Charlie Kirk Discusses His Faith, Turning Point USA, and Neoconservatism on Man Rampant Podcast

Welcome to Man Rampant. My name is Douglas Wilson. One of the things that the left has done very well is this. They oppose themselves a thought experiment. Pretended that they are the cancer and they've gone straight for the lymph nodes. And what are those lymph nodes? Those places from which the cancer spreads to the entire body. Well, the answer to that question, of course, is our system of education, K through 12, and then our entire system of higher ed. If secularism is a religion, and it is, then the public school system, soup to nuts, is their established church. Put another way, they cannot really practice separation of church and state because the state is their church. This is why when Charlie Kirk goes up on campuses, who has a disagreement, anybody? And starts to say unorthodox things. How many of you guys were adopted? A lot of people. Look at all these miracles of adoption around you. Praise God that your mom didn't have an abortion. Praise God your mom didn't have an abortion. And there are scare quotes around unorthodox. it invariably causes a stir. Do you feel proud of yourself for debating college kids um who are unprepared to speak in front of an audience like yourself? Do you think that's a little bit silly? Are you a voter? I am a voter. I So I vote and you vote. So I'm talking to voters of this country that will determine the future of Western civilization. That's what I'm doing here today. Yeah. When Charlie Kirk does this, it causes a commotion for two different reasons. The first reason is that he is breaking the rules. And when anybody in any society breaks the rules of that society, heads turn. People stop and then they come over. But there's a second reason. There's a propaganda machine that spreads smoke throughout the corridors of learning. And the aroma of the smoke is meant to communicate that those who are walking around in it are cool kids. They are sassy and street smart. They know how to defy authority, or so the official line goes. And a lot of the kids believe it, assuming themselves to be rebels. And the illusion can be maintained for a time, but only up to the moment when they meet someone who is actually being a rebel. What are your qualifications for arguing that college is a scam? Or really any having any economical knowledge at all when likely the vast majority of the students here know more than you. Who's Milton Friedman? Who is Milton Freeman? I have no idea and it's not important to this conversation. Like residents of all societies, they do notice when someone is breaking the rules. But the twist is that they've been taught their entire lives that they were the edgy ones, that they are the rule breakers. They have spent a lot of energy coloring inside the rule breaker lines. Things were going swimmingly until they saw an actual rule broken. Your face is small. Well, thanks for being here. They always go to insults when they lose the argument. God bless you, my friend. And a number of the kids are starting to notice. A kid is standing there listening to transgressive thoughts for the first time in his life. and he started to think dangerous thoughts to himself. Things like, "I've been educated my entire life by wowers and hall monitors." When this shtick started back in the 60s, there was still a surviving memory of the establishment, and it was still possible to outrage representatives of it. But they are all gone now, gone with a stegosaurus. And the only people you can outrage anymore would be the representatives of the current establishment. And she would be the one with blue hair and odd piercings. And the way you unsettle her is by writing things in your paper like, "You can't justate babies in a cardboard box." And your footnote sites Monty Python. You can't have babies. Don't you oppress me. Perhaps it is time to start sending more transgressive missionaries to the pagan darkness of Academ. [Music] [Music] [Music] Welcome to Man Rampid. It's wonderful to have this uh this episode with Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk is the CEO and founder of Turning Point USA and chief cook and bottle washer there. That is right. That's right. Um let's let's start with that. How h how did you become conservative? Did you have a conversion experience to conservatism on the Damascus road? Or did you grow up into it organically? Um it started uh I was a Christian first. I gave my life to the Lord uh in fifth grade. Grew up in uh the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Uh as a side note, fun thing about being from Illinois is we have term limits in Illinois. Uh a little different than most states. It's one term in office, one term in jail for our politicians. Um and so but no in fifth grade I made the most important decision in my life. I made Jesus Christ the chairman of the board of my life. Um and welcomed them into my life and every decision from there was always instructed by my faith. I was always a conservative in the sense where I respected history. I thought that liberal ideas would always go too far. Mind you, I was young. I was fifth, sixth, seventh grade. But as I grew and I started to study more, I grew very passionate about these ideas. So when I was in high school, Obama really kind of came onto the scene uh from Chicago. That was a very big deal to kind of be uh to see Chicago's own Obama kind of rise to fame and rise to stardom. Um I was a contrarian voice to that uh throughout high school and you know graduated high school. I was going to go to West Point, didn't get in. Um I convinced my parents to let me take a gap year. Uh, it's been 13 gap years and the only campuses I visit are like Washington State University down the street. That's why I'm dressed down, by the way, everybody. I did I just did three and a half hours at Washington State. Uh, literally, we just ended like 20 minutes ago, so excuse my casual dress. And um, simply put, I visit college campuses so you don't have to. Very good. So, um, how did Turning Point start? Really, it started at first diagnosing a problem. So I, as a senior in high school leading into my first year at Turning Point USA, I saw that young people were going very much in a liberal direction. Nothing new, but so dramatically that there was not a counter opinion or a counterpoint ever presented. And I had this crazy idea that conservatism can be spread and communicated in a much more appealing way than it otherwise has been, especially on college campuses. And I would I would go to campuses in 2013, 14, 15 with no money, no connections, no idea what I was doing with literally just a card table, just arguing with kids, no film crew, just like arguing with kids. And I would get like one kid, you know, that I would find a conservative. We'd start a turning point group from that. So it's like pure grassroots, right? Okay. I mean, it wasn't it wasn't as if I was selected for this or there was some committee that thought it'd be a good idea. It was gritty. It was very hard to convince people of this. I'm an entrepreneur and um thanks to the Lord's blessing and his providence and his grace, we started to see it grow and we started to see it start to gain some traction. Uh met then businessman Donald Trump in 2016. We became friends, got to know his son. Obviously, he won in 2017. We started to continue to grow as these campuses became more and more um Marxist secular islands of totalitarianism quite honestly. and you know, turning point USA was kind of standing against it. And then this last last two years was just God's really his greatest blessing to us. We I believe we stepped up for the moment. Uh really there were very few people that were willing to stand by President Trump. Uh when all that was happening, the indictments and all kind of the lawfare around him, especially no one thought that young people could move in