How Far Does Free Speech Go?

00:00:03 Speaker 1: My name is Charlie Kirk. 00:00:05 Speaker 2: 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. 00:00:26 Speaker 1: You got to stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as. 00:00:28 Speaker 2: Young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter. 00:00:33 Speaker 1: Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter. 00:00:35 Speaker 2: 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 1: Lord, use me. 00:00:48 Speaker 3: Buckle up, everybody. 00:00:49 Speaker 4: Here we go. 00:00:56 Speaker 2: 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: All right. Welcome, everybody. It is November 11th, 2026. We are live from Phoenix, Arizona at the Y refi studios. Honored to be with you all from coast to coast. So much news to get into. And we have a jam packed show. I will tell you, we even have an airline. What is it? An airline passenger passenger joining us at the top of the second half of this hour. Michael Knowles is going to be in the house. He's gone viral recently for that, but that's not what we're talking about with him, at least not primarily. We've got some due, I think, honor to be paid to our military today. It's Veterans Day also, so we're going to bring on a guest on that. And then we've got Ryan James Gerduski on the lessons learned from some of the data that he's been pouring over after these elections. We have to start... with what I believe is a dramatic betrayal of the American people, especially the conservative base. 00:02:15 Speaker 5: I don't know if I want to say a betrayal. I want to say it's a betrayal. It's a show of defiance. I was on Newsmax yesterday, and they asked what would it mean if Thune got reelected, and he probably was 30 minutes later. And I think what it is, so, of course, Senator John Thune. leader of the Senate Republicans, has been re-elected as their leader after losing, we'll see what the final tally is, but seven, eight seats in the Senate. Our worst bloodbath in a long time. Lost our majority, and then some. It's going to be very hard to undo that damage. But he's still the leader. 00:02:48 Speaker 3: So let's talk about how this happened, though. So there was a number of people, Ted Budd from North Carolina, Ashley Moody from Florida. We had. 00:03:00 Speaker 3: Rick Scott, who was supposed to be on the show yesterday, then he tried to push it today, but that is not able to happen because the Senate is deep in work. A lot of people are upset about what happened yesterday, so I take that as a good sign. But Rick Scott, there was others, there was about eight of them, Jim Banks, Ron Johnson, that were saying, hey, no election. We're not doing a leadership election on Tuesday. We've got to delay this after a bloodbath of an electoral process that was the midterms. We've got to push this out. Well, they met in secret for seven hours. Ultimately, the people that were urging a delay were defeated. They did a secret voice vote. So this is not recorded. We don't know who the senators were that voted for yay or nay. And it proceeded at 31 to 15 to have a vote for leadership. There were no challengers. And that's half the problem here. There were no challengers. So There's a lot going on here, and I'm going to start there. Ron Johnson was asked if he wanted or knew of anybody that was willing to take the leadership role, and he said, hey, that's part of the problem. Stop 14. 00:04:10 Speaker 6: It will be minority leader. 00:04:11 Speaker 4: If that vote happens Tuesday, would you vote for Thune? 00:04:15 Speaker 7: First of all, I'm not sure anybody else wants the job. Who would want it right now? Okay, so again, I think we ought to delay these elections. We ought to have robust robust, soul-searching discussions within our conference. Republicans have to recommit ourselves to limited government, lower spending. Unfortunately, now Democrats have got a lot of leverage here. 00:04:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, so nobody wanted the job. And so that was, I think, an interview from Saturday. So it's a little bit of a throwback, but it's important because 31 to 15, they vote to advance the election. 31 senators. We don't know who they are. We want their names. We want to know But part of the problem, if we're just being honest, nobody wants this job. 00:04:57 Speaker 5: And that's a frustrating thing to hear. I can get that it is a thankless job. We just lost. You're in the minority. Being the minority leader in the Senate is not the greatest thing in the world. And we have a divided caucus. But I think of Charlie's line. He loved that line. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. You guys are all United States Senators. It takes a little bit of lift and effort to become one of 100 United States Senators. You think they'd have a little bit of a leadership bone in their body? 00:05:25 Speaker 3: You'd think. 00:05:25 Speaker 5: You'd think. And that someone would want to step up. 00:05:28 Speaker 3: Or not, because they all go to a Senate where they can hide behind their numbers and never have to poke their head out and take any slings and arrows. 00:05:33 Speaker 5: And what I think this, frankly, what I think some of this is, is I think some of this is defiance in that if they picked a new leader besides John Thune, that would be an acknowledgement we screwed up at all and are at all to blame for what just happened. And I think a lot of them, they want to throw it at President Trump and say, this is all President Trump's doing. We didn't goof this up. And you and I know, Andrew, that that is not the case. 00:05:59 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not the case. John Thune goes on Brett Baier's show yesterday, probably one of the few shows that was brave enough to take him. By the way, Brett Baier said he can't even post on social media about Leader Thune without his just getting blown up with negative comments. Sat 12, this is Leader Thune, a minority leader, soon to be, saying, hey, we accomplished a lot, Sat 12. 00:06:20 Speaker 8: You called today's meeting open and honest. 00:06:22 Speaker 6: What did those senators tell. 00:06:23 Speaker 1: You that you got wrong? 00:06:25 Speaker 9: Well, I don't know that they necessarily told me anything I got wrong. I mean, I think that we accomplished a lot. If you look at what we did in these two years, and my question for them was, what could we have done differently? 00:06:37 Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so this is being reported widely, by the way. So Punchbowl has it. You know, there was this whole back and forth, like, what would you want me to do differently? I've got a whole list of this. A lot. 00:06:47 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:06:48 Speaker 5: Pass the SAVE Act. Pass the Ban on Congressional Stock Trading. 00:06:51 Speaker 3: Do an actual on-the-record vote. Let's see who votes yay or nay for this stuff. 00:06:55 Speaker 5: Confirm the president's appointees, which they generally were not on the ball to do. There's stuff they did. They passed the big, beautiful bill. They funded President Trump's deportation stuff. Very glad about that. But a big subset of why this midterm just happened is we got elected on a lot of pretty bold promises, and I think the public would respond well to having a Very bold, revolutionary cast of mind in the Senate. And they do not have that. 00:07:20 Speaker 3: Unfortunately, President Trump had to govern by executive fiat there. This is Senator Rick Scott. He did a video afterwards describing what took place and what was agreed to. It's at 13. 00:07:33 Speaker 10: Have you ever had a deadline to get things done? 00:07:35 Speaker 1: We do. 00:07:36 Speaker 10: The Democrats take over in January. Guess what our deadline is that day? We've got to get all of Trump's judicial nominations done before then. If we don't work seven days a week, we're not going to get them done. So what that means is, starting today, we need to stay up here until all of these judicial nominations get confirmed. Because guess what? None of them will get confirmed next year. 00:08:00 Speaker 3: He basically goes on to outline that it will require 200 hours of floor time to confirm the rest of Donald Trump's judicial nominees. My question, and I think a question a lot of people in the audience have and across the grassroots. 00:08:13 Speaker 5: Of this country... Why does it take one hour? 00:08:15 Speaker 3: Where were you... You know, two years ago. Where were you six months ago? Why all the vacations? Why all the recesses? Why all the stupid stuff? I'm trying to use my words here wisely. 00:08:31 Speaker 5: They didn't have. 00:08:32 Speaker 3: Why all that stuff? And why was there no urgency then? And I know in defense of Senator Rick Scott, I know that you've been pushing. And also in defense of Rick Scott, who's ran for leadership before in the past and lost to Thune and lost to McConnell. I understand why he didn't want to put himself out there again. He probably didn't have the votes. That's the sad truth, that 31 people were just going to vote against him. 00:08:54 Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's tough. We have an email. We got one yesterday when this happened from Jamie. It says, I'm a lifelong conservative who followed Charlie religiously. I'm frustrated by the GOP, by spitting in our faces, by selecting Thune again to continue to lead our party in the Senate. I would love a frank discussion of why Republican voters should continue to associate with this party. We're going to need to answer that in the next segment, I think. Because we're going to have to do it. You can never, ever respond to frustrations like this by giving up. 00:09:23 Speaker 1: Period. 