From the Archive: The Fruit of the West is the Fruit of Christianity — Charlie at the Sun Valley Policy Forum

00:00:03 Speaker 1: My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You got to stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life, and I encourage you to do the same. Here I am. 00:00:46 Speaker 2: Lord, use me. 00:00:48 Speaker 1: Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show. a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. 00:01:17 Speaker 3: That was fantastic. Thank you, Charlie. 00:01:20 Speaker 1: Thank you. 00:01:23 Speaker 4: You know, I'm not going to put Charlie on the spot here, but we were talking in the green room, and he asked about the pavilion and could we fill the pavilion next time. 00:01:33 Speaker 1: You know. 00:01:33 Speaker 3: I said, yes, we could. 00:01:36 Speaker 1: I get this bad trait from Donald Trump. I always want bigger rooms and bigger spaces and more crowds. Sorry. Maybe it's a good trait. I don't know. That's right. That's right. 00:01:46 Speaker 3: So it's excellent. So that was incredible. 00:01:50 Speaker 4: I want to talk about all the things we talked about. So we can go through a little bit of that. We're going to take some questions. We've got some time. So Independence Day is coming up. We do have a core topic that we talk about, the Constitution. And you like to talk about freedom of religion in the Constitution and why that is one of the most important clauses in the First Amendment, and as a driver for freedom for all Americans, regardless of religion. 00:02:19 Speaker 3: Do you want to kind of. 00:02:19 Speaker 1: Just spend a little time explaining that to us? I'm a deeply religious person, but even if you are not religious, you have to be intellectually honest that the country was better when more Americans took their religion seriously, period. And it's absolutely true. And you might say that the two are not related. I completely disagree. I think that it was better when most Americans believed that there was a creator of the universe that was not them, and they did not desire to be the creator of the world. I think it's just a better world to live in when you have that operating belief. And I could tell you that if you think it's okay, I'm not saying anyone has this belief, but just if you think it's okay that America loses its religious flavor or fervor, look to Europe what happens as they all of a sudden have become less religious. That continent is a husk of its former self. And you lose the moral center. There's a reason why. And this is a very important point. John Adams famously said, who's one of my favorite founding fathers, he famously said, the Constitution was written wholly for a moral and religious people. It is inadequate for the people of any other. So basically, the form and structure that I just spent time talking about, you really can't continue if America becomes completely secular. And there's a reason for it. If you have a body politic... that believes that there is a God who judges them and believe that there's a God who cares about how they act and that God wants you to do certain things, you don't need the voluminous laws that we have in our society where we have 900,000 laws if you count the federal register and the federal code and so on and so forth. So I just want to say that first and foremost. Secondly, we've always been lectured about separation of church and state. That is not in the constitution, but for argument's sake, let's pretend that's actually something that's in the Constitution. Instead, it's free exercise of religion and the establishment clause that Congress shall make no law abridging or respecting the religion thereof. However, you know, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a single letter in 1807 to the Danbury Baptist Convention, he said to the Danbury Baptists, we have separation of church and state. Interestingly, because the Baptists were really worried the government was going to come after them. Okay, So then the Warren Court or the Burger Court in the 60s, they resurrected this idea of separation of church and state. And they said, we cannot have any church in the state. Okay, well, during COVID, if we have separation of church and state, why was the state allowed to shut down the church? Oh, so you don't mean separation of church and state. You mean that the state can control the church, but the church can't have any input in the state. Got it. That's what this has all been about. Because they don't mean separation of church and state. They've always meant separation of morality and state. And nobody in this room believes that. That at some point, you will have to make a moral decision. And we're seeing this in the West right now. And I see it firsthand when I visit these college campuses. And you can watch my videos ad nauseum. Eventually, you have to get down to a truth claim. And we as Christians believe in very simple truth claims. Ones that we can all agree on is the Ten Commandments. And so eventually someone on college campus will say, why is it wrong for a 13 year old to chop off their breasts? Like, I see nothing wrong with that. So now we're talking wrong and right, good and evil. And if there is no transcendent standard to be able to judge off of that, well, then that's how you get. tens of thousands of kids that are medically mutilating themselves every single year. Additionally, Christopher Hitchens, who is a very well-known atheist from the United Kingdom, in the last couple of months, he came out and he said, I want back Christian society. So he's an atheist who doesn't believe in the truth claims of Christianity, who is acknowledging the West was better when it was Christian. And he's right. He's being honest. And Two things can be equally true. You might say that's a contradiction. No, he just doesn't believe in the metaphysics of Christianity, but he believes in the fruit of Christianity. And you can't have one without the other. However, I'm a big proponent and advocate of this because I believe at its core, if we think we can fix our problems in the West by continuing to be more secular, I think we're fooling ourselves. 00:06:28 Speaker 3: That's great. 00:06:32 Speaker 4: What did you, we had a governor in Louisiana just pass a law. Yeah, why don't you talk about that? The Ten Commandments, that was really bold. And I, you know, it was, of course, MSNBC did not. 00:06:43 Speaker 1: Well, no, they attacked me for saying something good about it. So first of all, how many of you guys know the Ten Commandments are actually in the Supreme Court building? Moses is in the Supreme Court building. This is not controversial, okay? By the way, I would love any MSNBC host, they can even study ahead of time, to come on my show, can you name the Ten Commandments, okay? I am the Lord your God who delivered you from Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall have no images in the form of no idols, right? Honor the Sabbath day and to keep it holy. You shall not carry or take the Lord's name in vain. honor your mother and father's name and live long in the land of which you are in. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not commit adultery. And of course, do not covet. I think I skipped over one. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not, do not give false witness. Thank you. Do not lie, essentially. So, by the way, who could, so then I asked the question, I asked the question of anybody who's secular. Okay. Forget the first four. Okay. The last six. Why do you have a problem with those? I mean, like, do not murder, do not steal. And the reason the Ten Commandments must be, I mean, the ACLU is suing, they're losing their mind over this. Again, this is what they spend their nonprofit money on, trying to remove the Ten Commandments from our schools. And the reason is this, is that they cannot finish their transformation project of America if people believed in the Ten Commandments. 00:08:03 Speaker 5: You cannot. 00:08:03 Speaker 1: You cannot. And the founders knew, the founders believed in self-government, and the founders would say time and time again, if every citizen knew, believed, and acted within the Ten Commandments, you have liberty. Think about that. You're a self-governing republic. If you believe that there's something higher above you that tells you that these 10 things really matter. For example, I honor the Sabbath very religiously. I'm not Jehovah's Witness. I just adopted it because I think it's amazing. And my life is infinitely better that I turn off my phone every Friday night to Sunday morning. I encourage everyone to do it. One of my favorites, though, and I could talk about this literally because I teach on the 10 commandments a lot because I think it's one of the most important topics in America, is the one commandment that the Marxists have targeted the most. And it's the only one of the 10 commandments that involves your nation and a promise. And it is the bridge commandment, the bridge commandment between our relationship with the divine and our relationship with our fellow man, which is honor your mother and father so that you may live long in the land of which you are in. Karl Marx and every Marxist thinker sense has said, in order to usher in our revolution, we must destroy the nuclear family. We are now a country that no longer fears God or fears our parents, but we fear the left instead. 00:09:17 Speaker 4: Yeah, I've got a follow up question, but I want the audience to get ready for their questions. 00:09:22 Speaker 1: And so I hope I had no idea. We were talking about no ideas like that's amazing. 00:09:26 Speaker 3: So I love this topic. 00:09:28 Speaker 4: So you also like to talk about the sort of the how liberty fits in a definition of liberty. And can just just explain that to and how that leads, what that leads to and how we have what liberty gives us. 00:09:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a very important point. And liberty understood in the classical sense, as the founders understood it, is not being able to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. That is a new age term of liberty. That's how we get drug legalization, prostitution, open air homelessness, and all the nonsense we see. Liberty is having the ability. absent government interference, to do what one ought to do. It's completely different. License is the ability to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. So again, this goes back to truth claims. You cannot build a self-governing republic if you're not willing to say that one way of life is better than the others. Some conservatives don't even like talking like this. They say, well, who am I to judge? I'm sorry. The way of having a beautiful family and homeschooling your children is And following the laws of the land, that's a better way of living than some bum on the side of the street in San Francisco who's a meth addict. Like, building a family is a way better life, and it's more virtuous, and we should lift that up. And so liberty is the ability to do what one ought to do. Again, that invites a whole bunch of questions and disagreements because we've been propagandized by the modern libertarian movement to never– like judge what another person does. We get the trans stuff because of that belief. Just so we're clear. We get the fact that our children are being preyed upon in the classrooms when we are unwilling to say that is not Liberty. I'll give you a great example. There was a debate in the last couple of five years ago between David French and so Amari David French, who I can't stand. He thinks he's super smart. And not again. 00:11:10 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:11:11 Speaker 1: So David French says that it was the founder's view of Liberty that to allow drag queens to be able to dance in front of children in libraries. And his argument actually made sense legally. And then so Rob says, no, no, the founders, they wanted Liberty, not license. And this was this huge debate that blew up. And so that is the test I have for people. Do you think that grown men wearing thongs should be able to go into libraries and dance in front of eight-year-olds? And currently the law says yes, because it's Liberty, right? No, because we have not defined liberty correctly. That is degeneracy, not liberty. Liberty is that which lifts us up to a better version of ourselves and humanity. It is about the beautiful things in life. Drag queen story hour with some thong dude is the disgusting things in life. 00:12:08 Speaker 3: All right, I know you have. 00:12:09 Speaker 4: A lot of questions, and I'd love to start looking for a question. I'm going to hand it to front row Ray. Sean, you ready? 00:12:18 Speaker 6: Okay, I have a question, and maybe it's not appropriate for this, but for the last four or five years, I've always been, I've never heard an explanation for this. Why 2% of the population takes over 80% of the airwaves, like you're talking about, right? Everybody in the administration has to be bi or gay or dressed in dresses with beards. I don't get it. But, you know, I'm not saying it's bad or good or anything. I'm just wondering how, who is involved in this? I mean, who presses this? 00:12:54 Speaker 1: It's a great, it's a very deep question. So what you're talking about is the new state-run religion of the West, which is the religion of pride. And we have a whole month dedicated to it. Do we have a whole month dedicated to Jesus? 00:13:05 Speaker 3: No. 00:13:06 Speaker 1: We have like two days, Easter and Christmas. We have a whole month embraced by corporate America, the federal government, the Department of Defense, the CIA around like people's personal private sexual behaviors. That's very like at its face. That should immediately be like, what are we doing as a civilization here? And so the answer is this, is that it is one of the five fake religions, counterfeit religions. that have infected Western culture. I can go through the list, but it's not totally applicable to this, but one of them is the religion of earth worship or environmentalism, the religion of anti-racism, the religion of scientism. But it has a fervor that feels as if that you're watching some sort of like a weird counterfeit Pentecostal revival. And you might say, well, that's heretical. Think about it. They have chantings and sayings that they all agree on. They have a core doctrine. They also have symbology that is more, in the month of June, I've seen more publicly displayed rainbow flags than American flags. Maybe you disagree. Maybe Idaho's different. 