President Trump's direction. That was incredibly contrarian. Um, and so we first kind of stepped up to bat just out of loyalty. And I said, "Look, the president's been a friend. He's had our back. He's been treated terribly. Um, we're going to try to organize young people for him because that's what we do." And we started to see something and I know you want to talk about this throughout the discussion about a year and a half ago, two years ago where all of a sudden the crowds on campuses weren't just growing. They were more diverse and they were very masculine of guys that were otherwise not politically affiliated at all. We saw started to see this young male undercurrent. They were thirsting and they were hungering for a different cultural, political and eventually theological and spiritual perspective. And yeah, look, long story short, glory be to God, we did 55 campus stops, myself personally, over the span of 14 months. We reached over three billion people on social media. Maybe you've seen the videos um on Tik Tok, Instagram X, and YouTube. Um polling, independent and liberal polling, shows that our organization was the most consequential in moving young people's opinion. And of every demographic group, baby boomers actually went three points more in Kla Harris's direction. younger voters over 20 points in Donald Trump's direction in November and uh praise God that we were able to play a small role getting him back in the White House. So your approach uh from right out of high school on right you were were you self-consciously building an organization or were you just doing you and your card table? Yeah, it was card table. I mean I had to learn kind of what credit and debit was. I had to learn how to write a check. I mean, and I tell this to young entrepreneurs all the time, that it's okay if you don't even know what you're doing. In fact, it's actually better if you don't know what you're doing because then there's nothing to unlearn, right? And that's that's really important, by the way. Uh, and college teaches you all this rubbish and this nonsense that you have to deprogram. And so, I had this passion and I had not just a passion. I tell this young people all the time, don't just follow your passion, follow your passion and your skill. So, those two things. So, you have to find something you're good at that you enjoy doing because if you just follow your passion, you can end up doing something you're honestly not very good at. And by the way, the Bible tells us, do not follow your heart. Bad idea. Do not follow your heart. Do not do that. Multiple warnings. Uh, do not do that. And so, as an entrepreneur, I started to learn, oh, this is what a 501c3 organization is. This is what a 501c4 organization is. I can have employees. That's amazing. I mean, you start to learn this stuff. And I have a lot of energy. Uh I always try to find problems and solve them and God just put so many people in our life at the right time where they were ultra generous where they didn't have to be and they poured into us where it would have just defied human reason. So there's uh several aspects to this. You obviously believe in hard work visiting all the campuses. You can't just dial it in, right? You've got to go. You've got to talk to people, engage with people out of obedience. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, there's that aspect of it. Also, tell me about Turning Point's ground game. Uh, is that something you're committed to knocking on doors, talking to people? What's what's your philosophy of the ground game? Yeah. And so, especially in I live in Arizona. Uh, I love Arizona. It's a great state. Uh, if you're ever there, come on by our headquarters. We'd love to have you. Uh, we were really bothered by what happened in the 2020 election that Donald Trump didn't get the electoral votes from Arizona. So, we said, "Hey, can we do the ground game better?" So, we hired well over a thousand full-time people on the ground in Arizona to do what we call ballot chasing, which is the grassroots grittiness, hustle work of politics. And it ended up working. Uh, Donald Trump won Arizona by nearly 200,000 votes. We moved younger voters in a great direction. But this just wasn't young voters. It was also knocking on doors and chasing ballots of unaffiliated, low propensity voters, welders, electricians, carpenters, firefighters, police officers. And this is going to be a throughine of our conversation. We did something that the media thought was insane. In fact, you if you have if you ever have, you know, spare time, you could look up all the articles attacking Turning Point about a year ago making fun of our strategy. You know what our strategy was? We're going to win by finding millions of young men that have never voted before. And the media said, "That's insane. Row versus Wade was just repealed. It's the year of the woman. Women are going to rise up in big numbers." were like, "Eh, actually we think men are going to shock the world because we" And how did I know that? It's because I don't just view things through looking at data and looking at charts. That's helpful. I actually go to college campuses and talk to thousands of people and I can see how they're processing information. I can see as I'm dialoguing and I started to realize see who shows up. See who shows up and see why they're showing up and what they're saying and how they're communicating. And what we what I realized very quickly, we were a little curve, is my goodness, there is a course correction of young men that want to resist and reject the hyper feminine, dare I say toxically feminine culture uh that has taken over American. Go ahead. Go ahead and say that. No, I Yes, that toxically feminine. Um and uh No, this is that you're you're that kind of pastor. I forgot. Um gota reme got to remind myself. Um and so we we seized on that in the best possible way and understand of course at its core is a spiritual problem and spiritual problems manifest themselves into cultural problems that then become political problems. So it's kind of a three-pronged issue. But of course at the core it's spiritual. And so my critics say, "Oh Charlie, you know, politics waste of time. You should only talk about the gospel." Look, the gospel is the most important thing. But you know how many people we have led to Christ by first talking politics because the law is a school teacher to Christ as it says says in Galatians 3. The law can show you towards Christ. It's a guardian of Christ's message. And I see this happen every day on campuses. And so there there's something very profound happening. It's actually accelerating. It's not slowing down. Young men are becoming more and more conservative. They're more and more hungry and thirsty to get involved in the local church. We could talk about young women because they uh present an opportunity. Let me let me let me put that mildly. All right. Um but I do believe women will follow if men lead. Okay. So, uh in this when when you go out to these campuses, uh you you said earlier that conservatives were not presenting you your part of your motivation was that conservatives were not presenting the message in a way that was attractive or compelling, right? Um but your style is confrontational, right? Uh is there something uh and mainstream or conservative inc believes in PR, believes in winsomeness? Yes. Which translates into giving away the store, right? How how can you how do you combine uh what's clearly an effective and winsome strategy that is simultaneously confrontational? Yeah. How do you do that? It's a great question. Look, I I I fail at this all the time. I try to be better at it than not, which is how do I have love and truth on a college campus, have an open mic for kids that need to hear it? And the the honest truth is I try to do as Jesus did in the public square, which is to show mercy where appropriate, but also have uncompromising truth