00:09:23 Speaker 3: That's why I wore this, actually, today. Never surrender. It was funny. Somebody else on our team wore it today. Because I think as defined as they are to us, we have to be defined back. So, Will Scharf is somebody that I want to highlight to you before we get into that question Blake posed. Will Scharf is somebody that has been on this show many times with Charlie. He was running for Attorney General of Missouri. Very talented legal mind. Very, very smart guy. And he got drafted into the White House, White House counsel. And you'll sometimes see pictures of Will Sharp when he's bringing out the executive orders and that sort of thing. He has... delivered a warning to Democrats coming in like Rep Garcia, who said, lawyer up. Maybe I'm gay, but I'm just I'm petty. Maybe it's because I'm gay. I'm petty. He's saying things like this out in the open. And they don't even know what they're going for. They just know that they want retribution. They know that they want to hurt people. They know that they want to imperil people legally that they disagree with. So Will Scharf has fired off a letter back saying, beyond being inconsistent with the clear, well-recognized constitutional limitations on your investigative functions, threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line. into blatant criminality and issuing unlawful subpoenas with the intention of depriving citizens of their constitutional rights and privileges may warrant further investigation. That is a shot across the bow from Will Scharf. Will Scharf is not a buffoon. He's not a clown. He's not a flamethrower. And if Will Scharf is warning them that if they continue with this unabated spray and pray approach to trying to entrap the executive branch officials in some sort of investigation or subpoena process just to punish them. He's saying that could be blatant criminality. You are warned. And again, I'll say Will Sharp, very smart guy. So that's good. I like the pushback. I like the fight. But Blake, you posed a question. Let's re-up it. 00:11:35 Speaker 1: Yes. 00:11:36 Speaker 5: So again, that's Jamie emailed us yesterday and basically said, why should I even be a Republican? if they're going to reelect Thune as the Senate leader, why should I be involved? It almost implied, should we start a third party? Well, first of all, I will tell you, if you start a third party, the only purpose of doing that in the United States, in its current condition, in this time, is to get Democrats elected to do the most far-left Democrat stuff. 00:12:00 Speaker 1: Period. 00:12:01 Speaker 5: End of story. And that's not acceptable. So, you kind of have to start from that thing. What is our goal in politics? Our goal in politics is not to feel like you're part of a club. Your goal in politics is not to achieve self-actualization within a group. It's not to hang out with all of your best friends. You participate in politics because you, hopefully as a Christian or as an observant Jew, whatever, as someone who cares about your country, you as someone who cares about your country, need to make your country better. 00:12:32 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, listen, we want to be a party that actually accomplishes good things for the country. We believe in ascendant America and a restoring. 00:12:40 Speaker 5: Point what's an attorney point for america we believe. 00:12:43 Speaker 3: In restoring the greatness of this country we believe in big beautiful ideas like sovereignty like virtue republican forms of government we believe in the founder's vision for this country we are happy warriors and we believe in not allowing the third world to invade america we believe in all of these things now the movement has a lot of virtue in it you and the audience have a lot of good things that are in your hearts, in your minds, in your value system. And as Charlie would say, I just want conservatives in Congress to be as conservative as their people. We want them to love the Lord. We want them to be virtuous, to be not corrupt. We want them to be courageous. Courage, as Charlie would always say, is the least common of all the virtues. We want these things, and we believe that we can still instill them if we work really hard and we primary the right people, and we get good candidates, okay? Our ideas are fundamentally different and better than the left. There has never been a time where our ideas are further apart. Go ahead, Blake. 00:13:46 Speaker 5: Yeah, but that said, Charlie wanted those things. He wanted lawmakers who match the conservatism of the people who vote for them. But it is a difficult process. It's an often thankless process. It's a painful process. It's one that has a lot of defeats along the way. Andrew, you and I, we're not even that old, but we've been through a few cycles of GOP defeat. If you were around in the 90s, you had to sit through the GOP letting you down on immigration reform. If you were here in the 2000s, we invaded Iraq, and then Bush led a huge wave of illegal immigration under Bush, and then we got blown out, lost the White House, they gave us Obama. We've been through many cycles of disappointment, and yet... I think the conservative movement is better now than it was decades ago. 00:14:31 Speaker 3: I totally agree with this. 00:14:33 Speaker 5: And think about things that were unimaginable victories. We repealed Roe v. 00:14:38 Speaker 1: Wade. 00:14:38 Speaker 5: That took decades to achieve. We got let down by Republicans a lot along the way. And there are children who are alive today because we didn't give up on that cause. We eventually got rid of a heinous Supreme Court decision. And that could still be undone. That's another reason you can't let Democrats win. They will try to undo that, but... All victory. No victory is permanent. No defeat is permanent. 00:14:59 Speaker 3: Well, how about this? President Trump's border wall, something that was unimaginable in 2016. 00:15:03 Speaker 5: They cackled that that could never happen. 00:15:06 Speaker 3: That's going to be done. That will be completed by the end of Trump's second term. 00:15:09 Speaker 5: The level of deportations, which some people online who want to demoralize you will say is not enough. It's no big deal. A million deportations, two million deportations. It doesn't matter. That was an amount that was unthinkable under any previous president. And this administration made it happen. And we could pick other stuff, stuff you don't even hear about anymore. The GOP used to be soft on gun rights all the time, and you don't hear about it anymore because we won so hard. You have basically total gun rights in any red state in this country, and you have the gun rights you used to have in red states in blue states. They have to try really hard to restrict it at all. 00:15:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, here's the thing. You know, and I go back to that Scott Greer comment that we read on the show yesterday. It was actually an excerpt from an article he just wrote where– I believe that the Lord is doing a new thing in the conservative movement. I believe that there is, there are new things churning, but I don't believe that ultimately it is something contrary to our values. I don't think it's anything contrary to some of the best ideas that have emerged in the new right over the last 10 years. The immigration hawkery, as he calls it, that is consensus. You know, as soon as amnesty was floated after the midterms, the, Base swarmed in and took that on. As a matter of fact, we have a great clip from Laura Ingraham yesterday challenging Secretary of DHS Mark Wayne Mullen on this. Give me the clip, Danny. Where she is voicing the concerns of the base. That is consensus. This kind of tough interview that we saw from Laura Ingraham with Secretary Mullen would not have happened 10 years ago. 00:16:46 Speaker 5: Yeah, let's do it. Let's clip four. 00:16:48 Speaker 8: It seems like every time Republicans feel like they're running into a rough spot... They rushed to some type of immigration deal with a party that you yourself have said has no interest in lowering immigration, legal immigration, or enforcing the laws as they exist. Why would any idea be floated to work with the Democrats on an issue that is their holy grail as well? 00:17:10 Speaker 11: Well, I think it depends on what you're talking about. If they want to talk about making people that enter this country here illegally legal, that's a nonstarter. If they want to talk about how do we reform amnesty and how the port of entries work, if they want to. 00:17:24 Speaker 8: Talk about how— But why does it flow DACA, Mr. 00:17:26 Speaker 1: Secretary? 00:17:27 Speaker 8: Why is that the message for you guys of this election? 00:17:31 Speaker 3: Good for Laura Ingraham. 00:17:32 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:17:33 Speaker 3: She's asking all the right questions because guess what? The conservative movement has won that battle. 00:17:38 Speaker 5: Our immune system is— Strong. Yes. 00:17:44 Speaker 3: What if today's mortgage market isn't an obstacle but an opportunity? Yes, mortgage rates are higher than we'd all like them to be. But while some buyers are sitting on the sidelines, others are discovering opportunities to negotiate, find the right home, and make a move on their own terms. Here's something to think about. If you buy when the opportunity is right, you may be able to refinance down the road if rates improve and you qualify. So don't let today's uncertainty steal tomorrow's possibilities. Andrew and Todd have decades of real-life experience helping people like you. They have access to programs and solutions that may open doors that you didn't know were available. Don't look back six months from now and wonder what you missed. Check in with Andrew and Todd today. All it takes is one phone call to find out what's possible for you. Call 888-888-1172. That's 888-888-1172. Or visit andrewandtodd.com. Don't let an obstacle become a missed opportunity for your future. Make the call today. 