Met Gala Mischief and Medicaid Millionaires

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. 00:00:24 Speaker 2: 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 at turning point. You would say college chapter. 00:00:33 Speaker 1: Go start at turning point, yould say high school chapter. 00:00:35 Speaker 2: Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. 00:00:39 Speaker 3: I gave my. 00:00:39 Speaker 1: 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 Lord, Use me. 00:00:48 Speaker 2: Buckle up, everybody, Here we go. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirkshaw, a company that specializes in gold I rays and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegold investments dot Com. That is Noblegoldinvestments dot Com. 00:01:17 Speaker 3: All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Shows, Tuesday, May fifth. We're here at the y re Fi Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. Have we doing, Blake? 00:01:25 Speaker 4: Oh, we're doing great because it's May fifth and Phoenix, Arizona and it's sixty four degrees out and raining. 00:01:30 Speaker 3: So yeah, this continues Blake's theme that Arizona is a fake desert, baked desert, rains all the time, too cold, and rains too much. 00:01:38 Speaker 5: Probably it's probably hotter in South Dkota right now. 00:01:40 Speaker 3: He's probably the only person I've ever heard describe Arizona this way. But that's why we keep him around. 00:01:46 Speaker 4: Okay, it's not it's not well, it's not cooler than South Dkota right now, or it's forty seven degrees that's good to say. 00:01:52 Speaker 3: We did have a spell where it was like one hundred and five for three weeks. 00:01:56 Speaker 5: Oh yeah, in like early March, and then it went back to raining for a while. 00:01:59 Speaker 6: Yea. 00:02:00 Speaker 3: Anyways, so lots to get to today. President Trump has just blasted Leader Thun. We're gonna get to that in just a second while we pull that clips. But we wanted to start the show off in a kind of more fun and jovial way, a little light hearted way, because it's just too it's too easy, it's too much fun. And that is the MET Gala. We knew it was happening yesterday because I saw it trending on social media, but I really could care less until you see some of the costumes, which are just too too good not to comment on. But let's just basically first premise this Blake with talking about the elitist hypocrisy of the MET Gala, where tickets cost around one hundred thousand dollars per person. This whole event functions as a massive tax writeoffs for millionaires and billionaires, by the way, because they can just write it off as a business expense. And they do these ostentatious displays of inequality, and they rage against the machine and the man and capitalism and Donald Trump, all while wearing massively expensive outfits, being extraordinarily rich and elitist and exclusionary in their own rights. And that's just too much fun not to comment on, Blake, you're a big MET Gala fan, right. 00:03:19 Speaker 4: Well, so I will admit I don't think I feel like it didn't quite penetrate my head what the met Gala was until last year, like it'll be in the news, and I was just like, okay, whatever, and then I just we started covering it more consistently on this show with Charlie and we'd react to it, and so I guess I'm vaguely aware of it. Now it seems like an excuse to wear dumb outfits, but I did admit I found them pretty funny this year. 00:03:47 Speaker 5: I liked I Actually, I actually joked about one last night. 00:03:50 Speaker 4: A Cardi b had some outfit where she looks like she's got kind of a bunch of polyps or tumors growing out her. 00:03:57 Speaker 3: She do we have the car? Do we have it yet? 00:04:00 Speaker 4: She kind of looked like she kind of looked like if you ever saw the eighties movie Akira, where this guy is a psychic and his body starts blowing up into a giant monster that destroys Tokyo. 00:04:10 Speaker 5: She kind of looks like. 00:04:11 Speaker 3: That got it? Okay, I haven't seen it yet. Hopefully the team can get it for us. But we do have b roll of the Gallas, so we should put that up. Put the b roll up. It's uh, I think that's what's that guy's name again, the Sam something or other. He's Sam Smith. Yeah, he's the the gay British singer who showed up as some sort of dark overlord or something. I don't know. It's like moleficent. I'm not sure what it is. I guess the theme was he looks like fashion as art. 00:04:44 Speaker 4: The stuff out of his head makes him look kind of like an exotic insect in a way. 00:04:48 Speaker 3: Well, that that could be it. It looks like a really tough thing to walk in. Uh, this person. Not sure what's going on exactly, but oh this is we do have. We do have Cardi B coming b roll of Sam Smith him dressed as as Satan. 00:05:07 Speaker 4: If you're mindful that Okay, there we go. There's Cardi B with all of the tumor stuff around her. 00:05:14 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting. 00:05:16 Speaker 5: I'm not sure what they're going for there. 00:05:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not. I don't think it matters too awful much. It's just supposed to be. I think over the top is the goal, and so I don't know. Send us your thoughts. What do you guys think of the met gala? And is it just it? Are we are we doing the wrong thing by even giving oxygen here? 00:05:35 Speaker 4: That's one of the arguments. I actually think it's prime fodder for there we go. That one is Sarah Paulson. She has a dollar bill over her eyes. 00:05:45 Speaker 5: I think, so you. 00:05:46 Speaker 4: Get the capitalism blind They might remember she's worth twelve million dollars, but yeah, if. 00:05:50 Speaker 5: They've forgotten, I believe the met Gala is where. 00:05:55 Speaker 4: Aoc she wore that eat the rich thing, and so similarly, here we have a person using a one hundred thousand dollar ticket to wear an outfit to this fantastic display of wealth and celebrity, puts a dollar over her eyes to be. 00:06:09 Speaker 5: Like, oh, money is ruling us. 00:06:12 Speaker 4: We need to have sympathy with the poor. It's a very performative thing. 00:06:16 Speaker 5: It's very rich. 00:06:17 Speaker 3: So actress Sarah Paulson was seen wearing a dollar bill over her face to call out the one percent who are blinded by money. Paulson, as I mentioned, is reportedly worth over twelve million dollars herself. So that's the kind of Champagne socialism that you get at the Met Gala every year, and it's just it's hilarious. Nobody does ostentatious like libs, Nobody does elitism like Hollywood and the entertainment class. And yet they are the ones that live behind gated communities. They're the ones that do not have to suffer under the decision making of democrats, democrats, socialists. Oh and there's a who's this scal This is? This one made a lot of headlines. I remember yesterday. This is I'm gonna get the name for you. This is uh Anna Rose Phillip, the first black transgender woman with quadriplegic cerebral palsy signed to a major modeling agency arriving at the Mecca. Okay, so we actually debated whether or not we're going to talk about this person. I'd never heard of her before or him, because it's actually transgender. But that was our decision. It's actually somebody that is a trans identifying black person who's quadriprilegic cerebral prop palsy and they've somehow been signed to a modeling agency, which I find to be fascinating. It does feel Philip, It does. 00:07:39 Speaker 4: Feel like an episode from some sort of satirical program like you can imagine South Park running without fifteen years ago. Obviously, we will knock on her for the disability of the disabilities, the stacking thing of disabled n black En trans and you know the first and it's a very performative thing. 00:07:59 Speaker 3: And then how many boxes on the you know, oppression Olympics can you check this sort of thing? 00:08:06 Speaker 4: And it just gets that the signal status signaling aspect of all of this, because we'll be frank, we are not gonna urt for the disability, but what it makes Does it make sense to sign a person with quadriplegic cerebral palsy to be a model? No, I can't imagine the market for that clothing is terribly large. 00:08:24 Speaker 3: That's that's a really it's a very I hope it's not as well. And yeah, I'm sorry that this person has this disability, but the whole projection and the virtue signaling of it is really I think I saw one post that was like breaking barriers everywhere, you know, glass ceiling, and I'm like, wait, glass as a dude, that's a that's a that's a man actually, and so the man breaking the glass ceiling. Anyways, none of it makes sense, but it sure is fun to comment on and make fun of because guess what, it's all bake and you know what the kids say, Uh, it's it's all performative and it's hard not to laugh at But this is their This is like their super Bowl for fashion. This is the fashion super Bowl. Blake, you would fit in wonderful. Certainly, I would pay money to see Blake react live to this. 00:09:17 Speaker 5: Oh man, you're gonna make me. You're gonna flick that on me. 00:09:20 Speaker 3: That's actually what we should do next year. We're gonna make Blake watch the red carpet and live react. That would be that would do numbers. Email us if you want to see Blake do live reaction to red carpet experiences, that would be great. 