standards. And and so the old way of doing things on campuses and this is where it's so wrong and I can't believe I for a short period of time I used to believe it and then I I dismissed it which is that okay kids are liberal therefore we have to go present a more liberal message to them and water down our beliefs. In reality what they enjoy more than anything else is like the most provocative truth claim that you could say is like men can't give birth. like, whoa, you can get 2,000 people into a auditorium for saying that, right? Um, what I'm getting at is that I I'll give you I'll give you an issue that I am a I'm an unapologetic advocate of despite the fact that I'm in the political minority, which is to fight for the unborn. I I am resolutely pro-life in every possible circumstance. And that's not popular, right? But the crowds we draw around that is amazing. And so I think to myself, I don't know if I would actually get as much attention if I was just kind of like an uncompromising squish. They're like, well, I think it's just a woman's, you know, my body, my choice. That's actually not that interesting because they could go hear that from their local professor, right? What's all of a sudden gets their attention like, did he just say that there should be no exceptions for abortion? Tell me more. Step up to the mic. Tell me why you're wrong. And then all of a sudden, we can use the Socratic method to ask questions. When does life begin? What is the process of human development? By what moral standard are you appealing to? What is good? what is evil? You know, what is right? Why is it bodily autonomy? Why does the size, level, development, environment, or degree dependency of a baby matter of its moral worth? And like, I've never heard this before. And I I don't want to try to brag too much on what we've kind of stumbled into here, but I think this is the direction that online content and young people are demanding. less kind of just like being in a studio reading a teleprompter and get out in the streets, find the best ideas, let them kind of confront each other and let anybody say anything they want at any time and um it's been it's been a amazing success. Praise the Lord. CS Lewis observes somewhere, I forget where, that when unbelievers or atheists become Christians, they almost never become liberal Christians. Right. That's true. They they go they think something like if I'm going to do something crazy I'm gonna go to I'm gonna go to the deep end I'm gonna go to Christians the kind of Christianity where they actually believe things and uh Eugene Genevvisi who was a a Marxist writer who became a Christian later uh said that in during his atheist days he said whenever I was in the presence of a liberal Christian I always had that deep assured feeling ing that I was in the presence of a fellow unbeliever. Right? So, if I'm going to ditch my unbelief, why would I move to a murky form of it? I'm if I'm going to be a Christian, I want to be a Christian Christian. And you've seen that play out like the stark claims of Christ. Absolutely. And I just we are we are seeing more interest for the gospel, more interest for spiritual things because think about the world that so many of these kids at University of Idaho or Washington State were raised into just the last four years. Every secular institution failed them and some religious, by the way, but every major power center has lied to them about almost everything that's involved them from COVID to the vaccine to mask mandates to the economy to to speech to gender norms to sexuality. So you have the most depressed, suicidal, alcohol addicted generation history that is also the most secular. Something here doesn't necessarily fit. So all of a sudden there's this this group of us and I I include you in this pastor and I'm a big admire of yours that is speaking truth all of a sudden into this broken culture and they're like I've never heard that. That makes sense because nonstop they get this nonsense on campus and you have to wonder like why do they fight so hard? There were tons of protests today but there were even more supporters. Understand we had nearly 3,000 kids there today at Washington State University. Don't believe me? It was unas was anyone there by the way? Did anyone you double dippers? We got super fans. But it was a big crowd. Wouldn't you agree, guys? It was It was really big. And so the That's That's funny. Um the There were protesters there the whole time. Fine. Why are they so threatened by me coming up there for three hours? Open mic. So, let me get this straight. Washington University gets them for four years. I might get some of them for three hours because they know that I in three hours can undo the damage of four years of garbage with one sentence, one question, one truth claim. And that's why they have to try so hard to not let me speak. Right. They're they are threatened by uh not just truth claims, but by truth claims that are true. Well, of course. Yes. Which big advantage. Yes. claims of truth I should say. Yeah. Yeah. So um is abortion the most volatile topic? What what is the what is the uh I would say yeah and this is also where I differentiate from the old way of reaching out to young people and I fell victim to this for a very short period of time and I snapped out of it which is only talk about economics. Don't talk about the cultural stuff. They actually want to hear about the cultural stuff. No one is telling these people to save themselves for marriage. No one is rejecting the premise that you shouldn't actually like abortion is not like a normal thing. And I I say and I it pains me to say this, but some of these kids on these campuses, they think like getting abortion is like getting a haircut. It's not a joke. There is zero teaching of the severity and the complexity and the inhumity and the butchery of what goes into this action. And it's not like they're like, "Oh yeah, it's no different than like a cosmetic plastic surgery." Right? And so abortion is probably the most frequent topic I get. But the one where there is like a pathological like they get very upset is transgenderism and and and that's I have I'm deeply uncompromising on that one as well where I believe God created men and God created women and period that's it. End of story. That if you have gender dysphoria it's a brain problem, not a body problem. We should not have these treatments for anybody. Period. um especially not minors and I think per personally the medical establishment has not earned our trust to have any treatment for anybody of any age for this period whether you're 25 or whether you're 30 I think there should be a full suspension of quote unquote gender affirming care for people in this country so all that to say transgenderism gets them very worked up and then almost inevitably they will then they will then come because I will say things like it's a blessing to be here God bless you know so eventually they're like wait a second are you like one of Christians and then yeah, which by the way, I was telling pastor here, I think I win the award for the greatest podcast contrast in a 24-hour period. You guys ready for this? So, tonight I'm in Moscow, Idaho with Pastor Douglas Wilson. Last night I was in Los Angeles doing two hours with Bill Maher. Uh, while and I kid you not, um, it it was probably the hardest podcast I've ever done. Not just because he is wickedly smart. Like, he is very smart objectively. knowing I was impressed by his his his capacity to understand things from a very very militantly atheist perspective. He was smoking weed the entire time and I don't like I don't like I don't like fragrances, okay? Let alone cigarette smoke or vaping. So I' I've never smoken marijuana, but now I guess I can might say I' like secondhand smoked marijuana. So here I am like he's trying to debate the Council of Nika and I'm like I kind of feel kind of funny right now. Um, and so