some stuff.
- [119:10]
Charlie Kirk
We could talk for hours on that.
- [119:11]
Dave Rubin
We could disagree on. But on the immigration stuff, Look, I get it. There are videos of Obama, of Pelosi, of Chuck Schumer, of Bill Clinton, all saying virtually the exact same things that Trump now says. And Trump is considered racist. Now I get it. Trump also has a strange intonation and inflection when he speaks. And he can be a little sloppy around some of the language or maybe intentionally inflammatory or. Yeah, yeah, and that's fine. It doesn't even matter which way you look at it. The point is that what he's actually saying is not different really than what Obama's saying. Just this morning, I tweeted out a clip of Obama saying virtually the same things that Trump says. Now, do you think there's anything that Trump could do if you think his policies around immigration are moral? And just they're reasonable. Is there anything you could do just around the language that might ease up some of this tension?
- [119:58]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, I mean, the one suggestion that I've made publicly, and I'll make it again, is we have to own the legal immigrant. I loved when Trump talked about the big door. I want to hear more about the door. I want him to say wall and door. That'd be just my one piece of recommendation because I was watching this ridiculous clip on Twitter the other day. And the left, they shadow box and make it seem as if you're accusing border jumpers and line cutters. I don't call them immigrants. They're border jumpers and line cutters. Because you know what an immigrant is? Someone who waits their turn that comes to this country correctly, which is why.
- [120:33]
Dave Rubin
We'Re seeing tons of studies now where legal immigrants, first generation legal immigrants, are the most anti illegal immigrants because they.
- [120:39]
Charlie Kirk
Had to wait the process. They had to get a green. All these amazingly hard, difficult things. We have to make that easier. But the second thing is the left, they make it seem as if, if you're against line cutters and border jumpers, you're somehow against legal immigrants. And I take the position, and some people on the right disagree with this position. I think we should have more legal immigrants. I think we should be the Kentucky basketball of immigrants. I want the smartest, richest, most aspirational, creative people in the world to come here that are under the age of 35. This should be the laboratory of excellence for the world. I want the best. Koreans, Indonesians, Somalians, Germans. I don't care where you're from, if you have aspirations, inspiration come to America. That should be the advertisement. And boy, this Donald Trump is great at marketing. He could sell that in a second, couldn't he? He could do a world tour just on the legal immigration tour. And I think that would be. The media would find a way.
- [121:31]
Dave Rubin
Here's the link. Sign up.
- [121:33]
Charlie Kirk
I think the media, all of a sudden, the left would be totally again for, you know, again, they'd be building the wall for them. I'm kidding. You know, but the other, the last thing is this is, look, if the illegals were voting Republican and they were 10 to vote Republican, the Democrats would already have the wall built and say anyone who opposes the wall is against the black community. Right. They would in some ways, Senate. Yeah. Which actually is correct. That open borders hurt the black community, believe it or not. But that's another.
- [121:56]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, that's another whole thing. All right, so I want to back up to one other thing in there. And then let's get to the tech.
- [122:00]
Charlie Kirk
Stuff, which is super important.
- [122:03]
Dave Rubin
On how sort of conservatives or people on the right have to sort of widen the net right now. How do you think the messaging could be about making room for secular conservatives or secular Republicans? So someone like Heather McDonald, who I've had on the show, she's a religious. I think she's an atheist.
- [122:21]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah. She said, I find petitionary prayer futile. And I love Heather. I heard that.
- [122:27]
It's.
- [122:27]
Dave Rubin
Come on.
- [122:28]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, we disagree. There we go.
- [122:30]
Dave Rubin
Okay. But you want to live in the same society as her, and you probably agree with her.
- [122:34]
Charlie Kirk
You're not a religious fundamentalist.
- [122:36]
Dave Rubin
But I think. And when I was on Candace's show on Prageru, I brought this up, that if there's such lunacy on the left, that to me, all the right has to do, all conservatives have to do is just be, at every turn, be a tiny bit better. Like, you don't have to be. You know what I mean? Like, not a lot, but just a little bit better. What do you think conservatives or Republicans or whatever can do for the disaffected lefty that still is secular, Maybe has some religious belief, but it's not sort of a core tenet or whatever it is? What do you think that people on the right think about?
- [123:04]
Charlie Kirk
Well, I have to give the conservatives credit. I think Donald Trump's done a lot of that. I mean, Donald Trump has been amazingly embracing of the evangelical community, but he himself, I don't want to speak for him, was definitely more secular. Right. I mean, he was not running a campaign like Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum was in 2016. I think you would agree with that.
- [123:26]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, for sure.
- [123:26]
Charlie Kirk
Is much more based than ideas in the revitalization of the nation state.
- [123:29]
Dave Rubin
And those guys actually have very little influence now over modern Republican politics.
- [123:35]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah. And look, I agree. Again, I want to just make sure I reinforce this. I agree with them on basically a lot of things they're saying personally. And now my pro life position is I could defend that from a secular lens. If you've got another four hours, we can have a whole thing.
- [123:50]
Dave Rubin
We might dive into that.
- [123:51]
Charlie Kirk
Or you could talk to Lila Rose about that.
- [123:53]
Dave Rubin
We've done that one.
- [123:54]
Charlie Kirk
I know, it's amazing podcast. I listened to it a couple times. She was really, really good at it. But the thing that I find really interesting about this is that the Republicans are becoming the tolerant ones. We really are. And it's the Republican conservative ones that have the most intellectual Diversity that have the most. I believe that's going to have the most religious diversity. We're trending towards that. And I like to think that Turning Point USA has really been on the cutting edge of this. I think we've been on the cutting edge of it.
- [124:23]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, listen, I go to Turning Point. There are kids in yarmulkes. There are black kids, there are Muslim kids, there are trans people.
- [124:29]
Charlie Kirk
We have a spokesman, Rob Smith, who's a veteran of our country, happens to be gay, black, super articulate. You know, Candace Owens was with us for a while and did an amazing job. I mean, I would like to think that we're practicing what we're preaching. I would like to think that. And also doing events with you is so fun because it's one thing to say you're the tolerant one and then you're the only one, but it's fun because then you and I will disagree on a couple things. But the marketplace of ideas and the collision of ideas, it also keeps you like any muscle. If it atrophies, if you don't use it atrophies. The same thing goes with your policy positions and your politics. And I really believe part of the reason why the left has become so radical is they haven't had to debate.
- [125:13]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, they got fat because it was so easy to call everyone racist and sit back.
- [125:17]
Charlie Kirk
Correct. Yeah. So they aoc, Alexandria, Kaiser, Gortez. Has she ever gone on a center right platform? That's a really good question. Is it? I know of no knowledge of it ever since that one woman asked her three tough questions about, and she said Palestine was occupying Israel or something. She has done nothing but friendly media.
- [125:37]
Dave Rubin
I would love to sit down with her. And even though I've gone after her on Twitter, obviously, I would treat her, of course, with the same respect.
- [125:43]
Charlie Kirk
I know you would. And I would too. And I would ask her direct questions and I would hope she would ask questions out of me. And so the one thing I think is really important that I get far too often the question I get a lot on college campuses and then we can get into the tech stuff, is that students that are in the middle, they come after this. This is the best case scenario at times, but it's not correct where they say, well, yeah, the left has gone out of control, but the right has also gone really out of control. And I say to myself, what do you mean? There is no moral equivalency between the two. Where is right wing antifa? Where is.
- [126:17]
Dave Rubin
Well, they'll tell you it's the KKK.
- [126:19]
Charlie Kirk
There'S 45 of them. And every time they try to materialize anywhere, it's unilateral, uniform and overwhelming denouncement of these people.
- [126:30]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [126:31]
Charlie Kirk
Just out of control denounce.
- [126:32]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. I think we should just hit that, though, because if what happened. If what happened a couple weeks ago with. With ice. Yeah. With the attack, or with Andy even. Right. With Andy Ngo, who I had on. I mean, if either one of those things had come out of the. Right. Whatever that is, whether you would.
- [126:47]
Charlie Kirk
There would be CNN Sunday Night Special.
- [126:49]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. They'd be having a town hall where Marco Rubio would be getting strung up.
- [126:52]
Charlie Kirk
I mean, that's right. And so they Virtue signal a lot better than us. But what I'm trying to say is. I'm not trying to say we're like better people and we deserve all this, but, boy, our worldview is better than them right now, 100%. Because if you're a member of Congress. Congress. And you're asked a specific question, will you denounce Antifa. Which for all intents and purposes in my mind is a domestic terror organization? They're a domestic terror organization. They should be treated as such. How do you assault a journalist like that, with masks, with concrete milkshakes, send him to a hospital and not be called a domestic terror? You have an organization, you have a hierarchy, you have a common meeting place. I mean, all this stuff that.
- [127:26]
Dave Rubin
Because they're doing that dirty work.
- [127:28]
Charlie Kirk
Right.
- [127:29]
Dave Rubin
But everything.
- [127:29]
Charlie Kirk
The FBI, there's like a checklist list that the FBI has of what a terror group is. They qualify, all of them. Domestic terror group. I mean, they have specific targets. Right. They all this sort of thing. And yet total silence amongst the left. Complete and total silence. And I'm rooting. I'm rooting for people like Delaney and Andrew Yang because Andrew Yang denounced it. Andrew Yang had the best tweet. And then we'll get to the text, though, the best tweet, he said. And I think it was just kind of this very interesting observation. He has an IQ that's amazing. He's a really smart guy. He's misguided on the UBI thing, but that's okay. And he said, I notice conservatives follow a lot more liberals on Twitter than liberals follow conservatives on Twitter. Did you see this?
- [128:11]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, I saw it.
- [128:12]
Charlie Kirk
And I said, he's getting there. Give him five more months of the circus. He's going to be very. He's gonna have a different view of the left than he did a year and a half ago.
- [128:22]
Dave Rubin
I Actually, I completely agree. And then we're gonna get to the disagreements up. But I'm with you on that. Cause he, he keeps. You know, I had him in here and I think he's a really.
- [128:29]
Charlie Kirk
Your interview with him was fantastic.
- [128:31]
Dave Rubin
Thank you.
- [128:31]
Charlie Kirk
Really good.
- [128:32]
Dave Rubin
Not necessary to say, but it's honest. I think you're basically right because even when I asked him what his progressive politics were, everything he said was about equality. You know, I'm for gay marriage or something like that. And it's like. But that's not progressive anymore because we've progressed to it. We've progressed to equality. So in my view, he really is an old school liberal. And yes, on some of the big government stuff. And whatever you think about ubi, he's not there. But I think once he's done with this evil machine, he's gonna. In a weird way, he could end up being more right than most liberals. I think that probably is where he'll end up. Oh, wait, let's.
- [129:09]
Charlie Kirk
Okay, fine.
- [129:09]
Dave Rubin
All right.
- [129:10]
I wanna move to the disagreements. We've been too nice to each other.
- [129:12]
Charlie Kirk
Here we are.
- [129:13]
Dave Rubin
You wrote a piece in the Washington Post about big tech a couple weeks ago. And everyone that's watched, watching this knows that where I'm at right now is the libertarian side of me that thinks that the market can solve everything. Or at least that the market is the best way to solve problems. Not that they're always going to be solved, but that's the best way. That's being pushed to its limit. The rubber is meeting the road. I think the tech companies have gotten so out of control with the bannings, with the shadow bannings, with the demonetizations with algorithms that nobody seems to know how to control or are being manipulated. And I could go on and on with a zillion other things. Your argument basically was, yeah, I don't want the government doing anything, but here we are. That's the but. And now the but, of course, is where. That's where the problem starts kicking in, if you hold an ideal that markets are supposed to solve these things. So I'm not there. I'm just not there.
- [130:09]
Charlie Kirk
Really tough conversation, Dave. I'm so glad we're having it because I'm a Milton Friedman guy. I'm a free market, free people.
- [130:16]
Dave Rubin
Wait, New York Times had him on the COVID He's indeed an alt right hero.
- [130:20]
Charlie Kirk
You're right. That was the most ridiculous piece that I've seen.
- [130:24]
Dave Rubin
My dad, 40 years he's had the New York Times, I think even longer than I've been born. He had it for like 45 years, still subscribed. Nothing like seeing his son's head.
- [130:31]
Charlie Kirk
This was one of the most dishonest pieces of journalism I've ever seen. You have one guy, like one guy, and it's just this Pablo, thousands of words of nonsense, nonsense. Anyway, that's a different thing at a different time.
- [130:43]
Dave Rubin
I've invited the author on the show, Milton Friedman.
- [130:45]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, I'm a Milton Friedman guy. I'm a Thomas Sowell guy. I believe markets do solve solutions. For those of you that are listening or watching, that aren't sure what my view of markets are, it's that free people exchanging goods in a free society, voluntarily, mutually cooperating as they see fit, will benefit society, benefit the individual. And that's essentially a market. So a couple things. In order for a market to operate, you also believe in private property. That's a big thing. So you have impartial courts that can adjudicate differences. So you're not an anarchist. I'm not an anarchist. Adam Smith talked about the importance of impartial courts because you're going to have differences of properties, and not just physical property, but intellectual property and all that. And also, of course, the price system, that's really, really important. Milton Friedman talked how prices are the language, how we communicate with each other. So if tomorrow Starbucks made every single cup of coffee $25, which is not inconceivable considering they're up, you mean they're.
- [131:35]
Dave Rubin
Going to lower the prices?
- [131:36]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, exactly. The upward trajectory that they're on for coffee, there's something to be said that less people will buy that coffee. And so that's how you communicate. No one actually might open. Some people might open their voice and be upset, but the silent regression from buying their coffee will be reflected in their balance sheet. And that's how. How we communicate value to value. Pricings are super important. So I think the first thing we talk about tech is we have to first admit we really don't have a market in tech. There's a couple reasons behind this. And then we have to talk about some of the problems that I think everyone admits. First of all, there's a lot of cronyism that exists between the big tech companies right now, whether it be government contracts, whether it be far too extended patents that are given to Google. We need to think about this. I think that patents in a lot of ways are anti free market. And I think we should shrink the window of how long some of these patents are. So you said it. The Best. Google has this algorithm that no one can figure out but they also have it patented and they have it patented for a very long time. And so if it were to be put off the patent market, it's also made public and someone could compete against it. So that's an interesting thing to think about that there could be a free. That there actually hiding behind some of the government favors that are given to them. Right.