00:14:17 Speaker 3: No? 00:14:18 Speaker 1: Okay, that's good. I'm glad Idaho's the exception. Maybe Boise, I don't know, Boise... Yeah, so Huntington Beach Bandit, good for them. So who is pushing it? Well, it's being pushed internally, but this is, again, the death of God in the West is one of the great moral tragedies. Frederick Nietzsche, who wrote a lot of books, he was wrong about a lot. He famously came up with that God is dead. That was one of his famous things. He actually was lamenting it, and he put forward, and thus says that Zalathustra in one of his books that he wrote, He says that, and I'm paraphrasing, be very careful, Westerners, what comes after God. And he was somebody that was not even a Christian. He was a nihilist who was saying God has already died. This is the 1870s, to be clear, how prophetic this guy was. And he's like, what comes next will be very dark. And we are living through that darkness, essentially. And they will not stop. And I'll just, I'll go really quickly. The pride thing and the gay thing is we've all been taken advantage of on this because it started with, okay, you must tolerate it. I think a lot of us, our temperament was like, sure, we're tolerant people. Who wants to be called intolerant, right? But then all of a sudden they said, you must accept it. Like, wait a second, I thought it was about tolerance. Now you care about my personal beliefs? And then all of a sudden they said, now you must celebrate it. I thought this was about tolerance. And they're like, where's your gay flag outside of your home? Why don't you have it at your corporate banner? What's your gay pride index? Not kidding, a real thing. How many openly transgender people do you have in your HR department? Questions they ask. Then finally, they say you must participate in it. And if you're like, well, how do I do that? Oh, give us your kids. And I will say something that might offend somebody, and that's fine. I don't care. They cannot reproduce, so they must recruit. 00:16:18 Speaker 2: All right, everybody, if you have a family, you know that you've got to be prepared for your family. And before this season gets even busier, we're about to head into the fall, back to school, got holidays just around the corner, you've got to check off one to-do that can safeguard your family's future, and that's quickly finding life insurance, okay? And it's tailored to your family's needs with Policy Genius. So I'm telling you, if you do not have life insurance, Policy Genius makes finding the right insurance and planning for your future easier than ever, okay? I have a great plan for my family with Policy Genius. You can do that too. So what is Policy Genius? 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That's policygenius.com. 00:17:54 Speaker 4: All right, we have another question. I see one over here on the aisle on the right. 00:17:59 Speaker 3: Hi, Charlie. 00:18:00 Speaker 7: My name's Tanya. My husband and I are huge fans of you. Thank you so much for what you're doing. Yeah. We're strong believers of preserving the nuclear family. We are 31 and 30. He's going to be 33 soon. We've been together 17 years. We have a 14-year-old, 9-year-old, one in heaven, and one on the way. That's amazing. And we give credit to God, to Jesus Christ. So thank you. Thank you. I started to get into politics because of the things that I see that are being brought into the school system. And a lot of people here in Blaine County don't think that the CRT movement or like the DEI is as bad as it is in the bigger cities, but it is. I want to, if you could share with a lot of the people here that, you know, reside in Blaine County, how dangerous the CRT DEI things are, because for a quick, real quick, when I was working in the school system, That's when it started to infiltrate. There was one day that I left in tears because I had to sit through a training that was anti-white. It was just telling us how the whole system is anti-white. Everything from being clean, like me being Hispanic, me being clean, or being expected to be clean at work is white supremacy. 00:19:19 Speaker 1: And this is the local school district here? 00:19:22 Speaker 3: Yes. 00:19:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe that. 00:19:23 Speaker 7: And in the after-school programs, we were required to go through these trainings. And one of them, the interesting thing was everyone was on board. But the other interesting thing was that all of the women that agreed with it were all of Jewish descent. And they agreed that the people of color have had it worse. Like they were willing to give up their own trauma for this. And I just want you to share how dangerous that is. 00:19:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. First of all, God bless you. 00:19:50 Speaker 5: You. 00:19:50 Speaker 1: And I'm glad you have another one on the way. So I will do this as quickly as I can. It's very simple. The American project has always been about individual over tribe. The Marxist project is about tribe over the individual. And CRT and DEI is about inverting us away from individual rights to tribal rights or group rights. So you are no longer made in the image of God. You are simply part of whatever ethnic group that we could be designated. And they can't explain the contradictions. What if you're half white, half black? They can't go through any of that, right? But because this is a means of control that actually ushers us back to primal governance, not Western governance. And if you look at most forms of government around the world, They're largely tribe-based. They are not individual-based. If you look at most governments in the Middle East, it's about who your father was. I mean, the best example I can give is India. which is the caste system. You're born in a certain caste. That is what matters. It is immovable. And this goes back to my religious argument, is that the woke, which I talk about in the book, critical race theory, diversity, equity, inclusion are just the latest manifestations. Also ESG, environmental sustainability governance, which is a way that they're taking over corporate America right now, is that they will constantly criticize the white man. There's a reason why they hate me so much, right? I'm all the things you're not supposed to be, right? married, white, Christian, heterosexual, entrepreneur, like they say this, by the way, right, that the only role for me is to constantly apologize for the rest of my life and become, you know, what they call a ally of the revolution. And so what they have been able to do so successfully is they have been able to convince the white majority population in America to effectively hate themselves. Now, I'm not big on, I guess I hate any sort of racial group saying that they're great, because I actually don't believe in that. But self-hatred is really bad and should not exist. And white guilt, if you will, by the way, this is not my thesis. This is Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell that have talked about this for multiple decades, has really allowed this to usher in to our school system and our curriculum. And you say something really interesting. The individuals in your school system say, well, these groups have been marginalized in the past. You see, if you looked at every individual made in the image of God, that's actually not relevant. It's because every individual has their own agency, their own ability to make choices, and they all have the ability to be developed of good character regardless of what happened previously to them. That's the American promise, by the way. The American promise is not what tribe you are from or what you look like. And they are trying to reduce us down to the melanin content in our skin and not try to ask the more deep questions of, What is your soul, spirit, character, actions? What have you done for the world? Instead, they want to put you into a prearranged box based just on how you look. Look, I can go at hours. I don't want to spend all the time on this, but CRT and DEI, if left unopposed, will