excuse me while I abstain tonight, pastor. I'm like, I've I've had enough. But anyway, I'm saying it's it's the great it's the greatest contrast one could ever imagine, right? From Bill Maher to Doug Douglas Wilson. And so that's that's really something. But um, all that to say, the Bill Maher discussion or the campus discussion is all about like whoa gets to spiritual matter matters. And again, what happens politically is just a manifestation of the spiritual and we must be unafraid to engage in spiritual. So, I'd like to get to that point in a minute, but just a quick demographic question. Uh, when you get push back on transgenderism, do does most of it come from guys or girls? Girls. Yeah. Um, that's a great question. It's 90% women. Yeah. And which which is like I'm sorry to interrupt. Shouldn't not make any sense because they're actually the greatest victims of it, right? And then on but when you look at the transgender world, someone who's grounded in the Christian worldview and what the Bible teaches about human sexuality and humanity, these people are broken puppies. They're just they're just they've been lied to and starved for spiritual truth and they they've sort of come to the end of the road. And I think there's a maternal instinct that kicks in where uh the women That's interesting. The the women feel like to oppose transgenderism is is like kicking puppies. Um and you you need to feel sorry for them. I think it's that we've been uh here in Moscow, we've been talking about the toxic empathy or untethered empathy. And I think that that's what this is. uh the women have been trained to be empathetic, no judgment. You you cannot make judgments because that is phariseaical or or legalistic or you know harsh critical and so they just don't want to do it. And the the women have bought into that um propaganda more heavily than the men have. I've never heard anyone say that. That's super smart and I think that's right. I would add to that um I would add to that women are norm enforcers. They always have been. Women look at what the consensus of the times are and they're very good at enforcing whatever the norm is. By the way, when Christianity was the dominant view of America, it was women that were enforcing that. So, so they they were ve the women were the ones that were the backbone of American Christianity, especially on the hyper local rural level all throughout the country. And that deserves to be credited. Women just generally are far more agreeable than they are disagreeable. And when it comes to transgenderism, there is high social cost which women do not like risking social capital as it is for opposing transgenderism. It's a very very high social cost. You get isolated. You cannot be part of the tribe. Women are far less likely to not want to be part of a community than men. Just as a as a as a as a fact. I think the maternal instinct is right. In addition though, transgenderism is the logical endpoint of feminism. If you understand feminism, feminism is this idea of no distinctions between male and female sexuality. The the first claim of Gloria Steinman in the feminine mystique is essentially that like men can do everything, women can do everything that men do and I need to be liberated from this oppression of being a homemaker, right? I must be liberated above this. And so fundamentally transgenderism is the climax of that. After 50 years it's like okay you say everyone's the same then fine men can become women and women women can become men because there's nothing actually intuitively or instinctively different between the sexes. So you you've alluded to this a couple times but not in these words. uh the late Andrew Breitbart said that politics is downstream from culture and then we've taught for a number of years now and culture is downstream from worship uh you become like what you worship and u because evangelical worship in North America is anemic and compromised and um it's like a room full of cotton candy. It's like there's not much weight to it, not much gravitas. And so, uh, that kind of worship has led to the corruptions in the culture that we see. So, worship is upstream from culture. Culture is upstream from politics. And you can't go down to Congress and say vote for this or do that or do the other thing when the juggernaut of a continent full of anemic worship and compromised corrupted culture is behind the this measure whatever it is pushing. Would you agree with that? That yes I mean as deep as you want. I mean what we worship in the west are the pagan gods of old that have just largely been repurposed. And I mean I I know you do a great job of this because I I read your book Christendom and I also I love I am a canon plus uh p subscriber of the book um as well um which is uh honoring the Sabbath. It's actually my next book all about the Sabbath. I think it's the most forgotten commandment by the Western Christianity by far and it is designed primarily for worship. Right? And so you think about it we've basically eliminated honoring the Sabbath. It says very clearly for six days you shall work and for the seventh day you shall rest. Very clearly the seventh day is designed for worshiping God who created the heavens and the earth. Beer sheet. It literally is for that purpose. Right. And and we we are up a creek when we go to talk to unbelievers about their violations of this commandment or that commandment because they say what about you guys? Yeah. You guys are working on Sunday or you're working on whatever day I mean you consider to be the seventh day. I I'm not legalistic about that at all. I will say though that most CR here, if you can't pass the Sabbath test, you are in violation of the Sabbath. It's very simple. If I walk into your home on the Sabbath, can I tell or does it look like every other day? Holy means separate in Hebrew and we're supposed to keep the Sabbath day holy. And if the Sabbath is not different than the other six days, then you are violating the Sabbath. My my dad said my dad was born in 1927. He said when he was a boy in Nebraska uh on the Lord's day on the first day of the week the stores would like the thearmacies would rotate which pharmacy stayed open. Yep. And the grocery stores would the the town would shut down. Hardware store would be closed. Clothing store would be closed. The necessity stores pharmacy grocery store that sort of thing. they would rotate who stayed open. Uh, and that was just part of the uh, culture. When I was in the Navy in the 1970s, I was stationed in Norfol, Virginia, and there was a referendum in Virginia in the 70s trying to get rid of the Sabbath laws, the blue laws, the blue laws, and uh, which were still on the books and still enforced uh, in the 1970s. And we've gone from uh Jesus said that man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man. And we have got bought into this frenetic 247 pace where you need um amphetamans to keep going after a while. Yeah. And so a couple again I I could literally talk for an hour on the Sabbath. It's a a passionate topic of mine. Or the Shabbat if you prefer. Um look, the the Hebrew word for work is malaka, which is a very specific word. You are only supposed to do that for six days. The only difference between Deuteronomy and Exodus where they repeat the ten commandments is the Sabbath. When Moses repeats the ten commandments in the book of Deuteronomy, he says, "Of course, for six days you shall work, for the seventh day you shall rest." And then he says, "For you are no longer slaves in Egypt. Only slaves work seven days." I know a lot of rich slaves. Yeah. I I know a lot of people that are slaves to their work, slaves to their stuff. In fact, the Romans used to make fun of the Jews. They're like, "Why would they take a day off? Why would they rest? Like, who are these people?" Well, they're still around and a lot Romans are not, right? Pretty good preservation tool. But look, I I will just also