High on Denial? America’s Weed Problem & a 2026 Wake-Up Call

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 gonna end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you'll 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 at turning point. You would say college chapter. Go start at turning point, yould say 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. 00:00:45 Speaker 2: Here I am Lord, Use me. 00:00:48 Speaker 1: Buckle up, everybody, Here we go. The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserved Gold, leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company. I recommend to my family, friends and viewers. 00:01:09 Speaker 3: All right, welcome back over to the Charlie Kirk Show is underway. Blake nef holding it down in the Bitcoin dot Com studios, your one stop shop to buy, sell, and trade bitcoin. Thanks for holding it down, Blake, keeping keeping the studio warm. I'm here in Palm Beach. I'll be back in the studio tomorrow. We have Alex Bearnson joining us. Check out his sub stack and his book. By the way, call it Tell Your Children The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence. Alex, welcome back to the show. You are sort of our resident expert on marijuana. You and Charlie saw very much eye to eye on this topic, and it is now back in the news. And I hope your book is selling like hotcakes because it's so important. I hope you're getting a fresh infusion of that because the New York Times is admitted that we've been right all along. Four point fifty two is the image it's time for America to add it has a marijuana problem. Big, big admission from the New York Times, your former employer, by the way, almost like maybe you still friends back there that are listening to you. Alex, tell us what the New York Times admitted and why now? 00:02:14 Speaker 2: Sure so? I mean, by the way, it's interesting you mentioned about the book because even before The Times put this out, it seemed to me that there was something in the ether happening with people becoming aware, increasingly aware of the problems with cannabis and THCHC. I think probably because so many, you know, so many young people are using and using very high potency vapes what's called dabbing, which is essentially smoking chunks of THCHC, which is the active chemical in cannabis. And when you use that way in particular, you can really knock yourself out and become psychotic very quickly. And so I do think that this is, unfortunately to something that's happening to people that their friends are seeing, that their family members are seeing, that they're parents are seeing, and and you know, for whatever reason, the book was starting to sell a little bit more even before the Times thing, and now all of a sudden, it actually has sort of taken off again in terms of sales, which is pretty amazing because it came out to tell your children seven years ago. And I promise you I will tell you the Times my view on the Times, which I think it's very important that they did this, But I want to tell you something even more important that happened in the last forty eight hours, which is at a conservative commentator, a young woman named Brett Cooper who you may know, post it. 00:03:34 Speaker 4: Yeah, we actually have this post. Let's throw it up, guys, four ninety four. Yes, here, I'll read it out. My mom and I have been told that my brother's psychosis, now full blown diagnosed schizophrenia, is most likely drug induced from his years of smoking weed. This drug isn't harmless, no matter what our culture and screening people in comments sections tried to tell us. 00:03:57 Speaker 2: Yes, So no important and right because in the end, you know, the Times can write what it writes, and I can write about statistics and journal articles and stuff. But people react as individual stories. They react to the stories of people, and you know, especially when when it's personal, right, when it's this is my brother and look what happened to him. And that's been viewed almost five million times on x right now. And so unfortunately, that is what's happening out there, is that people are seeing you know, family members or friends or friends of friends who've had real problems and they say, well, you know, this person wasn't using cocaine or methamphetamine or you know, or mushrooms they were using, they were using THC, they were using these vapes and suddenly they wound up in the er and or maybe they have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder or schizophrenian, you know, and their lives are really wrecked by this, and their families are getting messed up by it too, and I need to figure out I need to learn about this drug. So so what the Times wrote was the broader, you know, the bigger picture question, which is this is happening against the background of the legalization of cannabis. Charlie new right, Charlie new and so legalization. You know, many states have legalized in the last ten to fifteen years. There's been a very aggressive, very pushy, very effective for you know, for lack of a better word, propaganda campaign selling cannabis and THC as medicine. It's not medicine. If we're going to legalize it on any basis, it's got to be as a recreational intoxicant