- [132:46]
Dave Rubin
So it's a weird place to be though because you're sort of asking for government interference.
- [132:50]
Charlie Kirk
Well, I'll get to that with the.
- [132:51]
Dave Rubin
Hope of this back end freedom.
- [132:53]
Charlie Kirk
So let's ask, let's go to what we want. I think let's. I always tell our team at Turning Point USA every, every time, what does success look like? Well Charlie, Success Looks like 1400 high school kids in D.C. in August. Great. How do we get there? We work backwards to where we are today. Let's do that.
- [133:10]
Dave Rubin
Why not Take me on this voyage.
- [133:12]
Charlie Kirk
What does success look like? Fair, free and open platforms with different ideas can express themselves. Multiple tech companies, not four, but dozens of tech companies competing for our interests that are able to have these ideas present. Hopefully an improving product over time and hopefully a search engine that doesn't have 92% of the market share. I don't think that's a healthy thing. I just don't. I think even 40% would be a lot. 92%. So that that's where success would look like a disaggregation, let's call it that or decentralization. I think that's probably a fair. We would agree with that. Right. And also you not having to battle YouTube non stop and you not having to do all these things, you actually focus on content creation. I have to ask you Dave, how many hundreds of hours have you spent of wasted energy on this stuff?
- [133:56]
Dave Rubin
Oh, it's been. I mean I have to fight them publicly constantly. It's like it's not sex. Yeah, well, well it's not fun. It's not that it's bad business because I'm putting out content that I end up losing money on. I'm in a weird way there are times where I'm doing the producers. The more things that I make, the more money I lose, which is not fun. But also it's just publicly it's not fun to have to attack your own platform. But okay, so so far I'm with you on the ideas but now where we're going to have our problem is.
- [134:20]
Charlie Kirk
Here'S the question, the functional part, the question is so let's say we deregulate some of the patent stuff and all that, but is it enough? And I'm at a place right now where Tucker Carlson said something really interesting to me and really stuck with me. He said, charlie, I want you to think about this. Who is more powerful, the IRS or Google? And I immediately said, the irs, because that's what we conservatives believe. We believe that government has uniform power. And I defended it. I thought pretty well, Google doesn't have the power of audits. Google can't put you in prison. You know, all these. IRS can do all those sorts of. And IRS can wreck your business. And Tucker retorted with a really interesting thing. He said, well, but Google can't shut down your business. Yeah, I guess that's right. And I debated a little bit, and Google can manipulate entire society to believe something that might not be true. And we went through the whole litany of how powerful Google was, and I thought about it for months, and I think that's a really important thing that we conservatives do. We actually are always challenging our positions. I think that's what's so healthy about our movement. And it hit me about a month and a half ago when I was using. I had my laptop open and I had my gmail account, watching YouTube, you know, on my Google Calendar. And I said, my goodness, they know everything about me. The IRS doesn't know crap. The IRS knows a couple bank statements, you know, my taxes and my bank statements. That's a very small picture of my actual activity. And I thought to myself, when I might have this computer open, I said, what if one engineer in Google was flipping through Twitter and saw one of my tweets praising President Trump? And he said, screw this Charlie Kirk guy, and he goes to work tomorrow and he decides to look at everything about me. Do we know that's not happening?
- [136:01]
Dave Rubin
I mean, I think we can go on the assumption that it is happening. Actually.
- [136:04]
Charlie Kirk
That's really scary. That's more power than the NSA has. And by the way, we know that Google is so slanted in the wrong direction ideologically. We know they've shown regret for not doing enough in 2016. We know the political imbalance of their political contributions were over a million dollars to Hillary Clinton and $0 to Donald Trump in 2016. As far as political contributions, they fired James Damore. So here's the question. Is there a place for the federal government to get engaged or involved, tinker on the edges, or do something to change the way that this is currently happening? And the piece I wrote in The Washington Post was first admitting how this could go wrong. So let's just. Can I start there? Is that okay?
- [136:43]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's why, that's why I brought up the piece, because I think you did try to at least acknowledge this struggle with this, the freaking murky road that this thing is.
- [136:52]
Charlie Kirk
I'm struggling with this because I'm. Free market's so great. I believe this. I see this beautiful society created by the free market and I say, but what about this? These companies? I'm struggling. That's a good thing to struggle because then you actually might find reasonability somewhere. And so the first piece is, let's see how this could go wrong. Okay. More times than not, when you apply regulation on a very, very big company, the regulation ends up getting written by those companies. The regulation gets lobbied for by those companies. There's last minute, middle of the night changes being put by senators and K Street law firms and lobbyists that end up actually benefiting the very company that it's supposed to regulate.
- [137:30]
Dave Rubin
Right. It ends up hurting the competition that's trying to up upstart because they can never keep up with the regulations. Okay, so now you're so far you're giving me stuff that I'm with you.
- [137:37]
Charlie Kirk
I talked about this.
- [137:38]
Dave Rubin
That's why I wouldn't want you.
- [137:39]
Charlie Kirk
I opened up with this. And so let's take it. A very agreeable example is Dodd Frank. Dodd Frank, for those of you that don't know that are watching, this was a banking regulation bill passed out of the 2008 financial crisis authored by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank to try to regulate the big banks, to try to Never allow the 2008 financial crisis crisis to happen again. But essentially what it would be is like, okay, I lost my arm in a horrible motorcycle accident and I'm taking Pepto Bismol for a stomach ache. It's like the complete wrong treatment. They had nothing to do with this. So they applied the wrong treatment to an ill advised, poorly analyzed problem. And what ended up happening was the big five or six banks, Goldman, Wells Fargo, bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, these massive, massive banks that have trillions and trillions, hundreds of billions, tens of trillions of dollars of assets. Collectively, they lobby for regulation that they understand that they can comply with.
- [138:41]
Dave Rubin
Now they're even too bigger to fail.
- [138:43]
Charlie Kirk
And what has happened? You now have Wells Fargo, you have BoA, you have JP Morgan with stock prices that have never been higher, with more power than they ever had. And what did Dodd Frank do? We have seen A massive decrease and decline in community banking. Massive. Because for the bank, the local bank of Sacramento. Let's just take a local bank of Sacramento that might have $250 million in deposits, and they might do a couple, let's say, $12 million in revenue. They've got some good loans out, healthy balance sheets, all that. But all of a sudden, a federal regulator walks in with an encyclopedia of new regulation they have to comply with, and they say, well, this is going to cost us $800,000 in law. Well, sorry, this is the new law. Well, $800,000 for JP Morgan is called Lunch. That's nothing. I mean, it's nothing then. So what ends up happening is it penalizes it. So I'm admitting I'm being vulnerable.
- [139:38]
Dave Rubin
Okay, so, yeah, so this is a huge concession on your part.
- [139:41]
Charlie Kirk
It's a part of the piece. Right. I'm being vulnerable of. Of how I've come to this, because I first want to just tell the audience that I'm not dealing in absolutes here at all. I'm dealing in very much of. There's context and there's texture to this. So, anyway, so how regulation could be a weapon used. And you saw this with Facebook, though. You saw this with Facebook where Facebook actually put forth this proposal of how to protect people's privacy. That was, like 450,000 pages of garbage. It was basically written by, you know, Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg of how their company can thrive and rule the world. Okay, that's stupid. So then the question is, how do we get to that success? And I think what I wrote in the piece is the number one thing that we can do is change section 602. I think that's the number. It's a 206 or 602. I can be dyslexic at times, so I think it's 602 in the technology code that was passed the 1990s that allows these technology platforms to hide behind the label of being a platform when they're really acting like a publisher. So the Rubin Report. Right. The. Any of these companies. You guys are publishers, right? Correct me if I'm wrong. Yes.
- [140:53]
Dave Rubin
I'm responsible for the content.
- [140:55]
Charlie Kirk
So if you look at my. And say something horribly libelous about somebody and publish it behind your name, you could be held accountable for that libel suit.
- [141:03]
Dave Rubin
Okay?
- [141:04]
Charlie Kirk
Now, a platform, right. A platform is supposed to be an open forum where no one can be held accountable to it. However, where they get around it is where they have these community standards. Right?
- [141:15]
Dave Rubin
Right. Which Is the sneaky way of, oh, we're going to kind of curb out who we don't exactly want in there.
- [141:21]
Charlie Kirk
So trying to break outside the binary box. Since the piece, I've thought of this more and I've gotten some really good feedback on it. There can be a third box created too. Is like you can have a platform publisher and then social network because they're not. They're definitely acting like a publisher. They're pretending to be a platform. But why not create a third box and have an Internet Bill of Rights? That's an interesting idea. I'm not saying that's 100% what I believe, but why not? Because when you're consuming so much information online and so many people, their livelihoods are online and we're gravitating towards online, what's to say that there shouldn't be that kind of third box? And so there's a very aggressive community that says regulate these companies, throw the regulators at them. It's very tempting to do that because you want to seek vengeance against these companies that are doing these horrible, horrible things. But my whole thing right here is that something needs to change governmentally. We're at that point. What that something is I'm open minded to. I proposed in the Washington Post piece that got a ton of play. Got more mail from that piece, I think than any other thing I've written is you got the success. The 602 code is the opening. That's where I think we have to change it.
- [142:27]
Dave Rubin
Okay, so I like the platform versus publisher debate. And I think you're right. They are acting now as publishers, not open platforms. So I think there's something there. I think where I would still be struggling is, okay, so we even. I can get you with you on the Internet Bill of Rights. I would love that. If you're a, well, publisher, let's say if you're a platform as they're pretending.
- [142:49]
Charlie Kirk
To be, you have to abide by.
- [142:51]
Dave Rubin
Then you have certain things to abide by. So that sounds good, right? Road to hell is paid with good intentions. Now we've got something that sounds good, but then to enforce it, what are you going to do? What is the government going to do? Suddenly you have a gajillion bureaucrats running around these companies making sure that they're doing all of those things. And it's like, do the middle management, government bureaucrats have any insight into how these companies operate internally?
- [143:13]
Charlie Kirk
I could tell you what you do. You create a division of the Department of Justice that's focused on Internet civil rights. It's no different than free expression that was challenged in the 70s and 80s in a lot of different in the gay community. You know, there was a huge, there was huge controversy in the 1980s in California in particular, a lot of lawsuits that stemmed out of that. And there was a creation eventually in the Department of Justice that focused on how is it any different, Dave, when you get the kind of penalization that you've gotten on social media or when Crowder gets demonetized, how is that not a violation of your freedom of expression? And someone will say with our private.
- [143:48]
Dave Rubin
Company, I don't want to force that baker to bake the cake.
- [143:51]
Charlie Kirk
Of course, I completely and totally understand that. But then you are a publisher, you're discriminating if you want the point of being a publisher is you don't have to take everyone's peace. That's the whole idea of being a publisher. And so the other interesting thing, David, question to challenge you is when, at what point? What's the breaking point for you? Because what if Google shut us all up? Shapiro, Crowder, Knowles, Klavan Daily, Wire, me, Prager overnight would then we say we go after them with government. And here's the other question I have for you.
- [144:27]
Dave Rubin
No, but well, first off, let me just answer that.
- [144:28]
Charlie Kirk
I stopping them, right?
- [144:29]
Dave Rubin
So I've been posing this actually when I because this is what I've been talking about mostly at colleges lately and I posed that question, if they were to digitally assassinate me today, if they just all of them just agreed, Twitter down, YouTube down, Facebook down and Instagram down, would that be a violation of my civil rights? And I think it's as close as you can possibly get to yes. They could just take you out of what the new public sphere is and especially the way that technology is evolving so fast. And you could almost argue that your ability to be on those platforms in some weird way is almost paramount than your ability to just exist on a day to day basis, which is a sort of very Philip K. Dick to think of type of thing to think about.
- [145:14]
Charlie Kirk
Right. So my question for you, Dave, is are we there yet? And if not, when will we be? I'm there.
- [145:22]
Dave Rubin
Okay.
- [145:22]
Charlie Kirk
So let's say I see it.
- [145:24]
Dave Rubin
So Tucker and I have done this several times on his show. So let's say I grant you that. Then explain this to me. Trump happens to be favorable to some of the people that you're mentioning here. He's on the right side of this issue. I would say what happens now? Trump loses in 2020, you've got President Elizabeth Warren who wants. It's code 230, my guys are telling me, by the way, not 602. See, we fact checked here on the Rubin report. That wasn't even dyslexia. That was just a made up.
- [145:51]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, it wasn't made up. It was missed memory. Sorry.
- [145:55]
Dave Rubin
I got all these numbers you've just lost all credibility for. And I really thought you were doing well this hour. No. All right, now we've got President Elizabeth Warren, who would be more than happy as a far left progressive to do everything that she can to have the government take over everything. And now you've already handed her this power. Now, I think I know your answer is going to be she's going to do it anyway. Whether Trump moves on it or not. The left will come for it anyway. But that still seems crazily dangerous to me and a terrible pressure.
- [146:22]
Charlie Kirk
It depends on how we structure this in a way. Again, I think the challenge is, whenever possible, we're going back to the doctrine of Adam Smith. So here's the question, Dave. Private property. You have private property rights, don't you? We all do. So aren't all your videos you put on YouTube your property and you've monetized them? And so under the Adam Smith doctrine of markets, you have.
- [146:44]
Dave Rubin
Well, technically, I don't know if I actually just honestly don't know off the top of my head with whatever crazy thing I've signed with YouTube are the videos that I put there.
- [146:52]
Charlie Kirk
So that's an interesting question. Yeah, you definitely have the intellectual property, right?
- [146:56]
Dave Rubin
The ip, sure.