888-888-1172. Michael Knowles joins us now. Airline passenger. Knowles, I want to hear about, we all know that the airline industry has really taken some severe steps back post-COPE. There it is. Airline passenger. Tell us your story, Michael. 00:19:00 Speaker 4: We know it's been- Well, the New York Post ran this story over the weekend. And I noticed it. Some people started tagging me in it. They said, airline passenger fumes- over having to tip a robot. And then it's just a picture of me. And what's really strange about this is I, I filmed this video where I was at the airport and a buddy of mine said, yeah, I believe this. I went to buy a Coke and there's no employee, but they asked me to tip the robot. And so I went in, I filmed a little video that was like three years ago. And I thought it was funny, whatever it is. I guess there's nothing in the news this week, but I got such a kick out of it because I thought, look, we all have lots of different identities and we're Americans, we're podcasters, I'm a cigar salesman, all this. But if you ranked all my identities, airline passenger is probably in the top four. I'm on a lot of airplanes, you know? So I think the Post got it totally right. 00:19:49 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean... and you know, we just apologize for what you've been through, Michael. And, um, we know that it was tough. 00:19:55 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:19:55 Speaker 3: Everybody, you know, a lot of people out there really share, share this moment with you and understand exactly what you were feeling in that moment three years ago. Wait, did the video just like recirculate? I guess. I don't know. 00:20:06 Speaker 5: I'm surprised that's three years ago because I feel like that's really at the start of where they started putting the tip screen on everything. and really aggressively going at you for it. 00:20:18 Speaker 4: I'd much rather be asked to tip a robot, weirdly. I mean, it's more absurd. But the thing is, when the robot asks for the tip, I can just say no, and I can flip it off if I wanted to. But when you're at the coffee shop or wherever, you're at the convenience store, they say, okay, just press this button now. And then they stare at you, and they pierce your soul, and you have to tip like three bucks to get your bottle of water. 00:20:37 Speaker 1: That's much worse, in my humble view. 00:20:39 Speaker 3: Blake is not beholden to such. 00:20:40 Speaker 5: Yeah, no, you've got to stand up to this, Michael. He's mean. We discussed this on Thought Crime before. I'm adamant. We have things that get tipped. Table service gets tipped. A bartender gets tipped. Taxi driver, you could tip him. But you are not getting tipped if you just walked up to the cash register and received your item. That's not a tipping job. 00:20:59 Speaker 3: You deal with the angry emails. 00:21:00 Speaker 5: You have to resist. 00:21:01 Speaker 3: You deal with the angry emails. 00:21:02 Speaker 5: If you give in to that, Michael, you are actually participating in the downfall of American civilization. 00:21:07 Speaker 1: You're right. 00:21:08 Speaker 4: I agree. And I think, frankly, they should tip me. I'm going to flip the screen back on them. I say, you give me three bucks. I didn't have to work here. 00:21:14 Speaker 3: Listen, tip culture has gotten out of control. I think we all agree with that. But Blake's like the guy that will be like, well, the service wasn't quite what I expected. You get five percent. 00:21:23 Speaker 4: Fourteen and a half percent. 00:21:24 Speaker 5: No, exactly. 00:21:25 Speaker 1: Hold on. 00:21:26 Speaker 3: This is Blake. 00:21:26 Speaker 5: No, this is not true. I've only refused a tip at a restaurant once. And it's because they kicked me off the table once. Because I wasn't ordering alcohol. I was at the bar, actually. I was at the bar to watch a Packers game. And so they said I had to order alcohol. Ordering a Diet Coke and food wasn't enough. 00:21:43 Speaker 1: I kind of get it. 00:21:44 Speaker 3: I don't want to. 00:21:45 Speaker 5: I mean, I'm on your. 00:21:46 Speaker 3: But I kind of get it. 00:21:47 Speaker 1: All right. 00:21:48 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we're getting into very controversial waters here. 00:21:50 Speaker 5: Well, this is not why we had you. 00:21:52 Speaker 6: On, though. 00:21:52 Speaker 3: Michael Knowles, we want to talk about. So this is hilarious. There is a move afoot. To remove all the sponsors from Jennifer Welch's podcast. Now, I'm pretty sure most of them are gone. There's like 30 that have left her podcast. Now, they're all mad at me like I did this. I did not do this. They keep using me as the boogeyman. I did not do this. All I did was post the W's. All I did was say, hey, another company down, another company down. The grassroots did it. There was this whole network and they were all DMing me stuff. I didn't do it. I didn't even tell them to do it. So anyway, I just was like, hey, another one bites the dust. Okay, but now they're trying to, you know, trying to act like I'm canceling them. I'm not canceling them. But you had this, you had a tweet, and you said, you said, Crone, Jennifer Welch has reportedly lost $ 7. 6 million for cackling on air at Charlie's murder. That's a good start. Her remaining phone... Numbers of her two remaining advertisers are– you get it. 00:22:50 Speaker 5: And we lost another one of those since he made that post, I believe. 00:22:53 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Quince is gone. I don't have updates on the article. But anyways, so you've been– you were supportive of this effort. So I wanted to get you on for a conversation of what about canceling. Now, conservatives said we're anti-cancel culture. We're anti-cancel culture. But in the years in between, that became a consensus. And now you'll hear certain voices say, well, I'm actually okay with canceling certain things and certain people. We need to embrace cancel culture. there is a debate about what is cancellation and is it okay? Michael knows the floor is yours. 00:23:24 Speaker 4: Well, I love you say, look, I didn't do this. And that's true. You know, you were trying to be more moderate about it, but if I were you, I would take credit for it. I happily would. I posted their phone numbers. I think every single one of her sponsors should drop. I think she should be excluded from polite society. There was this big debate during the heyday of cancel culture, 20, what was that? 2016, 2017, you know, before COVID. And, there was a debate over what cancel culture meant. Does cancel culture really mean that you can never hold anyone to account? Does cancel culture, I'll go further, does cancel culture really mean that you can't censor any kinds of speech? Because the framers of our Constitution censored a lot of speech. There are speech acts that are not protected by the First Amendment that are in fact criminal and for which you can be prosecuted, like threats, obscenity, fighting words, so on and so forth. So my argument at the time, and it was kind of unpopular when I was making it, the whole right was defending free speech in absolute terms. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, guys. That's actually kind of a liberal perspective. The free speech movement, you will recall, originated in the 1960s with leftists at Berkeley who were just trying to tear down the pillars and standards and norms of of traditional society. And then, by the way, they didn't stick with this free speech talk very long. The minute they ripped down the good standards and norms, they just created their own terrible standards and norms. So they'd punish you for saying true things and good things, and they'd reward you for saying bad things and false things. So I said, I wrote this book about it called Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. At the time, I said, the debate between free speech on the one hand and censorship on the other is a fake debate. All societies have taboos. All of them have standards. That's just like part of living with other people. The real debate here is over what kind of standards and norms we're going to have. I'll give you just one practical example on it. In the 50s, you could teach the Bible in schools. You could not teach pornography in schools. So there was censorship. There were limits to free speech. 00:25:22 Speaker 1: Those are the limits. 00:25:23 Speaker 4: Today, you cannot teach the Bible in schools, and you must teach pornography in schools. So there's always going to be some kind of limit. I think they had it right in the 50s. And I think a woman who's going to cackle about the cold-blooded murder of a political conservative— a father and a husband for stating perfectly mainstream, amiable views. If that woman's going to cackle about it, I think she should lose all responses. She should be totally canceled. She should be ostracized from polite society. She can repent. She can be forgiven. She can have eternal life in heaven, but there need to be consequences on earth. And I'm very glad that that crone is facing them. 00:25:56 Speaker 5: Why did you decide on the word crone over hag or witch? 00:26:00 Speaker 4: Well, Because it's a less popular word. And so I wanted this to be a teaching moment, too, not only on the nature of free speech, but on very funny words for vicious aging women like Jennifer Welch. 