say in a modern culture, truly honoring the Sabbath, how I honor, I turn off my phone completely for 36 hours. I own the I I do the traditional Jewish Sabbath to my own liking. I whatever from Friday night to Sunday morning. And I could tell you, it's really hard. And it is, you have to almost fight your flesh to do it, to not want to return an email, to not want to return a text message. And because in some ways, you're worshiping with your time. You're saying that I'm sanctifying this space. It is a standing appointment with our creator saying that you matter so much. I'm going to give 17th of my week to you in glory and worship. So, I completely agree with that. And the modern church unfortunately does not even worship God the god the god that you and I would consider to be you know the the god of the heavens and the earth. It it's it's a broken fragmented American Christian church. How do you answer the charge that um that you have been co-opted by a a politician, the politician Trump or the Republican party or uh do you go around making Republicans happy? Um look, I Yeah, right. No. Uh I I I oppose a lot of Republicans. For example, I've spoken out about against both of your US senators in this state, of which I would like to see primaries happen. So, no, I do not I do not operate just to try to make Republicans happy. You guys deserve better senators. Let me tell you right now, you guys deserve better senators. The fact that there's not outspread applause because you guys are like, "Oh, good." Um, so no one can criticize me just to kind of carry the water to the Republican party. Okay. Um, but I can tell you right now, you have two war mongering senators here in this state that sent a lot of money to Ukraine and didn't do anything to try to close the southern border when Biden was president. Anyway, besides that, they're great people. Um, so how other than that, how is the play? Exactly. No, I mean, but I guess so the charge I just needed to say that. But look, Jesus is always number one in my life. That's that's very important. I will bring what I know to be true into the political domain. And I believe we as Christians are called to be counselors to the king, you know, to be counselor to the politician as Daniel was or Mori that if I can influence for moral and righteous or good purposes. I mean, it was pretty awesome when I was able to in the early days of this administration advocate to President Trump, hey, I really think you should pardon all these proifers that are in jail right now for the FACE Act. Amen. That was awesome. Now, I I I don't I'm not I don't deserve credit to be perfectly clear. I don't deserve credit for that. But it was really confirming that all that advocacy gave me proximity to a man with a pen that was able to get all these amazing pro-life warriors out of prison. It was pretty awesome when JD asked me, he's like, "Hey, should I speak at the March for Life?" I said, 'Absolutely. Right. So, just little things like that where I can use the proximity that the Lord has given me to try to push for things that I believe are pleasing to the Lord. Little things that are actually enormous things. No, of course. But by little, I mean that that they add up, meaning that they are daily decisions that need to be made. Uh, another one where again, I don't deserve credit, but I was pushing. I said, "Guys, you know, Steven Miller and all, again, they deserve the credit. They did it, but I was a voice. We need an executive order prohibiting gender- affirming care for minors. We need an executive order saying only men and female sports. And so I amongst many other great voices are trying to be that counselor to the king, counselor to the president that I believe is a biblical role. Right? So back uh if we rewind uh in the history of North American conservatism, uh William Buckley when he was just out of Yale wrote God and man at Yale and sort of wound up launching the um the modern conservative resurgence that culminated in the election of Reagan. Right. Okay. Uh part of that project was the fusionist uh project of of Meyer of Hawks, you know, antiarianism, neoconservatism. Uh so you had like three major strands bundled up together in this fusionist project. Yep. Uh the the hawks wanted to defeat Russia in the cold Soviet Union in the cold war and the culture warriors wanted were concerned about the morality and then the free market guys wanted uh less regulations and all that. Um I'm sure you're up against some of the similar currents. If you if you looked at Turning Point, what kind it's obviously a conservative activist organization. Is it one of those strands or another one? Or is it a a neofusionist project? Or is it more eclectic than that? It it it's it's probably eclectic because look, we're a membership organization and then a lot of what Turning Point espouses are my beliefs. So I don't I'll tell you what I believe and then it kind of goes downstream from there, which is like look, I I'm first and foremost a Christian and I need to just repeat that, right? I I believe that we want a strong country. I'm resolutely America first. I think that it is against our own best interests to continue to engage in these neoimperialist wars. So, I'm not a neoconservative at all. I think that our own borders matter a lot more than the borders of a foreign country. And I think it's a long past time that our leaders would start to prioritize the well-being of our own citizens, not those of foreign nations. Not that crazy of a concept, right? So you can call that a nationalist, you can call that a conservative or whatever, where I am involved in a very serious and spirited battle, which goes to my prior comment about your senators, is that I think neoconservatism has no place in the Republican party and and that that's where a lot of people uh get upset. So what is neoonservatism? That that's not even hawkish stuff. Neoconservatism is beyond that. Neoconservatism is a form of Marxism. Literally, it's a branch of Troskyism, which is to believe that America is exists primarily as a global empire to go and try and tell other countries what to do and how to do it. We're going to invade the world and then we will invite the world. That America is a colony and will be a series of colonies. We reject this because neoconservatism prioritizes GDP over God. Neoconservatism prioritizes mass migration over the well-being of nativeborn Americans. Neoconservatism will say that by all means necessary, we must use force and around every corner there's a dragon waiting to destroy us. We need to have war with Russia, war with Iran. We need to be sable rattling around every corner. And I ask people, has that worked the last 20 years? George W. Bush is a perfect example of a neoonservative. Okay, that is like he's basically him and Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney is like central casting. The Iraq war I think was a disaster. I think it was a total mistake. It never should have happened. The war in Afghanistan was I think prosecuted incorrectly. Never should have been a long nationbuilding, you know, kind of change the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan war. So in that fusionism, I look at those kids on a college campus and I think to them, I think to myself, they deserve better than leaders that are trying to get them closer to an unnecessarily, you know, unnecessary third world war while simultaneously not embracing this idea that the American foreign policy project has at its best of the last 20 years been overly aggressive. At its worst, actually swed the seeds seeds of our own demise. Look at Elon Omar, who we don't like, who's in Congress. How did she come? She's a perfect example of neoconservatism. We get involved in Somalia because of the Somalian civil war. We invade them. We feel bad. So, we bring a bunch of Somalians into our country because we're told we must have mass migration. So, one is a