- [146:57]
Charlie Kirk
This production cost, all that, that is yours and you've monetized it. And I think from what I understand, you've gone into a cooperative with YouTube. I'm guessing that they have the rights to it once you sign over the rights. But isn't there an argument to say, but this is my video, I've created this. Whether that's been adjudicated or not, I'm not sure. But I think the solution has to go through the courts. And this is me believing the courts have been highly politicized in many, many recent years. The long lasting legacy of Donald Trump will be hopefully the rebalancing the federal judiciary away from slanted radicalism and towards hopefully kind of very restrained. Kind of restrained, what's the word? Textualism. Being more textualist. And so that's the question. So if Elizabeth Warren starts to go on a rampage, hopefully you can be able to sue and you can use the courts to uphold these Things, and that's under, you know, under Obama, there were decisions that he. What he was not crazy about.
- [147:52]
Dave Rubin
So your basic belief, if we were to whittle all this down, would be that the three branches of government would still be able to function in a way, hopefully, that would protect us from the government over.
- [148:03]
Charlie Kirk
Let me go a step further.
- [148:04]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [148:04]
Charlie Kirk
There's four branches of government and the fourth is called Silicon Valley.
- [148:07]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [148:08]
Charlie Kirk
And they're stronger than the rest of the three of them. That's where I'm at. Where we have a super government that's been created, where The Kingdom of D.C. is no longer the most powerful fief of them in this game of Thrones, that the power is in Silicon Valley. And this is where Tucker is on this issue. This is where Dennis Prager is on this issue. I mean, the irs, to give you an idea, the irs, they don't even accept emails. You have to send a snail letter to them, like a snail mail letter to them. Again, they might be morally corrupted, but these guys at Google, I mean, they're literally building new limbs for people. I mean, they have driverless cars, highly technological people. And so. And Dave, here's my question for you. As a libertarian, do you support looking retrospectively back in history, the trust busting that Teddy Roosevelt did in the 1900s?
- [148:55]
Dave Rubin
Right. So I get it. I mean, this is the slippery slope thing always. Right. There's a libertarian argument that would be against that. The Civil Rights act. That I think is a. I disagree with that too. No, so I disagree with the two, and I'm not for relitigating it, but I think there is a libertarian argument there. But this is where I would say. I would say this is the difference between basically a classical liberal and a libertarian. I do find some utility for the state. So nothing that you're saying to me, nothing you're saying is completely outlandish.
- [149:20]
Charlie Kirk
Sure.
- [149:21]
Dave Rubin
And I think if anything, for whatever disagreement there is here, in a weird way, we need to keep that disagreement. Do you think that's fair to say? Because that way it keeps either side from.
- [149:32]
Charlie Kirk
It's an account and not getting too far and not allowing your emotion run. And I think to keep it in check, I just. So it's a very interesting conversation because growing in the kind of conservative libertarian world and reading Hayek and reading Rothbard, I've been told my entire life, and I agree with this up until the last couple months where I've told the true monopoly is government, and that's just not true anymore. We have companies that could do things the government cannot do. And that's never been the case in human history. It's just never been the case. It just hasn't. Where you have a government that can shut off the entire lines of communication for millions of people. You have a government that can say, we want everyone to think that Sam's Deli is closed tomorrow. So everyone Googles Sam's Deli. Oh, it's closed even though it's open.
- [150:17]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [150:18]
Charlie Kirk
You have an entire supergovernment that's been created that can manipulate the entire behavioral pattern of a society. And so if we could admit that's stronger than the government, then do we use government against it? And again, I admit it. Although how that could go wrong, you could actually end up making those companies more powerful. But I want to go back to where I saw what success looks like. And this has to be like the moonshot we're going to get to the moon. And this is the advice I gave to President Trump publicly, where I think the President should issue a big challenge, saying to the entrepreneurs of America, go start the next tech company. I'm going to use your platform. I'm going to use as many platforms as I can touch. Go do it right now. Go raise the capital. I believe in you. Almost like creating entrepreneurial activity around this.
- [151:07]
Dave Rubin
Well, Kirk, as you know, we're taping this at the end of July right now. This is going to air in August because I'm off the grid for August. You might be interested in perhaps an announcement that someone might be making at the beginning of September. I don't want to say too much, but if you want to ping that Trump guy and tell him, sure.
- [151:23]
Charlie Kirk
But yes, I love all that stuff. And I'm not saying any of these things are exclusive. I'm saying we've identified the problem, we understand the significance of it, we understand how we could solve it incorrectly. Because the first thing you do in medicine is what first do no harm. It's the first thing. So we have this problem and we could end up actually making it worse. And that would be horrible, wouldn't it? Imagine if we passed all this regulation. Imagine if we had this crazy bill passed through Congress. We felt great about it. Then 18 months later, all of a sudden we find out that Google got all these last minute provisions and it's not being enforced and they're ending up not 92% of search results. They have 99% of search results and everyone gets taken off the market. And that would be really, that would.
- [152:04]
Dave Rubin
Be defeating the road to Hell, man. All right, listen, we have to wrap up, unfortunately, but obviously we're gonna do this again. And, you know, look, if we ended up getting booted from the platforms, I guess we'll just have to keep doing this in person until we could text.
- [152:15]
Charlie Kirk
This video to people or something, I don't know.
- [152:16]
Dave Rubin
Then they'll take us down. Thank you, Charlie. For more on Charlie, follow him. Arliekirk11. And don't forget to click that subscribe button and make sure the bell is solid to get all the notifications for our videos. Thanks for watching, everybody. I'm Dave Rubin, and joining me today is the host of the Charlie Kirk show, the founder of Turning Point USA and the author of the MAGA Doctrine, the Only Ideas that will win the future. Charlie Kirk, old friend. Welcome back to the Rubin Report.
- [152:54]
Dave, you're a good friend. Honored to be here. Thank you for having me.
- [152:57]
We've done this a couple times, and I thought, how can I approach this interview in a way that's a little different than what we've done before? So I thought we'd start off. Give me your top 10 reasons you love Joe Biden.
- [153:11]
Top 10 reasons I love Joe Biden. That's, you know, I will say he's actually made me prioritize things in life that matter. Not to say politics don't matter. Yeah, but it's been such a dumpster fire. You have to kind of look outside of all the madness, and you're like, okay, what really matters in life? Right? Like, what exactly gives you purpose and meaning? Because obviously, the things that, you know, we used to. I used to look at the presidency as something I revere, and I guess I still do, and I love my country. But he's been so awful. It's like, okay, there's a couple things I can control in my life, like family and relationships, friendships, career. And I'm gonna focus on those things. And it's kind of the. One of the few things I wanna thank Joe Biden for is he has reinforced, at least for me, things that I control and things I cannot control. Unfortunately, I can't control the southern border. I can talk about it. It's wide open, and it's a total disaster. But besides that, I'm not sure what else I would put on that list.
- [154:07]
Dave, I thought maybe you could come up with three. I thought maybe there were gonna be three, but I'll accept that. But for a guy like you. Yeah, go ahead.
- [154:16]
Well, I mean, I guess if you wanna kind of do the whole, like, you know, Glass half full thing and the perpetual optimist thing. And the best thing about being surrounded is you can shoot in any direction thing. Because basically, look, I do think that there's been unintended consequences of what this regime has been trying to implement, which is the rise of the citizen and.
- [154:37]
Knew you were gonna get there. That was one of the three I had in there.
- [154:40]
Right. And like the homeschooling revolution and people really caring about their country again. And there is a window, there's an opportunity, there's a chance, there's a sliver. I don't think it's by any chance certain that this backfires on them so dramatically that it could be a political realignment the likes of which our generation we haven't seen in 30 or 40 years.
- [155:02]
Do you believe in the machine enough to believe that something like that could happen? Because that's the direction I thought you were gonna go. Because it's like everything is so bad, everything is so upside down. Even for guys like us who expected this thing to be bad, it's worse than most of us could have imagined. But do you think the machine will allow, like just in the last couple days, watching the narrative on Covid shift, like, do you think it'll allow what should happen to happen, that the voice of the people will actually be heard? Well, thankfully, between the media and the whole thing, that's what I'm talking about.
- [155:34]
Yeah. Well, no, for sure, of course, yeah. Thankfully, critical parts of the machine are falling apart, which gives me hope. I mean, CNN is basically a Democrat super PAC that no one watches. Facebook is cratering, which is really, really interesting to see Rumble, which you and I really care about is ascending. So there are certain trends right now that kind of go into maybe the machine isn't as strong as it once was. Americans trust in government as an all time low. Americans trust in corporations are at all time low. You're starting to see people care more about local than national trends, which is really, really important. So I think the machine is way weaker than it was even a year ago and let alone five years ago. I think that there is kind of like a natural law component to this where if you try to build a multi trillion dollar oligarchy, or oligopoly, I should say, the laws of gravity are probably gonna push back against you at some point. There will be leaks in dissension, civil war fracturing, and you're seeing a lot of that not just within the Democrat party, but within a lot of the superstructures that you and I believe the Actual power is vested in. So, look, I could have a cynical take where I'm like, you know what? These people always have power. The infrastructure is impenetrable. But I'm not so sure of that. I think that there is a revival to challenge all these institutions. And, Dave, you've played a really important part in this, which is those of us that love freedom and love the Constitution as the greatest political document ever. We're building our own infrastructure, we're building our own machine, and that's been a really exciting trend. I think the regime is really surprised by it. I think they're shocked, quite honestly, that we've been able to kind of stand up a YouTube competitor, a payment processing competitor, a Patreon competitor, like locals. So quickly you're starting to see a higher education competitor of University of Austin, and all of a sudden, this kind of this monopoly they had on these certain goods and services and credentialing institutions is being challenged in a very serious way. But they're still way more powerful than us. There's no doubt. But I'm optimistic that there might be some legitimate fault lines that are going to materialize in their demise.
- [157:43]
That would be a slightly better great reset than the great reset that they've been telling us about. But I'm curious for you. Look, I know you off camera, too, at this point, but I don't know that I've ever fully asked you this before. Like, you know, you were so obviously a close associate and through Turning Point in the Trump campaign, and you wrote the book, the MAGA Doctrine, the whole thing, to go from that. And, you know, I would go to Turning Point the night that I met Trump at Mar a Lago. We were at dinner that very night there, and it was after an event you put together and all that stuff. And I say that because you were so associated with that, now he's not in power. And I just wonder for you personally, what did the last year show? I'm not talking about the political part of my guy's not in power anymore, but just like the other, you were part of something that was fun and cool, at least from our perspective, and now you ain't in it. You know, the thing exists, but, like, it's not in power anymore. So, like, what is that just personally for you?
- [158:38]
Like, well, first it was really demoralizing. Not from like an access standpoint or like the fact you could call the president, like, whatever. It was just kind of demoralizing for the country, right? I mean, especially the month of January. We're like, okay, you know, at New Year's, I remember thinking, all right, okay, Biden's gonna be president. At the very least, we can win these Senate races in Georgia. You know, we can have a check in balance, separation of powers. And then January 5th happened. They're like, okay, we lost that. And then January 6th happened, which was a catastrophe, Right? For a variety of different reasons. And so it was a demoralizing couple weeks in 2021. And our team at Turning Point USA, which has always been educationally focused, and our team at the Charlie Kirk show, which has obviously been very aligned with the Trump doctrine and his worldview. What do we stand for? And we really went to work. You know, I traveled 330 days in the year of 2021 and went to campuses and churches, and we didn't talk a lot about Trump, honestly. And we didn't talk about Biden either. More than anything else, we talked about what it meant to be an American and what we stood for and why we stood for it. And it was definitely this moment where I also had to kind of reintroduce myself to a lot of people that just kind of knew me as, oh, you're the guy that defends Trump. Right. And it was, I think, very well received in a lot of different ways. And I also think it forced our team and our show to go a level deeper. I spent more time in 2021 of reading deep books and spending time in very complex philosophy and really challenging my ideas and why I believe it and where does it come from? Because it wasn't just kind of like, okay, the left is out of their mind. We have to defend the president. We have. Because he's doing a really good job. And you can kind of get really used to that, Right? But then all of a sudden, when he's displaced from power, there's a lot of people that are saying, okay, do we want to go back to, like, the Liz Cheney kind of way of doing things? Or why do we want, you know, borders to be controlled? And so you have to kind of come from that with an approach that is philosophically based and rooted in a natural rights doctrine and also in timeless ideas, while also respecting the fruits of the Enlightenment, all these really important things. And so I think that we've been. I think we're better because of it, honestly. I think our show's more interesting. I think our organization is stronger. I think we're reaching more people. And, you know, I'm not to say. Not to say that I'm thankful. I mean, the country's in horrible shape. But I think we were able to use what was an adversarial situation or set of circumstances to our advantage.
- [161:04]
Do you think that they think that they're doing good? I mean, this is a little bit of the road to hell kind of situation. Like, do you think. I mean, I don't know if Biden's in charge at this point, which, if you want to comment on that, feel free. But like, when they all put their heads on the pillow when PSAKI lays down at night, Biden, the rest of them, the Surgeon general, all of these people that are associated with this thing, Fauci, all of them, do you really think they're looking at the information, looking at what's going on here, supply chain, inflation, Afghanistan, et cetera, and going, boy, we really are doing a great job, man.
- [161:41]
You ask good questions.
- [161:42]
Charlie Kirk
I gotta tell you.
- [161:43]
Dave Rubin
I ask questions too, every day, and it's a great question. Cause I get this all the time. And people say, what is the motive? Right. How do they judge success? Like, what does the whiteboard look like in the outer room of the Oval? Right. Like, are we going towards the mission accomplished or are we getting further away from it? And this is a hard thing for some people on the center right or people that love the Constitution to admit. It's not hard for me to admit because I kind of understand the left really well. I think they're right on schedule for what they want. And I really do believe that they want to be a willing participant in the World Economic Forum. Great.
- [162:21]
Charlie Kirk
Reset.
- [162:22]
Dave Rubin
You mentioned it, you know, a little bit sarcastically earlier. But you and I both know this is a very real agenda, which is important.