00:26:13 Speaker 5: Precisely. So to run with this, though, so on the serious part of it, though, so as you say, there's going to be standards no matter what. But I think the reason a lot of people on the right really seized upon a relatively absolutist position with speech was the sense, well, We don't own the commanding heights of culture anymore. And despite our efforts, we're not really close to getting there yet. We are still mostly insurgent in our ways. And so we are the beneficiaries of a relatively open situation. Whereas if we concede, oh, there's going to be controls on speech. Even if we say we have freedom of speech, actually there are limits on it. The people who are going to be setting those rules are the left. And we are just going to, maybe we'll get a win here, but we are going to open the way to they boot us off YouTube, off of X, off of every platform again, and we're back where we were 15 years ago, and you can't really say a lot of stuff. 00:27:07 Speaker 4: Yeah, there's something to that argument. I mean, I think the latter part of it, this hypothetical fear that if we enforce the taboos now, that'll really bite us, because in the future, hypothetically, the left could do it to us. I discount that, because I think They're already doing it. They do it every chance they get. It's built in fait accompli. So I'm not concerned about that hypothetical because it's been so real. But the first part, I think, is a very good point, which is maybe when I wrote Speechless or when I was kind of zagging while a lot of people on the right were zigging on free speech, maybe the crime was just I was being a little too honest. I was being a little too blunt about it because both sides, when they are in the minority position, both sides will make arguments for free speech absolutism. It's what the leftists did in the 60s at Berkeley. It's what the conservatives did during the 20-teens when big tech and the government were censoring us. It's a great argument to make. It's what conservatives in academia make. They'll usually call for neutrality in speech or open discourse or whatever, mostly because they know that the arbiters of what is right are total lunatics because the left dominates the institutions. So that's all well and good. But I guess I just don't want us on the right to believe our own press releases. which is a real danger that people have in politics. The men who created our modern ideology of free speech, I'm talking about the liberals like John Locke, John Milton, further though, Montesquieu, even the more conservative liberals like Edmund Burke, all of these guys admitted that that there have to be great restrictions on speech, even for there to be such a thing as free speech. They imposed much harsher standards than I would. Go read Milton's or John Locke's letter concerning toleration. I guess the point with Jennifer Welch, why it's so crucial for us to enforce this standard is Jennifer Welch is cackling at the notion, seemingly supportive of the notion that leftists should murder conservatives as we're trying to have debate in the public square. And so my point is, even if you believe in the free exchange of ideas and the open marketplace of ideas, what Jennifer Welch is doing undermines the free marketplace of ideas. It is what Chesterton would call the thought that stops thought, and it is therefore the thought that ought to be stopped. 00:29:23 Speaker 3: I think that's right. I mean, because it is the assassin's veto, right? That if you can undermine this value in our culture, everything else falls apart. And, you know, they're already trying to push this back and like, you know, they're they're, they're, they're trying to get to turning point sponsors or trying to get to the show sponsors. And I'm like, good luck, good luck with that. You know how many times we've been boycotted? Conservatives have been boycotted throughout the years. The only people remaining with us are the good guys. That's it. They've got a backbone. So finally, in one instance, we have the asymmetrical advantage over the left and Good luck. 00:30:00 Speaker 5: So just before you talked about, yeah, letter concerning toleration from Locke, some of those early guys, they favored a lot more restrictions on speech than we're used to as Americans. So I went and I looked at a summary of the letter concerning toleration. One, it's very funny because he strongly implies we shouldn't tolerate Catholics, as you may remember, because it's mostly about religious toleration. And he says we shouldn't allow churches that owe fealty to a foreign prince. But he also talks about stuff you, and some of this seems related to what you're saying. So he says we shouldn't allow opinions contrary to civil society and i think we could say for example advocating the assassination of others would come under that but he also just says like you shouldn't allow religious meetings that are actually fronts for sedition you shouldn't allow doctrines that claim special privileges over others and an example he cites is those who say do not keep faith with heretics so basically they don't tolerate others and i guess i just want to continue unpacking this because we're Glad that Ms. Welch is losing her sponsors. But if we are going to embrace a realm where speech is restricted, I just feel like I hear in those caveats, like don't allow stuff that's undermining society, you very rapidly end up at the UK right now. And the UK is a country where way more people are getting arrested for their speech than in China. You're getting... You're getting booted off everything. You're going to go to jail if you make a Facebook post critical of immigration. 00:31:24 Speaker 4: Yes, I guess my argument is not so much prescriptive as it is descriptive. I'm not saying that this is how society should operate. I'm saying it's how it always does operate. So, yeah, you might end up in a situation with speech like you're seeing in the UK or like you're seeing in America because plenty of Americans have been punished for speech and lost their jobs and been deplatformed or debanked or worse or even prosecuted. So it happens here in different ways because polities are different. Even, look, I'm a mackerel-snapping papist with decent bona fides on that, but I almost want to defend John Locke or John Milton, another early liberal, very pro-free speech, wrote Areopagitica, probably the most powerful pro-free speech text ever written. Both of them said we need to limit the speech of Catholics, but in their defense— The issue of those religious wars between Catholics and Protestants had been the central political issue that was ripping the country apart. So I wish they decided it on the other side, but I actually even understand that from the principle of politics. Because what lies underneath all of this is that in order to have a society, we need to agree upon certain things, certain ways of life. We need to agree upon the difference between a man and a woman. Here's a good example from modern society. Either women get their own bathrooms or they don't get their own bathrooms. But you can't just let everyone have his own opinion on that and act upon that opinion. We actually have to establish it. That's a matter of political right. Do women get their own bathrooms or are we going to get rid of women's bathrooms and let the men go into them? So we have to establish certain exclusions. This is why in the First Amendment we defend a lot of speech. but certain things we don't defend. So like threats, for instance, or threats are not protected by the First Amendment because they actually undermine speech. Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment because it appeals to the prurient interest, takes you away from your reason, and undermines the purpose of free speech, which in theory is supposed to help us to get to the truth. And so regardless of the ways in which speech restrictions could go off the rails, I think what we have to first establish is, There are always going to be speech restrictions. There always have been from the beginning of the country. There always are in every polity. Right now, I think we can agree that we're not going to clamp down on Catholic speaking or Protestants or Jews or Muslims for that matter. But we do have to at least reestablish the basic premises of this. We no longer even enforce the First Amendment prohibition on obscenity. That's weakened for many, many decades now. But at the very least, can we all agree that that if you use your free speech to threaten or to encourage political violence against people who are properly using their free speech, that that would be incoherent, that would violate the law of non-contradiction, that would be a use of speech that totally undermines speech, and therefore that is at the very least one restriction that we should all be able to agree on, left, right, and center. 00:34:25 Speaker 3: Well, and this is where we have a lot of agreement. I tend to I think Charlie was a free speech absolutist because I think ultimately you find that it becomes unworkable in this multi-ethnic, multicultural society that we have. If we were all 90% white evangelical Protestants or whatever, as the country was at certain points, then it would be a lot easier to come up with certain consensus around our value system, right? I ultimately... kind of find that to be unworkable now. But what I would say, and I made this point when I was on with Will Kane a couple days ago, when it was about the Dave Chappelle joke, or joke, and I use that term very lightly in this regard. 