prerequisite to the other. And so the Republican party has a lot of different views on big issues, but neoconservatism at its core where where they are trying to stoke conflict where it shouldn't exist, where they care more about foreign nations other than our own. Would you say the DNA of as you're defining neoonservative, the DNA of it is globalist? Yes, that is a great another term for it. It's it's one that looks at the great American empire gay ga um that its spheres of influence goes all the way from Ukraine. Like hold on, time out. Time out. We have very distinct borders. Why don't you start caring about it? Here's the problem with neoonservatism. Neoconservatism is highly obsessed with the enrichment of the capital class and is completely ignoring of the well-being of its own citizens. You see this best on display when you have homeless people that are vets that can't get care. You see this on display of mass drug overdoses and we have to be lectured that the greatest enemy to America is Vladimir Putin. I'm sorry that's not the greatest enemy to America by any means necessary. I don't like Vladimir Putin. I don't think he's good. But a much bigger problem to Vladimir than Vladimir Putin is the American left that has ignored and left people behind or public sector teacher unions. So anyway, so here here here would be a uh I think an important distinction in this. I concur with that what you're saying there. Um would you make a distinction as I I would between uh the use of the US military in nation building exercises uh which would be Iraq Afghanistan right as opposed to what President Trump is currently doing to the Houthis. So the the Houthis are attacking shipping going through the Red Sea and we've said we're not going to try to build anything in Yemen. we're blowing things up until they stop shooting at the ships, right? Um would you say, "Yeah, that's an area where I differ with Trump," or do you see that a distinction between um sort of an aggressive short defensive action like that versus nation building projects? I totally see what Trump's doing there. I don't know enough about it to have a strong I don't know the complexities. I think that we should exercise caution when meddling in other count's affairs, but I'll just be very honest with you. something that I'm against. I'm I don't think we should bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. I just don't. I think it would be a huge mistake. It's an act of war against a major country. You go to war with Persia, it will bring your country down. The American people did not rise up in major numbers because we want war with Iran. That that was never part of the deal. Okay? It was never like, "Hey, America first, we're going to go do a bunch of, you know, targeted strikes on the main the inland of Iran." So, that's just where I I I would say that that would be a catastrophic mistake. And so, but but beyond that, I just want to make sure that we are clear kind of why we believe this. We have so many pressing problems at home and our leaders are internationally obsessed and they are domestically ignorant and and and they they don't care to know that we have a suicide problem with our nation's young people. They don't care to know that we are having a fertility crisis in the West. And so again they ignore the problems and their and neoconservatives solution to every problem is what the religion of neoonservatism beyond invasion is mass migration. Bring as many people into the country as you possibly can regardless if they can't assimilate or they can't have cultural cohesion because one plays into the other. Why? Because they don't believe in nationality. That's the important point. They are globalist. They'll say, "Oh, come on. Why can't you bring a bunch of people in Somalia? Why can't you bring a bunch of people from Gaza? Why can't you bring a bunch of people from Syria in? And we know that you cannot bring people from the third world. You bring in the third world, you become the third world, right? I'd be h I'd be willing to bring people in from Gaza if we put them in Martha's vineyard. Yeah. And they they uh they they won't be received there. That's for sure. But no, I I just look, it says very clearly in the scriptures, demand the welfare of the nation that you are in because your your welfare is your nation's welfare. Jeremiah 29:7. And so I I think we far overreached and I know that as I speak for our nation's young people, we I have known just you understand my passionate perspective on this from my earliest memory. We have been a nation at war. One of my earliest memories was 911 and we had a no- win war in Iraq and a no- win war in Afghanistan. And now we're heavily involved in no- win war with Russia and Ukraine. And I just asked myself, could that $8 trillion have been better spent? Like what did we get for that? And I think that philosophy at its core is one that is globalist, not nationalistic. One of the one of the tenants is of this electoral revolution that just happened in the 2020 election was no to endless war. Um, totally. So there's uh Trump clearly believes in a strong military. He but he also believes that there's bloat excess um and all kinds of uh dirty deeds going on in Pentagon contracts. So he he's he's an odd m he's not a pacifist. Not a pacifist by no means, but he's not a nation builder either. And so when we when we say no to endless war, we're we're saying no to the globalist enterprise, no to the idea that we are somehow the savior of the world. Correct. Right. So on immigration, the there are evangelical leaders who used to have a lot more uh authority to speak maybe seven or eight years ago than they do now. Uh the New York Times when they wanted to talk to an evangelical would call up Russ Moore or or David French or someone like that and say, "What's the evangelical take on this?" And the evangelical elite was also in favor of open borders and uh correct very loose immigration policy. And and the illustration I've used for this is imagine a Christian couple that with a couple of kids of their own and they take in two foster kids and they're doing very well with the four and everybody's thriving and happy and then one day a short bus from the state shows up with 28 extra foster kids and they dump off 28 more foster kids and the father objects and then one of the evangelical leaders says I think that you're not showing a an ethic of hospitality here. Um, Christians should love their neighbors. Christians should be open to foster children. And he could say, "Well, I was open to them and I was taking good care of the two, which I thought we could do. I was loving my own two. I was loving these foster kids. But if you drop off those 28, I'm not going to be loving anybody, right? I'm the 28 are going to lose. The two foster kids are going to lose, and my own kids are going to lose. Um you you have just crippled me. Um you've you've not made you've not been been charitable. You've made charity impossible. Yes. Right. The CA So the issue is not whether someone could legally immigrate from another country. The issue is chaos. Right. Yeah. And I I I I would go even a step further which is that you don't have to have any any immigration. I know that sounds like a radical view. You actually don't have to. We have gone through plenty of periods in this country's history where we had almost no immigration from like the 1920s to the 1960s and I think that immigration the the sales point for immigration is always one of the following. Well, they won't do the jobs that we'll do. Okay. Well, with mass robotics or AI, that's not going to be true anymore. By the way, how insulting the American people? I think that American people with a a fair wage would actually do a lot of these jobs and so if their wages weren't always being undercut. So the other thing they say is, "Well, diversity is our strength." No, it's not. Actually, diversity is not a