00:09:35 Speaker 4: Well, we did get an email from Damon said, I don't want to watch the Met Gala. I just want to watch Blake react to it two layer reacts. But yes, ten year anniversary of Oh hold on, hold up your throw, I want to know, would you watch Blake Nef mister fashionista, mister cultural icon himself live react to red carpets in general or the Met Gala and just give his honest we'd have to pay all this like this could your honest reactions would get us like canceled and fired, but it would be it would be really entertaining. 00:10:09 Speaker 3: Let me just tell you. So, yeah, that's that's what I said. Would you would you watch it? 00:10:16 Speaker 7: So? 00:10:16 Speaker 3: Email us Freedom at Charliekirk dot com, Freedom at Charliekirk dot com. All right, so it is May fifth, Senco to Maya, which means it is the tenth anniversary of the tweet heard around the world, the taco bowl tweet from President Trump. Throw it up there. It's important that you guys see this May. 00:10:32 Speaker 5: Fifth, twenty sixteen, Canada. 00:10:35 Speaker 4: Donald Trump out of the blue, jumping from the top rope posts happy hashtag. They still use those more in those days. Happy Sinco de Mayo. The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower grill. I love his Spanish and he's got the thumbs up and he's eating the taco bowl for you younger people or forgetful people. This we've changed so much because the reaction to this was apocalyptic. Yes, yeah, now he does Jesus memes and which we don't like the Jesus but I mean, but that's like, that's what it takes now to get people worked up. 00:11:13 Speaker 3: This just destroyed the media cycle for like three weeks. My favorite pote about it is I love Hispanics exclamation mark, like it's so trump in it makes it like it's genuinely humorous. To me, the best taco bawls are made in Trump Tower, girl. All right, so I think there's a fun, easy enough tie in here, So go ahead and throw up that graphic of the Washington Post and the Save America Act here, So little Sinco to myle, tie in New Mexico. All right, we're not talking about Old Mexico. We're talking about New Mexico. But the Save America Act. That Washington Post did a deep dive into what would happen state by state if the Save America Act was passed, and we do have that graphic if you can get it up there, guys. But the point is it was shocking. There are two states in particular, Nevada and New Mexico that showed massive shifts. So New Mexico. This is based on twenty twenty four numbers, so we don't know what they would be today because obviously the electorate has shifted back in the Democrats favor a little bit, which tends to happen when you're in power. But it would go from a negative four Trump state. So Trump lost by four points to a Trump three point three percent state. 00:12:27 Speaker 5: And we should explain what's going on here. 00:12:28 Speaker 4: The justification for this is, among its many provisions, the Save America Act, it raises the requirement nationwide for voter idea essentially to you must possess a proof of citizenship. 00:12:41 Speaker 3: You hold qualifying citizenship documents. 00:12:43 Speaker 4: Exactly, which so that could be a passport, that could be your birth certificate. And the argument from critics, the ergot from the Washington Post is not all Americans have easy access to those documents, and so you could imagine those people are maybe going to miss this cycle because they don't have them or they don't care enough to go and get them. And their argument is is that nationwide it's about even between Republicans and Democrats. Who is easy access to those They say about ninety percent basically of both each party, but by state, but they say overall, their argument is in individual states there is a partisan't split. And their claim is in the swing states of Nevada and New Mexico that Democrat voters in those states are significantly more likely to not have easy access to proof of citizenship, which I know Andrew and I are raising an eyebright here. 00:13:33 Speaker 5: Oh, they don't have easy proof of citizenship. 00:13:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're disenfranchising voters that don't have easy access to citizenship. You do the math on that one. 00:13:44 Speaker 4: Another fascinating one there they're showing some other states that would shift to the right. They argue that Connecticut would go from eight points Democrat to only about five points Democrats, So that's still blue. That's about as blue as New Mexico. But we know that in a big year, New Mexico could go right Washington Washington state ten points so super blue to four point seven, so it's as blue as well again as blue as New Mexico was. Yep, and that's a much more competitive state. 00:14:12 Speaker 5: That's a state. 00:14:13 Speaker 4: Where in a good wave year you win their setate race. But some red states would get even redder. Wyoming would go from our plus twenty one to our plus twenty five point four, South Dakota. 00:14:24 Speaker 5: Twenty three point South Dakota would. 00:14:26 Speaker 3: Go from R plus fifteen to R plus twenty two point eight. Tennessee R plus fourteen to R plus twenty point seven. Louisiana are eleven to R plus eighteen point one. So there's a lot of people that probably shouldn't be voting in a lot of states, point being, there was one state that stood out as maybe going a little bit left, and that was North Carolina, which to me, North Carolina is going to be the new Virginia. We're avent. We need to get very upset about North Carolina. 00:14:54 Speaker 4: We need to be ready, and we need to be picking up states to potentially offset that one. 00:14:58 Speaker 5: That's a tough state. 00:14:59 Speaker 3: North Carolina and Georgia are going to be problems for us in the future. So if you can pick up a new Mexico, you can pick up a new Hampshire. If you can pick up and hold comfortably Nevada, if you hold comfortably Arizona, these become our red wall. And that's significant. If you're like me and you're tired of random stuff getting thrown into your supplements, like artificial colors and sugars, you probably would love to know more about phyto nutrition. 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Welcoming back to the show, first time in a little while, Ari fly Shirt, welcome back. It's good to have you. 00:16:27 Speaker 8: Sir, Thank you so much, thanks for having me back. It is. It's a joy to be back. 00:16:31 Speaker 3: Thank you. Yeah, it's it's a joy for us too, with guys like you that came on with Charlie and then you come on with us and we're honored to have you and lots to get to I uh Hey. 00:16:42 Speaker 9: And Andrew, if I can you know, just as I was preparing and thinking about the show today, I went back somehow and look through my old direct messages on Twitter, and I found so many from Charlie to me. 00:16:54 Speaker 8: I didn't even remember they were on there. 00:16:57 Speaker 9: It was the sweetest feeling just reread those messages and Charlie initiated it. 00:17:03 Speaker 8: That's the kind of guy he was. 00:17:05 Speaker 3: Yeah, he was always uh, you know, if I may be so boldest to say, I mean, Charlie was a guy. I remember when we had you on the first time, and you know, I don't know what the current context was of it, but we were going hard in the pain against something that was probably a little uncomfortable for you know, guys of the Bush era and things like that. And no, no, no, I'm not necessarily saying you or anything, but but I remember bringing that up with Charlie, going like, you know, we should have oria to kind of talk about that, and he was like so into it. He was like, you know, that's great, that's great. We're gonna bring everybody together and get everybody kind of you know, and and anyways, I just he saw in you somebody that could kind of bridge different parts of the party and and a good ally and that stuff. So thank you for coming back. So, speaking of divides in the party, there's a lot of them, and we could go we could go into them in some respect. I'm gonna start with President Trump take takes a shot at leader Thun this morning, which is something he hasn't really done yet. So I'm want to play that clip and get your reactions, sir, top twenty one. 00:18:07 Speaker 6: Are you disappointed in me? 00:18:08 Speaker 8: Yeah, no, I'm disappointed. 00:18:10 Speaker 3: I like John a lot, but he you know, he has a couple of Republicans that are foolish people. 00:18:17 Speaker 8: A couple of them are alike. A couple of them I can't stand. 00:18:19 Speaker 3: Actually, if you want to know the true Yeah, well, so this comes off the heels by the way of seeing this Washington Post report. I don't know if you saw it, Ari, but it showed that based on the context of certain states, based on the way certain voters have certain documentation in certain states. I'll let you read into why they don't have certain documentation in some states. But a state like Nevada would go R one to like our six point something. New Mexico would go D four to R plus three. Point three. So if you pass the Save America Act, you could actually be putting additional states in the Republican column. Again, that's based on twenty twenty four numbers. Why are they not getting this passed? What do you want to see happen? Do you think it's possible with our current composition? 00:19:01 Speaker 9: You know, I think the simple answer is that on the votes to but what requires is the elimination of the filibuster. And you have fifty three Republican senators, of course, so if they lose four senators on that vote, they cannot eliminate the filibuster. 