00:35:08 Speaker 1: Yeah, was it a joke? Yeah. 00:35:10 Speaker 3: It wasn't a joke. It was him just expressing his feeling. And you sort of hear the audience kind of, they cheered, but it was subdued. It was muted. And I look back at 1981 after Reagan was, the attempted assassination on Reagan's life, And I looked back to see if any comics were making jokes about it. And there was only one I could find. And what I heard or what I read was that the joke bombed. Nobody laughed. And ultimately, that's what we're talking about. It's the political will to establish consensus in a country, to establish a value system where we're not trying to be speech police. We're not trying to be thought police. But it is a... incentive system. Dave Chappelle said that out loud because he thought that he was going to be cheered. He thought that he was going to be rewarded for voicing that. And I want to live in a culture that at least has this modicum of decency left where they know not to cheer. They know not to laugh at a joke that that that is that revolt revolting. 00:36:09 Speaker 4: And so, you know, it gets to it gets to a really deep issue at the heart of this question, which is what is free speech for? And some people will say, I don't know what it's for. But no, there is an answer to that. The people who developed the concept of free speech, the framers, the founders, they actually did have an answer to that. In America, free speech is for the blessings of liberty. Liberty itself is for certain blessings. It's for the common good. It's for a flourishing society. It's for justice. I mean, the framers are writing all about this. in the Federalist Papers, which explain the Constitution. And so you say, okay, we believe, he follows someone like John Stuart Mill, okay, we believe that it's for getting at the truth. Okay, well, at least let's not have speech that totally undermines that speech. 00:36:55 Speaker 1: Amen. 00:36:55 Speaker 3: I think that's a good place to end it. Michael Knowles, airline passenger, travel safe, my friend. 00:37:00 Speaker 4: Good to see you, gentlemen. 00:37:01 Speaker 3: See you soon. Picture this. You go to pay for groceries and your card is declined. You check the app, zero. The IRS just levied your account overnight and nobody called to tell you about it. That's not a horror story. That's a Tuesday for the IRS. Liens, levies, wage garnishments, bank seizures. They take what you've earned and they do not hesitate. If you owe back taxes or haven't filed, do not wait. Call America Tax Group, the nation's leading tax firm, now at 888-381-3816. Here's what's happening while you put it off. Failure to file penalties of up to 25% of your unpaid tax. The interest compounding daily. The number on that letter is already out of date. It's bigger now. Every day you wait, the IRS gets stronger and you get weaker. The IRS is not going to forget about you. It's not a matter of if they act, it's when. And when they do, it will not be gentle. Going up against them alone is extremely risky. So don't do it. Protect your financial security with guidance from America Tax Group. Call 888-381-3816 or visit americataxgroup.com slash charliekirk. It is, of course, Veterans Day, and we want to take a brief aside to give some reverence and some thought and some appreciation to the men and women who have served in our armed forces and provided us all with freedom, security, And we love these people. It's a great day on the calendar, honestly. And there's so much to be thankful for. And here to kind of help us dive into some of the rich tradition, I think it's a palate cleanser, a good palate cleanser, is Patrick K. O'Donnell, bestselling author of The Indispensables and The Unvanquished. And he has a book now called Revolutionary Snipers, Washington's Frontier Commandos. whose marksmanship forged a new way of war and helped win the revolution. You've seen him on our show before, and we're so glad to have him back. Patrick, welcome back, my friend. How are we doing? 00:39:05 Speaker 1: It's great to be back. I'm doing wonderfully. I mean, the book came out yesterday. It's a best-selling book. We're doing awesome. 00:39:11 Speaker 5: That's great. And we really mean palate cleanser. I was telling him before we started that 250... 250 years ago right now is basically the low point in the American Revolution. You have that Battle of Long Island. We get driven out of New York. Washington hasn't crossed the Delaware yet. We are losing the. 00:39:30 Speaker 1: war. 00:39:30 Speaker 5: It is going badly. So if you think we had a bad time a week ago, because we lost a lot of House seats and Senate seats, America has been in dire straits before. 00:39:39 Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean, this is, I think that's a great thing about history. It provides perspective. When you think things are bad, you think you had a bad day. It provides perspective. And I mean, This next week is the anniversary of the Battle of Fort Washington. And if you know where the GW Bridge is, the base of that, Fort Washington was this bastion that was over a mile long. And it was here that Washington constructed defenses. Many of the revolutionary snipers were inside of that bastion, but they had a problem. I mean, this is a situation where the American Civil War was really the first civil wars during the American Revolution. You had people... that were just not on board, and you had some serious hardcore traitors. And the adjutant of the fort, who was actually a rifleman initially in my book, bails out a week before the siege of this fort, almost to this day right now that we're broadcasting this show, bails out with the plans of the fort and the order of battle and delivers them directly to the British Army. So they know exactly where the weak points are at Fort Washington, and also the order of battle where people are positioned and they attack. The riflemen hold for a while. Their long rifles are the best in the world. They're able to hit at 300 or 400 yards at best, sometimes 100, 200 yards, where the average musket can't even hit within 50 yards. It's that inaccurate. But they're able to hit the weak points, and it's the Hessians, the German allies that the British have, It's led by a guy by the name of Johan Rall. If you know your history, he's the commander of the garrison at Trenton on Christmas day where Washington attacks, but he is really one of their most elite and best commanders and he leads the assault and they break through. And it's here that there's some really amazing stories, Blake, that, um, you know, I mean, especially some women's stories that are just off the charts. In fact, uh, Molly Corbin is one of those people, and she is a camp follower with her husband. Many of these women go to battle with their husbands because they don't want to be left behind at home. And she is next to the cannon of her husband, and he goes down. He's killed. And the next man up is a woman, and it's Molly. And she helps load that cannon and continue to fire into the onrushing Hessian soldiers. And she is actually very– she's almost mortally wounded, very seriously wounded in the process of doing that. And she is– after the battle is over, some British surgeons find her, and they sort of rehabilitate her just enough, and she will live out her days in West Point eventually with the Americans. And she's one of the first women to receive a pension, and she's considered an Army veteran. 00:42:33 Speaker 5: That's amazing. And she'd wear her frock coat. You had a piece today in Fox News, the revolution's epic test showed the strength of our greatest generation. And I think, yeah, you're calling the original revolution here is the true greatest generation. Obviously, all respect to our World War Two vets as well. But you just talk about like describe what they're going through just day to day to fight this battle that they're enduring starvation. They don't have shoes that. What do you have to do and endure to be an American patriot 250 years ago? 00:43:04 Speaker 1: This is why, you know, people are selling out so cheaply. This is the sacrifices that this generation made. And I'm a World War II historian. I've written seven books on World War II. In fact, I've interviewed about 4,000 World War II veterans. And one of my favorite interviews was in the mid-' 90s with the Darby's Rangers. And I said to Frank Mativi, who was a— You know, it was in the spearhead attacks on everything. And one of the toughest of the tough, I said, are you the greatest generation? And he looked me straight in the eye and said, Patrick, what about the boys of 75 and 76 who fought for the cause, that fought against the greatest army and navy at the time, that forged our ideals of freedom and liberty, and then also fought against fellow Americans that were fighting against the crown? And they do all this and they create our ideals of freedom and liberty in which transcend everything and have changed the world. But the article I wrote today is about the Long March. This is sort of like most people don't know about it. Benedict Arnold was a great hero at the early phase of the Revolutionary War, a strategic genius. And they are going about attacking Canada. And Arnold, it's a two-pronged plan. They push Montgomery up in the center. He takes Montreal to the right side. through the main woods in the wilderness, Benedict Arnold thinks it's only about 200 miles, when in reality, it's the most rugged terrain practically in the United States of rivers and, you know, trees and mountainous terrain. And they have to traverse all this for over 350 miles. And this becomes a death march, a starvation march. It is an epic story of survival. And that's what the piece is on today, where, you know, this is, I think one of the greatest generations, the revolutionary generations, really the true epic test of human endurance, because they have to traverse this. They have to constantly look over their shoulder for Native American Indian tax. And, oh, by the way, they're totally starving. And they're starving so much that they literally rip off their belts and shot pouches and boil them in water and eat the leather. And many of the men do not survive. And within this group, are also some intrepid women that are following the men. And I'll have another article out tomorrow called America's First Female Sniper. And one of those women is with her man, and she takes his rifle, and she's a combat veteran. 