- [162:28]
It's legit. I spent an hour with Glenn Beck on it.
- [162:31]
Yeah. And it's. I think that in order to get there, you have to first make America no longer a superpower. And that doesn't mean you have to kill everybody. Right. I mean, I think there's some extremes people can take towards describing this, but you definitely have to destroy our currency, you have to deteriorate our sovereignty, you have to erode the national will. And then also you have to create mass uncertainty as it what. As to what it means to be an American. And the person that's probably done the best job of this is Nikole Hannah Jones from the 1619 Project. It's something we talk about every single day at Turning Point usa, which is if you can't tell an agreed upon American story, then you just don't have a country. I mean, it's such polar opposites. Where you and I would look at the American founding as a heroic breakthrough of the human story, where Nikole Hannah Jones looks at it as a regressive moment in the human story. There really isn't much in common from that point forward. Right. When you can't agree on the Federalist Papers, the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. And so I believe that the people in charge, from Ron Klain to Biden, they might have their own little kind of wrinkles of where they think the country should go, but it's definitely in a place where they want to deemphasize America's role in the world. They want to weaken America and they think the world will be better because of it. This is the most important thing though is that, I mean in the beginning of Aristotle's Ethics there's this incredible line that is hotly debated which is all human action points towards some good. Now you take out the mentally and politically insane from that. But really what he's getting at is that more evil has been done under people believing that they're doing good than anything else. You take Joseph Stalin, he actually thought he was bettering humanity or bettering himself or whatever. Very few people are actually yes, I'm doing what is wrong and I'm gonna keep on doing it. It's a very rare thing. And I think that these people in charge and no, I don't think Biden's in charge. I think he's a puppet for all these other masters. I actually don't think very much about Biden. I actually really haven't engaged much in kind of the mental decline kind of meme verse, if you will. I think it's a little overdone. We all kind of know he's not there. I'm more interested in the people behind him and the, and the reason they're doing all this. But yes, I think that from the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Mayorkas to the educational secretary to all of them, I think that they believe that they are all doing what a good comrade should do to try and usher in a globalist type project and the American superpower status of a strong economy, being energy independent, a sound currency and a national story that we all agree on, those are things that are right at the heart of their agenda.
- [165:06]
Do you think that conservatives, whatever this new wide 10 thing is at this point, this anti woke coalition and we'll see how tightly it can hold, do you think we just need a better story? Do you think the story of just telling the American history, say the way we've seen it or the way that you and I have talked about it for a long time, that maybe that isn't enough. Just going back to say, Reagan talking points, as good and decent as they are, like, do we need a new story, a new narrative to craft to capture young people? I mean, obviously that's what you guys are trying to do at Turning Point. But is just saying freedom and individual rights and capitalism, is it not enough, that there has to be something else behind that, too?
- [165:45]
It's not enough. But it will be enough this year, which worries me. It will be enough to take back power for Republicans and defeat the woke up, just to run against the woke. They are so unpopular, they're so awful at governing. And that's the thing, Dave, is that not only do they have bad ideas, they're actually bad at executing their bad ideas. I mean, it's like the worst possible, thank God, sort of combination. Well, no, that's the thing where I got in this debate the other day and someone says, charlie, we need more technology in government so they can be more efficient. I'm like, you know, I'm actually really glad that they're slow. I'm really glad that they take Arbor Day off, because if they didn't, then they'd be like Google, which we know how harmful they can be, which we'll get into the whole corporate side of this. But I'm worried because I'm afraid that there's going to be kind of a false stimulus effect to the conservative movement. All we have to do is run against the woke. We take back every chamber of power, like the Glenn Youngkin thing, right? Where I'm afraid that we're gonna need a lot more. And I'll give you an example of what a lot more looks like, which I think conservatives need to think very deeply about. A national recovery program. I think that this country has been so severely damaged by unelected bureaucrats, especially young people, most suicidal, drug addicted, alcohol addicted, most anxious, depressed, medicated generation in history, that I think there needs to be an intergenerational apology to try to get this generation back on track. And I'm not saying massive government programs or some sort of climate core like AOC wants, but I think we should try to make it easier to try to have conservatizing events. And the three conservatizing events, if you will just accept the term is to own property, to get married and have kids, and hopefully a nice fourth one is have a job that means something to you. Right. That isn't like a minimum wage job or some sort of woke social media manager for Goldman Sachs or whatever. Right. Those four things are harder than ever for this generation to grab onto. And I think that we need to have pro market based conversations outside of just kind of the immediate muscle memory of the dogma of the kind of ghosts of Reagan past and say, how do we make it easier for a 28 year old that's $100,000 in student loan debt that was locked down for a couple years. Right. Is really demoralized, might be on an unnecessary regimen of antidepressants, how to make it easier for them to break through and buy quote unquote equity in the American project. Right. Because that actually is a really good thing for the country. People don't burn down Wendy's if they have a mortgage. When you're renting all the time, you become a perfect population that could be captured by these kind of woke socialist revolutionaries. And so, no, I don't think it's just enough to kind of have the slogans. I think we need to think creatively about these things. And I think we also need to know why we believe and what we believe it. The Constitution needs to be our North Star. It is the greatest political document ever. Nothing we should do should violate the four basic tenets of Constitution. Separation of powers, consent to the governed, independent judiciary and balance of power. Basically, that's the core basis of the US Constitution. But with that being said though, Dave, I think that we have portions of the American population that have been so set back by the lockdowns and government interference that if we don't come up with something more robust or exciting, we're going to be looking at a potential political population that will entertain seriously radical ideas.
- [169:07]
Right. I mean, how much worse it could be if we don't do something to heal some of these wounds. You accidentally said ghosts of Rogan Pass.
- [169:15]
We'll get to that.
- [169:16]
I get to that.
- [169:18]
You're right.
- [169:20]
That will be a hell of a segue we're gonna slide into when we talk about Big Tech in just a little bit. But you said something interesting there about the intergenerational version of this, and I've been thinking about this a lot that so many of the people that are in power right now, or at least appear to be in power, say Joe Biden, say Nancy Pelosi, any of these people, really, any of them, Dianne Feinstein, who everyone knows is almost incapacitated at this point, just the amount of, I guess they're upper end boomers, but they're also the last of the great generation. Something like that. But these people that are in their say, mid-70s and up that are still clinging to power. Nancy Pelosi with that ridiculous reelection video from two weeks ago and it's like, lady, you're 81, go be a grandma. Like, enough. Do you think there's something, what do you think that is psychologically maybe about that generation that they can't let go? Because that does seem to be a big problem here. And I've seen in just the last couple weeks that suddenly gen X, I'm 45, right in the middle of Gen X, like my generation. You're a little younger than me, so you're not. You're Gen Y. Is that fair to say?
- [170:32]
I'm millennial.
- [170:34]
You're a millennial. No offense, but that 35. Right, but the 35, 36 to say 54 year olds, we just haven't had our chance yet because for some reason those people kept hanging on at every level. Do you think there's something psychologically going on there that didn't allow them to let go?
- [170:52]
Yeah, you're gonna get me in a lot of trouble, Dave, because we talk about this a lot and the angriest emails I get are on this topic. So buckle up. I suppose you said something super interesting. Which Nancy Pelosi, go be a grandma. And she kind of still sees herself as this like 33 year old, kind of like AIDS crusader in West San Francisco.
- [171:12]
That is the eyebrows keep getting higher.
- [171:15]
Yeah, but do you know what I mean? Which is like, okay, like you've had your chance. Go look beyond yourself. That's what a grandma's all about. Right? Like go look about. Go look towards the next generation. And are you actually preserving things that are beautiful, true and good for her? It's kind of like, no, I still have to have that one more election cycle. You don't understand because that's when the real revolution is going to happen. And so look, I mean it's the tyranny of the septuagenarians and the octogenarians and there's a lot of great people in the 70s and 80s category in our country. It just so happens none of them are in leadership right now. It just so happens that the cream that whatever has risen to the top isn't the best. And so you kind of have a through line of Biden and Schumer and Pelosi that have been in this shtick for 30 or 40 years, literally. And they don't really care about the damage they're leaving to the next generation. It's kind of like they want to have their two to four years to rule over the ashes and they're going to die. And I hate to be so morbid about it, but they're on the back nine of the back nine. They're on like hole 17, right? And so you gotta start to all of a sudden look like, who's the next group of people that are going to be playing now? You know, you've had Eric Weinstein on your program before. He talks about the ego, the embedded growth obligation. I think that's a really smart perspective about how this is a generation that has literally experienced nothing but prosperity economically their entire life and has gotten used to it and acts as if that is.
- [172:41]
Dan Harris
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- [173:19]
Dave Rubin
Something that is just kind of baked in the human existence. Things get better. Don't get in my way. But I think that the entire way that we reacted to Covid kind of exposes all of this. I think it does so in bright and dramatic colors, which is it really is kind of the first modern civilization that has willingly sacrificed the young to placate the old. And there is no other way to describe it. I mean, some people will reject the premise, but we went from shutting down schools cuz it might hurt kids to shutting down schools because they might transmit a virus to grandma. That's a totally different moral argument, by the way. Totally different. The first moral argument is like, okay, it might kill young people. I get that. The next is, oh, now they might get infected and they might kill grandma. I'm not into that. Obviously I want to protect seniors. But that's a totally different argument which is like, okay, we must inhibit your development. We must suppress your life experience and your activities because you might then hurt the generation that does not have as many years left to live. And so yes, I think an intergenerational apology is necessary. Totally. And I will say that kind of that 35 to 54 year old bracket is the, I think it is going to be, in my opinion, the great swing to the right that no one expected. I think there's more red pilling happening between ages 35 to 54. And there's a lot of boomers that are really conservative and God bless them for that and they continue to be. But there is kind of this question of like the 42 year old mom that looks, she's like, wait a second, you know, I wasn't able to get the career advancement that maybe they wanted because I had to wait for boomers to age out. And now my kids have to wear masks because a bunch of septuagenarians are worried about this. And I think that we're experiencing the kind of the climax of generational tension. And we saw this. I'll say one final thing in this, Dave, which is this is nothing new. This kind of immoral behavior first manifested itself through fiscal policy. A generation that was willing to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to add to the national debt in 2009-2010-2011-2012, with no regard for the fiscal health of future generations, is the same type of generation that locks down seventh graders and doesn't think anything of it. It's like, you know that we just do that around here, okay? Like we'll put their life on hold, we'll steal their savings, we'll steal their purchasing power. Cuz I'm important and I matter. And I think that really, I think that betrays the social contract. I think it goes directly, it's what it means to be a patriotic citizen.
- [175:42]
You say 35 to 54 are gonna be the red pill generation. It's like I'm 45, I know a little something about this red pill situation, right? So it's like, I'm with you, man. I feel it. You know, you see those pictures online of, you know, Stacey Abrams unmasked in front of the kids and Hochul over in New York smiling with the kids. It's like these kids are gonna do some pretty horrible things to old people one day. You can really feel it. Do you? Not just to talk about it at an idea level, but because you're around so many college kids. Kids, I mean, they're young adults. Through Turning Point, have you seen a real shift in their attitudes on this stuff? We go to the events. When I go to Turning Point events, it's always so positive and fun and all that stuff. But have you seen a difference in the way they're reacting with the ideas or resentment or whatever it might be.
- [176:34]
Definitely on the center. Right? For sure. Our students are pushing back like crazy.
- [176:39]
Charlie Kirk
We have a list.
- [176:39]
Dave Rubin
I was just going through it. We have 35 schools that have staged walkouts in the last 24 hours at Turning Point USA over the mask mandates. And we support them 100%. We're helping them with PR support and times legal support, all that stuff, because the mass mandates have gone out of control. But I will say, Dave, that the mass propaganda, dare I say mass formation psychosis.
- [176:59]
You're trying to get us both taken out, man.
- [177:01]
Yeah, there we go. Well, I figure this will be on local so we know the owner.
- [177:04]
Charlie Kirk
They won't.
- [177:05]
Dave Rubin
Goodbye, Spotify.
- [177:07]
Yeah, exactly. But you know, that kind of mass propaganda campaign has really worked on a lot of young people. And it's kind of a great irony where and this is a stereotype, but the average 70 year old, 60 or 70 year old right now is far less concerned about COVID than I think the average 17 year old. And that's a stereotype. That's like a generalization, I should say. But there has been a lot of induced fear amongst high school and college kids completely and totally unnecessarily. And there's a cost to pay for that. It's going to be a generation that is the least free thinking generation absent our intervention and trying to get them their humanity back. It's the most medicated generation, most suicidal generation, the most confused generation, the most directionalist generation. But we're starting to see some pushback against this and some hopefully writing of that trajectory. But I don't think it's enough. I don't think that this is going to fix itself. I think that we need, and I don't say this lightly, you know that I'm a small government conservative guy. But I think that we need a collective intervention to try to fix some of these trends that have gone so awry. I don't just think that we're like, oh well, we shut everything down for two years. We vaccinated kids, didn't need it, and put masks on them. They had no social development. They are not speaking the way they should. The IQs are stunted, like everything's gonna kind of sort itself out. I'm not as convinced of that. I'm not. I think there's some very interesting, bold, robust, entrepreneurial and creative ideas that could probably fix this. But I'LL be honest, Dave, there's been a little glimmer of hope amongst some of the young people, but it's nowhere near the type of rebellion that I would like to see. It isn't. I saw far more activism and energy around Greta Thunberg's the world is ending climate change propaganda and far more energy amongst the average high school kid around Florida Palooza than I did around mask mandates, vaccine mandates, or being locked down and not being able to see their friends.
- [179:02]
Yeah, and you're not overstating this stuff. I just read this crazy study about what masks have done to adolescent children who are now having all sorts of delayed speech. Literally the muscles in their mouths are not developing the way that they are supposed to because they don't move their mouths and they don't talk enough and they can't see the mouth of the teacher. So you can mimic it to speak properly. I mean, it's really, really crazy stuff. What do you think of the pivot that they're about to do? We can see it happening right in front of our eyes. They are the good guys. They didn't wanna lock us down. They're gonna somehow pin this on. That was the Republicans that did it. They're all just repeating the stuff that Charlie Kirk. That Charlie Kirk, that Ron DeSantis was saying two years ago. But Charlie Kirk was probably saying some of it too.