destroy America and will do it very quickly. That is not just my opinion. It's the opinion of other moderate voices like Elon Musk and many other people that are opening up and reading the literature that I've been warning about for many years. It is currently enveloping anything successful in and taking it down. So I'll give you an example. And I got a lot of heat for this. And I stand by it 100% because anybody with intellectual honesty agrees with me, which is this, is that United Airlines has come out and they say in their new pilot hiring classes, 50% will be black people or women in their new hiring classes. Okay, so currently it's like 15%. So they're going to go from 15% to 50%. Every time DEI and affirmative action, which are sisters of each other, are implemented, standards go down every time. At Harvard, in the federal government, there has never been an isolated example ever where you prioritize race and merit is simultaneously achieved. You have to lower the standards. So I say to people, are you comfortable flying in a United Airlines plane if you find out that your pilot was hired because of his race, not because of his excellence? And if you're honest, you say, of course not. And you say, how about this? You're going to go into surgery. And it comes in for the pre-op. It's like, hey, I don't know what I'm doing, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and I'm black, and this will be the most diverse surgery in this hospital's history. 00:24:23 Speaker 3: That's right. 00:24:24 Speaker 1: I'd like to interject something really quick here. 00:24:28 Speaker 5: Okay. 00:24:28 Speaker 1: Just one sec. 00:24:29 Speaker 3: Let's get to the question. Well, what I want to ask about that is that how... So. 00:24:38 Speaker 4: The black population is shifting and they're wakening. We saw that you had this amazing big event in Detroit. 00:24:47 Speaker 3: Thank you. 00:24:48 Speaker 4: And you hosted former President Donald Trump with the former mayor of Detroit and a group of black leaders. 00:24:55 Speaker 3: Will you talk about that for a few minutes and what they are thinking? Because they think a lot of these things are just bananas and absurd. 00:25:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny. When I made that comment about the pilots, you know, the world erupted. It was mostly white liberals attacking me. It's actually blacks and Hispanics who are the most favorable in defending me saying no, that we do not want to be looked at just as a skin color. It's insulting to us and our career and And our future and our achievements, because then people think we're only there because of a quota. And by the way, they're correct. People start to think that if you start to hire just on those practices. So, yeah, look, we're making huge gains in those communities. And for good reason, because the idea of a meritocracy should be appealing to anyone that wants to work hard and to succeed in this country. And so, yeah. 00:25:41 Speaker 4: Well, you know, and I think about that, I think back in the 30 years of school choice and vouchers and really opening up freedom to so many families to have an opportunity to choose where they go to school. And particularly children who are born or live in the wrong zip code. And they happen to be a majority of them are minorities. And their lives have changed tremendously by having other opportunities. 00:26:06 Speaker 3: And we've seen a whole generation of kids rise up. Do you have any thoughts on that? 00:26:11 Speaker 4: And, you know, just to just talk a little bit about, you know, what what freedom really can do for. 00:26:16 Speaker 3: Raising every kid? 00:26:17 Speaker 1: Yeah. And I loved when President Trump came out a couple of days ago, said he wants to abolish the Department of Education, which I think is amazing. And it is long overdue. And it is 100 percent achievable if Congress would actually act on it. By the way, there's a lot he can do through federal executive order to just reduce the power of the federal federal department of education. It has been one of the great stains on society. This is I again, I don't want to monopolize too much on these one offs, but the whole premise of education in our country is wrong. And we I hear from conservatives a lot. How many times maybe some of you said it, Charlie, I just want my kid. to go to school and have a politics-neutral experience, and they learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. You might have heard that before. Okay. That is not what education is, everybody. I know you just applauded. It's not about skills. It should be about developing good people of deep character. And you say, what are you talking about? Is that properly understood? The founding fathers were all classically educated, and they got their skills outside of school. What they got in school was reading the great, beautiful texts that had built the world prior, and they were in pursuit of what is good, true, and beautiful. Children are something that you need to nourish and allow them to grow, not something to be engineered as a project. And so let me say two things. If you think you're ever going to get a politics-neutral classroom, it will never exist because eventually there will be a truth claim. I'll give you an example. Eventually somebody will show up late to class. Does the teacher discipline that kid, yes or no? That morality will then be instilled on the rest of the class. Are you allowed to interrupt the teacher? You say no, but that's a political statement to say you can't interrupt the teacher. How about this? I'm allowed to turn in my homework late because I'm black. That happens all the time, by the way, in school districts across the country. So this idea that we're going to get a depoliticized classroom is never going to happen. Instead, what we should have is embrace the classical model of education. Every founder was classically educated. Hillsdale College is a classical institution, and they're America's greatest college. And so the whole premise of education is wrong because the current experts of the D.C. regime, they look at children as widgets to be engineered when they should look at them as plants to allow them to grow. It's completely different. Education comes from the word, Latin word, to lead forth. You must lead them forth towards something. And I ask parents this all the time. Actually, somebody earlier, they said, how do I say to my grandkid? And it's very simple. Would you rather have your grandkid be somebody of upstanding character or have a college degree? And sometimes you can get both, right? But we have lost, we've lost the plot because it should be about creating good people, about people of high character and high esteem in society. Anyway, so look, school choice and mobility is incredibly important. We need to break the back of the teacher union cartel. The teacher union cartel has done more damage to America than the Mexican drug cartel. I believe these people should be, some of them I think should be criminally investigated for what they've done, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. So school choice is a great way to solve that. 00:29:28 Speaker 3: Okay, we're going to go to another question. Okay, Lisa Leach. So there's right there in the middle. 00:29:36 Speaker 8: Charlie, you have talked about colleges not performing for our children. 