00:45:39 Speaker 3: Patrick O'Donnell, historian and author of the brand-new book Revolutionary Snipers, Washington's frontier commandos whose marksmanship forged a new way of war, and helped win the revolution. I want to read just a portion of the description of this book because it's so vivid. And Patrick, I think your real gift, the real treasure is, yes, you're an intelligent man, you're a deep researcher, you do the hard work, but you're such a good storyteller. Listen to this. The snipers, the very first members of the Continental Army, quickly struck terror among British troops besieged in Boston in the summer of 75 by picking off targets. However, their success was checkered by mutiny. an epic journey through the Maine wilderness, and a heart-wrenching failure at the gates of Quebec. O'Donnell follows unforgettable characters, including a white slave to a rifle-wielding female camp follower, and a riveting Band of Brothers-style narrative. Despite setbacks, Washington and his officers perceived a new approach to waging war could emerge from the combined arms of pairing sniper groups with traditional units like The journey to Maine and Quebec and the mutiny. I mean, this is such good stuff. It's drama. It's epic. Yeah, it's epic. It's epic. But we're talking about the way that they revolutionized the way that war was even fought. And it had me thinking about the drones that are revolutionizing our current day and what that can do to the way people perceive war, engage in it. and execute these battles. And I just, as a historian, I was curious about your reflections on that. 00:47:11 Speaker 1: This is a major theme within my book. And the book is a band of brothers on these characters that will travel from 75 and even 74 all the way through the war to Yorktown. And it's about the enlisted men. These are riflemen that do extraordinary things, that do the fighting, do the fighting of all of our wars, in fact. as well as some really amazing revolutionary snipers that are officers. But within that, another character is the long rifle or the Pennsylvania long rifle. And just think of a drone today. This was the drone of its day. And it's an incredible piece of technology that was an American made, that was an American innovation for the frontier. There were rifles around in Europe, but they were bulky, they were clunky, really heavy. But this thing is light and And it's adapted for the frontier so that it could shoot further than any other rifle in the world at the time. And it was lightweight. And it had to work because the men in this book were on the bleeding edge of the frontier. Their homes were next. Many of them were burned out by Native Americans. It was life hung by a thread. It was rugged individuals that was formed in this crucible. And the story of the long rifle itself is a character story. And how it fits into the broader system of war is a real struggle because they're constantly trying to figure out how it fits in and how it works with its advantages, which is this great distance. Major disadvantage, though. It's very fragile. You can't put a bayonet on it. It's very slow loading compared to a musket. So they're vulnerable to a bayonet charge. And they come up with an idea of issuing everybody spears to Washington and But nobody wants to lug around a heavy spear and their rifle, a shot pouch, a bedroll, and a tomahawk, and all kinds of other stuff. So they get rid of the spears. And it's Daniel Morgan who's a central character in this book that comes up with, it's probably him, that comes up with the idea of combined arms. And what that means is to combine riflemen with musket men so that they have this failing of bayonets and fast-loading muskets that can protect the slower-loading riflemen. And this is a very innovative tactic, and it will mushroom and grow into cavalry and cannon. and that move around very quickly, and it's a new way of work. But that's only part of it, because these guys also innovate and pioneer much of irregular warfare and special operations. They are the earliest and first troops of the Continental Army. They're part of the 10 companies that are formed on June 15, 1775, and they're the backwoodsmen of America, and they're tough as nails. They're total badasses that can shoot further than anyone else. 00:50:01 Speaker 5: I guess that's the big takeaway. America's been... One of our blessings is we have men who've sacrificed a lot, suffered a lot, but we've also been these big innovators. So even back in 1775 all the way through to today. 00:50:13 Speaker 3: Forged by the struggle in the frontier. I mean, that's what's interesting. And you see this with the– I go back to the drones. You develop drones because you have to. It's all you got. It's the only way you can fight back against a superior force. So how do you eke out an advantage? Where can you do it? And it's the frontier mixed with just the sheer daunting task of facing down the British, right? So you have to come up with innovations. 00:50:42 Speaker 1: And what's so cool about the story is it's not this linear slope of success. It's mired in controversy. These are guys that are uncontrollable in many cases, and they have to somehow fit into the army. And when they arrive in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the Siege of Boston– Their first job is to protect the army because there's a vital shortage of gunpowder. The British know that. Everything at the beginning of the war was about disarmament, Lexington and Concord and everything else. British knew that. But they had to mask this critical shortage. So their job was to keep heads down or take them off. And they were doing that very effectively. But they were also hard-drinking men that didn't like to be told what to do. And when one of their guys was put in a stockade, they literally enmasked an entire company went to the stockade and pulled them out. And it was effectively a mutiny. And they, Washington has to crush that. And it's, it's this incident that literally takes one of these two of these companies and puts them on this death March through the main wilderness. Cause Washington almost in a way, he deals with them very leniently in a court Marshall, but they also get a ticket to ride on a death March and starvation March. Wow. But that's an epic story. And many of these, these men survive and then they, They attack the gates of Quebec, and they're so close, so close to taking Canada and Quebec in the middle of a Nor'easter. It's another epic story. 00:52:11 Speaker 5: You're telling us we could have prevented Canada. 00:52:16 Speaker 1: The 14th colony almost was American. It was incredible because it was on the first of the year, 1776. that these men are, they know that British reinforcements are coming, and General Montgomery gives these men a very rousing speech, and they had been through so much hell, and that's what's amazing of this death march, that they are just united, and they will just go through the most treacherous things. Through the snowstorm, they attack the bastion of Fortress Quebec on both sides, And Benedict Arnold and Daniel Morgan are on one side. They're penetrating. And then Montgomery is on the other. And they are moving forward. And the Canadians are retreating along with the British soldiers. But one guy who's a drunken sailor is next to the candidate. He's like, all right, I'm going to give it one last shot. Puts his torch on the touch hole. And it fires a shot directly at General Montgomery and kills him instantly. And halts the one prong of the attack as the Americans flee. It should have. It was a twist of fate that changed the course of the world. 00:53:28 Speaker 3: Blake's never going to stop thinking about this now. 00:53:31 Speaker 5: We could have stopped Maid. We could have stopped all that. We could have stopped Justin Trudeau. Patrick, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for your work honoring our military heroes. Check out his book, Revolutionary Snipers. And happy Veterans Day. And happy Veterans Day to you. Thank you for coming on, Patrick. 00:53:47 Speaker 1: I'm at Combat Historian on Twitter. Beautiful. Thank you. 00:53:53 Speaker 3: I talk about jobs and industries on this show all the time, but I didn't expect to find an entire skills trade community on TikTok. Plumbers, electrician, builders, and contractors sharing the work they do every day. And it went way beyond tips and tricks. People were sharing their craft, connecting with local contractors, and talking about how they were building their businesses and growing their teams. It opened my eyes. to how people in the trades are using TikTok to share their skills, make connections, and find new opportunities. I remember thinking, this is exactly what we need more of, people sharing what they know and creating opportunities for others. And I never expected to find a community like this that's the thing about TikTok. You start with something you know, and suddenly you're finding a whole new side of it that surprises you and leaves you wanting to know more. Your next discovery is waiting for you on TikTok. Learn more at TikTok.com slash discover more. Without further ado, we have Ryan James Gerduski. You know him from the show and also from the HomelandPAC.com work he does. The Nat Pop, which is National Populous Substack. Check him out there. He's also the host of the Numbers Game podcast. Ryan, good to see you, my friend. We all know that we lost the midterms because of tariffs. And I'm excited to have you explain why. 00:55:10 Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. 