- [179:47]
We were saying the same thing.
- [179:48]
Do you admire the pivot that they're about to do that they're in the process of doing right now?
- [179:52]
Do I admire it?
- [179:53]
Charlie Kirk
No.
- [179:53]
Dave Rubin
I think it's good for the country. Yeah. It's better now than 10 years from now. Sure.
- [179:57]
Charlie Kirk
Good.
- [179:57]
Dave Rubin
Terrific. But I mean, look, I don't say this slightly. There needs to be justice. People need to go to jail for what they did. There needs to be some sort of mass firing campaign, decredentialing campaign. None of that's probably gonna happen, I'll be very honest.
- [180:10]
Yeah, but what would that really look like? Cuz I've kind of thought about it. Like, I do think some of these people, probably in a really sane society that would grapple with this properly, some of these people would end up in jail, like literally in jail. But I don't know. What does that really look like? We're gonna Nuremberg for Covid.
- [180:26]
I would love Nuremberg. But I mean, some say that's radical. But I mean, there is, I think, a lot of the tenets of Nuremberg.
- [180:32]
There's the Media Matters clip for today.
- [180:33]
Well, no, I mean, we've done entire shows on Nuremberg. But, yeah, sure, they could pick it up and run with it, but that's probably not gonna happen. I try to live in the land of reality. I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon. What I would like to see, though, happen, Dave, is a legitimate public policy and legislative campaign around medical autonomy, around medical freedom. And I think there's a lot of answers we. Yet we still do not have. We do not have answers around the money flow from a lot of these pharmaceutical companies to politicians or their campaigns. We do not have answers as to why early treatments were suppressed. We've been a very outspoken program on ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, melatonin, aspirin, monoclonal antibodies, intravenous therapy, vitamin D levels. I think it's one of the great injustices of my life, the fact that most Americans were not properly exposed to those things. But don't worry, we're subsidizing crack cocaine pipes for people, you know, in San Francisco. All the while, the controlled substance our government cares about is the perfectly safe and probably very, very effective Ivermectin.
- [181:32]
Charlie Kirk
It's.
- [181:32]
It's.
- [181:32]
Dave Rubin
Dude, Biden sent me three crack pipes. I only need one. You want me to send you one?
- [181:36]
Is that I wouldn't know what to do with it, to be very honest. So. Haven't exactly ventured into that domain of human existence. So. Yeah, and then Charlie Kirk, yeah, he'd give me lip balm in case my lips get too chapped while smoking crack on the, you know, in Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. But, yeah, look, what would justice look like? I don't know. But we definitely need some action, right? We need legislative changes. We also, I think just from a more constitutional perspective, we have to make sure the emergency use powers are never used again by these governors and mayors. I know that might be wishful thinking, but I think in some red states, they were used and abused way too much. I think these legislatures have to step up and look, if you want to shut down a state, go through the legislative process, I totally. I would say that's fine. If, like, you can get the Ohio state house and state senate to shut down a state for 30 days, I actually think that's okay. I think that the courts might knock it down here and there. But just like the fact that a governor can just sign a piece of paper and shut down bars in schools, that's. I think that's a usurpation of what the Constitution, especially on a state based level, and definitely a federal level is supposed to be able to do. I'll give you another example. The fact that Joe Biden can just sign a piece of paper and say you have to wear a mask on an airplane, go through the legislative process. So those are some remedies for sure that we have to do. That I think could slow down kind of this indulgence of, you know, kind of autocratic and tyrannical behavior we've seen. But we're not gonna get the justice that I would wanna see. Dave, I think that any doctor that interfered with a patient trying to get ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine needs to be held criminally accountable. And I don't say that lightly. And Dave, you get a lot of emails. I get a ton of emails. I have hundreds of emails of people that have relatives that died in the hospital and they were trying to give them these life saving drugs and the hospital says, oh, those drugs might kill them and then they die. And so it's like, wait, we're dealing from already the potential of, we know death is in the cards, so why wouldn't you try some of the more you know, let's say, you know, censored treatments. And so I think there needs to be justice with that and the hospitals need to be held accountable, but just kind of managing expectations. That's probably not going to happen. But the last thing you said. Do I admire it? No, I don't admire it. Why are they doing it? Well, the science has not changed no matter what. You know, Dr. Wen says Lee Ann Wen's changed. It's changed.
- [183:55]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah.
- [183:56]
Dave Rubin
I mean, look, and this is the thing is that trust the science. Trust the science. We did a whole podcast on this that I think it was really well received. One of the best podcasts we've done in a while. As far as like response, which is that they conflate two things, right? So they conflate things that we would call the natural law, like force equals mass times acceleration. The irrefutable tenets of Western science, right? The inquiry into the natural world, Second law of thermodynamics, the inevitable law of decay, and they conflate that with conjecture and hypothesis, right? So they put that all into kind of the same term. As if you challenge wearing three masks while you shower, you're somehow at war with Copernicus, right? And like the average engineer who works at Ford, right, is like, well, you know, I'm trading the sciences. I don't ever want to question that when in reality, they had that which we know and that which we think we know. And they were never honest enough to separate those two things.
- [184:49]
Charlie, you're blowing my mind right now. I gotta write this down. Are you telling me that A squared plus B squared equals C squared is more valid than when you're at a restaurant, you can walk in without a mask, or when you have a mask, when you walk in and you can take it off when you sit? Is that what you're telling me here?
- [185:06]
I'm telling that, you know, I know it might really blow your audience's mind that the things we know in the Western scientific tradition that have been true, that really proven to be the laws of nature and nature is God, which Thomas Jefferson brilliantly wrote in the Declaration, is far better science than vaccinating a six month old with a vaccine against a virus that isn't gonna harm them significantly anyway. Or let's just think of all this, the scientific calisthenics that we've heard in just the last couple weeks. Was it Gavin News, Eric Garcetti that said he held his breath when he took a picture at Sofi Stadium? Or Gavin Newsom, he said, well, I just took a picture, I put the mask back on. I mean, and just the or Dr. Vivek Murphy who said you have to wear masks at home around your children? That was in the last couple of months. And we know the science is totally insane. I mean, you take the mask mandate on planes, for example. It's right. It's the only virus in the history of communicable diseases that does not come out. As soon as the beverage cart comes out, it stops. It's so scared of the hot coffee and the sanitized Coke cans that it stops all transmission. But from going from New York to LA for a year and a half of the pandemic, you could not go eat indoors. But if you wanted to go eat indoors, just go board American Airlines at JFK and fly to lax.
- [186:25]
But we all folded. We all kind of folded. You know, I said to my guys, it's like I'm doing just fine. I'm not complaining about life, but my goal after these last two years is to become so rich I never have to fly commercial again. Cuz I flew private twice for the first time ever in this past year. And they've made the flying experience. Even though, yes, you can take off your mask to drink your coffee and eat your small chicken. It just ain't right what they're doing. But do you think the federal mask Mandate. I mean, I haven't heard any talk about they're gonna stop it on airplanes and we've got idiots like Swalwell pushing it forever. Do I also slept with a Chinese spy? But that's a whole other thing.
- [187:04]
I mean, yeah, I don't know if he did it on a plane or not. That would be a very interesting chapter two of the Fang Fang Diaries.
- [187:10]
As long as he had his mask on.
- [187:11]
Yeah, that's right. I mean, that's correct. So do I think the federal mask mandate will be lifted? No. And you actually, you make a really important point, which is because the people in charge aren't affected by it. Biden doesn't fly commercial. He flies Air Force One.
- [187:22]
Yep.
- [187:23]
I mean, and so.
- [187:24]
But he always puts his mask on right before he gets off. Air Force One. I always love that when it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, you guys been wearing it on the helicopter. And Air Force One. Okay.
- [187:33]
And it's Covid theater. But this goes to a deeper point that the founding fathers warned us against. And the more we kind of dwell and we marinate and ruminate on the brilliance and the wisdom of the founding Fathers, we realize they saw a lot of this coming, which I think in Federalist 51 or one of those associates, Madison warned what would happen if the group of rulers are exempt from the laws that they push upon the citizenry. And that's why Congress technically can't pass laws that they are immune from. They found carve outs and ways to do that. But the federal mass mandate on airplanes is a perfect example of this, which is a vast majority of the members of Congress and especially people financing the members of Congress, they're totally unaffected by it. And their kids go to private schools where there are no mask mandates, and they fly on private jets where there's no mask mandates. And yeah, look, Governor Mussolini married into the Siebel family. I don't know the last time he flew commercial. Right. He's flying around probably on a Gulf Stream or a Learjet or whatever. And I guarantee you the family's not masking when they hit 15,000 or 20,000ft. No, they're having a great time and they're laughing about it.
- [188:36]
Charlie, they spent 200 grand on a one week vacation in Cabo about three months ago. Right. The same week he extended his emergency powers. I don't live there anymore, by the way. Very exciting. Can't you tell?
- [188:48]
Yeah, you're happier. You're paying more taxes. Right. You've become more conservative, which is just delightful to Me. But yeah, it's. And we call it hypocrisy. It's not. It's hierarchy, Dave. It's not hypocrisy. It's. I am better than you. I'm gonna crush you, and I don't care.
- [189:07]
Yeah, he's a bad. He's a bad dude. But. All right, I know we can go on this stuff forever, but let's link some of this to the big tech stuff that you and I have been talking about forever. And as you said, we're both involved in the Rumble situation. You were sort of early on with the Rumble team. Obviously, Locals merged with Rumble. There's a lot going on there. Do you honestly think we have a chance? I mean, even just in the last couple days? Look, we put our best foot forward. We made this offer to Joe Rogan. He may not take it, but we felt it was the best thing we could do to defend our principles and fight for what we believe in. We shall see. We're fighting on every front. The payment processor front, the AWS front, the algorithm front. But do you think we can really do it?
- [189:51]
We don't have a choice. We have to win. We have to get this right, or else everything we love falls apart. I have been so encouraged, though, just in the last 12 months, Dave, how much momentum there is behind this kind of new technology space from Locals, which is terrific. Which is a way to bypass the Patreon gatekeepers to the content creators that have gone all in on Rumble. You, our program. Dan Bongino, Dinesh d', Souza, Russell Brand, Tulsi Gabbard. You know, freedom loving, liberty loving people all across the spectrum but do believe that big tech tyranny is an existential threat. I thought the offer to Rogan was really brilliant. I don't know Rogan. I've met him once. I think it would be really smart of him personally to take the Rumble deal because they are not going to stop this censorship. Hit job train, he says. Oh, has Spotify stood by me? I don't think so. They're removing episodes and putting disclaimers. You and I are way too cynical for that, Dave. We've been through this entire program many times, and maybe a couple years ago, we might have said that, but. And look, it's def. The Rumble was really smart to offer the $100 million because it made it legit, and I don't. We'll see if. We'll see what Rogan ends up doing, right? I mean, he signaled towards Spotify or whatever, but the point is that it wasn't totally laughed off, Dave. And that shows how real Rumble is. Right? That shows that we can win this. So to answer your question on a probability argument, I first made a moral argument. We have to win this. We have to do this. I think Rumble's gonna be a 20 or 30 or $40 billion company. I'm confident of that. Because there is a center right of the planet, not just the country that is desiring a platform that actually allows voices to speak their mind and not be taken off and not have these sort of woke gatekeepers. But look, there are going to be institutional challenges, but to, you know, I know we keep talking about Rumble, but they're not, you know, not alone. There's other people in play. But Rumble is definitely the most sophisticated, I think best funded and most momentum. I think that, I think that it's ahead of schedule and I think that there's going to be starts. I think there's some chatter already in Silicon Valley of what are we going to do about these Rumble guys. Well, you can't shut off their servers, Right. You could probably go after after their advertisers for now, but then you got locals, which is hundreds of thousands of grassroots people supporting people via Patreon, which is going to be incredibly effective to be able to kind of have the super chat feature of videos, which is a huge revenue source for Google. There'll be institutional ads that will always go behind Rumble that are on the center. Right. And so what else do they kind of have in the tickler file to try to go after Rumble? Okay, they're going to try to go after the ad network, they're going to try to go after New York Times, Washington Post, you're platforming hateful people. Yeah. But when you start to have a roster of Dave Rubin, Charlie Kirk, you know, Daily Wire is coming online is what I'm hearing. You have Dan Bongino and others. All of a sudden you're like, yeah, okay, we're gonna link arms and we've created tech NATO and we have Article.
- [192:44]
6 and you attack NATO. You didn't just come up with that, did you? You've used that one before. Come on.
- [192:50]
I've never said it out loud, but I have wrote it. I have a whole pamphlet of kind of one liners, but you could use IT tech NATO, and it's Article 5 or Article 6 of NATO, which is attack on one of us, is attack on all of us. Right. And to kind of tie in the whole Ukrainian thing. That's why Ukraine and NATO is such a controversial thing. It's like Putin crosses the line. It's the same as invading Paris or London. And it's like, okay, you go after Dave Rubin, then you have to deal with all of us and our combined power and our combined followers. And I'm starting to see that solidarity, and guess what? That word solidarity is something that we freedom loving people don't do well. But when we do it, we win. It's not in our blood. We're all entrepreneurs or individuals. We think we could do things better than each other. Right. We're competitors. You know, we'll go out to dinner with one another and they'll be like, yeah, I kind of like that idea and that, like, whatever. But that's what's beautiful about markets. But now we're at war and we need solidarity and we need alliances. So I think we got a chance to win.
- [193:44]
I like that every time I'm on your show when I say something clever, you always say to me, I'm stealing that. But I'm gonna credit you for this tech NATO.
- [193:52]
Charlie Kirk
You got it.
- [193:53]
Dave Rubin
You know, that's the difference. That's the difference between Australia.