00:29:41 Speaker 3: So what do you say to graduating seniors from high school? What should they do? 00:29:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. So if you have to go to college, I can give you advice on that. If you want to be a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, 95% of kids that go to college should not go to college. And I'll prove it to you. Those of you that employ people, would you rather have somebody from University of CU Boulder, or somebody that has visited 50 countries? Which person would you hire? 50 countries. So why don't we do that? I mean, you say, oh, I want my kid to go get high and have unlimited, like, STD sharing for four years and, like, learn nothing and hate the country and get, like, sloppy overweight. And, like, that's what happens, by the way, to almost all these kids that go to college. I don't think people understand how destructive these institutions have become to our country. And so I think we have to look at things way more creatively. People say, oh, I can't get a job if I don't go to college. That is increasingly not true. We prove that in the book, The College Scam. Mike Rowe has also been a great backup on that. I'm also a living example. You don't need to go to college. I have a high school degree. I'm proud of it. And so I'm like one of those non-college educated people that support Donald Trump. You always see that in the polls. 00:30:51 Speaker 3: And.... 00:30:55 Speaker 1: So but I think that's it's very important, though, because I again, this this room is obviously very, you know, is college educated and all that. But it's very important because what they're doing in that polling is they're saying, here's what the smart people think of Trump and here's what the dumb people think of Trump. That's what they're doing. They are they are propagandizing and mind shaping you through a long period of time. And parents say, I'd rather have my kid, of course, be in the college educated category, not in the other category. I guarantee if we went around the room, there would be story after story of people that have lost kids or grandkids to college. that they come back something completely different. And I see a lot of heads nodding. And you send Brian off to University of Oregon, and he comes back Brianna. So it's not a one-size-fits-all suggestion. I wrote a whole book about it. I will say this. We do not have enough entrepreneurs and risk-takers in this country, people that want to start businesses, scrap and hustle, This is not just me. Employers will say that if they see an application from Gen Z, they'll say they'll immediately throw it. They do not want to touch anyone that has gone to college. It is the least desirable hiring class. In fact, having a college degree, at least with what we do, hurts you. I immediately think that you're a tainted object. But here is the limiting belief. You have to be okay with your kid or grandkid not going to college. And until you are able to swallow that pill, then nothing will change. And the problem is in high society circles like this, it's an expectation. I know that because I came from suburban Chicago. I was the only, I graduated at the top of my class, Eagle Scout football basketball captain, good student. When I told people I wasn't going to college, they say, are you okay? Are you like on drugs? Like, do you need to like get a, you know, do you need to see us like a psychiatrist or something? I was like, no, no, I'm going to go start an organization to hopefully save the country. They're like, yeah, good luck with that. Cynicism, negativity, you know. But again, glory be to God, right? So- That's great. 00:32:56 Speaker 3: No, you're not. That's great. 00:32:58 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:32:58 Speaker 3: We need, we have some more questions. Um, let me see. 00:33:03 Speaker 4: Um, uh, okay. 00:33:04 Speaker 3: Oh, I see over here. 00:33:05 Speaker 4: No, I, I see somebody waving, but I can't tell what's going on. Oh, hi. 00:33:10 Speaker 3: Can you hear me? Yes. 00:33:11 Speaker 4: Charlie, I listened to your recent interview with Roger Stone. 00:33:15 Speaker 3: Yes. 00:33:15 Speaker 1: About his prediction for June 11th. Can you speak to that and tell us what you think about that? 00:33:21 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:33:22 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:33:22 Speaker 1: So, uh, yeah, it's a great question. Um, my, uh, Is that my friend from, I know who that is. Yes, so, okay, so yes, Roger Stone came on my show and he said that on July 11th, which will be, that will be one of the most consequential days in American history, which is the day that Donald Trump will be sentenced for the 34 convictions. By the way, great fun trick with your liberal friends, ask them to name the 34 things he was convicted of. They can't name one of them, right? By the way, neither can the judge, just so we're clear. No one knows. It's completely made up. And I'm not kidding. They convicted him for a fraud of covering up a crime, and they cannot tell you what the actual crime was. Just so we are clear. Andrew Cuomo has now come out, and he has said that I'm former Attorney General of New York, former governor. This case should never have been brought. If it wasn't Trump, it shouldn't have been brought. So anyway, so Judge Mershon, who is a raging left-wing Democrat, I don't say this lightly, he would have been a perfect Politburo member of Stalin's cabinet as a judge. This guy is a nasty, evil person. I'm not under a gag order, so I can say whatever I want about this guy. So... And he has the full authority on July 11th. He could go anything from one extreme to the other. He could say, Donald, Mr. Trump, Rikers Island right now. He could do that. He could send him to prison right then and there. He could say, you have to report to jail a month from then. He could do house arrest. He could say that you have to stay in Trump Tower for then to the end of the year. He could also do something more creative, which I think they might do, which is he could turn it. We could be like, okay, I know you're running for president. Um, you have to report to prison in February. And all of a sudden it becomes a political issue that becomes more of a political issue than of just being a convicted felon. 00:35:03 Speaker 2: Right. 00:35:04 Speaker 1: And then people think, can he serve as president? What does that look like? So two thoughts, number one, he has to announce his vice president before July 11th. We just need to like, this is, we can't, we cannot go through this with the uncertainty of the unknown that he get hauled off to jail and he has to announce his VP via zoom or Skype or something. 00:35:19 Speaker 8: Right. 00:35:20 Speaker 1: I don't think that's a good idea. Um, The second thing is what do I think they're going to do? I have no idea. But if I study the left for a living and I fight them for a living, they have shown no signs of slowing down. Instead, they are accelerating. They are accelerating against us. They're putting Steve Bannon in a federal prison cell for a misdemeanor on July 1st, I think. Peter Navarro is in a federal prison cell. They still are raiding homes, raiding homes of people that were hundreds of yards away from the Capitol and never went into the Capitol. They are still raiding those homes on a daily basis. There are still dozens of people in pretrial detention in Washington, D.C. for January 6th related crimes. There are 1,400 people that have been arrested and convicted of crimes January 6th related. 