00:55:11 Speaker 5: No, we lost because we didn't have amnesty. 00:55:13 Speaker 3: That's what it was. 00:55:13 Speaker 5: It was amnesty. 00:55:15 Speaker 3: That's what we need. So you are diving in the numbers, Ryan. Immigration, corruption, amnesty. The Dems like to put this thing on their polls like democracy. I never really... Our democracy. Yeah, like 62% of Democrats are very concerned about democracy. And I have no idea what the hell they mean by that. Give me the broad strokes and we'll dive deeper. Sum it up as simple as you can. What happened? 00:55:41 Speaker 6: So... Yeah, immigration, not immigration, the war and the gas prices definitely mattered. I think the thing I've been kind of challenging myself within the last couple of days is how much the Epstein files mattered in a way that I didn't think that they were going to. Epstein files were the Democrats closing message in almost every key swing state. There was a Democrat donor who gave $ 12 million to run this message. And I don't know whether it was because of GOP suppression ad or whether it was a persuasion ad. But essentially they were saying that the Republicans in Congress were part of the Epstein class and protecting pedophile, a pedophile sex ring. And it really impacted, it probably swung Mississippi. It may have swung a lot of votes in Kansas, but it was absolutely effective in suppressing, I think suppressing the Republican vote and making them feel like once again, this party that branches up as the working class party has become the party of the elites that look out for each other, no matter what. 00:56:41 Speaker 1: Interesting. 00:56:41 Speaker 3: I mean, That's fascinating. It does jive because ultimately the Epstein thing didn't matter to Democrats. They never even talked about it during Joe Biden's tenure. It was our base. It was the MAGA base that really, really wanted transparency on that. That was the first, I call it the psychic break with the base. Charlie knew it. He saw it. He was privately warning about it a lot and publicly at Student Action Summit in July 2025. I mean, we talked a lot about it and we were trying to get you know, people in D.C. to understand what it meant to the base. So that actually makes a perfect sense to me. And it makes sense that it would impact red states more than blue states, actually. 00:57:18 Speaker 6: So Democrats ad tested their five most effective ads. The most effective ad was the anti-Max Miller ad. No surprise there. The four other top five were all Epstein ads in every key swing state. 00:57:31 Speaker 3: In which states? 00:57:33 Speaker 6: Mississippi, Ohio, Kansas, Texas. And I don't know what South Carolina was attested, but those are the big four, Ohio, Kansas, Mississippi and Texas. Hugely effective. North Carolina's the only attack ad that they had really against Watley was over pedophiles and the Epstein stuff. It was like the most effective stuff. And I think it really impacts where why Republicans wanted to show up. And I think, you know, if you've seen TikTok lately, which I'm not on TikTok, but my siblings are. I have two younger siblings, and they said TikTok has gone from a pro-Trump social media platform to a platform that is solely about conspiracies, theories about Israel and Epstein. And that TikTok has changed fundamentally how many social media content creators are really talking about how Republicans are covering up the Epstein files and how we're going to war for Israel. And that's been a real game changer. I was looking at Zachary Danini from VoteHub's file on the early vote. Among non-three of three young Republicans, Republicans between 18 to 44, among the people who don't vote in every election under the sun, they had a turnout of the lowest turnout imaginable. 13% of those that voted early in 2024 showed up early in 2026. Among young, non-13%. Do you know how many non-three of threes black showed up? Non-3 of 3 blacks, 55%. Non-3 of 3 Latinos, 45%. 00:59:02 Speaker 9: Wow. 00:59:10 Speaker 6: Difference among white young Republicans was catastrophic. Super low turnout, and it is probably why so many of these elections were close. In the state of Georgia, for example, 18 to 25-year-old whites are barely showed up more than 18 to 25 year old blacks. And there's a lot more whites than there are blacks because they did not show up to vote in this election. There is something about the Republican brand and the Republican message that they don't believe that they have the same, you know, that they're, that this is the same party from just two years ago. It's really dramatic. And I say that, you know, the Epstein files was a big part of it, but it's really hard to say you're the party of the working class when most of your campaign dollars are coming from a handful of billionaires, including the world's richest man. You know, every Republican candidate was outspent in their campaigns, not super PAC money, but the campaign money. They raised some of the fewest dollars from smaller grassroots donors in the entire country, certainly far fewer than Democrats do. And if you look at a map, a breakdown of counties, of which counties gave more smaller grassroots donations to Democrats versus Republicans, You can almost count the amount of Republican counties on your hands, your toes and fingers. Super low. Democrats. And what happens when you donate that $ 20, that $ 10, you're more invested in your candidate winning. Republicans have become so used to getting these $ 100 million checks from the likes of Elon Musk. And there's nothing wrong with Elon Musk, but I'm not bashing him. I'm just saying they're so used to getting the Adelson money, the Musk money, this money, that money. They've really lost touch with grassroots as far as what their issues are, what their concerns are, and how to mobilize them, and young people especially. I mean, that's really. 01:00:56 Speaker 3: Where– I remember– Yeah, Ryan, I remember after midnight– I mean, this is why Charlie was screaming at the top of his lungs basically about Iran and screaming about Epstein. It's because he knew. He knew what kids were thinking about both of those things. He knew it. 01:01:14 Speaker 5: I mean, have we ever seen kind of a divergence between people on the same political side in terms of what issues they prioritize? Because we've seen it just with this war that what stands out is if you're an over 65 Republican, they basically just like the war. There's rah-rah, let's go knock heads. And then if you're under 35, under 30, not just not enthusiastic, but really adamantly against it to the point that the war happening at all just seems to have, destroyed their turnout enthusiasm completely. 01:01:46 Speaker 6: Well, where do you get your news from? I think that's a big message. I mean, is there anyone under 65 years old or under 75 years old listening to Mark Thiessen? 01:01:55 Speaker 1: Seriously. 01:01:55 Speaker 6: I mean, I'm not joking. I don't think that there probably is. If you are the last people, look at what the war has done in terms of support for Israel. You know, I was saying this to one of my Jewish friends the other day. I said, you know, you've been so wrapped up in what the DSA thinks of Israel and what young Republicans think about Israel. Look at what the average Gen X independent thinks about Israel. These are people who usually vote Republican, and the support has been catastrophic, and you need to wake up to reality. Otherwise, you're caught fighting the last war. So that was a big part of it. Epstein-Faul, it was bigger than I thought it was. Obviously, the gas prices from the war, immigration, the taxes went, I think, moved a lot of Hispanics to the left. 01:02:40 Speaker 3: Ryan, can we talk about Texas? Why did Texas go blue? 01:02:45 Speaker 6: Paxton was a horrible candidate. Truly horrific. Didn't campaign, didn't fundraise, wouldn't debate. He's notoriously- He didn't do that. 01:02:52 Speaker 3: How much worse than Abbott did he end up coming in? 01:02:55 Speaker 6: It wasn't- Seven points. 01:02:57 Speaker 3: Was it seven points? 01:02:58 Speaker 8: Okay. 01:02:58 Speaker 6: Yeah, it was the worst performer statewide by a long shot. And actually, the biggest over-performer in the state legislature, or one of the biggest over-performers in the legislature, was the man who was in charge of his impeachment trials. There are a lot. The anti-Paxton attitude was significant in Texas. It was really, really significant. And it also feeds the whole idea of corruption. Corruption is an issue. It was highbrow and lowbrow. Among lowbrow, it was these people are covering up Epstein. They're all part of the Epstein class. That was the line you heard over and over again. Among highbrow, it was why is Donald Trump making $ 5 billion? Why is Jared Kushner making all this money? Why are all these pardons happening around money? So there was a difference, but it didn't help that our candidate in Texas also had his own corruption allegations. 01:03:49 Speaker 3: That were– So it played into a pervasive narrative. 01:03:54 Speaker 1: Right. 01:03:54 Speaker 3: Because Paxton had won statewide races in Texas before. He was generally beloved by the grassroots and the base, but in terms of normie voters, independent voters, it probably– played into this narrative, and it was just maybe the wrong candidate at the wrong time, perhaps, is what you're saying. And I like Ken. I think he's a fighter. 