- [193:55]
That's right, the attribution.
- [193:58]
But do you see? Okay, so let's say we build this stuff and it's all great. And yes, we are working real hard and there's a lot of questions, but there's a lot of answers as well. So we start building all that. We know that the trends where people are moving are going very heavily to freedom loving places. Nobody's moving to blue states right now. I think California lost almost 400,000 people last year. First loss of population ever. As these things continue to go, I mean, what keeps us the United States if we've just got our own products and we've got our own states and they've got their products and their states, where are we United?
- [194:36]
Well, we aren't. And you're right. And so just kind of reinforce the point though, you know, Netflix is down, Facebook is down, California is down, Florida is up, Texas is up. Rumble is up. Right. So look, I've said this for quite some time. I think we're living through a slow motion secession movement. And the act of secession is happening on United Airlines every day in the nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Orlando or from Los Angeles to Miami. It's a movement of secession and it's not a one that breaks the country apart immediately. But they're starting to say out loud what I have feared. And it's mostly pop icon people, you Know Sarah Silverman or that guy from Hellboy, whatever his name is.
- [195:13]
Oh, that nut bag Ron Perlman.
- [195:14]
Yeah, whatever. And they're saying it out loud. I don't want to live in the country with you. You don't want to live with me? Let's go our separate ways. And a very provocative but honest thought exercise for your audience and for all of us to kind of dwell over, which is, what do I, Charlie Kirk, who live in Phoenix, what do I have in common with a San Francisco woke activist that's 24 years old that just graduated from UC Berkeley? I believe America's awesome. They believe America's awful. I believe in basic natural rights. They believe in collective and tribal rights. I believe in free speech. They believe in power. I believe that we should have borders. They don't believe in borders. I could go through the whole checkpoint checklist. The only thing that we have in common is the dollar bill that we're trading. It's literally the whole project is basically hinging on a currency. And that is not an over exaggeration. You don't have a shared story. You don't have shared values. You don't have a shared future. You don't have a shared policy prescriptions. Everything is quote unquote, politicized and divided. And so, you know, we've kind of dwelled in this field to the great, you know, the great cost of being written up in Media matters, which is a wonderful thing to happen. They're like PR experts.
- [196:26]
They love you over there. They like you more than me. With all the pieces they do on you.
- [196:30]
It's great. They write up what you say and it's right there. And then you could share it.
- [196:33]
Charlie Kirk
Like, hey, look, it's.
- [196:35]
Dave Rubin
But look, we are right on the hinge. We're right on the edge of a national divorce. Now, I have a contrarian view on this, which is I actually think the sooner we build the parallel economy and we have these other mediums, I actually think it de escalates the chance for a national divorce. I think it's the exact opposite.
- [196:57]
Yeah, I like that, actually.
- [196:59]
It's kind of like, all right, you do you, we do us. Like maybe we can have like a five year cooling off period before we actually sign the divorce papers. Right. And I don't think. I think the more that we live under their tyranny, you're gonna see real radicalism rise up that I hate and you hate. Right. Where people are starting to talk about things that I don't want the country to break up. I Think it's an awful thing.
- [197:19]
Charlie Kirk
It's my home.
- [197:20]
Dave Rubin
It's your home. I don't wanna have to show a passport when I go to lax. It's like, I want that to be. My fellow countrymen, I don't know if they believe that, but I think that they wanna. I think there's two thoughts on this, right? Which is most of the leftist rulers will reject a national divorce because they want the whole enchilada, right? They want every county. They want every inch. And they want us to live in their tyranny. Like, they are up at night really angry that some Baptist preacher in Enid, Oklahoma, is not, like, perfectly in alignment with every single one of their worldviews. That really bothers them where it's like, as a conservative, like, I don't really care about some guy in Brooklyn that hates me. Like, okay, whatever. It's like, so who's the actual liberal in this equation, right? Like, who's the live and let live guy, right? It's like, is it the Baptist preacher, the conservative in Phoenix, or is it, like the person in Brooklyn that's really angry that someone disagrees with them in, like, central Iowa? But, you know, that's part of it. But I think that. So those are the kind of the imperial Democrats, right? They want to take over territory. It's like, we are not going to stop till everyone succumbs to our agenda. And then the other side of it, though, are like, the Sarah Silverman, Ron Perlman types, which they're actually being more humble and honest. I have to say that I have way more respect for people that are like, let's just break up and not fight. And that's actually a better. That's a better starting point than, like, we're going to take over Kansas. Like, well, hold. Hold on a second. Like, probably not going to. That's not in the cards. Does that make sense?
- [198:50]
Yeah, but can I put a fly in that ointment on the second one for you? Which is they're saying, let's break up and just that's it. But they'll never let that be. I think you would agree with that, right? If we give them the breakup that they want, Sarah Silverman, guess what she wants. It's like, she'll never stop. She's not gonna stop. As Florida flourishes, as Arizona flourishes and Texas flourishes, and as their places just crumble, they're not gonna stop now. They're gonna want what we got. So the second one might be more honest, but it's Not, I don't think it's fully thought through.
- [199:24]
No, it's not thought through. And look, there's, and this is not exaggerated, there's a thousand externalities that I don't have answers for. Military water rights, ports of entry. Right, like who gets rights to minerals, how do you travel back and forth, how do you divide the citizenship? What if you don't want to live there? I mean, it's like again, we have, if we actually put our heads together, there's enough mature people that could probably figure this out. But if we're dealing with Chuck Schumer, like, I don't know, like that's probably not going to go well. Do you know what I mean? He's like, no, no, actually I want Marshallton, Iowa, like you can't have, right? And so, yeah, that's why I, I and you, we want to heal this land, we want this to work, we want this republic to stay together. I don't think there is a manageable exit from this. And I don't, I would rather solve this with ballots than bullets, as Abraham Lincoln said. And I don't want this to go to conflict. I'm afraid it's trending that way. And the media always says, like, oh, Charlie thinks the Civil War is coming, first of all. I never use that term. But when I say conflict, I don't think that's out of the cards. Want it to happen, but you can only raise the temperature in the room so much before you kind of provoke a kinetic response. And so I actually think the parallel economy is going to be an unintended pressure release valve for liberty loving people across the country, which is like, okay, now I at least have a place I can watch videos. Like now I have a place I can bank right now I have a place I can get a mortgage. And I think that's going to hopefully bring the temperature down in the room, despite the best wishes of the other side. It seems like they want conflict, which is a whole different conversation for a different time. It seems like they want us to punch first and then they could justify the security state apparatus behind it.
- [201:07]
Now this concept of building the parallel economy purely to keep it together is actually interesting because most people think of it as, oh, that accelerates the separation. Cuz then we can just go our separate ways. But I like this release valve idea. Kirk, you got one today.
- [201:22]
Thank you.
- [201:23]
Very impressed.
- [201:23]
Charlie Kirk
Thank you.
- [201:25]
Dave Rubin
You got one. All right, now let me get you in some real trouble.
- [201:28]
Okay, here we go.
- [201:29]
Because everybody is looking to the midterms. And there's this feeling that there's gonna be this red wave, although as I said, we're seeing the pivot happen in real time. And you can also feel the media trying to link January 6th to somehow the truckers and that we're exporting a worldwide insurrection and all of this nonsense. But I wanna ask you this. Well, a, I guess give me a little bit of your take on what you think is gonna happen in the midterms and are there areas we could focus in to make sure that we get a nice result? But B, you know, everyone's looking at the 2024 situation. I want DeSantis to stay the governor of Florida. That's what I want. I think the state you live in is way more important. I think he's only been in one term so far. He's done a heck of a job. I just think that's more important than the presidency, believe it or not. Although obviously it is important. Do you as a guy that at least part time lives in Florida or is there a lot. Do you like that idea? Do you think he should run? Where does Trump fall out? What do you know on the inside the whole damn thing? Charlie, go.
- [202:26]
I'll start with the midterms. I think Republicans are gonna do well. I'm worried that we're not gonna do nearly as well as we should. Every single indicator shows Republicans are going to take back the House. Senate is a little bit up for grabs. This should be a 60 or 70 year seat majority for the House of Representatives, which is enough where you could hold onto that for at least two or three more cycles. So I don't know, it remains to be seen. Democrats are gonna try to correct a couple things. You could start to see that already they're having Obama come in and try to tell them to not be so radical out loud. He's really good at kind of saying.
- [203:00]
Right, he does it on the deal.
- [203:01]
Stop telling the truth.
- [203:02]
Charlie Kirk
Right.
- [203:02]
Dave Rubin
Like that's kind of his whole deal to try to tell people that, you know, that are running for office to just camouflage the radicalism. Right? Just tell people what they want to hear. So I think that they're gonna, I think they're gonn parade in order shortly. That's my warning to Republicans. I still think we're gonna do very, very well, especially in some of these Senate races like Arizona and Georgia. I think it'll be a 7 to 10 point swing on top of what things naturally are. I'm afraid I'll reinforce a point I said earlier. I think it will be a misleading indicator of the health of the Republican Party because of how bad the Democrats are. This will be a massive indictment of the woke and the Democrats and the insane and the COVID lockdowns where people are just looking for some way that they can just like what can I vote for that isn't them? I think Virginia was an example of that. I think the incredibly unexpected airtight race in New Jersey was an example of that. I think a Republican winning the city attorneys race in Seattle was an example of that. That's all back in November, but it's important to remind people of that. So that's one thing. I'm happy to go more into that. It's still, it's too early to kind of make predictions on like seat majorities, but I am not seeing from Republicans what I really want, which is a Newt Gingrich style Contract with America promises clear and concise. Here's what we're going to do. And it's not just, you know, free trade and giving China what they want and mass amnesty plan and lower taxes and socialism is bad enough, right? I think voters want more than that and I think they want honesty. So on the Trump thing in 2024, he is going to run. Every single indication points towards that. I think actually Trump will benefit from a primary challenge. I think that if he actually has to run against somebody who isn't a joke, I actually think that would really be good for him. I think that's one of the things that made him such a powerful general election candidate in 2016, because he had some of the most amazing metaphorical political crossfit training one could have. I mean, he ran up against like 29,000 people, right? It was like 16, but it was like from every direction, right? It was like boom, Scott Walker and boom, Ben Carson. It was like Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz. It was like nonstop. By the time he had a run against Hillary, he's like, I ran against 16 people, this is nothing. So I think that I'm not trying to encourage someone to run against him. I would rather see him obviously go unopposed if that's necessary. It's probably better for him in the sense of not having to spend as much money. But I actually think kind of shaking off kind of some of the dust and getting back into the metaphorical ring could be really, really good for him. As far as DeSantis goes, I think he's unbelievable. I think he's the greatest governor of the last 10 or 20 or 30 years. I can't think of a better governor. Ron DeSantis has done everything right and everything issue that matters to me, from vaccine mandates to opening up Florida, to being strong on crime across the board, he's been phenomenal. I think someone like Desantis, or it could be him, is the future of the Republican Party. I truly do. But Trump's gonna run and that's gonna be a challenge for a lot of people. I think that once you win one presidential election, you deserve a chance to run again. I really do. In 2020, there were massive irregularities. Happy to get into all the kind of voter fraud conversation if you want. I think Dinesh d' Souza's new film is extraordinary in what it looks into. And the evidence is very, very compelling. I think some of that could be shored up. I think Trump could win again. And look, I think that there is positives and negatives to him running again. The positives are he was a terrific president. He was tremendous. We know what we're getting. He has a base unlike anything we've ever seen. He'll raise a bunch of money in small dollar donations, he'll work his tail off. And I think that he also has a record to run on in contrast to this current absolute dumpster fire that we are seeing in real time. And also, make no mistake, I don't think people are really looking forward to having another Democrat president after four years. If we had, I want people to think about this. If we had a parliamentary system and there was right now a national vote of no confidence against Joe Biden, he'd get run out of there immediately. Now, we don't have that type of system. Right. We just don't. But if the election were held today, Donald Trump would just clobber him in every, like, he would win like 40 states. I think he would win New Hampshire, he'd win Nevada, and so look, I also think, though that Trump has to have, he has to make some adjustments going in 2024. If you're running up against a self destructive candidate, do not get in the way of your enemy defeating himself. I think that was something that's a great learning lesson from 2020. And I think 2016, Trump, where he was big, bold, ambitious, and he was willing to capture the imagination of the American people, I think he has to play a little bit more into that. It's hard when you're an incumbent to do that. I get it. But 2016, Trump, he made people dream. He really pushed the boundaries of what a political candidate is allowed to talk about. I think he could recapture that in a very, very compelling way in 2024.
- [207:41]
Charlie Kirk, future political consultant.
- [207:45]
Yeah, right.
- [207:45]
It's been a pleasure talking to you, my friend. I will see you probably. I sense it will be on the west coast of Florida. What do you think?
- [207:53]
West coast of Florida is the place to be. My place in Florida will not be disclosed, but it's not too far from Rumble's headquarters. The heartbeat of the response to the Silicon Valley tyranny. So honored, Dave. Thank you. And check out my locals, everybody.
- [208:08]
Charlie Kirk
It's gonna be great.
- [208:09]
Dave Rubin
It's charliekirk.locals.com right?
- [208:11]
That's right. That's correct.
- [208:13]
See ya, brother.
- [208:15]
See you soon. Thank you.
- [208:25]
All right. Joining me today is the founder of Turning Point USA and the host of the Charlie Kirk show, as well as multiple time Rubin Report guest Charlie Kirk. Charlie, how are you, my friend?
- [208:36]
Charlie Kirk
Dave, I'm doing great. Great to see you. Thank you for having me. And you've been so good to me and us throughout the years. So I want to make sure I express that gratitude and great to be back.
- [208:45]
Dave Rubin
Now, Charlie, you sound a little dour or a little depressed or a little soft spoken. Those were kind words and I appreciate it. But what's going on here? Before people think something weird's happening, I'm.