00:19:14 Speaker 8: And I think that's Thune's math. 00:19:16 Speaker 9: He's looked at it, he's looked in his caucus, and he's asked who would vote for it, and he knows where the defections are right now. 00:19:23 Speaker 8: It was kind of the same problem the Democrats. 00:19:25 Speaker 9: Had when they had West Virginia senator an Arizona senator, and the Democrat Party say they would refuse to eliminate the philibuster. Republicans have a small group of Republicans who won't eliminate the philibuster. That's the only reason I can think of. There's no other reason not to pass the Save Act. 00:19:41 Speaker 3: All right, do you think I mean, I'm all about naming names at this point. So we've got let's say Thune is actually in the camp of eliminating it. We've got Tom Tillis. Probably they won't go along. That's the one people aren't thinking about. I think North Carolina he's run sideways of the Trump admin. And so there's beef. There got Susan Collins, Lisa m Kowski, and Mitch McConnell. So those four correct? Yeah, that was that five? 00:20:06 Speaker 8: Let me do that? Yeah, that gets you down to forty nine votes to eliminate the philibil. 00:20:11 Speaker 3: Who and who knows what Rand Paul would do. I guess my question is, you know, if your leader Thun, could you get a Tillius on board? Could you could? Is there? What could you do? I mean what? Here's the problem. Thune just looks like he's happy that it's failing. If I'm calling spade a spade, it looks from the outside, yeah, he's very content to let this die on the vine. And then you know, basically face the parliamentarian reconciliation to see if you could do it, and you know, moving forward then which I which remains unclear. So if you're if you're consulting the communications of Leader thun Ari, what do you tell him because right now it just looks like he's complicit. 00:20:50 Speaker 8: Well, you know what he could do is try it. He could try to put it through and let the vote fail and then prove to everybody I tried. But I think Andrew, You've got it right. 00:20:59 Speaker 9: I don't think John's heart is in eliminating the filibuster because he's kind of the traditionalist mode in the Senate. And I've had conversations with senators who want to eliminate the filibuster about this. And the counter, of course, is if we do this, the Democrats are going to do it too, and the Democrats are going to do it for different reasons. Republicans want to do it to pass policies. Democrats want to do it to maintain or get power. Democrats want to eliminate the philibuster to create new states because they need new seats in the Senate because they can't win on their current makeup of the country. They can't win enough Senate seats, so they need to create new ones. They want to change the way we have Supreme Court justices to them. It's structural changes to get power, possibly including the elimination of or changes with the electoral college of the popular vote wins. These are the things that Democrats want to get rid of, the filibuster, for Republicans want to do things to pass policies. And that's a huge difference. It's between why the two parties want to eliminate. So I've always been for eliminating with philibuster. By the way, my standard has been eliminated, but you eliminate it in a way that it does not go into effect until the next Congress begins, because I'm for fairness and I don't like either party changing the rules in the middle of the game to grab power. Philibuster is wrong if you can only need a majority of pass things, which is what I think. 00:22:25 Speaker 8: It should be. 00:22:26 Speaker 9: Put it so it goes into effect when nobody knows who's going to control the Senate. Nobody knows who's going to control it starting in January of twenty twenty seven, just eleven months from now or ten nine months from now. So do it that way and it's fair to everybody, and then whoever has power can pass things with fifty percent. 00:22:47 Speaker 8: I just don't like rigging the game in the middle. Given where we. 00:22:51 Speaker 9: Are right now, if I were a Senator and this came before me, I would vote to eliminate the philibuster today. 00:22:57 Speaker 4: Though, you know, the biggest struggle I think with eliminating it now is, as you say, we are not that far from an election, and I feel, other than potentially the Save Act, we don't necessarily have a lot of legislation that we'd like that's ready to go. And the chief accomplishment of getting rid of the filibuster might just be it does finally do something which we need, which is to expose which Republicans are lying to you about what they really want to do, because, as we've said on this show many times, the chief use of the filibuster is not to protect the minority nearly as much it is to protect the majority from votes they don't want to actually take. So we have Republicans in the Senate right now who say, I'm tough on the border, I'm really a hawk on immigration, but they would not vote to actually restrict legal immigration. They would not vote to enable mass deportations if that vote really was going to change national policy. And you can repeat that for issue after issue, pro life issues, LGBT stuff, one issue after another, and once you get rid of the filibuster, the Senate is real again. The Senate is actually capable of passing bills that aren't just omnibus monstrosities. 00:24:10 Speaker 3: We have a zombie Senate. I mean, it's basically useless, and it seems. 00:24:13 Speaker 5: Like that's all we'll get if we get rid of the filibuster. 00:24:15 Speaker 4: Now we'll maybe get the same Act, which is good, but other than that, we don't have other big wins queued up. Whereas Democrats they have in their think tex in their blogosphere, they have a lot of this stuff. They've thought about this, They've dreamed about this for over a decade at this point, As you say policies they want to pass. For example, they want to bring back nationwide abortion. They want to make a nationwide Roe v. 00:24:36 Speaker 3: Wade law. 00:24:36 Speaker 4: That's something they would pass with no filibuster. But they also want Puerto Rico and DC estates. They want to pack the Supreme Court. They want to enact a whole swath of things whose intent is they don't need to worry about the Republicans having a filibuster free Senate because their intent is no Republican will ever hold power ever again. 00:24:54 Speaker 9: I think you're really onto something big right there. To me, one of the greatest dangers in our country right now is in action. If you want to have an angry populace, if you want to have a group of people who just give up on government to say, this American experiment just doesn't work anymore. 00:25:10 Speaker 8: This great tradition we have of. 00:25:12 Speaker 9: Sending people to Washington so they do what is in the nation's interest, but nobody can do anything because of the filibuster. 00:25:19 Speaker 8: So inaction is the rule of the day. Inaction is the law of the land. 00:25:24 Speaker 9: This breeds cynicism, this breeds resentment, and it breeds people giving up on our government. I don't ever want to be in the category of being someone who gave up on government. I will continue to cling to my ideals and they're going to be let downs, of course there are. But I still want Washington to work, and the filibuster is the biggest reason Washington doesn't work. There'll be years I hate it when the Democrats have power. There'll be years I love it when the Republicans have power. But you have to have a system that can get things done for better or worse and then throw the bombs out if you don't like it. 00:25:58 Speaker 8: That's what empowers people. 00:26:00 Speaker 9: That's how we the people have a check and balance on the people we elect. This inaction is the kiss of death for national unity and for making people bully a government can get anything done. 00:26:11 Speaker 3: I totally, I totally agree. I think a lot of this cynicism and the nihilism that's set in where you get these you know, the accelerationists that you know that used to be sort of write coded influencers or whatever that are now saying, hey, just vote Democrat and burn it all down and we'll remake I mean, part of all of that stuff is coming out of a sense of inaction and a lot of this critique against President Trump with was saying it feels just the same as it did before. It's just a different party in charge. That's coming from the Senate. It's just this permanent logjam. Ari. There's a lot of consternation. The Iran war has not proven to be popular. Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, just said that the ceasefire is not broken, so they're still doing the blockade. There's some tension there. Obviously. Exit strategy how to bring it to a close unsure, But I will tell you all, I've spoken to so many students through our turning point chapters and elsewhere that all of them without I have not heard one student are not one said that they were positive on the war. All of them are negative on it. Okay, And so there's a generational divide. It's like do you watch Fox News or do you do you get your stuff from social media? All right, there's like that's the divide. So what do we do about it? And is there any remedying this before mid terms? And what are your bright lines of hope out there ahead of midterms? 