1,400 people. There were zero for BLM on the federal level during that summer of love, otherwise known as Floydapalooza. So they are accelerating, not de-accelerating. So I don't know. Judge Mershon, he could change the entire election. I hope for the good of the country. He will say probation. You know, good luck if you want to be president. That would be the right thing for the country. And by the way, not just the right thing for the country. He has every precedent and every legal reasoning. He's a first time offender. It's a nonviolent crime. These are misdemeanors that were upgraded to felonies. So every reason. But we're not living in an era of the law. We are living in a post-constitutional moment. And I hope it does not become a post-constitutional reality. 00:36:48 Speaker 3: That's great. 00:36:51 Speaker 1: October 15th. Write it down. 00:36:54 Speaker 2: Set an alarm because the second that date passes, there's no extension, no grace period, no second chance. Liens, wage garnishments, bank account seizures. That's the IRS taking what you've earned. If you filed an extension and haven't submitted your return yet, stop what you're doing and call America Tax Group, the nation's leading tax firm right now. 00:37:14 Speaker 1: Do so at 888-381-3816. 00:37:19 Speaker 2: Mention the code KIRK26 when you call for $ 250 off. Miss this deadline and failure to file penalties are assessed immediately with interest, compounding daily, growing your debt every single hour. Every hour past October 15th hands the IRS more power over your life. So if you owe back taxes or haven't filed, understand this. It's not a matter of if the IRS will act, it's when. And that clock is ticking. Dealing with the IRS without professional help is extremely risky, so don't do it. not with days left on the clock. So protect your financial security with guidance from America Tax Group. Call the firm I trust right now before October 15th, 888-381-3816. Mention the code Kirk26 when you call for. 00:38:05 Speaker 8: $ 250 off. 00:38:08 Speaker 3: Let's have some more questions. 00:38:11 Speaker 1: On that uplifting, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:38:12 Speaker 3: Let's get to something really positive. 00:38:15 Speaker 4: I'm looking for, okay, there, I see a hand up midway. 00:38:19 Speaker 2: Yep. 00:38:20 Speaker 3: Thank you. Stand up and ask your question. Thanks. 00:38:22 Speaker 9: Thanks for being with us, Charlie. 00:38:26 Speaker 1: So if you look at D.C., you. 00:38:28 Speaker 9: See rhinos who are centrists at best, and you see Democrats who are moving more and more progressively. If I was struck by something Ms. Mitchell said last night where she said that Democrats have spent the last 11 years focusing on electoral process, whereas conservatives have focused on policy. And so as we sit here today, if we can't win from an election perspective, what can each of us do in the room to kind of bolster, embrace, activate conservative values to actually win? 00:39:07 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really profound question. So I'll give you two answers to that. first of all, in Idaho, you can win on a political basis and you have won. And I'm going to tell you a very, in my opinion, disappointing statewide elected officials here. And I don't mean to insult anybody. You do not have fighters in D.C. right now. You don't. Maybe you agree or disagree. They are not fighters. Sorry. They are not people that are fighting for you guys. They're checking boxes and doing all sorts of stuff. It's a waste of time. This country is about to no longer be a country, and they're sending more money to Ukraine and telling you how great they are. It's a waste of rations. But yes, I think we can win electorally. So what you can do is every person needs to take over the Idaho Republican Party from the grassroots level and to make this a grassroots party. You are the reddest state in the country. Maybe it's time that Idaho starts acting like it. Instead, you have Republicans that are more moderate than Ron Johnson, who's from a battleground state in Wisconsin. And it's just, again, they talk a good game. That's fine. I'm sure all of you guys, they went to your ribbon-cutting ceremony at some factory or whatever. I'm sure they're nice people. Are they the fighters of Josh Hawley, Rand Paul? Are they fighting every single day in the trenches? You don't see it. If you see it, you're seeing something that's not there, right? And so, yes, my friend here from Boise knows, taking over the Republican Party, right? You are, but that's what you have to do, is that here's one of the main problems in American politics. The American people are a center-right people. They do not have an opposition party that they can attach to. This is why when D.C. people are like, oh, I don't understand Trump. Trump is the only person that has come and has disrupted the status quo for millions of people that have been so upset with the old Republican Party for decades. And that is part of his appeal. That's why he can do no wrong in the eyes of so many people, because he represents something bigger than that. So yeah, just take over the Republican Party, to be perfectly honest with you. It's not good enough to just go to D.C. and reorganize the chairs on the Titanic, which is what they're doing. 00:41:11 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great. Very motivating. And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about your book. 00:41:18 Speaker 4: You have some great recommendations in there. And, you know, a lot of times we'd say, what can we do? And that is one of the great, great things is to get more active locally. Talk about some of these interesting, some great recommendations. 00:41:30 Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah. So first is, of course, start local. So try to take over this school board, take over the local city here. I know that you're in the minority and it's tough, but that would be a really good action item. Secondly, you have to care less about one thing. You should never care about the names that left-wingers call you. At its core, the amount of power that the American left has over us by nothing more than weaponized name-calling is extraordinary. It's like we give them so much power because we think that their insults to us mean something. Oh, I'm not a racist, I'm not a misogynist, I'm not a sexist. It should mean nothing. You should care less about that. And then finally... Look, there's a lot of people in this room that give philanthropically and have done very well in business. And, you know, we raise a lot of money at Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action, praise God. We raise over $ 100 million a year. We have 300,000 donors. So I see a big change in this regard. But we have to stop giving money voluntarily to institutions that hate us. Cut off your college, guys, is the first thing. Stop giving your money to your alma mater. And if you say, oh, well, my alma mater is different. Unless you went to Hillsdale College, you're wrong, okay? And so, but think about it. How many left-wingers are voluntarily giving money to Hillsdale? None of them. Why do we voluntarily give money to the institutions that are destroying the nation? And then finally, you have to, maybe you should find a new wealth manager if you have Fidelity. Fidelity is awful, for example. They cancel conservers all the time. Find a donor-advised fund like Bradley, an impact fund that does a great job. And I think the world of them, and they've done such a great job. So their action items I'm getting at, though, is that Everything you do should be colored by the idea of, is it consistent with my