that's gotten downsides and that needs to be regulated carefully. But that's not how the industry got people to legalize. They got people legalized by telling them this is medicine. And if you have seizures. It's good for you, and if you're you know, if you have cancer, it's good for you. And it's going to keep people away from opioids. All this stuff, most of which has essentially no basis in science. There's a couple of things where there's some evidence that cannabis and team you might be valuable, but mostly it doesn't. 00:06:00 Speaker 4: Yeah, I was just thinking, I remember, I remember being online kind of in that two thousand and two, two thousand and eight, you know, that early Internet window, and it felt like weed was coming up all the time online. There was this huge consensus among young people except for me, where they were saying, oh, marijuana is basically harmless. 00:06:17 Speaker 5: It was like a whole spiel. 00:06:18 Speaker 4: It was only ever banned because racist lawmakers in the twenties had like a moral panic about Mexicans bringing this drug over the border. And yeah, as you said, it was medicine, it would cure cancer. It basically was like a super drug if anything. And yeah, and the New York Times it says in this article here. You know, in our editorials we described marijuana addiction as relatively minor problems. Many went further and claimed marijuana was a harmless drug that might even bring net health benefits, and we said that legalization might not lead to greater use. 00:06:51 Speaker 5: And the number they have here is insane. 00:06:53 Speaker 4: It went from about one million daily users in nineteen ninety two to more than eighteen million daily users today. 00:07:01 Speaker 2: So the thing about canvas is actually more addictive than alcohol, considerably more. If you look at the number of people who use compared to the total number of the number of people who use daily, let's say, compared to the total number of users. Okay, there's about one hundred million adults in the US who use alcohol on a regular basis, about half the population, a little bit more than half, okay, so maybe a little bit more than one hundred million. Of those people, fewer than twenty million drink every day, okay, based on the studies. And most of those people aren't drinking all day every day. If they do, we call them alcoholics. We know they have a problem. They know it. They have a problem. When it comes to cannabis, there are more people using every day than use alcohol every day, even though the total number of cannabis users are much smaller than the total number of alcohol users. And those people, those cannabis users, when they're using every day, they are waking and baking. For the most part, they are not doing this. I'm gonna have like one hit. I mean, there's some people who do, but I have one hit at night and I'm going to go to sleep. 00:08:02 Speaker 6: No. 00:08:02 Speaker 2: This is this is this is a major part of my life. I wake up to this. I schedule my life around my you know, my vape breaks. I may you know, maybe I don't have a girlfriend anymore because I decided I liked cannabis more than having a girlfriend. You know, maybe I just hang out playing video games and getting high all the time. That is not you know, your your viewers, your viewers, no, that it's a typical pattern. Yeah. 00:08:26 Speaker 3: Well, and Alex, you're kind of zeroing in on the young male cohort when you're talking about video games, vaping and this team. This actually tends from what I'm gathering online, this young male super high dose of THHC developing brains leading to schizophrenia. This actually, to me is one of the more terrifying aspects of increased pot usage and US normalizing it and us sort of deifying the drug. Is like the only drug in the universe that doesn't have any side effects it. Young men seemed to be particularly vulnerable to schizophrenia. Let's go ahead and play this cut. We actually have a cut here from Brett Cooper talking about it four ninety five. 00:09:08 Speaker 7: My mom and I have been told that my brother psychosis, now full blown diagnosed schizophrenia, is most likely drug induced from his years of smoking weed. This drug isn't harmless, no matter what our culture and screaming people in comment sections tried to tell us. The story is that my brother Reid, who was twelve years older than me, he became a pothead I would say late and high squire to this. He never showed any signs of mental illness. He never showed any signs of psychosis. But for the last decade, my brother Reid has been in and out of psychiatric facilities. He has been on and off the streets. And say it's like California and Idaho and Tennessee. He's been all over the country. This is what my family has been dealing with for a decade. My brother Reid is now a diagnosed schizophrenic and he is mute. As it stands right now, currently, he is unable to participate in society unless he is medicated. 