00:27:32 Speaker 9: Well, you don't want to ever conflate war with an election. You really don't want to say we need to do this or do that because of the electoral consequences. You don't go to war if you're worried about electoral consequences. You go to war, O women and get home whatever political season. It is what I hope here, and I think this is what President Trump is doing is Operation Enduring Fury has now turned into Operation Boa Constructor. 00:28:00 Speaker 8: Instead of fighting. 00:28:01 Speaker 9: With bombs and the forces we were doing before, what we're now trying to do is just squeeze their economy through the naval blockade and hope that that leads to change inside of Iran. I'm not sure that this is ultimately going to work because it leads the same people in charge of Iran, and I think the only solution, the right solution. 00:28:20 Speaker 8: Is you can't leave Iran stronger. 00:28:22 Speaker 9: You can't let them prevail in any way in this current combat we're in, and Trump has to see you through. Trump's got to make sure that the Iran that comes next is a peaceful Iran, and Iran that changes the face of the Middle East, and Iran that we for forty seven years have accepted. It's just the terrorist on the block that changes the Middle East, makes it the most dangerous region in the world. 00:28:45 Speaker 8: Why does it have to be the most dangerous reason in the world. 00:28:47 Speaker 9: It doesn't. It's been because of Iran. So you've got to change the leadership of Iran. It is a wants to be a pro Western country. That is where you talk about the young people in America. The young people in Iran are over will only pro Western. They're just trapped under a theocracy that's killing them. And so the hope is that by replacing the government forcing them out. Something else comes in and we don't have to be part of that. We can't be the ones making regime change. I learned that haven't been part of what happened to an Iraq. That won't be successful. It has to come within. We can create the environment where it comes from within, and then Middle East can be the peaceful region with a wholly new alignment of Gulf states, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Western Europe is going to fall behind Eastern Europe and these nations are going to be where peace and capitalism and prosperity come from in a changed world. 00:29:48 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and I think you're right. I agree with that assessment. But when you talk to you know, voters, especially young people. Right, So we saw this historic surge to the right of young people, thanks in large part to the work of Turning Point and Charlie. But I'm telling you, as soon as as soon as the Epstein stuff happened, where President Trump kind of pushed it off and didn't want to deal with it at first, we saw a huge shift. First First Thing, then Operation Midnight Hammer. We saw a huge shift. Nothing we could message on was going to change that they didn't want war, they wanted Epstein transparency. Then we get Operation Epic Fury compounded the impact. So I'm you know, I'm kind of just trying to be a realist here, like the messaging we do with our student our turning points students. Sorry, they're telling me that they don't know how to defend what President Trump has done in Iran when they're tabling on campus. So we have to sort of bake into the pie here that young people are going to go the other way here in this this election. Where do we make up the ground? What can we do and what should the messaging be domestically specifically, I mean the affordability housing whatever, what should what do we need to do? What does President Trump need to do to try and write the ship ahead of November. 00:31:02 Speaker 9: Well, I've been saying this even before the military operation began in late February, that Republicans are going to lose the House. I just think it's obvious when you look at the numbers, when you look at historical trends, when you look at happens in the sixty year of a two term presidency, it's hard to escape this historical pattern, and particularly with a president whose job approval is what it is. The president's job approval is right around forty percent. It's not horrible, but it's very low. And this is going to be the indications of a midterm that's going to be very hard for Republicans to keep the House. So I think we're going to be in an era of divided government in the next cycle, and it's going to set up a wallapalooza of a twenty twenty eight presidential And the other interesting thing about history is Republicans used to be the party that did well in the midterms because we were the party mostly of college educated voters who turn out every two years to vote. Democrats were the party of a lot more blue collar, working class people who came out every four years to vote. 00:32:01 Speaker 8: That pattern has switched. 00:32:02 Speaker 9: Republicans are now much more of the party of working class people, and the Democrats are now the party of people with postgraduate degrees and college degrees. They turn out every two years. So tough election cycle for Republicans. I believe we're going to lose the House. Senate is right now a fifty to fifty shot for Republicans to keep the Senate, and well set up the biggest battle you can imagine. 00:32:24 Speaker 3: I think this is all shaping up for a twenty twenty eight absolute drag out race. It's gonna be something. But I will tell you, interestingly enough, one of these X factors. There's a lot of reporting going on that that John Fetterman might go independent and Caucus Republican. I don't know. I don't know if I trust it, because he's still very much like a Democrat socialist economically, but he's a patriot and he's a reasonable guy. He's made a lot of reasonable comments, of patriotic comments. So that's an X factor that would be really interesting to see. I don't know. Are you hearing any thing within the Beltway ari about this? 00:33:02 Speaker 9: I just I don't believe it. I don't believe it because I take John Fetterman at his word. He's always given his word bluntly, and he says he's a Democrat, he'll always be a Democrat, and as you point out, on abortion, on gay rights, on a host of issues, he is a more progressive Democrat. It's just that he's reasonable on Israel, he's reasonable on how you treat people. He's reasonable on saying you don't shut the government down. He's what a handful of Democrats used to be ten, fifteen, twenty years ago before they got drummed out of the party by the progressive movement. Inside the Democrat Party, there used to be about a dozen Democrats who would do and say things like him, vote the way he does on Israel and not shutting. 00:33:43 Speaker 8: Down the government. 00:33:44 Speaker 9: He's the only one left, so he just kind of stands out because he's such an aberration in a progressive Democratic party. 00:33:52 Speaker 3: I hope that you're wrong, but I suspect that you're right. So yeah, because he is a socially and economically he's he's way left. You know, he always has been right. So we'll see, though I am hearing conflicting reports, so we're gonna keep watching that. It'd just be interesting if we end up, you know, losing the Senate forty nine to fifty one and then Fetterman switches over to independent caucuses Republican. That'd be fascinating, all right, fliesher former White House Press secretary and Fleisher Communications dot Com check him out there. Thank you for coming back, Sarah. It's great to see you, Andrew. Great to be with you guys. Thank you God bless you. 00:34:29 Speaker 4: Hey everyone, we're excited to tell you about Charlie's favorite supplement. If you experience brain fog, low energy, frequent illnesses, or if you just wake up stiff and achy every day, you've got to try strong cell. Charlie took it every single day, He frequently talked about it on the show, and he even traveled around the country bringing it with him. For Charlie, strong cell helped keep his mind sharp and focused for all the debates he was engaged in. Strong cell gives clean, natural energy without jitters, weird spikes, or afternoon crashes. It makes you feel like a younger version of yourself. People would often ask Charlie what is strong cell exactly. 00:35:01 Speaker 2: Strong cell uses a proprietary delivery of ANYDH to make sure it goes straight to your cells to help your mitochondria. 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Get strong Cell today and give it the time it needs to work its magic. 00:36:46 Speaker 2: That Strongsell dot com forward slash Charlie, and don't forget to use special discount code Charlie at checkout to get a special twenty percent off just for Kirk listeners. Strong Sell dot com forward slash Charlie. Check it out right now. 00:37:03 Speaker 3: You know, Blake, there's that old expression, it's good work if you can get it. You know, it's good work if you can get it. And you know, I think I'm gonna go. I'm gonna I'm gonna ditch all this current current gig and I'm gonna go into hospice care for my relatives. I'm going to get paid professionally to have conversation and companionship with my family. 00:37:23 Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think we've seen the numbers. 00:37:26 Speaker 4: It seems like you could make vastly more than you could make any any sort of media job. 00:37:30 Speaker 5: Millions of dollars, yes, billions. 