strength. Okay? No. Show me any country that has mass importation of foreigners and gets stronger. Right. Like ever. In fact, Moses specifically warned against this in the end of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 28. Exactly. Where he says they will become your masters. There is like a cautionary tale there. They will be the head, you will be the tail. Yes. Yeah. And and so and finally, as we care about the nation, I just I think the charitable way of looking at it is so right. I I think there is this kind of like guilt complex that seeps into evangelicalism, which is that, well, everyone says America's awful and we're going to atone to our sins by allowing everybody that wants to come in here at all times. While they're actually not loving their neighbor, they're importing a foreigner. That's two totally different things. They're very slow to actually go help their neighbor who's an American, but somehow they want to go bring in like a Honduran or a Vietnamese, which again, if you have a good heart for that, terrific. That's fine. But a fact is this is that America is collapsing because we are a nation of strangers. We speak different languages. We have different origin stories. We have different cultural backgrounds. And one that I think we can all agree on as Christians. We are we should look at Europe with shock and with awe and say that Islam is incompatible with Western civilization. That is mass migration. You're not going to convert these the Muslims in big numbers to Christianity. They're going to want to convert you. And they have a lot more kids than we do, by the way. A lot. The number one birth name in London, in Birmingham, in Edinburg is Muhammad. They they they they they they seek to to conquer and to grow and to and explode their influence. And they're very good at it because Islam, you know, we as Christians, we kind of dance around like is there a political doctrine for Christianity or not? And you know, Islam makes no apology that it's a it is a nakedly political ideology that's disguised as a religion. And like they they they make no apology. It's well within their teaching that we come here to institute a government of a certain structure, which eventually will be Sharia law. and we're inviting that into our country. I I it is it is slow motion suicide. And so, and the final point they'll say is like, well, the West is not having enough children. Oh, really? Well, maybe we having a million abortions every single year, we wouldn't need mass migration. Maybe if we didn't have, you know, kids that are on the pill with birth control, we wouldn't need to import, you know, massive amount of third worlders into our country. And so, look, I I'm of the opinion that we should have a full pause on immigration, both legal and illegal. We have way too many people in this country right now. We have a public services issue. We have a wage issue. We have a crime issue. And call me radical, but again, I think the American citizen should always come first. A government is constituted to fulfill its mandate to its people. It stops at its borders. And its failure to do that has really led to the rise of Donald Trump. I wanted to circle back to something you touched on earlier and um develop it maybe a little bit more. You mentioned uh the all the men who have started to show up at your events. Yes. Uh young men have um been moving steadily to the right, becoming more conservative. Um a lot of them are the the world that that they've inherited just isn't working for them. Correct. Right. It's and you you mentioned all the major institution. Name one institution uh in American life that hasn't thoroughly discredited itself in the last 10 years. All of them. Completely right. Uh media, military, including the church. Including the church. So, uh young men who want to be taught, instructed, and led are where do I go? Where do I go? And and so they're they're showing up at your events, and there are a lot of them. Yes. one um downside, one challenge, every with everything that happens, there's always going to be a temptation that accompanies it. And one of them here is that a lot of these young men are so disillusioned with everything that they have gone into some pretty dark corners of the internet and have started to listen to um Jew hate uh conspiracy theories. And of course, we have the joke, you know, I'm going to need some new conspiracy theories because all of mine are coming true. Yeah, that's right. No, you don't want these ones, right? Yeah. There there are some there are some conspiracy things theories that are really dank. They're really bad. And then there are the conspiracy theories that are people who just have eyes in their head and they they don't believe the lies that are coming out of their television set. Correct. Right. So, make that distinction. But some of these men are pretty um are broken, bleeding, hurting, and they are hostile to everything. And so your your for support for Israel, for example, will um animate. Yes. Animate them. you will probably get feedback and that sort how just aside from the specific answer to the a question one of them might ask how how would you address sort of the root cause of of this young male rootlessness fatherlessness that is resulting in adoption of some really bad u political theologies. It's a great question. So I get asked frequently why are men rebelling in such great numbers? There's a lot of answers, but one that is almost never mentioned, and I think I was the first one to present this. Young men do not like taking orders from women. They don't. Period. If you want to get young men to rebel, have them have a bunch of women barking at them, especially crazy liberal women. And you ladies afterwards, don't ask your guy if that's true. Yeah. But it's do. And so, you think about it. You have a 17-year-old man, young young man, I should say, where everything around him is falling apart. his kid, his friends are committing suicide. They're all addicted to porn. And then he all of a sudden shows up at age 18 at a college campus where some like childless 45year-old Catwoman is telling him that he's the problem because he's toxically masculine. And he's like, "Forget this. Like, I'm going to go find somewhere else where I'm at least validated as a man." And again, you could say like, "Oh, well, we have to teach men to be able to take orders from women." That's a state of nature, guys. It's just that that's not going to you have you have to understand that young men in particular are trying to figure out how to become a man and not a boy. They're trying to understand also how to deal with physical violence. That's why young men without fathers are much more likely to engage in acts of violent crime, murder, arson, kidnapping, whatever, gang violence, because they've never actually had a male figure to have them wrestle with the idea like what is it actually? What is good use of force actually mean? So they have totally distorted. And then even beyond that, the entire culture is hyper hyper feminized. Now what what do I mean by that? I mean fe feminine qualities at its best would be an appeal to emotion. We have thrown reason out the window and the entire constit the the current constitution of the postmodernist view is that the the worst thing that you can be in America is a white Anglo-Saxon Christian heterosex heterosexual male of which I am one. Right? because you're looking at like the chief villain and the only way you can atone for that is by becoming a liberal or transitioning to become a woman and men are the problem. Men are the cancer. They're a tumor that must be removed. And it has created mass cultural chaos. And you have made all that list of that litany of things that you are one degree worse, 10 degrees worse because add to it apologetic unapologetic. Unapologetic Christian, right? Yes. unapologetic for everything. Yes. That whole list. And so that I'm like