00:09:54 Speaker 2: Hi. So listen, men have a higher rate of schizophrenia than women. They're more prone to severe mental ill less than women. And as we all know, as Charlie talked about all the time, young men are having a hard time in society today and it's understandable that some of them turn to this drug. But it doesn't make their problems better. It makes them worse. And I just hope that they know they're being sold a bill of goods here by the drug legalizers, by the cannabis industry. They really should try not to use this. It's not a good drug for them. 00:10:25 Speaker 4: If you're like me and are tired of random stuff getting thrown into your supplements, like artificial colors and sugars, you probably would love to learn more about phyto nutrition. Phytoonutrients are the naturally occurring plant nutrients found in whole foods. It's what gives them their color, their tastes, their smell. The presence of these three things is the surefire sign that you're getting real phytoonutrients. Balance of Nature's whole health system supplements are a value bundle that includes their fruits and veggies and fiber and spice supplements, which give you forty seven different ingredients of fruits, vegetables, spices, and fibers, and all of the naturally occurring phyto nutrients that come with them. Every single day. Balance of Nature takes produce through a specialized vacuum cold process that stabilizes the ingredients. They are then powdered and packaged with no binders, no fillers, no flow agents. So whether you've been on the fence for a long time or it's the first time you're even hearing about them, I recommend that you go to Balance of Nature dot com and order the whole health system supplements as a preferred customer today. That's Balance Offnature dot com. I guess, Alex, some perspective I'd like on this is just how the New York Times kind of acts like they were, you know, they made an error of judgment. But it strikes me I just feel like so much of these outcomes were obvious that there has to be this element where a lot of people realize they could make a lot of money off of this, that they could. 00:11:49 Speaker 2: Like they were creating. 00:11:51 Speaker 4: Something they knew would be super addictive and they would be a huge market for this, And now a ton of people are getting rich off of these eighteen million people a day who are using mayor want to every single day. 00:12:01 Speaker 5: Like it's kind of like tobacco. 00:12:03 Speaker 4: Tobacco companies knew exactly how addictive their product was, and they knew how deadly it was. And I can't imagine that anyone was under any illusions who was in the know with marijuanare. 00:12:14 Speaker 2: There's two issues there, okay, And they're both very interesting people in the industry. Yeah, they know, they know how addictive this stuff is, and they've been working for thirty years to make cannabis more potent, to make the you know what's called flower cannabis, what's in a joints stronger, but also to produce these vapes which are essentially pure THC. And they know exactly what they've been doing, and those a lot of those people want to get rich. If you look at times, you know, unfortunately, it's the same kind of sort of useful idiocy that these people played when they called for schools to be lockdowns during COVID, when they went crazy with the Russian collusion hoax. 00:12:52 Speaker 6: You know, there is a group. 00:12:54 Speaker 2: Think on the left in elite journalism that blinds people to facts that should be obvious. Okay, and you the data on this when I'm going to tell your children. It was twenty nineteen and I was able to draw on twenty years of data showing the sort of the harmful links between cannabis and severe mental illness. And that's counting the links between cannabis and let's say, you know, sort of bad life outcomes because you just don't achieve very much because you're you're smoking every day and you're not working very hard, and your life is just sort of passing you by. I'm talking about the really severe mental illness outcomes and frankly, the downstream violence from that, which is an issue we don't even have to begin to talk about. We have so much else to talk about. But people at the Times, people at the Washington Post, people at the Atlantic, all these places that think they're so smart, they didn't look at the data, and they just told themselves over and over again, well, this is just being used to put black men in prison. I mean, it was it was nonsense. Okay, it was nonsense in twenty nineteen. It was nonsense even in two thousand and nine. It hadn't been true for a really long time. Let me tell you one quick thing that I discovered when I was tell your children, which was people, as I think Andrews said, you know, they always said, well, we'd got banned in nineteen in the nineteen twenties and thirties, because there was a perception that it was a Mexican drug, that it was a drug that was being brought up from Mexico. There is some truth in that. What people don't tell you, what they didn't ever know, all these supposedly smart people, is that Mixco actually banned cannabis first because Mexicans saw what it was doing to their culture and country and they didn't like it. So whenever this drug has become widely used, whether it's in India, whether it's in Mexico, whether it's an African or and North African countries, eventually there's a backlash to what it does to people. And the fact that we thought we could rewrite the rules on this, that a bunch of nice liberals who basically had smoked pot a few times in college thought they could totally rewrite history in human biology and legalize this and there'd be no consequences just tells you once again what a bubble the left is living. And now, by the way, you know some of these people what's happened is they've seen their kids get completely screwed up on high potency cannabis and THAC or their friends, and now they realize the truth. 