00:37:33 Speaker 3: I could be a Medicaid millionaire. Two you could as well. But guess what we're not because we're on a citizens. But there's a whole lot of people that aren't on a citizens that probably aren't even citizens in many respects. Maybe they're illegals. I don't even know what the rules are here, but we're gonna find out. Luke Rosiak is an investigative journalist and reporter for The Daily Wire, and he has a news story out that he's been working on for a couple months titled Medicaid Millionaires, How the Feds pay immigrants billions to hang out with their families. So welcome to the show, Luke Rosiak. 00:38:07 Speaker 6: Thanks for having me. 00:38:08 Speaker 10: That's right, free Butler's for Somali's and Medicaid millionaires. 00:38:11 Speaker 6: You got it? 00:38:12 Speaker 3: And so okay, so we know all about Somali fraud in Minnesota. You focused on Ohio. So let's and what I find really interesting about this story. By the way, this is the first story you're dropping in a series, so there's more to come, right, And but what's interesting about this story is the origin of it. So you know, Doge was much celebrated, much attacked part of the first hundred days and then some of the Trump administration two point zero. But they left us a little easter egg that you went looking through to find this story. So tell us about that in wy Ohio. 00:38:49 Speaker 10: Yeah, you know, what of the criticisms people had of Doge, especially on the left, is why are you guys even bothering. There's not that much spare change you can rustle up in the couch of the federal budget because most of it is locked away in defense or you know, non discretionary funding. And if you look at that pie chart, a big chunk of what we spend is medicaid. 00:39:07 Speaker 6: So there's like they're they're they're telling us there's no ways there. 00:39:10 Speaker 10: I mean, you've got to eliminate programs and thing medicaid is just paying people to go to the doctor. Well that's because we never got to see what medicaid was. And so doose release data that shows who's getting paid by medicaid, which I think is a huge deal for transparency. It's the kind of thing Barack Obama should have done when he was always going on and on about being transparent and using technology. I mean, this doesn't reveal and invade the privacy of anybody's any patients medical information. It's about the corporations. They get rich. And that's what we're seeing here is the new welfare queens aren't the participants in poverty programs. They're the people that get paid to ostensibly serve the poor people, and those people go on to become millionaires. Now in Ohio they have a waiver. 00:39:56 Speaker 6: Much like Minnesota. 00:39:57 Speaker 10: The root of all the fraud, most of the fraud, everything but the daycares, is these medicaid waivers that they have in Minnesota. 00:40:04 Speaker 6: Ohio has the same problem. 00:40:06 Speaker 10: They'll pay you for what's called personal services, and that's not medical. 00:40:11 Speaker 6: That's why it has that weird name. 00:40:12 Speaker 10: It just means it's medicaid, but it has nothing to do with the intended purpose of the program. You can just cook and clean and even provide, as you said, companionship and conversation for somebody that's like sixty five. 00:40:24 Speaker 6: Years old or whatever. 00:40:25 Speaker 10: So that's why I call it Butler's for Somalis because it's just like somebody to literally just do your chores for you. I mean, wouldn't it be nice if we could all have that, and so the real wrinkle is a lot of these Somalis started getting paid by the government to be personal servants to their own relatives, in other words, just to hang out with their family the way that everybody has done throughout all of millennia. Maybe if your parents are getting up there and they're sixty five and they could use somebody to vacuum the carpet, you do that because your parents raised you and it's a it's a human, human decency thing to do to return the favor. Well, the Somalis found a way to actually get paid by the government for just doing normal stuff and hanging out with your family. 00:41:03 Speaker 5: So you say found But in your investigation, I know, with. 00:41:07 Speaker 4: A lot of really bad government programs, there's notoriously social workers nonprofits are who basically explain to people how to do this. Have you found any evidence of that, Like, are there, we'll just say it, democrat operatives, either in literal form or spiritual form. Do they go around and explain to these people or is this an organic development where the community has figured out, Oh, there's money to be had and no one's going to stop us, and if they do catch it all they might do is slap you on the wrist, and you can go back to Somalia for a bit. 00:41:38 Speaker 10: Well, in part two are my series, which I think went up. You have a Democrat politician who actually founded a home healthcare company that got eleven million dollars and then he sold it and ran for office with the Democrat endorsement for state Senate. 00:41:55 Speaker 6: He was also. 00:41:55 Speaker 10: Involved in one of these NGOs as you mentioned, that got like seven million dollars from the federal government. 00:42:02 Speaker 6: And so there are NGOs kind of pushing people to do these things. 00:42:06 Speaker 10: I talked to one guy who was getting paid by the government to help refugees sign up for other government programs. So it's not enough to give the Somalis free disability and free food. You also have to pay a different Somali to encourage the first Somali to fill out that form to get the free money. 00:42:26 Speaker 6: And so there's definitely a sense. 00:42:27 Speaker 10: You go through these buildings, and in part two that that you'll see on the daily wire, Yeah, I go to these There's this one landlord in New Jersey and it's based in New Jersey and they own seven buildings in Columbus. Now these seven buildings have two hundred and eighty eight home healthcare firms in them, and those firms have built a quarter billion dollars over the last several years. That's just one landlord. And then the landlord goes and you know, is buying private planes and things like that. So there's good money in this at every level. There's a whole economy now based on this. And you know, some of them are basically the ones hanging out with their family and getting paid. But then there's also a corporation that sits in the middle because the average person doesn't They can't build medicaid directly. You need what's called an NBI. So there are all these all these companies, these little they're really nothing more than an LLC, but they are able to build medicaid and then they will pay the family member to hang out with with with their relatives and you take a little cut, and it really it really adds up to like a billion dollars a year in Ohio. 00:43:37 Speaker 3: Jesu Loise and so has Governor de Wine commented on this waiver that you're talking about that Minnesota also has. I mean, this is a Republican red state run state. You would think that they would you know, plug these holes and these gaps in oversight and enforcement. 00:43:53 Speaker 10: Yeah, he actually raised the amount that these people were getting paid recently, and he made some positive comments, you know, talking about how important it is to give everybody what they need or whatever. So, you know, the Attorney General of the state testified recently about how crazy the rules are. Basically, there's a law that makes it less severe to steal from medicaid than to steal from anybody else. The attorney general can't do any investigative subpoenas to gather information to prove fraud. And they used to have a rule that you're supposed to have a GPS on your car. If you're one of those people who isn't tanging out with your own family members, but you're one of those people that has a roster of clients that you go and visit, you should have a GPS to make sure you're really visiting them, you're not just putting down the names of your friends and getting a kickback. 00:44:41 Speaker 6: Well, apparently they. 00:44:42 Speaker 10: Got rid of the GPS rule, which I don't know why you would do that because a GPS costs like fifty bucks and you could save like ten million dollars. 00:44:50 Speaker 6: So It's also just pretty difficult to prove in a. 00:44:53 Speaker 10: Court of law that you didn't go to your cousin a beide's house some Tuesday a year ago, you know, unless you have footage on everybody's house. So you know, it's pretty difficult to track these people. I found some crazy stories by putting a lot of investigative resources into it, but I'm skeptical that the government is really able to monitor these people at all, and certainly from what you see on the ground, there's not a lot of oversight going on. 00:45:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, this is all really depressing. And I saw that jd Vance quote tweeted your report. That's promising as obviously he's chairing the Anti Fraud Task Force, so hopefully they're going to take it very seriously. But it's just despicable that this is happening in a conservative and a Republican run state where they're making it easier to commit frauds. Now, Luke, you went to this one building here, which I just thought was so telling, and it was all blacked out windows, there was nobody inside. You did on the ground reporting for this show this image. If you guys can this building where all the windows seem like there's no you can't see in, they've blocked them all. What did you see here? And what what is the significance of this building? 