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Charlie Kirk is the Founder and President of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country with over 250,000 student members, over 150 full-time staff, and a presence on over 2,000 high school and college campuses nationwide. Charlie is also the Chairman of Students for Trump, which aims to activate one million new college voters on campuses in battleground states in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. His social media reaches over 100 million people per month and according to Axios, he is one of the "top 10 most engaged" Twitter handles in the world. He is also the host of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which regularly ranks among the top news shows on Apple podcast charts.
Charlie Kirk and Senator Mike Lee Discuss Left-Wing Terrorism Targeting Elon Musk and Tesla
Charlie Kirk sits down with Senator Mike Lee to address the alarming rise of threats and violence targeting Elon Musk and Tesla. As vandalism, arson, and death threats become disturbingly common, Senator Lee explains why Democratic politicians remain largely silent on domestic terrorism tactics. The conversation turns to the crisis of activist judges issuing nationwide injunctions to obstruct the administration, with Lee revealing his upcoming legislation to combat judicial overreach and forum shopping.
Charlie Kirk opens the conversation with Senator Mike Lee from Utah by addressing a disturbing trend: the escalating violence and threats targeting Tesla and Elon Musk. Kirk expresses his fear that this pattern of intimidation could escalate to tragic violence, referencing the shooting of Steve Scalise and the constant death threats he and others receive daily.
Senator Lee identifies these actions as textbook domestic terrorism. "This is what domestic terrorism does, this is what domestic terrorism looks like," Lee explains. "They very much want people to be in fear. That's why they do it. They understand that people understand that there's a risk of bodily harm or even death in these kinds of circumstances, and that's designed to induce fear."
The Senator points to a deeper problem: those engaging in these acts apparently feel empowered to do so without consequence. "These folks apparently feel at liberty to do this. They've been trained by the radical left to think that there will be no consequence to them for doing this, that they'll be applauded, that they'll be rewarded," Lee states.
The Silence of Democratic Leadership
One of Senator Lee's primary concerns is the absence of condemnation from Democratic elected officials. "One of the things that is missing in all of this: we haven't seen politicians on the left, elected office holders in the Democratic party in any significant numbers coming out and saying stop this madness, end this, stop the death threats, stop the painting of the swastikas, the vandalism, all forms of violence. Knock it off," Lee observes.
He singles out Representative Ritchie Torres as one of the few Democrats who has spoken out against the violence, inviting all other Democrats to join him in condemning these actions.
Media Personalities Encouraging Violence
The discussion turns to a clip of Jimmy Kimmel, who addresses Tesla vandalism on his show with what appears to be a mocking tone. Kimmel says, "People have been vandalizing Tesla vehicles, new Tesla vehicles. Please don't vandalize, don't ever vandalize Tesla vehicles," before making additional comments about Elon Musk.
Senator Lee responds strongly: "This isn't funny. It's not cute. It shouldn't be allowed on public airwaves, and I'm frankly stunned that his network hasn't called him out on it, hasn't apologized, hasn't taken some action against them for doing this. This is disgraceful."
Lee emphasizes that regardless of political views, Americans should be able to objectively recognize that "violence and acts of vandalism aren't a good thing." He criticizes Kimmel for doing the opposite of discouraging such behavior, calling it shameful, while noting that Disney will likely face no advertiser backlash.
Tim Walz Celebrates Economic Harm
Charlie Kirk introduces a clip of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz celebrating the decline in Tesla's stock price. Walz describes adding Tesla to his phone's stock app "to give me a little boost during the day" before noting the stock price is "dropping."
Kirk characterizes this as a sitting governor cheering for people to lose their jobs and refers to Walz as an arsonist, referencing comments his wife made during the Floyd protests about enjoying the smell of burning buildings.
Senator Lee finds the governor's comments particularly troubling: "There's nothing wrong if that's his thing to monitor the stocks of a company and figure out what kind of stock prices make him happy and make him sad. It's weird, here, even that his own state retirement fund is pretty heavily invested in Tesla as I understand it, so he's celebrating the diminution in value of his own state workers, his own state retirees' retirement benefits. That's weird."
More concerning to Lee is what Walz didn't say: "If he's going to bring up Tesla at all, why wouldn't he take that opportunity to say, by the way, regardless of whether you want to celebrate when Tesla's stock price goes down, knock it off with the violence? He didn't do that. There's a reason he didn't do that, and I fear what it means for the future of our country."
Nationwide Injunction Crisis and Legislative Response
Kirk shifts the conversation to what he calls the "nationwide injunction crisis," asking if Congress will take action to address the pattern of activist judges issuing sweeping orders against presidential policies.
Senator Lee announces he will be introducing legislation to address this exact problem. "I'll be introducing legislation next week that would require a separate procedure to be followed for this type of injunction," Lee reveals. He explains that injunctions with nationwide applicability focused on presidential policy decisions should no longer be considered by a single federal district judge.
Instead, Lee's legislation would require these cases to go before a three-judge district court panel, a procedure currently used in limited cases dealing with House apportionment or federal legislative boundaries. This approach would have multiple benefits: "Make it infinitely more difficult to game the system, to judge shop, to file the case in a place that suggests from the outset you'll get a very favorable audience from a leftist judge."
Additionally, decisions from three-judge district court panels come with an automatic appeal to the Supreme Court, not discretionary review. "The Supreme Court has to review it, or if it chooses not to, it's still setting precedent," Lee explains. This would "expedite the process, diminish the amount of time that these leftist activist judges could tie up the Trump Administration in these legal proceedings."
The Limits of Judicial Power
In closing, Kirk poses a challenging question about whether there might ever be circumstances where a president should ignore a district court decision, particularly in matters of foreign policy, if nationwide injunctions continue spiraling out of control.
Senator Lee approaches the question thoughtfully, drawing an analogy to military chain of command situations where direct orders might not be followed. "There are circumstances in which a direct order from someone in your chain of command at the military isn't something that you follow. I don't know that the parallel works exactly, but yeah, I mean, there are theoretical limits beyond which a chief executive might deem it appropriate not to follow something."
He emphasizes that such situations would be rare: "The rule of law is important, and so normally one follows orders. It would be the extreme, extreme unusual exception for something like that to exist, but I don't think anyone doubts that there are limits to that."
Lee distinguishes recent circumstances where "the thing that the court was trying to stop had already happened, that was already underway," representing a different scenario than the hypothetical Kirk posed.
Charlie Kirk closes by thanking Senator Lee for his leadership and expressing hope that what he calls "black robe tyranny" can be reined in.