00:15:12 Speaker 3: I think, here, here, let's do like a little rapid fire question and answer. Here is weed a gateway drug? 00:15:18 Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, evidence is clear? 00:15:20 Speaker 5: Does it? 00:15:22 Speaker 8: What? 00:15:22 Speaker 6: What? 00:15:22 Speaker 3: What is the rate of schizophrenia do we know? Especially in young men that are high drug users? 00:15:28 Speaker 2: So, I mean the base rate is about one percent. So one reason this has been able to happen is that, let's say, heavy cannoby shoes triples the base rate. Okay, even not every young man is using. So even if let's say thirty percent of young men are using in a dangerous way, that would not result in such a huge number that it would be immediately obvious. Even though this is a really severe illness, it becomes obvious over time. But what I what I say, and I say this with confidence now, is that there are probably hundreds of thousands of young people people, mostly men, but some women in the United States and Canada who have become severely mentally ill as a result of cannabis use, who wouldn't have been hundreds of thousands of lives ruined, hundreds of thousands of families Because what you heard with Brett is this destroys families, right. It doesn't just destroy one person when you're when you're the family member or the brother or sister, I mean God forbid you the child, but brother, sister, parent of somebody with really severe mental illness, your life is misery. 00:16:27 Speaker 4: I have a couple, Alex. So, even if you don't get psychosis, if you're using weed nearly daily from age sixteen, how bad of an impact is that going to have on your cognitive baseline? 00:16:39 Speaker 5: How many IQ points are you going to lose? 00:16:40 Speaker 2: So really good question. I don't think there's a simple number. It's bad for memory, it's bad for motivation, it's bad for intelligence. But I wouldn't be comfortable saying you know, ten points, twenty points. I mean clearly most people who use are many. Many people who use heavily find their lives disrupted by this in a sence way. If you're an alcoholic, your life is going to be disrupted. 00:17:03 Speaker 5: I've got another question. 00:17:06 Speaker 3: Where weed has been legalized, have the outcomes been Has there been what you touched on violence? 00:17:12 Speaker 5: Have we seen rises in violence? Crime? Criminality? Thirty seconds? 00:17:16 Speaker 2: So why can't they. 00:17:17 Speaker 6: Tell your children? 00:17:17 Speaker 2: There was evidence that in the states that had legalized early there was a rise in sort of in violence, basically essentially in severe violence. Now, nationally we've been on a down trend in terms of violence. Obviously, cannabis psychosis is only one component of violence, right There are many, many different components of what make people violent. Whether you know how we treat people who are you know, do we incarcorty people for a long time? Obviously that gets them off the streets. Are the cops getting better at solving gun crimes because they, you know, they have more surveillance. There's many things, but there was evidence in twenty nineteen of that. 00:17:55 Speaker 5: Alex Bearnson, check them out. Thank you, my friend. We'll talk to you soon. 00:18:00 Speaker 3: Hi, folks, Andrew Colvett here, I'd like to tell you about my friends over at why Refi. You've probably been hearing me talk about y REFI for some time now. We are all in with these guys. If you or someone you know is struggling with private student loan debt, take my advice and give them a call. Maybe you're behind on your payments, maybe you're even in default. You don't have to live in this nightmare anymore. Why ref I will provide you a custom payment based on your ability to pay. They tailor each loan individually. They can save you thousands of dollars and you can get your life back. We go to campuses all over America and we see student after student who's drowning in private student loan debt. Many of them don't even know how much they owe. Why ref I can help. Just go to y refi dot com. That's the letter, Why then refi dot com And remember why Refi doesn't care what your credit score is. Just go to yrefi dot com and tell them your friend Andrews sent you. I want to get to our next guest, and that is Tom Bevan. I got to hang out with him last night at celebrating freedom of speech with real clear politics. Tom, welcome back to the show, my friend. It's good to have you, it's. 00:19:12 Speaker 6: Good to be back, and it was going to be with you last night. That was a lot of fun. 00:19:15 Speaker 3: Yeah, and thank you for honoring Charlie and his work celebrating free speech. And I thought you guys did a great job of honoring him and honoring his legacies. So and you had you had liberals on stage. I mean, you guys really run the gamut. You really we had some spirited debates about trans and it was it was it was good. It was really Don Lemon, and it was he a journalist or an activist. It was a it was a really good collision of ideas. All right, Tom, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna read something verbatim from a very prominent left wing journalist that I was texting with, and this is everybody would know the name of I said it, but I'm gonna leave the anonymous, just for the sake of the relationship. Says there's absolutely no proof of any significant illegal voting. 