- [208:57]
Charlie Kirk
Trying to audition for the NPR NewsHour. So I'm trying to, you know, change my vibe. You know, I've been on these campuses and I've been known to have a lot of energy and a lot of passion. I think it's time for Charlie Kirk 2.0, where it's more thoughtful and slow. All kidding aside, Dave, I did seven events in Pennsylvania within 24 hours. And even for me, that was too much. I felt my voice was holding. It was holding, was holding. First time in my career. My voice just went out last Thursday, like out, and just couldn't talk for literally three days. So I had to rest it for three days, which is awfully humbling, but it's actually a lot better right now. I'm able to have a conversation with you and be intelligible. So not quite yet recovered, but we're, we're getting there. So people grant me a little grace. It's not the NPR hour.
- [209:46]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, I was going to say something kind of funny about like a conservative or just relatively sane human being trying to talk with the cadence of an NPR host. It would sound pretty damn disturbing. I mean, that's the worst. Like, what is, why don't we start there? What is wrong with these people? And I'm talking about everyone besides us at this point.
- [210:03]
Charlie Kirk
Well, but you know, I'm telling you, Dave with the NPR voice, what's so frustrating is they're talking about such like hyper aggressive topics in like this very muted way. Today on the NPR hour, we talk about how half the country should be exterminated from the face of the planet. And experts say it's good for the climate. Today on npr, it's like, wait, what? I'm sorry, did you just talk about like mass genocide in this, like very muted, passive aggressive voice? I think that's what bothers me the most about the NPR boys.
- [210:34]
Dave Rubin
I always say under that very thin veneer of pleasantness, there is something very, very nasty with most of these people. But let's dive in. We've got about a half hour together. Obviously a lot going on. We're 30 plus some odd days out from this election. Let me start with the most broad thing. I mean, obviously you're well within the Trump universe and helping fight on campuses and elsewhere. How are you feeling at this moment about the election?
- [211:01]
Charlie Kirk
I feel better than I did in 2020 for sure. I think Trump's in a much better spot. I feel better than even where we were in 2016. With that being said, given the environment, I would think we should be feeling even better because this election really should not be competitive or close. Given the economy, given the southern border, given the kind of status of how things are in the country, how people view how things are going in the country. Kamala Harris campaign team is brilliant. She's receiving coaching very, very well. You know, Dave is someone who's brilliant in broadcasting. I'm sure you see how she constantly is uploading new one liners and she's trying to de emphasize the cackle and the laugh and try to turn into something that she isn't. But yes, as far as the map and what's going to matter? Here's the good news, Dave, and I give you full credit for this. Florida is no longer a battleground state. So thank you, Dave.
- [211:54]
Dave Rubin
Thank you. Happy to help. You know, it's my way of giving back.
- [211:56]
Charlie Kirk
I give Dave 100% credit. You know, it was a battleground state until the Rubin Report moved down to Miami. But that's a big deal. In years past, Dave, we used to have to campaign in Florida and we used to have to do events. And Governor Ron DeSantis deserves a lot of credit for this from voter registration, being an effective governor. Democrats have given up on Florida and so that allows us to better focus our resources. Ohio used to be a battleground state, David. Not anymore. Trump is up 11 in Ohio. That is gone. Iowa used to be a battleground state. Now I'm doing this because in years past, we used to have to work our way up from, okay, gotta win Iowa, gotta win Ohio, then you gotta win Florida, and then we can get into those next second and third tier threshold states. That is not the case this time. This time we start from a far better place than we have in years past, where now North Carolina, we should win. It's a little shakier. I'll be honest with your audience. Given some problems with Mark Robinson and just other factors, North Carolina is not in the best place that it should be given other states. However, if Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, he's President of the United States. If you're telling me that Trump has to win three states, all three of which he's won in previous elections, one of which he won in 2020, and then the other he fell 10,000 votes short of, that's a great starting point. And we're not even getting into Wisconsin, which was 21,000 votes short in 2020, or Arizona, that was 10,000 votes short. And so it's a great map for Trump. What should happen is that it should break in Trump's favor somewhere around mid October. However, we can't underestimate Kamala Harris and their team's ability to chase ballots, register voters, engage in early voting. And so I remain saying this is a 50, 50 election. I think Trump has a 50% chance of winning.
- [213:44]
Dave Rubin
That is a bold prediction, my friend. 50% Trump, 50% Harris. Pretty good. Well, what. Let me ask you something that's actually a little trickier for guys like us to talk about and still be able to make a living, which is that I think a lot of people right now are worried that there are going to be some shenanigans. We don't have to relitigate 2020, but I think a lot of people are worried that it's going to be the day before the election. We're going to see weeks of massive Trump rallies. We've seen this kind of new coalition of rfk, Tulsi Elon types come around. We're not seeing a lot of people break the other way, really. And everything is going to feel like Trump is going to win and we're just going to wake up the next morning and he will not have won. How worried are you of that? That there's really no way, like, I know, okay, we can all say 50, 50 or whatever, but that there's really just no way to gauge these things properly anymore because we've all. Because there is no mainstream that makes sense. So we're all kind of off in our own little universe trying to just get a touch point that makes sense.
- [214:47]
Charlie Kirk
It's an important point. I am worried about it. And this is where I'm different in the camp than some people. I think there's a limit to their cheating. I think, like all things, there's only so much that they can cheat. For example, in the state of Florida, I think they would have loved to have Governor DeSantis not win in 2022. Well, he did by 20 points. Okay, meaning that there's a limit when you have enough public consensus and a good enough ground game. There's only so much the other time the other side can do. Shenanigans or tomfoolery or whatever. That's number one. Number two, where we are emphasizing our focus on turning point action is the people who agree with us that do not vote. There are tens of millions of people that stay at home and decide not to participate and not to vote, and their ballots are never in the system. So we think the best remedy to a very broken system is driving turnout, is to say if we have enough of our people turnout in record numbers, then we're able to overcome that. But, Dave, I don't want to sugarcoat it, and I don't want to mislead your audience. What you just articulated might happen. And I don't say that as a way to make you cynical. I'd say that to people so that you know what you're dealing with, number one. And number two, it should actually give you more reason and more urgency to vote.
- [216:00]
Dave Rubin
What are you seeing that has changed over the last couple of years on college campuses? You and I used to do a ton of events together, you know, seven, eight years ago. Our lives and businesses have gone in separate directions. So it's been a while that we've done something on stage together. But what are you seeing now that maybe we didn't see back then? Or is it crazier? Did any of the craziness go away? I mean, it seems crazier, but you're out there.
- [216:24]
Charlie Kirk
I will say this. I mean, the videos and the pictures speak for themselves. And, Dave, you remember the opposition? There's still a fair amount of opposition there. We just did an event at Penn State University. We do these prove me wrong events where we have people come up to the mic and the videos go super viral. We had 3,000 people show up.
- [216:40]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, it was awesome. We'll throw some B roll in so people can see while you're talking right now.
- [216:44]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah.
- [216:44]
And that's no spin, that's no bs. That's not like a bunch of people from like the local GOP meeting. And these are young students at a campus in Center College, Pennsylvania. Similar type crowd at University of Wisconsin Madison. We're going Arizona State University. Similar type deal. Here's the truth. Young ladies, super liberal, no doubt. Okay. Very, very liberal young men. Most conservative they've been in 50 years and by far the most conservative I've seen them in the 12 years of doing this.
- [217:14]
Dave Rubin
What do you make of this new alliance that I mentioned earlier? This sort of rfk, Tulsi Elon? I would say me plenty of other people thing that has more come around. I don't think everyone is traditionally a conservative. And you and I used to joke for years you'd always be saying, Dave, you're going to be the, the most hardcore conservative out of all of us by the end, cuz you know what they are. But what do you make of this thing that's happening right now? Because you know, it, it to me, it's what America is all about and that's really what Trump represents now. It disagrees. These people wildly disagree on abortion, they wildly disagree on foreign policy and a whole bunch of other stuff. But they love America. They love America and they love free speech. And to me, that that is good enough. I can work with that.
- [217:56]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah. First of all, I think it's one of the most exciting, underreported developments by the mainstream media. Media is being careful not to touch this because I think they know they'd make it even bigger if they gave any credence to it. And add to the list Brett Weinstein. I mean, that's amazing. This guy is a liberal from Evergreen State University and he's in the fight now. And so what is the through line here between Tulsi Gabbard, Bobby Kennedy, Elon Musk? Number one is that they have experienced, spent time with, fraternized with the left wing blue beast and they did not like what they've seen. All of them have a story of personal scorn that terrified them of what that thing is. And you too, right, Dave? I mean you have your stories, you are way ahead of the curve. But for the record, Dave was like a decade ahead of everybody else.
- [218:47]
Dave Rubin
I was so ahead of the curve. I was behind. I think that's where we're at right now.
- [218:50]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, Exactly. Yeah. It's all one big circle where Bret Weinstein, Evergreen State University, he was like, what is this? This is complete nonsense. Jordan Peterson, what happened with the forced pronoun stuff in Canada. Elon Musk, to a lesser extent, a personal story. But you could look at how his companies have been targeted. Twitter, free speech. It's only further brought him in that direction.
- [219:13]
Dave Rubin
His son, that's now a daughter or whatever you want to say about that. I mean, that's pretty damn personal, but I get your point.
- [219:20]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, for sure. Oh, no, that's exactly right. I mean, yeah, I totally forgot about that. You're exactly right. And then you have Tulsi Gabbard, co chair of the DNC, who was the darling of D.C. until she disagreed with the Democrat party on foreign policy. And she immediately became a pariah. It's like, we're not allowed to deal with you. Or how about Bobby Kennedy? Bobby Kennedy, who ran for the presidency as a Democrat, then an independent. They sue to try to keep him off the ballot, and they sue to keep him on the ballot. Just this incredibly contradictory, non principled Democrat Party. And all of them kind of simultaneously were like, okay, wait a second. I'm not a conservative, I'm not a Republican, but I like free speech. And this open border thing is insane. And the government has way too much power. That's merged with big corporations. And we all love the Constitution. Who's with me? And this kind of Avengers unity team started to organically come together. You see, Dave, there was no central casting of this. There was not some kind of casting director that was like, yeah, and then we'll bring Tulsi Gabbard. This all happened organically. It's a profoundly exciting and groundbreaking story. The 2024 election. 2020 did not have a through line with this story. 2016 did not have a sub plot like this. This here is people that I want you to think about it. A Kennedy. A Kennedy who's the namesake of Bobby Kennedy, the co chair of the DNC, Brett Weinstein, who was like Mr. Liberal professor of the Year. And they all have their own personal story. But here's the thing. It's not just that they were, oh, I'm scorned. No, no, no. They extrapolated being like, whoa, yep, if this happens to me and these people treated me this way, what am I dealing with? With this big blue machine or Team Blue, if you will. And so combining forces, it's been amazing to see. I consider many of them friends. And Dave, you know, I'm very conservative. But I also love disagreements and I love agreement on the macro stuff. And the micro stuff is not that interesting to me. And I think that's what makes the conservative movement a healthier movement and a more vibrant movement and a robust movement. And so if I think in some ways it is what you and I tried to demonstrate through unity campus work seven or eight years ago that has now manifested and crescendoed into the presidential election.
- [221:43]
Dave Rubin
I should note that we're taping this in a couple days in advance, but this weekend that has just passed by the time you guys are seeing this, the Restore the Republic rally is taking place. Charlie and I will both be there or were there in essence. And we're going to have a whole bunch of interviews and I'm broadcasting.
- [221:59]
Dan Harris
Hey, this is Dan Harris, host of the 10% Happier podcast. I'm here to tell you about a new series we're running this September on 10 happier. The goal is to help you do your life better. The series is called Reset. It's all about hitting the reset button in many of the most crucial areas of your life. Each week we'll tackle a topic like how to reset your nervous system, how to reset your relationships, how to reset your career. We're going to bring on top notch scientists and world class meditation teachers to give you deep insights and and actionable advice. It's all delivered with our trademark blend of skepticism, humor, credibility and practicality. 10% happier is self help for smart people. Come join the party live from there.
- [222:38]
Dave Rubin
And there's some time shift disorder involved in all of this, but we'll, we'll have all of those videos up as well. Be careful.
- [222:44]
Charlie Kirk
The way I was talking about it. Thank you, Dave.
- [222:45]
I was like I can see it.
- [222:47]
And it happened.
- [222:48]
Dave Rubin
Yes, I will see you in a few days. And also I just saw you something like that. Let me ask you about the blue monster that you just mentioned or that blue machine or the system or the swamp, whatever you want to call it at this point. I am still and you know, I take Augusts off so I'm a little delayed I guess when it comes to the fall. But I'm still a little hung up on the coup thing that happened. The fact that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer got together clearly with Kamala. They made it very obvious to Joe that they were gonna pull the 25th Amendment and clearly Jill and whoever else didn't have enough juice to fight it off. And I guess the question I'm asking you is are you still amazed that the Machine can pull off these tricks. I mean, we don't talk about that. We don't talk about Trump assassination attempt 1. We don't talk about assassination attempt 2. That somehow, despite all of these people coming together and all the good stuff that you've just pointed out here, the machine finds a way. The House kind of always wins.
- [223:44]
Charlie Kirk
I am amazed by it. But what's more remarkable to me, Dave, is how they're able to quell rebellion and how they're able to keep any disagreement from bubbling up. That's what I find to be an interesting psychological mystery to me, where they're able to be like, okay, guys, we're the party democracy. What we're gonna do is put in a candidate with no votes and if you disagree, we're gonna destroy you. And everyone's like, cool? Yeah, absolutely. That sounds great. And again, this is why Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard and these people were affecting because it's completely insane and it's so self evidently bad for the country. So. Yes. And I think that we'd be clear though, that the Kamala Harris thing, again, the media has been such an enemy to the American people and so awful on the Kamala thing. This was probably a plan that was many months underway. It was probably started around April or May or earlier. The summer debate, when they schedule with Joe Biden, was probably a sabotage to try to get Joe Biden either that will surge. Yeah, please, Dave, interject.