01:04:15 Speaker 6: I have nothing against Ken Paxton at all, but also he was not in the state as much. Listen, the only two things that are very equal in all campaigns is time. Tallarico did three times as many town hall rallies as Paxton. There is no excuse from that. He never campaigned like he was running from behind. He always campaigned like he was a mile ahead. You cannot do that in this kind of election cycle. 01:04:42 Speaker 1: How did we win the narrative on affordability? 01:04:45 Speaker 12: Were there just these nice little Democrats out there running for office and going to. 01:04:49 Speaker 1: No. 01:04:51 Speaker 12: The Republicans never figured out what we were doing. There's something called the American Accountability Network. Tens of thousands of online humans, not bots, coordinated to make the affordability message a winning message online. 32.5 million people People hit on Instagram every day. 88.8 million hit on Twitter every single day. And 185 million Facebook hits every single day. 01:05:21 Speaker 1: They were saying you need to elect Democrats to deal with this. 01:05:24 Speaker 12: Driving the kitchen table affordability message and tying that to Democrats on a positive and Republicans on a negative. They couldn't get any traction on these cultural war issues anymore. because we figured out how to get around all that. 01:05:38 Speaker 3: We're joined by Ryan James Gerduski. And what you're hearing there, Ryan, has been one of the more viral clips I've seen go around. Do you buy it that it was that Dems worked this giant PSYOP and it affected, you know, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina? Saying to voters, we are the kitchen table issue party. We're going to get your prices down, even though we all know they have no ideas to do that. Just tax the rich and try and hand out free stuff. It's not going to work. Do you believe that that was effective? 01:06:08 Speaker 6: No, I think that's a lie. I think it's something they're trying to brand for the election. Look, is it ever just one thing? Could a terrible candidate, could Barry Goldwater, if he had Turning Point USA, win the 1964 presidential election? No, he couldn't. You can have a good organization and bad candidates. You could have bad organization and good candidates and you can't win. And it's a lot of little things. that mount up to it. Did this action group have 32.5 million? One, that's 32.5 million. Is it all global? It is, because every internet thing is global. So 32.5 million across the globe, not just in America. How many were repeat users? How many were new users? I mean, he's really selling a lot of hopes and dreams right now that this is impacting it. I don't think that that's the case. I think that there was a large shift among Latinos for immigration issues and for economic issues. 01:07:01 Speaker 3: Okay, hold on. 01:07:03 Speaker 1: I'm sorry. 01:07:03 Speaker 3: Latinos on immigration. 01:07:05 Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I think immigration did impact. 01:07:08 Speaker 3: So so the sense that Renee Good, Alex Petty, it was too it was too harsh. It was too too many raids. What are you saying here? 01:07:15 Speaker 6: So I like there is. So what Republicans did successfully in 2004, 2024 rather, was do the fairness issue on immigration. 01:07:22 Speaker 1: Right. 01:07:23 Speaker 6: Is it fair for an illegal alien across the border to get benefits, to get a jump line? No, it's not fair. Fairness is a really core establishment of the American mantra. 01:07:32 Speaker 1: Right. 01:07:33 Speaker 6: We run against people who are unfair. So we won the fairness issue on immigration with border security in 2024. I think doing some of the ICE raids at like courthouses where people are trying to get their paperwork together and they're getting dragged off. 01:07:48 Speaker 3: Is that fair? 01:07:49 Speaker 6: They're trying to do the right thing. To a lot of the minds of a lot of Americans, no, it's not fair. Going in school lines, is that fair? No, it's not fair. Going after people with their children. Is that fair? Those kinds of things. It's not that we were doing mass deportations. It's, I think, how aggressively it happened and where it was caught on constant on video. I've talked to a number of Hispanic friends of mine who are not political people in the slightest. They are just normies. And some of them were sort of carrying around ID because they thought they were going to be intercepted by ICE. Like they were genuinely afraid of what was happening. I think we could have achieved mass deportation by freezing bank accounts, by going after employers, by doing other things like that. I think it was just a little bit too much, too aggressive. And the problem is, is that a lot of Republicans, they really want to go after Somalians. Problem is, Somalians are all here legally. Thank you, George H.W. 01:08:39 Speaker 1: Bush, right? 01:08:41 Speaker 6: And Bill Clinton. We want to go after the people who came under Biden. Problem is, a lot of them are asylum seekers and they're caught up in the legal system and they're not going to be deported until they're cases are adjudicated. Who are the easiest people to get is the gotaways. They are mostly Mexican. They've been here for quite some time. And criminals, by the way, are really good at evading the law. That's why they're criminals. So it's known gotaways that were able to really get deported en masse, and they are overwhelmingly Mexican. If you see among Hispanics, the group that shifted the furthest left of all Hispanic ethnicities, it was Mexicans. I don't think that's an accident. So I'm not saying don't do mass deportation. I'm very in favor of mass deportation. I'm super in favor of the wall. Everything that Trump said, I think it's not a matter of like, you know, when your parents would yell at you, your mom would yell at you. It's not what you say. It's how you say it. It's not what we're doing. It's how we're doing it. I just think it's a little too over the top and aggressive. Let's freeze bank accounts. Let's go after employers. Let's punish the people hiring them. I just think there's a better way to do it. 01:09:42 Speaker 5: I mean, it's always seemed to me like that's the $ 50 bill on the sidewalk or billion dollar bill on the sidewalk is you turn business owners who employ illegals into these national villains because a lot of them are pretty ugly people. Like they're running shops that pay in cash and don't have any safety and they're not super likable a lot of the time. And especially if you can pick who you make the villain, you can find the least likable one in America to make him the face for it. 01:10:07 Speaker 8: Yep. 01:10:08 Speaker 5: Just seems like right. And you make the opportunity. 01:10:09 Speaker 6: And in this in this populist economic populist environment, wealthy people are the villain, whether we like it or not, especially the wealthier they are. So, yeah, you want to go to a meat shop, a meat packing plant where like an illegal alien loses their hand and has no protection and the American hospitals on the on the dole for it. That's a great optics that they could go after for illegal immigration and put some fear in the eyes of employers. And freeze bank accounts of illegal aliens. That's another easy way to create self-deportation and to use whatever the app is. That is an easier way than I think it was. And not what we're doing. It's how we're doing it. And I think that that was the problem. 01:10:50 Speaker 3: So I've gotten so many notes, Ryan. The numbers don't add up. The numbers in Texas don't add up. There's something fishy about these numbers. Texas, go back to that. The turnout was insane for Democrats. What explains it then? 01:11:04 Speaker 6: About 20% of Republicans voted for James Tallarico, something that high. Republicans outvoted Democrats in Texas when all the numbers are said and done. There were 170,000 new Hispanics that have never voted before. That's a concern. A lot of low propensity Democrats, 700,000 more low propensity Democrats than Republicans. That's a major concern as far as the future goes. But a bigger problem is you can't win Denton County and Collin County without Republicans. You just can't. And he lost them by a landslide. It wasn't that they were inventing new voters. It's just that the Republicans were really turned off by James Tallarico. And also, there's this myth that Abbott's this amazing campaigner who does these amazing numbers in the suburbs. Abbott was not amazing. And what was Abbott running on for his fourth term, an unprecedented fourth term? He wanted to say, if you owned a home, you didn't have to pay a school tax anymore. What happens if homes don't pay school taxes anymore? It's the end of high school football in Texas. And Gina, whatever her last name is, was talking about that, saying he's going to end high school football in Texas. Yeah, like she's a big fan of high school Texas. 01:12:15 Speaker 3: Yeah, could you? 01:12:16 Speaker 1: Exactly. 01:12:17 Speaker 5: You shouldn't go after football in Texas. 01:12:19 Speaker 3: I have a belief, though, that we have a chance to snap back a lot of these states. We're going to have to get rid of the buffoonery and the clownishness, and we're going to have to get serious. 01:12:29 Speaker 6: And Darlene Graham can't be our nominee anymore. So, yeah, that's it. 01:12:32 Speaker 1: Fair enough. 01:12:33 Speaker 3: Ryan James Gerdeski, this was very, very interesting stuff. Genuinely. We need to have him back for round two. There's so much to unpack here. Yeah, there's so much to get to. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Much more to get to then. 01:12:48 Speaker 5: For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.