00:20:00 Speaker 5: He's talking about the Save Act. 00:20:02 Speaker 3: You ran a campaign based on fear, demagogue and exaggeration of them. It worked until now. Now not only do you have a majority of the country against the way you're enforcing laws, but affordability has been revealed to not be because of legal entrance. And you guys have a real problem heading into the midterms. So unless you do something about healthcare costs, you're screwed basically, and Trump's Trump RX. 00:20:25 Speaker 5: Ain't it agree or disagree? 00:20:28 Speaker 9: I agree with some parts of it, disagree with others. I mean, first of all, the Save Act. The majority of the country's in favor of that, you know, across the board, even I think a majority of Democrats are in favor of certainly African American voters, Hispanics, Republicans, independents think it's kind of common sense that you should have voter ID laws. So is affordability a big issue? Yes, it is a big issue. 00:20:54 Speaker 6: Is Trump? 00:20:58 Speaker 9: You know, He's got some work to do. Republicans do have some work to do on this issue. So he's Trump is at forty two point one percent in our overall Roal Clear Politics average on the economies at forty. On inflation, he's at thirty six. So to the extent that those continue to be issues that are of primary concernative voters, and most polls suggest that they are, I think the administration in the Republican Party has some work to do do. 00:21:21 Speaker 6: I think Trump RX is an answer. It could be. I think the saving accounts could be. 00:21:28 Speaker 9: My take on the economy as far as Trump is concerned, is that you know, he's got good he's got a story to tell. There are plenty of good numbers when you talk about the down and all that. The problem that he has as a perception problem because people think the economy sucks, even though there are aspects of the economy that are really good. But when Trump goes out there and says this is the best economy in the world and voters don't think. 00:21:50 Speaker 6: That, then he looks like he's gas lighting. 00:21:53 Speaker 9: And there there is this discrepancy between what their perception is and what Trump is telling them the reality is. And so that's really a that's an issue for him to go out and prove to the American people that he has focused on this issue. It's more of an almost an empathy type question to say, instead of saying affordability as a hoax, or instead of focusing on taking over Greenland, for example, which occupied like seven days of the media landscape and all the oxygen right for him to be doing these events. 00:22:23 Speaker 6: If you remember ACKed his first term, he was doing events at the White House. 00:22:26 Speaker 9: With like truckers and welders, and you know, he had CEOs. 00:22:30 Speaker 6: He had everybody in there. It was all about the economy. 00:22:33 Speaker 9: And he's not doing that kind of thing, yet he'll do an event. He did one speech on the economy at the end of last year in Detroit, and that kind of got overshadowed by the fact that he flipped some guy off and had this thing with this factory floor worker. He did another event recently in Iowa which was supposed to be focused all on the economy, and then went out like two hours afterwards and tweeted that he's got the fleet, you know, steaming toward Iran, and that became the headline. 00:23:00 Speaker 6: So they've got to do a better job. 00:23:01 Speaker 9: In my opinion, the administration has to do a better job of having events and focusing on the economy and then sort of letting the staying out of their own way so that the people the perception out there changes on how the economy is doing. 00:23:16 Speaker 4: Yeah, Tom, That's what I find myself thinking and asking on the affordability issue, on the economy issue. I there's sometimes people have this debate. Are we in a vibe session where the idea is people have gotten used to the idea that they just say affordability is their go to acceptable expression for things just don't always feel awesome. And I guess The part that goes with that is does Trump doing events meaningfully help on this question? How do you actually imprint the idea? Oh, actually, the economy is doing well or at least this administration is improving things. I guess I don't see the obvious link between him doing an event at the White House and better poll numbers. 