00:46:05 Speaker 10: Yeah, and if people go to Daily Wire later today, they will see a bunch of different images like that, along with the lists of all the people that have our tenants inside. 00:46:16 Speaker 6: And they all have Muslim names, probably ninety nine percent. 00:46:19 Speaker 10: And when you go in the buildings, they're also probably ninety to ninety nine percent vacant. They have these little offices that say something home Healthcare, something else, home Healthcare, LLC, all these little names. But the papers are the logos and the signs are just like printed out off of somebody. A lot of them are just the same same thing. Some of the doors, like one of the doors didn't even have a doorknob, so it's like obvious that nobody's going into it. You could see mail that had post was postmarked like months prior, like nobody's going to these buildings. There's smoke alarms, tripping for batteries, there's stray cats in the parking lot, and it's really creepy. I mean, they the hallways are very There was like a whole street full of buildings like the one on your screen, and you walk down the hallway and down the hallway and down the hallway, and it's just LLC after LLC after LLC. 00:47:10 Speaker 6: Nobody in and any of them you. 00:47:12 Speaker 10: And it was only until recently that you could now look up in federal records and be like, now we know why that little office exists because nobody's doing any work in there. But it's billing five million dollars from the government. This one got thirty two million dollars from the government. This one got nine million from the government. And you can peer in the window and there's not even like a desk or a computer in the office. 00:47:32 Speaker 6: It's just an empty room. 00:47:34 Speaker 10: So it was just a really creepy and I think black pilling experience, honestly. 00:47:39 Speaker 3: Is anybody doing any oversight in the state of Ohio and this is other people that go out and check the LLCs to see what they're doing. Is what's the enforcement mechanism here? 00:47:50 Speaker 6: I think they basically take their word for it. 00:47:52 Speaker 10: You submit an invoice that said you went to such and such person's house and you you performed services like housekeeping or common conversation for so many hours, and the government pays. I mean, there's really no way you can check. Occasionally, they'll do these audits that find that the companies claim to have visited people at home when they were actually in the hospital, and Medicaid knows that because the hospitals were charging Medicaid for their inpatient care. And that's really the only way they get caught is when two different entities at once tried to build Medicaid for the same person. And so what Medicaid does then is they make the home healthcare companies just refund the money for that specific day when they got caught, Lion, but they just keep taking their word for it that all the other thousands of times that they say they went to somebody's house that was definitely only the one time they lied is when they were in the hospital. 00:48:43 Speaker 6: The other times it's probably fine. 00:48:45 Speaker 10: And so there's all kinds of clues that these people lie routinely, and someone lied to me. 00:48:51 Speaker 3: So I want to underscore a point that we made in the previous segment, Luke. This was all made possible because DOGE made public what had previously been hit hidden from public view, and that is some of the details on Medicaid and how it was paid out, correct, So that was a Doge contribution, which is huge. I want to know two things. How many of these people involved in this scheme are Somalis or foreigners? What percentage would you say? And then I'm instantly thinking of states like Washington, Maine, New York where these are booming businesses. How much of the fraud do you think in those How much of this industry, this booming industry is fraud in those days? 00:49:33 Speaker 8: Yeah? 00:49:33 Speaker 10: So, I mean I've seen it reported that the most common job in New York City is a home healthcare aid. And so once you understand that's being a free butler for a Somali or hanging out with your own family member, I mean that's a fake job. It's basically UBI, but we don't say it's UBI. If you know how to work the system, you get paid to hang out with your own family in your own house. So it's like fifteen billion dollars or something in New York. In New York, it's insane. But yeah, it's really bad. I think that we're going to have to look at rather than doing fraud enforcement, which turns into whack a mole, you know, you bust Abdukar Mohammed, and then pretty soon his brother, you know, ab Deer Mohammad, pops up with a bunch of assets and a new company, new company name. 00:50:26 Speaker 6: It's just so easy for these people just to. 00:50:28 Speaker 10: Start new LLCs anytime they need and to put to move assets around in between their family members. They can also flee the country if they need to, like we saw in Feeding Our Future. They can wire money abroad where we can't get it. It's very difficult to track these people because they all have the same names. And she gets you your point. I mean what percentage are foreign? Essentially all of them? I mean ninety nine, Like I was so struck by that. And I think if you could take a field trip of liberals to these places, they would be very radicalized. Because anybody who doesn't see the pattern here, the connection between immigration and then the exploitation at scale of these generous safety safety net programs that hadn't really been abused in previous years, is completely blind. It's important to make that connection because it couldn't be more blatant. 00:51:16 Speaker 6: It's virtually one hundred percent foreign. 00:51:19 Speaker 10: And yeah, I think it's very difficult for the government to track. I mean, how do you know the difference between Mohammed Ahmed and Ahmed Mohamed. There's a guy that owns a business whose name is just Omar Omar. A lot of times their birthdays are just listed as January first, because we don't know when they were born. They spell their names different ways, multiple ways. 00:51:39 Speaker 3: Document Why are we giving somebody that puts January first on all their like you know, I mean, why are That's the part that's frustrated. It's like, why are we not looking into it? We're just gonna write million dollar checks to these people and not perform any oversight or checked to verify anything. I mean, it's it's really infuriating. And what makes it even more infuriating is it may fit it sinc go to MIO today. So all the libs are all over the place talking about abolish ice, abolish ice. Meanwhile, we've got billions, billions of dollars just flying out the window going to god knows where, probably back to Somalia to you know, fund al Shabab or whatever. This is. This is a massive, massive domestic problem. 00:52:18 Speaker 4: Go ahead, Blake, Well, I want to end on a white pilt, so you have a minute here, Luke, stuff that this is a red state. What should we be changing. What could a state, in your opinion, pretty easily do to reduce the impact of this, even if we can't eliminate it without deporting twenty million people. 00:52:34 Speaker 10: I think that the Trump administration needs to rescind Medicaid waivers and restore medicaid to what it was intended to be, like basic doctor's service. 00:52:42 Speaker 6: It's not really fair to have certain. 00:52:44 Speaker 10: States be able to provide more services than others because the Feds are paying for it seventy percent, and I think that's part of why the states don't care that much if it's wasted. It's because it's seventy percent other people's money. So it's great that jd. Vance is going to have this task force take a look. Got a lot of really sketchy red flags for them coming out in the Daily Wire this week. But the shortest path to keeping our country from insolvency is to just stop allowing people to charge the government for hanging out with your own family. And if you do have a mom who's getting old and could use some help once a week, do it on your own because it's the right thing to do. And that's what I think differentiates small ease here is they don't want to do normal family tasks unless they get paid. 00:53:29 Speaker 3: Luke Rose, Yeah, great work. Keep going, man, keep keep going. 00:53:33 Speaker 6: Thanks guys. 00:53:36 Speaker 3: I wasn't expecting this, but Death of Recess genuinely stop me in my tracks. This isn't about dodgeballs and jungle gyms. It's about control. The modern American classroom didn't just happen. It was intentionally designed, standardized, and centralized. And once you see who builds it and who protects it, everything will click for you too. Billions of dollars flow through education bureauocracies every year, test scores collapse, and somehow the answer is always more money and less parental authority. The documentary breaks down how organizations like the NEA amassed enormous influence, how radical gender ideology entered classrooms, and why something as basic as recess, movement, freedom, childhood, all the good things, how they had to go. That's not random, it's systemic. Institutions protect themselves. They do not protect your kids. That's why this documentary exists on Angel Studio streaming platform Angel Guild. Angel Guild is willing to distribute films that challenge powerful systems. When legacy media won't touch them. So go to angel dot com slash Charlie and watch Death of Recess right now. If you're a parent, or if you plan to be one, you need to see this film. Angel dot com forward slash Charlie. Without further ado, I want to bring in our next two guests who've written an amazing new book. These are New York Times bestselling authors Candice Lee and Eric Newman. They're the authors of a new book called George Goodwin Dragon Slayer. I believe Bear Grills is involved in the project. Candice and Eric, Welcome to the Charlie Kirkshaw. 