patriotic American values? From where you shop to the goods and services, public square is a great resource for a lot of people. But it's a different mindset because I, like you, miss the country where we could just kind of go to Starbucks and not have to worry if we're funding the opposition. That country no longer exists. And the greatest untapped asset, and it's barely been touched on, is the combined purchasing power of red America. If that beast ever wakes up, we could bankrupt corporate America. And by the way, look at just Bud Light, for example. By the way, they've recovered in the stock price because we kind of forgot to stop boycotting them. But again, I don't drink. I think it's all nonsense. But that's okay. You guys... you know, have a great day. So by the way, if you're drinking Bud Light, we got bigger problems, just so we're clear. So you guys in Idaho, you got a lot better options, right? You got micro breweries and stuff like you got to do better than that. Yeah, I was gonna say, I have no moral problems with drink. It's just not for me. But I'll say with with Bud Light, though, they had like a slight dip in sales that became a big dip, and they totally reconfigured their company. I will say one promising thing. I have noticed versus last year, a little bit more of a muted approach to pride month from some companies than we did last year. Again, it's still in your face. It's still there. But last year was like out of control. I mean, that was, that was outrageous. So look, and then in my book, I go through action items of what people can do. I think everyone gets a book here now. Is that right? Or they do. 00:44:41 Speaker 3: I think we have enough left to go per household. We're hoping to. 00:44:45 Speaker 4: So let me, let me ask you that. I want to, I want you to transition. Are you, are you, I think you include this in your book as well. Cause I just got my, my copy on this trip too. Cause you just released it is, um, Just the existential threat of the American family and young families and what we should be thinking about in terms of family life, you know, families prioritizing the family and. 00:45:10 Speaker 3: Just kind of talking to that a little bit. 00:45:11 Speaker 4: And just that recommendation that if young adults just started reading about this before it. 00:45:16 Speaker 3: Was too late and they decided they didn't. 00:45:18 Speaker 1: Have a family. Yeah, it's a great, great thing. A great point. So I blame both parties on this regard, but let's just look at Joe Biden on this. We get symposiums on systemic racism. He turns Easter into Transgender Day of Awareness. Did he do a single press conference or mentioning that the birth rate in America is the lowest ever in recorded history? I mean, just so we're clear, that is like species-ending stuff, if you don't get that right. How many of you did not know that, by the way? I see tons of hands. You know the fertility rate is at the lowest it's ever been in American history, and it is collapsing in real time. It's getting so low, and it's an interesting shoehorn, actually. It's that the people who are having the most kids are the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-poor. Middle-class America is having the least amount of kids. It's kind of a very interesting shoehorn, and it makes actually a lot of sense. The ultra-poor, their treasure is their kids. The ultra-rich have everything else, so they want the most beautiful thing in life because they can afford it, which is kids. And so it's the middle class that really can't afford having children anymore. So affordability is a big problem, and we've made it nearly impossible to have a single income provider of a family. I'll give you one number really quick. I got it from Elizabeth Warren, of all people. She wrote a great book, believe it or not, before she became a nutcase. It's a really good book called The Dual Income Trap. In the early 2000s, she was a Harvard professor, and she correctly argued, by the way, that America will decline if we force women into the workforce who want to be stay-at-home moms. Can you believe Elizabeth Warren wrote that? And she did an amazing job. It's an incredible book. And she goes through all the numbers saying that the country will be better if the man can support the family alone. So she gets this amazing number. In 1995, when a lot of you guys were in the heart of your business and really doing a lot, it required 36 weeks of work a year to support a family of four in America. It now requires 60 weeks of work a year, so more than 52 weeks. So it forces the woman into the workforce unnecessarily and not voluntarily. I'm all for, of course, women in the workforce if they choose, but a lot of moms don't want to have to go to work immediately. They want to spend those first five or six years with those kids and then maybe go back at their own choosing. So we're seeing the birth rate just plummet because of that. Secondly, we're seeing the marriage rate plummet. Less and less people are getting married. than ever before in American history. We have more single men and women in their early 30s than married men and women in their early 30s. Never happened before in American history. And it makes sense, of course, because we prioritize sending them to college, which teaches them not to get married. So why should we be shocked that they don't get married? Again, you might say, what do you mean they teach you not to get married? Come with me to University of Denver and sit in a sociology class. They are taught that marriage is a misogynistic, open-air prison. They read feminist theory. It's not an exaggeration. They are taught that these are unjust, oppressive constructs. So we shouldn't be shocked that 10 years later, no one's having kids and the marriage rate plummets. So I think there are ways to fix this. It's starting to begin to fix naturally because we're seeing just the country fall apart as a lack of it. But it's a serious problem. And the Democrat Party is capitalizing on it. The The most reliable voting group for the Democrat Party are college-educated, single women living in urban areas with cats. And I'm not kidding. The cats I made up. The other part is... And they are incredibly loyal to the Democrat Party. And there's a lot of reasons for that. The data is amazing. I wish Scott was still here because he would reinforce me on this. The data is unbelievable. As soon as they get married, if they get married, They go from 95% Democrat to like 55% Democrat. If once they have kids, they become Republicans majority. It's if you can go from an adherent to the Democrat party worldview to almost a Republican to a Republican. right-winger by getting married and having children. 00:49:24 Speaker 3: That's pretty incredible. 00:49:28 Speaker 4: We have a question in the back. I see, yep, standing up. Do we have a mic ready? 00:49:32 Speaker 1: Hello? 00:49:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, good. Hi, Charlie. 00:49:35 Speaker 8: My name is Esther Williams. I am a Christian conservative. did not go to college, and was also homeschooled all 12 years. I have my parents to thank for that, for going against the grain. More often than not, I'm shamed for either all four of those or one of those in not only this town, but in my generation. My question to you, and I ask this very genuinely, is how does someone tap into their inner Charlie Kirk? 00:50:06 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great. 