00:23:58 Speaker 6: Necessarily, It's it's more of a question. You know, he's also trailing on this on this. 00:24:03 Speaker 9: Question when when polsters ask does the president care about people like me? 00:24:08 Speaker 6: Right? Does he have? 00:24:10 Speaker 9: Is he focused on my concerns and that that's more than anything. It's like it's not about the policy in particular, like these Trump savings accounts, Right, is that going to have any short term impact on the midterms? 00:24:21 Speaker 6: Is that really going to change people? No? But it was an event where I think. 00:24:26 Speaker 9: You know, the focus was on, hey, this is how we help the younger generation, the next generation actually, you know, invest and save and get ahead of the game. 00:24:36 Speaker 6: I mean, he's fighting. The problem that he's fighting right. 00:24:39 Speaker 9: Now is you know, he can say, well, inflation's down, Okay, it's down, but we just went through five years where we had you know, mid to high single digit inflation, which compounded, and so people, you know, things are thirty or forty percent more than they used to be. And we're talking about healthcare and you know, college tuition and groceries and all those things. And while Trump and point in the sort of short term, well, you know, the price of eggs are down, people are still not feel That's why they feel that economy sucks is because they've been battered for four or five years with inflation that has eroded their buying power. And so I think one of the things that he needs to focus on from a policy perspective that would help him is to tell people and impress upon people that wages are rising faster than inflation. 00:25:25 Speaker 6: It is all about wages. 00:25:26 Speaker 9: If inflation's at two percent four percent, but wages are growing at four or eight percent, people are going to feel like they are getting some buying power back. 00:25:35 Speaker 6: They are they are doing better in. 00:25:37 Speaker 9: This economy, and his policies have helped wage growth, and so I think that's that's another area. 00:25:43 Speaker 6: But again it comes down to people looking at their TV screens and oh, Trump's talking about the price of this or the price of that. Trump has focused on the economy. 00:25:50 Speaker 9: He's focused on the things that that I care about, that we care about in my family, that we're talking about on the kitchen table. He's not off, you know, focused on stuff going on overseas or Venezuela or even you know, building a new wing on the White House. I mean, those kind of things are just they're catenet for the media and they help shift the issue, you know, away from where I think the public wants it to be and where Trump needs it to be. 00:26:17 Speaker 3: Tom So, I'm struggling, especially in this economic question here, So throw up four fifty six. This is a question asked, you know, are you better off today than you were four years ago? Forty eight percent say yes, forty four percent say no. But that yes number is about twenty points twenty twenty five points higher than it was in November I believe, of twenty twenty four, So it's going in the right direction. 00:26:42 Speaker 5: There's another image here five oh two. This is from Marquette. 00:26:45 Speaker 3: It says family financial situation living comfortably is at forty percent, just getting by forty five percent, But that's up nine points from November of twenty twenty five. So you see, So it's almost like you're getting two sets of data. It's like, if you ask the question one way, people are positive. If you ask it another way, it's almost like the Biden year hangover. And maybe this cognitive dissonance with what Trump is saying. They just can't get they can't connect with it. But what's true here? Because I'm seeing positives, I'm seeing negatives? 00:27:16 Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is. 00:27:18 Speaker 9: You know, people can make the data say sort of whatever it wants. You could find this stuff. I think the economy is getting better. I think people are feeling a little bit better about the way things are going. But Trump has about you know, the Republicans have until about June, and basically by that point, if anything that happens after that won't accrue to their benefit, probably in the midterms. 00:27:42 Speaker 6: The other thing about these polls. 00:27:43 Speaker 9: Too, Andrew, is you know, you really do need to go in and look at the sort of partisan splits here, because you know, there's this question if you go back and look, how's the economy doing well when Joe Biden was in office, Democrats seventy five percent Democrats that the economy is great, and five percent of Republicans said it was great. You know, Republicans not the economy suck. And the minute Trump gets in office, that number flips right. It's just a partisan sort of lizard brain thing. And so Democrats are even if they feel the economy is getting better, they're certainly not giving Trump with the Republicans credit for it. And the Republicans probably feel the economy is pretty good and they like and support Trump, but focus on independence like they're the ones and again it's a fifteen or twenty percent part of the electorate, but they're the ones who truly do move back and forth based on what they see in their in their in their daily lives, and they're going to be an important part of the midterms November as well. 00:28:38 Speaker 3: Tom Bevian, co founder and president of Real Clear Politics, again, so great to see you last night and to be a part of that great event. Thanks for having me and for Honor and Charlie. So God bless you guys. 00:28:47 Speaker 6: Absolutely thank the great work. 00:28:49 Speaker 3: By the way, I check your guys, I check your homepage every day every day. Love it because it if I need to see what the left is thinking that you put it all there for me right there. And even if I hate it, you guys put it up. So it's a really powerful resource. Tom Bevan thank you. 00:29:05 Speaker 6: Thanks Andrew. 