00:55:12 Speaker 11: Hey, good to be here. 00:55:13 Speaker 7: Thanks so much for having us. 00:55:15 Speaker 3: Nice backdrop. I love that the branding's on point, all right, So I'm convinced that we got to get younger and younger people inspired. They need to be activated. They need to feel their own agency, the power of their own imaginations. 00:55:28 Speaker 6: Why. 00:55:29 Speaker 3: I love what you guys are doing here. Tell us about it. It's a scouting legend, so I have questions about what you mean by that, But tell us about the book and why you wrote it. 00:55:37 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:55:38 Speaker 12: Well, there's a famous quote often attributed to GK. Chesterton that really inspired us, and fairy tales exist not to tell us, not to tell children that dragons are real, but that they can be killed. 00:55:53 Speaker 7: And that really is the heart of. 00:55:55 Speaker 6: The story is. 00:55:56 Speaker 12: We were inspired, yes, to tell a great story, a fun story, very exciting story that hooks readers, but we also, you know, we all know that there are dragons everywhere and we want to inspire young men and women to rise up and slay them. 00:56:10 Speaker 13: Absolutely yeah, and just storyline wise, it's about what you think it's about. It is a young guy who is faced with an impossible situation. He goes on a weekend camping trip and ends up having to save his whole town. But it really is, at it's core one of those David and Goliath stories, the kind of story that you know we wanted the cover of the book, I'll just hold it up here. We wanted even the youngest reader to be able to look at that and know, Okay, this is a story where somebody is going to defy the odds and do something that seems impossible. And so that's really our heart is to inspire the next generation to see that you do have a hero inside you, and sometimes it might take something really scary a dragon to draw it out. 00:56:54 Speaker 3: Yeah, so you say it's so, you know, there's a warning from bear girls here. I love it by the way he goes warning, This adventure is full of danger. It's got dragons and death, coal mines and cold blooded killers, treasure and true love, the stuff legends are made of, but even more dangerous to the kids in this tale. They're tough, they're brave, and they're exactly the kind of heroes our world needs. And I kind of love the premise. It's like, so it's set in West Virginia, and you know that coal mines are strictly forbidden to go in, but twelve year old George Goodwin knows something more deep underground lies a treasure that could save his town and clear his father's name. And so then then he's with the scouting troops. So explain the tie in with the scouting angle here? 00:57:33 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:57:34 Speaker 13: Yeah, Well, we love stories where kids are in the driver's seat, you know, like we think back to like Goonies and even Jurassic Park, where there's kids who have to make choices and impossible situations. And Eric and I were sitting around years ago working actually on another project, and we were looking at a character who was a side character who was a scout, And the more we started talking about it, we're like, man, scouts are awesome. 00:58:00 Speaker 11: Are young people who actually know how to do things. 00:58:02 Speaker 13: You could throw them in any situation and a scout could probably outperform me when it comes to survival. 00:58:08 Speaker 11: But they're just so broad in what they can do. 00:58:10 Speaker 12: Yeah, and it's the rare place in society now, I mean we talk about, you know, get out and touch grass. It's the rare place where kids have a little bit of autonomy and they can adventure on. 00:58:22 Speaker 7: Their own, learn skills on their own. 00:58:23 Speaker 12: And we thought, man, this would be a fun place to start a story. So we imagine this twelve year old boy, you know, and we had kind of this lightning bolt brainstorm session and twelve year old boy, this should take place in West Virginia. We just could imagine a dragon in a coal mine, and then we thought, how who would be the fellow who would be the. 00:58:45 Speaker 7: Rest of the crew that helps take this dragon down? We thought, oh, it was a scouting patrol and his best friends. So it just kind of like naturally emerged. And it's the kind of story that we. 00:58:56 Speaker 8: Happen to love. 00:58:57 Speaker 5: Yeah, and yeah, I appreciate that for sure. I'm an Eagle Scout myself. Charlie was an Eagle Scout as well. Were you in the Scouts? 00:59:03 Speaker 3: No, never. I came from a ranching family that like the experience was literally just like on a horse in the desert. 00:59:09 Speaker 4: Sounds like a but it's appreciated because I am. 00:59:14 Speaker 5: I'm sure we followed the travails of. 00:59:17 Speaker 4: The main scouting organization, Boy Scouts, which became the gender non determinist Scouts. But they're making they're making some progress, but it's it's certainly been a saga. It's been difficult, it's been frustrating, and I suppose I appreciate you guys for evoking the classic image of a Scout. I don't know if you describe any specific Scouting group they're in, but that that really is a set of values that was hugely useful in America, hugely positive for boys. And I approve of evoking that even if we know that today, you know the Left went after it precisely because it was such a good thing. 00:59:53 Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is coming back. I mean they partnered with Secretary of War heag Seth and they're making headway. I don't know if you have insights into that, if that's part of you know, what's going on in the background here or not. But I agree with Blake that the values of scouting are so critically important to the next generation. That's why the left went after it. If we're being honest. 01:00:12 Speaker 13: Yeah, there's something about the there's not very many opportunities for young people to kind of put on a specific identity that carries. 01:00:22 Speaker 11: The values of scouting. 01:00:24 Speaker 13: And you know, my son just became a scout. He's six years old, and he went on his first camp out as a Lion cub and it was interesting when he saw a picture of himself. 01:00:36 Speaker 11: You know, I'm doing mom milestone. 01:00:38 Speaker 13: He saw a picture of himself in a uniform and he looked at himself and he goes, oh my goodness. 01:00:43 Speaker 11: Mom, I look fearless. 01:00:45 Speaker 13: And then he came home from his first camp out and I said, hey, I'm a little cold. He brought me the blanket and said, I'm courteous, mom, because I'm a scout. And there is something about stepping into an identity that carries virtue, that carries these responsibilities with them, that that's something that We did want to kind of evoke with this story that there's a young man who's not only you know, he's a Scout, but he's stepping into this identity as a dragon slayer, and that's really broader than anyone organization. That's something that all of us can aspire to, you know when you look at the Scout. 01:01:18 Speaker 4: Sorry, well, someone of ourselves was asking, you know, George dragons Layer, is there symbolic meaning to the name. Obviously there's Saint George as the Great Dragon Washington. 01:01:27 Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was that was part of our Lightning Bolt inspiration. Fifteen years ago. When we first started this, were like, what's his name? And I remember Canis goes, It's George. It's George. Because this will be a modern day reimagining of the legend of Saint George, and that just clicked with us. And so there's some Saint George threads woven throughout the whole story. 01:01:51 Speaker 13: Yeah, And you know, the cool thing is, like Saint the legend of Saint George, it's it's a story that exists in lots of different cultures, but over time it's kind of been lost, and I think that speaks to how you know, there are so many great stories, the kind of stories that move and inspires I have kind of gotten lost to this generation, and so we love the idea of being able to reimagine that because we just we believe that the stories kind of work in this space of imagination that's ultimately the bridge between. 01:02:23 Speaker 11: The heart and the mind. 01:02:24 Speaker 13: And you know, we want to take ideas that are out there and kind of help ground them in stories so that they can move from just being ideas. 01:02:33 Speaker 11: To becoming you know, beliefs and convictions. 01:02:35 Speaker 13: And so that's just one of the things we love about storytelling. 