00:50:07 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great one. 00:50:12 Speaker 1: So first of all, that's part of the book, which is you shouldn't care if they shame you. And that's important, right? I admit, I have a genetic deformity. I truly don't care what people think of me. And I totally acknowledge it. I think it's actually hilarious when people attack me. I care if people I care about attack me or criticize me. If my wife says something about me or my close friends or my pastor, then I listen. But if some purple-haired jihadi calls me like not wise or smart because I didn't go to college. Like, okay, whatever. And so it's about, as a Christian, I'll give you some advice, just releasing that to the Lord and just being like that. None of the approval of man matters at all. The approval of man is actually a scorn, it says in the scriptures. And that's, by the way, that is a discipline and a practice more than anything else. You will get stronger at it the older you get and the more you decide not to care. But you shouldn't become someone who is not able to receive loving advice or coaching from those who should be correcting you. That's narcissistic type behavior, which no one should endorse. So, yeah, look, I acknowledge it. I've never been bothered by the mob hating me or the New York Times hating me or whatever. In fact, I think it's one of our superpowers at Turning Point USA. I really do. 00:51:27 Speaker 3: That's great. See, one more question, I think, and then we'll get pretty close. 00:51:36 Speaker 1: Oh, great. Good to see you again. So you're going to go to college? 00:51:43 Speaker 10: I'm a 13-year-old, and I'm going into eighth grade, and I'm trying to make some positive change. Like, I had this guy say that, like, you can't prove that God is real because every religion was made by man. Is there, like, a way I could, like, deal with school? 00:52:07 Speaker 1: Yeah, so. 00:52:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll give you a fun counter and be like, hey, you know, without God, there would be no atheists. So I didn't come up with that. That's a G.K. Chesterton quote. So, yeah, look, for an eighth grader, let me think about this. Yeah, the best argument that you could probably give is that we now know because of science, thanks to science, that the universe had a beginning, and we call that the Big Bang. And so time, space, and matter started at a specific time. Therefore, using the laws of logic, which are always applicable, in order to have time, space, and matter start, you need something that is outside of time, space, and matter. And that thing is called God. And so the question is, who caused the Big Bang to actually go into effect? We have an answer to that. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. You see, the atheists, they have a tough task ahead of them. And we as religious people must acknowledge our task. We have to deal with suffering. That is the hardest issue as a religious people, to explain away unjust suffering. Why does the kid get cancer? Why does the loving wife die in a car accident? It is the greatest challenge of religious people. Atheists, they have to explain everything else. They have to explain where these mountains came from, the earth, the planet, meaning, existence, morality, children, deoxyribonucleic acid. They have to say all of that is an act of randomness and chance. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. That's what you should tell your friend. 00:53:43 Speaker 3: That's beautiful. Thank you. All right. We have time for just one more question. Did I miss? 00:53:54 Speaker 1: What is the hardest question. 00:53:55 Speaker 5: You can ask? Yeah. Okay. 00:53:58 Speaker 3: There we go. 00:53:58 Speaker 5: Thank you for being here, Charlie Kirk. I am curious about how we as brave conservatives can be out in the world when We have a legal system that seems to be so against us. We had Jonathan Turley here. Thank you, Christina, who was saying that there are really basically no conservative professors out there. And so if we are trying to find justice, if we're fighting the good fight, and we know that we're going to this, what advice do you have for us? 00:54:28 Speaker 1: So that's great. I'll tell you my advice. You just have to expect to end up in federal prison at some point. It's true. Right, Cleta? And, I mean, I don't invite it, but do you know how liberating it is once you say that and you're like, okay, great. My wife knows it. My family knows it. Like, okay. We live in an open-air Soviet country right now where people like me that have certain politics, we are relentlessly investigated. We're relentlessly, you know, the government is obsessed with us, obviously, because we're effective and because we're outspoken and because we have opinions that they don't like. And so, again, I don't expect people to have the attitude that I have. which is a whole of life, just like, hey, I might end up in Gitmo. And if I do, then it will be a life well-lived because I did the right thing. But there's probably smaller versions of that. And I'm a big believer that you cannot have beautiful things without sacrifice. I think that is a law of nature. I believe that we have the beautiful country that we have because of the sacrifice of the heroes at Normandy Beach, for example. And we remember that on D-Day. We remember the Greatest Generation. I believe that we have the country because of the revolutionary generation that sacrificed, so on and so forth. And so we can't continue to have a beautiful country if people aren't willing to sacrifice. And I'm afraid that we kind of want it both ways. We want the luxury of a great country, but not everyone wants the sacrifice. I'm willing to do that. And I know other people are too, a lot of other great patriots. And I will say, I'm not trying to do this, Cleta is one of them. I am so encouraged by, by how many people are willing to sacrifice everything they have to go into debt, to go into bankruptcy, to say, if I have to just never see my kids again. There is a rising duty spirit in the conservative movement in this country that is so promising. But I'm also not going to do hopium. Hope and opium mixed together, that feels good. But it's really bad for you. If we're not successful in November, that will be the future for a lot of us. It will be. Maybe later than sooner, sooner rather than later. And You see what's happening. Donald Trump will end up in federal prison if he doesn't win. End of story, period. And there will be many of us that they're going to try to do after that. And bring it on. We get to live in a country that was once great. We want to make it great again. And I wouldn't want to live in any other time because the civilization itself hangs in the balance. And I consider myself and all of us that get to fight in it immensely blessed because the stakes have never been higher. 00:56:59 Speaker 3: That's great. 00:57:00 Speaker 8: Thank you. 00:57:07 Speaker 3: Charlie, thank you so much. 00:57:08 Speaker 4: This has been a delightful evening and a wonderful day for all of us. 00:57:13 Speaker 1: I just want to say, this is a great organization. They treated us so well. I speak all across the country. This is a first-class operation, I've got to tell you. The Sun Valley Policy, this is a first-class operation. And I'm a tough grader. So they treated us so well, so great, amazing hospitality. And I love it here, and I hope to return. God bless you guys. Thank you so much. 00:57:35 Speaker 3: Thank you, everybody. Really appreciate it. 00:57:45 Speaker 2: For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.