00:29:08 Speaker 5: Howdy Blake here. 00:29:09 Speaker 4: Legacy Box has been a proud sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show All the Way since twenty twenty one, and we're grateful that they have continued supporting a community that values family and tradition. You know how we talk about protecting what really matters. It's not just finances or politics, it's also your family memories. We all have our old VHS tapes, our old film reels, maybe boxes of photos that are sitting in your closet. But time is not on your side. Those tapes will wear out, the film will fade, and before long, the stories of your own childhood, your parents, and your grandparents, those can all be lost. And that is where Legacy Box comes in. Legacy Box makes it simple. You order their Legacy Box kit, fill it with your old media, and you send it back to them. Their expert team carefully digitizes everything and they return both the originals and a new, secure digital version that you can stream, share and keep in your family forever. It's so simple, it's like magic. 00:30:04 Speaker 1: Go to legacybox dot com slash k Irk to say fifty percent and take care of it today. 00:30:09 Speaker 5: You'll be glad you did. 00:30:10 Speaker 1: That is legacybox dot com. Slash Kirk legacybox dot com, slash krk. That is legacybox dot com slash Kirk. 00:30:20 Speaker 6: Blake. 00:30:21 Speaker 3: You called this the millennial nine to eleven. You said it in Jess, But it was funny because but it is a sad story and I wanted to get to it because James Vanderbeek left us with some really really good clips. He was a father of six children, so he leaves behind a wife and six children. I think his GoFundMe to support his family is over a million dollars. I encourage people to please support that because six children, that's a lot of mouths to feed. Beautiful, beautiful family. He had some great It's just some really really amazing clips. 00:30:50 Speaker 5: He lost his battle with cancer. He was so young, just in his. 00:30:54 Speaker 3: Forties, which just blows me away. Let's go ahead and play Cup four. 00:30:57 Speaker 8: Thirty before cancer. God was something I tried to fit into my life as much as possible. After cancer, I feel like a connection to God, whatever that is, is kind of the whole point of this exercise on this planet. 00:31:13 Speaker 5: That so beautifully said for eighty five. This was his final message, his. 00:31:17 Speaker 10: Face with the question if I am just a too skinny, weak guy alone in an apartment with cancer, what am I? And I meditated and the answer came through, I am worthy of God's love simply because I exist. And if I'm worthy of God's love, shouldn't I also be worthy of my own? And the same is true for you. 00:31:54 Speaker 2: You know. 00:31:54 Speaker 4: I want to flag by the way, because I think this would interest some of our people, So this might surprise you. He was an actor. We associate them with being spectacularly wealthy, but a lot of them are not as much as you might think, and so they actually Unfortunately, his battle with cancer did exhaust the family's funds, were told, so they do have a go fund me for that family, for his wife, his six children. It has already raised one point six million dollars, which is very generous. But if you feel inclined to support them, you can find that on gofund me. I just wanted to shout that out there. Yeah, it's remarkable. There aren't enough people like him in Hollywood or in show business generally, but it is good to be reminded that those people do exist. 00:32:39 Speaker 5: Yeah, he was. 00:32:41 Speaker 3: He was a just seems like a genuine guy. Yeah, it's at one point five to nine three million, and it seems like a just a really nice guy. And yeah, if you're a millennial, what was it, I'm gonna get the Dawson's Creek And then what was the other one? Friday Night Lights or was it something like that Varsity Blue? 00:33:00 Speaker 5: Thank you? 00:33:00 Speaker 3: There was those two dueling high school football pieces of content. 00:33:08 Speaker 4: Version of himself in Don't Trust the be An Apartment twenty three. I have not watched any of these programs, but yeah, a lot of people greatly did enjoy them. 00:33:17 Speaker 3: Yeah, there's just go fundme and you know what, please support them. 00:33:21 Speaker 5: God bless him six kids. It's just tragic. 