01:02:40 Speaker 3: So you would say that this book is probably best s geared for what ages. 01:02:45 Speaker 12: It's technically middle grade, so you're looking at like the Percy Jackson, right, the Percy Jackson audience, so they say like fourth to like seventh or eighth grade and that range, and that happens to. 01:02:58 Speaker 7: Be one of our favorite genres. You know, we were both raised on Gooni's Yeah, and. 01:03:03 Speaker 8: We love like. 01:03:06 Speaker 12: Adventurous stories where the steaks are really high. It's life or death, but yet at the heart of the story are is a group of kids. 01:03:14 Speaker 13: Yeah, and we really did our best, you know, we we have this core group of characters that are so fun. They range from twelve to seventeen, but really even the moms are awesome in the book. We kind of wanted to make it something that if a family sits around and reads it aloud, there is something that everybody can you know, everyone can enjoy and also everyone. 01:03:36 Speaker 11: Can kind of aspire to in some ways. So yeah, it's a fun story, all right. 01:03:40 Speaker 3: So this is available like everywhere. Books are sold from Target and Walmart, Amazon, Barnes and Noble Books a million, all the places, all the things. You guys are New York Times bestselling authors. Real quick, you're pitch to parents, why do they need a book like this for their kids? Oh? Man? 01:03:56 Speaker 12: You know, this started with a vision that we want to inspire young men and women to be prepared mentally, physically, spiritually to slay lives dragons. 01:04:04 Speaker 7: You know, we know the world is full of dragons right now, and our heart is that. 01:04:09 Speaker 12: This story will inspire young people to discover their god given identity to be a David versus a Goliath or a dragon slayer to take on whatever dragons there are. 01:04:19 Speaker 6: In their lives. 01:04:19 Speaker 13: Yeah, there's a line from one of the characters and she says, you know, there's breath. 01:04:24 Speaker 11: In my lungs. I'm here for something. I'm going to find out what. 01:04:27 Speaker 13: And we just want to connect young people to their purpose, to their destiny. And so that's why you know you've heard the phrase pay it forward. We're asking people to just slay it forward. Think of somebody who needs a story like that, because we believe that this can unlock identity and truth and. 01:04:43 Speaker 11: We are excited for families to discover that together. 01:04:45 Speaker 3: Let's talk about woke lib literature for this kind of age. Who what are kids up against? 01:04:50 Speaker 1: Like? 01:04:51 Speaker 3: What are they reading in schools? Because it's so important that they have alternatives? They're actually good, exciting, daring adventuress. I love that you bear girls involved in this, who mister adventure? But what are they up against in schools? 01:05:03 Speaker 7: I mean everything you name it. 01:05:05 Speaker 12: You know, when we first started again, as we said, we just love these kinds of stories. 01:05:10 Speaker 7: You know, we're goony's at heart. 01:05:12 Speaker 12: But when for us, as important as the story itself is why we're telling it, and we had come across It's this is fourteen fifteen years old. By now we've come across as Ted talk called the demise of guys. 01:05:28 Speaker 7: It's it's fascinating ted talk. 01:05:30 Speaker 8: You can look it up. 01:05:31 Speaker 12: I think there's a book and it's two psychologists and this is not from a faith perspective. This is just clinical psychologists. And they were talking about the incredible, incredibly rough trajectory of young boys becoming men and how immersive worlds of video gaming and online pornography and social media, how it's just wrecking havoc on a generation. And one of the big questions that asked, because you know it touches on, is the universal question that every young man, really all of us ask is do I have what it takes? And when we read this, like just utterly sobering statistic, we were like, this is why we have to tell this story. We have to tell the story. You know, I tell it took us fifteen years to get here. And one of the stories I tell often is that, you know, why what kept you going? I took my son on a camp out, a father son camp out, when he was three, and he was he was by far the youngest kid, but I thought I'll be fine, and he wore diapers at night. He came out of the tent and all these other boys saw him and started laughing at him and pointing. 01:06:41 Speaker 7: And said, you're a baby, You're a baby, You're just a baby. I was like devastated. 01:06:46 Speaker 12: I run over there to intervene, and my son is laughing and he says, I'm not a baby, I'm a dragon slayer, and I was. 01:06:57 Speaker 7: I just stood there and I was like, oh my. 01:06:59 Speaker 12: Gosh, all these stories I've been telling him, all the insults didn't stick, all the. 01:07:06 Speaker 7: Mockery, all that kind of stuff. None of it stuck because he knew who he was. And that's our heart. 01:07:12 Speaker 3: You know. 01:07:12 Speaker 12: It's like everything is thrown at kids nowadays from social media and school and who they are and who they aren't, but if they know who God calls them like, none of that other stuff sticks. 01:07:25 Speaker 3: That is so true. I mean, life is a series of things that get in your way, that knock you down, that beat you up, call you names, accuse you of things, and it's how you respond that is ultimately going to define the person and what is it. It's like life is ten percent what happens to you in ninety percent how you choose to react to it, and that resiliency, resiliency and the courage building that up in kids. I had a similar story with my son this weekend actually, and he looked at me. He was scared to go on this ride, and he said, Dad, I'm going to choose to be brave. And he went and did it. And I was like, yes, you know, like it's getting in there somewhere where I'm like, you gotta be brave. Son, you got it. He looked at me and said, I'm choose to be brave. I'm scared, but I'm gonna choose to be brave. I'm so proud of him. 01:08:10 Speaker 11: Uh. 01:08:10 Speaker 3: And and those are the lessons that we need to be getting through. Not that you're a victim, not that there's nothing you can do about anything, not that that you know ultimately your your fate is sealed and all is awful. That's not the American spirit either, And I think that's again go back to Scouts. Scouts was about giving you agency and power over your dominion. And yeah, I think bad things happen, but ultimately we want young people to be the type of people that can overcome the obstacles that are thrown in their life. All right, Blake, final question to you, you're the Scout. You're the you're the Eagle scout here. 01:08:40 Speaker 5: Oh, I guess a natural follow up? Uh? Is there gonna be a sequel? Is he gonna Is he gonna defeat other monsters? 01:08:48 Speaker 11: Yes? 01:08:48 Speaker 13: We are happy to say. This is actually the first in a three book series. So it's the Order of the Dragons Layers series. That's why you don't want to fall behind. You gotta read the first one. But we are actually furiously writing the second one, dreaming up the third one, and we're so thrilled to be able to take families on not just one great adventure, but a whole epic. 01:09:07 Speaker 3: So so it's not gonna take fifteen years though, right, we're gonna. 01:09:10 Speaker 5: Get oh someone there. 01:09:15 Speaker 3: Yeah, well they said it took them fifteen years. 01:09:19 Speaker 12: Yeah, we're it'll be out. The next one will be out next summer sometime. 01:09:23 Speaker 3: Great, great, Well, congratulations on your book. I think this stuff is so important. I wanted to devote as much time as we could in the show because we need stuff that feels like the nineties again. That's what I think. It's basically like, go back to like the way things used to be when we all had our sanity and before social media. Candice ly Eric Newman. Congratulations. Check out the book. Get it. It's wherever books are sold. Get it for somebody in your family or a friend. God bless you both. 01:09:49 Speaker 11: Thank you so much, so much for having us. 01:09:51 Speaker 3: All right, God bless you guys. All right, final minute here, it's Cinco de Mayo and I want to go have tacos today. We're gonna go have tacos. I'm not because I'm still getting over the stomach bug thing. I look, you know, maybe skinnier. Maybe that's the thing I haven't eaten in like two days. 01:10:06 Speaker 5: Well, you know, if you get you know what they say, if you need to purge a lot of stuff from your system, just get sick, get some or get some tacos. 01:10:13 Speaker 3: Well, listen, get some really spicy tacos. 01:10:16 Speaker 5: Yes, like a really authentic Mexican place. 01:10:18 Speaker 3: That'll purge me. 01:10:19 Speaker 6: Yeah. 01:10:19 Speaker 3: So here's here's what I want you to do today. In this final thirty seconds that we have together, the Democrats are going all in hitting Ice. I want you to go public today, somewhere whatever your preferred social platform is, and defend Ice. That is your homework today. Defend the brave men and women that keep this country safe and secure and go tell Leader Thoon that you want to Save America Act passed. So we want New Mexico to be a Republican state. We want Nevada to be firmly in our column. So go say something nice about Ice. They keep us safe in their heroes, and I refuse to let them be defamed and maligned by these open border cabals that just want to loot our medicaid funds. 01:11:04 Speaker 12: For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to Charliekirk dot com