- [224:51]
Dave Rubin
Well, let me pause you there for a second. Cuz do you think in some. Cuz I agree with you on that actually. But my question is, do you think maybe Trump fell in their trap on that one, in that he was willing to do the debate so early, so it gave them the chance for this thing to swap.
- [225:05]
Charlie Kirk
Do I wish that Trump would not have done the debate? Yes, I think because in some ways the trend was going so well for us. But you look at it from Trump's perspective, it's that he's the guy that's like, there will be no fight he'll say no to, especially against Biden. Very personal. You have four years of pent up. I should be president and you shouldn't be.
- [225:27]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [225:28]
Charlie Kirk
And understand that not all the data before the debate was nearly as decisive that Trump was gonna win. There was polls that showed Biden up. There were polls. So it was still a little bit of a murky situation. Right. But looking back at it, we're like, man, we gave the coup plotters the forcing function that they needed. Right. And with that Being said, I still think we can be Kamala, and we might. So I don't want to, you know, complain all day long, but looking back, if a candidate who's not doing great wants a summer debate, we should probably put this in, like, our political strategy book for the next hundred years so our grandkids can learn this.
- [226:03]
Dave Rubin
Right?
- [226:03]
Charlie Kirk
Don't give them that.
- [226:04]
Dave Rubin
Don't give them that. Yeah, right.
- [226:07]
Charlie Kirk
So again, I'm not blaming Trump. He's a friend. Like, I get it. I understand the calculus, but I think we can look back. We can say when they're not doing well, don't debate in June.
- [226:17]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, right, right. I get it, I get it. It was very different at the time. I'm just saying in retrospect. And look, hopefully he wins and it becomes largely irrelevant. So, no.
- [226:27]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah. But looking again, looking at it now, we're like, man. And that was the beginning of the end. And they were able to then put Kamala in. It's very clear that all these slogans, all these one liners were workshopped ahead of time. You know, a broad new future on the can, all this crap. Right. That she didn't just all of a sudden become a candidate and had all this branding ready to go out of nowhere. This was definitely planned behind the scenes. Joe Biden fought it, and they're like, okay, old man, good luck. And the one thing that actually screwed up the timing was the Trump assassination attempt. Screwed it up a little bit, but they still went through with it amazingly. That's one of the reasons why they had to memory hold that assassination attempt so quickly is they wanted to get the news cycle onto Kamala. But understand what happened within one week. Historians will write this down as one of the most interesting. Eight days never reported by media. No one was like, oh, yeah, that's interesting how that'll happen. Trump gets shot. Trump becomes the nominee. Kamala becomes the nominee. Eight days. So you have a shooting, a convention, and a switch, and no one asks the question, like, what the hell just happened here? Like, who's in charge? And by the way, Dave, can somebody explain to me, was there like a zoom call where, like, Kamala Harris officially became the nominee? Was there like a text message or, like, Charlie?
- [227:43]
Dave Rubin
It was very grassroots. I've been told it was a grassroots effort to install her with Novo. Please don't ask any more questions.
- [227:50]
Charlie Kirk
No, I just. I want to know, at least for, like, future planning, if what exactly? How did this work? It was like a Slack channel or like no one has ever explained. It's Just like, oh, no, all the delegates pledge support for it. No, I got that. I know, but was there ever, like a sequence? And it's chilling, Dave, how millions of Americans just bought it. They were cool with it. Yeah. The person that didn't even make it to Iowa in our party back in 2020 is now the most popular person ever. But, hey, that's the party of democracy.
- [228:21]
Dave Rubin
Well, what does that tell you about the modern Democrat Party? Because, you know, you know my feelings about the word liberal and why I can't really call myself a liberal. Not because I am not in some old school sense, but because the word has just been so mucked up, it doesn't, it doesn't fly for me anymore. It's just not worth the explanation. But what does that tell you about the sort of general state of the average Democrat voter that they sort of like being spit on in the face?
- [228:45]
Charlie Kirk
Actually, it's a couple things. I don't think it's hard to overstate how much they hate Trump and what deals they're willing to cut in their own mind and in their politics to get rid of Trump. I think that's a big part of it. And I think they hate Trump so much that they're willing to privately say, we gotta get rid of Trump. Let's just put our democracy stuff aside. I really think that's a core piece of this. The second piece, though, is that the Democrat Party for the last 30, like, 20 years post Obama has been more like an oligarchy. The country runs more like an oligarchy. The Democrat Party absolutely runs like an oligarchy. Now, mind you, the Republican Party used to run like an oligarchy. And the 2016 race was supposed to be Hillary Clinton versus Jeb Bush. Yeah, that's what the race was supposed to be. Two families that have ruled before with their own fiefdoms. They agree on everything except corporate tax cuts. That's it. Right. Like, the whole election would have been about, like, corporate tax rates and, I don't know, like, school choice or something. Okay, great. Like, that would have been the whole election. And that way, no matter who wins, D.C. wins. Trump blew that up and took over the Republican Party and kicked the plutocrats out. And many of them went into the Democrat Party. Leon Panetta, Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney, they're now in the Democrat Party. They help run the Democrat Party. Literally. It's not an exaggeration. And so the average Democrat voter is possessed by the hatred of Trump and the rulers and leaders. They're like, hey, instead of Having to deal with primaries, we just call the shots. And an oligarchy is the ruling of the few that are untouchable. And so it's a very chilling development. It is.
- [230:25]
Dave Rubin
Let's dive into a couple of the issues because you and I, although politically we've definitely come closer over the years since we first met, we don't agree on everything, which is completely fine. And I'm not, I don't want to do a back and forth on who's right about the issues, but I want to talk about abortion and sort of how it might hurt. Well, you might argue it would help Trump in this election. I, I, although I consider myself begrudgingly pro choice, and we can pick what that means, whether it's, you know, 12 or 14 weeks or whatever. You know, here in Florida we have six, Obviously, I was for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, because abortion obviously is not a constitutionally guaranteed right. However, it seems to me this is always going to be a loser for Republicans also, not just, not because of the optics exactly as much as the Democrats are just going to lie about the Republican position on it all the time. For example, at the debate that he's for a national abortion ban and no matter how many times he says he's not for it in that first debate with, with Biden, I thought that was the best three minutes he's maybe ever given politically to explain himself and then to say, to say, oh, and I don't even know if this is going to help me electorally. So my question to you is not to debate abortion rather than do you. Is this the great card they have up their sleeve always to get voter turnout at the last second?
- [231:40]
Charlie Kirk
No, for sure, it's a great question. And you know me, I'm a pro life absolutist and totally respect disagreements on the issue because most of the country's not where I'm at. And you got to be realistic. Yes. To answer your question first politically and then morally are two different issues the way I look at it, because as a spokesperson, as an advocate, when I'm on campus, I don't move an inch on the moral topic. I'm not running for office and I try to make arguments that way. Politically, you have to win elections and you have to try to win elections by persuading a majority of people in states to agree with you. And the majority of the country is not even close to where I am on abortion. And the only thing I would push back on, you said it's always going to be a loser. I Don't know if always is. Maybe the country will become more pro life. Maybe people like me will be successful.
- [232:26]
Dave Rubin
Currently, let's say in the next decade or so, something like that.
- [232:31]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, fine. Currently it is a political problem for Republicans for many different reasons. And the first reason is that people who call themselves pro life are not actually as pro life as I am. They're like, well, I'm pro life, which means, like, abortion in the first trimester. And like. Okay, well, we have different definitions of what pro life is. Let me say this, though, is that if Kamala Harris wins, she said she's going to use the filibuster to get rid of any state sovereignty on this issue and nationalize Roe versus Wade. You disagree with that? I disagree with that. And so now we agree that that is like nationalized abortion zealotry that has no space at all in our country, and it would reverse a lot of pro life momentum that I care deeply about. Number two, which is the pro life infrastructure. Kamala Harris, as Attorney General, she used the California Attorney General's office to go after David Daleiden, to go after journalists, to go after pregnancy resource centers. Kamala Harris would use the IRS and the Department of Justice to go after pro life organizations, nonprofits, 501s and companies just because they would be spreading, you know, medical disinformation. The final point, though, that I'll say this, is that Trump's in a very difficult position in the sense where he delivered a reversal of Roe vs. Wade. The pro life movement largely is now not sure what to do about that, to be perfectly honest. You know, do you run on a national ban? Do you run on a state type thing? I want my own opinions, none of which have been listened to or kind of followed and not that applicable. What you must.
- [234:10]
Dave Rubin
For the record, I think Trump played it perfectly. I think Trump's messaging on this has been absolutely perfect. I don't know that it will get more votes, but I think it's.
- [234:17]
Charlie Kirk
I wouldn't say perfect. Yeah, I would say he should not say reproductive freedom. I don't think that's smart to use left wing. There was one truth social where he said that, and I told him that privately, and I think he received that. However, given the circumstance, I would agree he's been very prudent in how he's navigated this. And I want everyone who's pro life to understand this as well, that Donald Trump very well could have just said, forget all of you guys. I'm just gonna be, you know, I'm gonna say that I believe in 12 weeks nationally and just get rid of the issue. And instead he says, look, we brought it back to the states, we reversed Roe versus Wade. And I agree with you. His abortion answer with Biden was the best I've ever seen.
- [234:57]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [234:57]
Charlie Kirk
And he talked about late term abortion. And I was like, man, and if we could just have that kind of on repeat. And so let me just finish with this, which is that those of us that are pro life are never gonna stop advocating for the unborn, advocating for this obviously deeply important moral topic. But I also don't live on fantasy land in politics, and I don't act as if it's a political winner when currently it's not.
- [235:19]
Dave Rubin
Let me ask you another. Another hot one, which is that the Democrats, and I guess this goes to how confused they are about almost all the issues when it comes to foreign policy. They are obsessively pro war as it pertains to Ukraine, Russia, even though Putin's got nukes. No defense of Putin, just a reality. And they're wildly anti Israel. How do you put these two things together?
- [235:44]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, let's just be honest. There's significant Jew hatred in the base of the Democrat Party. Both movements have anti Semitism. The Democrat Party has it, like, in the fibers of their party. And I have the best piece of evidence for this that no one can refute. Josh Shapiro should have been the vice presidential nominee. Pennsylvania might go to Trump. And I'm not saying this is like some sort of broad prediction. Just look at all the numbers on the ground and the chatter. And yet you have this very popular governor with a sizable political operation who just has one problem. Dave, he's a Jew. Well, not a problem for me or you, but like, for the Democrats, they were like, there's no way that they wanted to turn Chicago into a race riot about, you know, what's happening in Israel. That's a big problem. That was an undercovered story that someone was actively discriminated against from becoming a vice presidential nominee simply because he was Jewish.
- [236:37]
Dave Rubin
You know, Charlie, you'll find it interesting. He was my choice when I left to go off the grid for August. One of the last things I said, I was like, I'll make one prediction. It's going to be Josh Shapiro. And I'm pretty sure I said it on air, if not on a backstage show or whatever. Like, the only issue would be that they don't want to Jew for sure.
- [236:54]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah. And again, let's just repeat this. That he was object.
- [236:59]
He is.
- [236:59]
He would right now be making Pennsylvania a far more competitive state, therefore massively increasing Kamala Harris's odds. When they chose this buffoon from Minnesota, Tim Walls, I just, I was like, thank you. I guess. So that's number one. Number two, though, is that the base, base of the Democrat Party, they view Israel as a mistake. We view Israel as a miracle.
- [237:22]
Dave Rubin
Big difference.
- [237:23]
Charlie Kirk
We view Israel as the hero's triumph of people that were significantly abused, murdered, attempted to be genocided, and were able to create something basically an oasis in the desert, a place where common law and separation of powers and individual liberty and private property rights were able to flourish in a sea of totalitarianism. They view Israel as a colonialist project that stole land from indigenous. You've heard all this nonsense, right? So it goes back. They hate Israel for very similar reasons why they hate the West.
- [237:59]
Dave Rubin
So what do you do with that? What do you do with that? That's one of the things that I'm extremely worried about right now. I'm sure you're playing them on your show, too. But almost every day I can show you a video of a now a Hezbollah flag in New York City and a riot or what's happening in Chicago or San Francisco or Detroit on top of the homelessness and everything else. What I'm majorly worried about, outside of, like the pure political part of all of this, is how long can a Western society, a multi multicultural society, last when on any given day in any major city, you can have terrorist supporters rampaging through the streets? Like, how long do you think that can work?
- [238:34]
Charlie Kirk
Well, not much longer. I mean, look at the United Kingdom. It's a husk of its former self. There's a couple components here. Number one, not all cultures are equal. And I say that definitively and clearly. And it drives people nuts. I'm sorry that Mideastern Muslim totalitarianism is not equal to Western civilization. It's just not. The people are equal made in the image of God's economy. Let me be very clear. This is not that some people are substandard or anything not even close to their worldview is not equal to ours. But number two, what you're articulating, Dave, is an immigration problem. And to President Trump's great credit, this is his issue where he's the strongest. We need to have mass deportations for lots of people, including anti Western American flag burner newcomers that come to the country at our request. They come to the country with our invitation and they act in such a hostile and bitter way no more. They should be deported from the nation and they should not be here any longer because we are inviting our own demise.
- [239:38]
Dave Rubin
Charlie, there's literally a hundred other things that I could do with you right now, but I'm gonna let you save your voice so that you can speak at the event that we are about to go to. That if you're watching this now, we just did. It'll be good to see you already spoke at yeah, it'll be good to see you in real life. My last question is the most annoying one. You know what it is? Who's going to win the election?
- [239:59]
Charlie Kirk
Got a coin flip it.
- [240:01]
Dave Rubin
Come on, come on, come on.
- [240:04]
Charlie Kirk
That's it. I have no idea. All I know is what I'm going to do and I'm working as hard as I possibly can. Dave, you know, I don't BS I do not know. I can make great arguments for Kamala, great arguments for Trump. It's as 5050 as I've ever seen it.
- [240:19]
Dave Rubin
Enjoy your throat lozenge. I'll see you this weekend.