00:33:23 Speaker 3: I feel terrible for all those kids without it, without their father. So Blake, you got some emails for us, Yeah, well we got a great deal. 00:33:31 Speaker 4: We got a very big response obviously to the video from that disturbed man, the disturbed shooter in Canada. More I'd say five or six people send us the identical take that that man they believe was demon possessed in some way. He certainly gave off that vibe and it's very understandable, you know, whether he literally was or not. Why why that's a useful way to look at it, that when you allow certain mind virus, certain brain worms into yourself, and if you indulge them endlessly, that can really take over you as a person. That's why addiction is so dangerous. It's why Charlie would talk about this, why he would try to listen to music that elevates the spirit, holy music, why you avoid certain things because we are so heavily influenced by what we choose to marinate in and what we choose to be around. It's why the friends you have matter. You become like what you are around all of the time. And if you're around poisons all the time, those take you over and they destroy what was once a full person. You just become a parody of yourself. We have a lot of responses on marijuana. We got another email I believe, I believe she'd contacted us before from one I don't want to say the name, but she has a brother who he's basically been in and out of homelessness due to marijuana use that shattered his mental health. And we have another one. Gary says, uh, people are these are all legal because people are making money off of it, And I think Alex definitely drove that home for us. 00:35:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, we got one from Clarence saying, be honest, and I'm not trying to be stupid here, but marijuana kept me from drinking because I knew what drinking was about and it wasn't good for me. 00:35:14 Speaker 5: I would say to. 00:35:15 Speaker 3: You, Clarence, that just because it kept up drinking being you know, smoking a lot of pots, probably not good for you either. 00:35:21 Speaker 5: Right. 00:35:22 Speaker 3: In the scriptures it says that you will be mastered by nothing, no addiction, and so everybody struggles with what they struggle with. But that's the goal, that's the north star. So just something to keep in mind. 00:35:34 Speaker 4: I would say the numbers reflect if you look at it, when you are hooked on one thing, the pattern is that it makes it easier for you to be hooked on other things, which is one reason making marijuana so widely available. With such a mistake, like for the people at the bottom of society, it was like throwing one more problem onto another. So it's not that we have twenty million people who use weed and then twenty million people who drink too much, and then another twenty million who gamble too much. It's often the same people doing all these things. They do too much weed, and they drink, and they gamble away their money, and they're hooked on they played too many video games, and they also are abusing prescription drugs. And that's one reason the health of a lot of the American underclass is just totally disintegrated. They're dying, yeah, and they're dying of ten different addictions. And it'd be bad enough. It would be bad enough if we just had people with drinking problems, for example. But if you have a drinking problem and you're abusing your pills and you're taking a bunch of weed, it's very bad for you. And we have to conquer these one at a time. But the easiest way to not fall into this trap is to just make sure you never set down that path in the first place. And that's why Charlie was such a great example. 00:36:48 Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's interesting though, just looking at our emails, there's a lot of you that are a little skeptical about our weed take. Still, it's interesting. Gary says, well, cigarettes and alcohol kill you. Yes, yes, yes, is not. This guy is a use idiot, so that's interesting. Donald says, hey, folks love you. The three things listed above are legal marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, Use it your own risk. They are all bad for you, and they are only legal because they make someone money. Drinking is bad, SIGs are bad, marijuana is bad. All legal. 00:37:17 Speaker 5: Blake final, A few moments here to you. 00:37:20 Speaker 3: What do you say about the libertarian argument of the conservative movement. 00:37:24 Speaker 4: You know, I understand the appeal, but we have to recognize like no one is an island, None of us is you know, homo economicus. This like you know, this pure Randy and superhero against the world. It's like I said, we're all shaped by what's around us. And also we are defined not just as Charlie would say. We're not just defined by our independence. We're defined by our burdens, our obligations. 00:37:48 Speaker 5: Our duties. We should seek out duties. 00:37:50 Speaker 4: That's why Charlie would advocate marriage children. You become a stronger person when you actually have responsibilities and duties to fulfill. And all these addictions we push everywhere, they are encouraging people to abdicate their duties towards others, which are part of what make us fully human beings. We'll see all of you guys tomorrow join the AMA. We love having all of 00:38:13 Speaker 9: You for more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to Charliekirk dot com