the chief villain, right? So I'm white. Sue me. Yeah. So I'm heter I'm male. Exactly. What am I supposed to do? Stop existing? And they'll say basically some of them will be like yes. I mean you think I'm kidding. I mean so so you this the cultural paradigm right now is a rebellion of the men of the west that's happening in every major country where young men are finding podcasts like ours. They're finding other in, you know, information conduits that believe in nature, believe in God's design, believe that men should have to stand up for the vulnerable, create a family, provide for the family, have to uh to protect the weak, to fight the battles of society, to go on an adventure. This is very appealing to young men when they hear it. And they're not getting any of that. Instead, they get a well, the hero's journey that they get is not the story of Abraham. Uh, it's like it's it's it's the story of well, become a social justice warrior and get a degree in sociology and like go become a social worker. Like that's your hero's journey to like go become a guidance counselor to help kids become trans, right? Like that's how you redeem yourself. And like young men are like, "No, that's like against my soul." Like I'm called to go into the wilderness. I mean, what? Like Abraham left his Abram left his dad's house when he's like 120 or something, right? I mean, you you would know he's pretty old, like 70 or something. Every young boy wants that call to adventure to leave his father's home and to go do something out in the wilderness, to do something of the wants to slay the dragon. Exactly. And again, I'm not the first one to diagnose this. Jordan Peterson's been on this for quite a while. Right. What I'm getting at though is the political side is what people missed is that there's a lot that you can call Donald Trump. No one has ever called him feminine. All right? In a toxically feminine world, again, all the media missed this and almost every cultural critic missed it. We didn't. In a toxically feminine world, you have the absolute inverse of that, which is like ultra masculine, never apologize, red tie, big plane, super rich, supermodel wife, right? It's going to be big and Mexico's going to pay for it and get more tariffs and it's like as bravado strong men as you can get. And young men didn't care that, you know, I don't. It wasn't even about policy. That's what people don't understand is that it was partially policy. Was like, "No, he is the middle finger to all of the screeching hall monitors that have told me I have to use certain pronouns, that have told me that like I'm bad for existing, that have penalized me for my existence." And Trump is the big FU to the feminist establishment that has not been challenged my entire life. Right? And there you have a coach and analysis of the 2020 election. 2024. Yeah. 2024. No. Yeah. Yeah. But uh I could go on forever, but yeah. Well, thank you so much. Very good. Thank you. You want me to stay for questions or no? Yeah, we're we're going to stay. So, if you have if you have a question, line up at the mic here and then uh someone authoritative will cut it off when it's time to be done. So, I listened to your podcast interview with Gavin Newsome. Yeah, that's right. And as a former Californian, I'm just curious, do you think he's going to successfully pull this uh reinvention off? No, I don't. I mean, he's going to try to be the Democrat nominee. I don't profess to know Democrat politics. I will say like, no joke, Bernie drew a huge crowd in Boise a couple days ago. Like I'm telling you, it's 12,000 people. That's not easy to do. Uh we drew a big crowd too at Boise, but boy state not that big. Um the Democrats are going to go through a very difficult chapter right now. Huh. I'm not I'll pray for them. Um and uh pray this chapter 11. Yeah. No, exactly. Exactly. Chap. Exactly. So um the uh I don't know who the Democrat nominee is going to be. I'm not going to pretend, but there there is uh I don't think the Democrats will be able to be competitive in the battleground states if they still stay married to their mass migration uh trans zealatry if they allow the purple-haired jihadis to continue to run their party. Uh I think they're going to be uncompetitive in the swing states. Um yeah, thanks for coming out. I really appreciate you uh doing this. I have a question kind of for you and love to hear Pastor Wilson chime in on it as well, but um I've heard Jordan Peterson say something uh to young men in particular. Um something along the lines of if you're not going to if you're not going to college, you should do something as difficult or more difficult. Um one of the big topics you've been speaking on at college campuses is the idea that college is a scam. Correct. Um what do you think the solution is for aimless young men who struggle to find a purpose? And um if they don't have a mission, should they go to college with the hopes of finding one through pursuing a degree? Um or is college too dangerous of an environment for uh young men seeking purpose? Like what's the alternative? Yeah. I mean, look, this is a generalization. I could tell you this though that uh boys do not become men at college. They don't. In fact, they stay boys and one of the reasons why generally is that they get everything that they could possibly want and they don't have to work for it. This is why feminism is bad for everybody, men included. So the the feminist shtick is they tell a bunch of young women, hey, have as much sex as you possibly can. I know we got kids in the audience, but you know, it's just what it is. Have as much sex as you possibly can. And so the girls are like, "Oh, okay." And so they do that. So then the men don't actually have to be impressive or work to get what they want because all the women are free and easy on these campuses. And so they don't have to grow up. They don't have to shave. They don't have to shower. They don't have to stop doing weed. They don't have to, you know, be impressive. So in the olden days, in order to even court a woman, you had to be a pretty impressive guy. You had to have your act together. And now all of a sudden, the women throw themselves all over the place. And so it's a very simple supply and demand issue. So I am I'm against college for a lot of different reasons. That that's one of them. I also just don't think it makes you wiser at all. I mean, you might know more stuff, but wisdom is the knowledge of things that do not change. And studying of the great books and the great ideas. Now, there are exceptions. I'm sure there's I know there's a great uh there's a great college up here in Idaho somewhere. Yeah. Uh, yes. Um, so that would be the exception. But I mean, I'll just tell you, I mean, like Washington State University, one of the first, you guys saw it, that professor that came up, he's he's a Like, why would you spend money to learn from this guy? He has, no, seriously, he's an anthropology or whatever sociology professor. He knows nothing. Like, he's like there's nothing there. Okay? There's no reason for you to go into debt to learn from this guy other than get the credential. And so there's there's there's a lot that young men can do. But the bottom line is I would say do hard things and college should be hard and it's not and it's not. Um and there are places where you could make it hard. You could make a point of it of it being difficult and challenging. You could double major in engineering and you know something else that's difficult. Um men need a challenge. They need to work hard. The problem is at state colleges they make you run the gauntlet of other gunk in order to get your engineering degree. So you have to be very selective and very picky. I have a friend who many years ago in his non-Christian days uh was a sociology major and he got stoned out of his gourd and went and took his sociology final and he aced it and his conclusion was I have got to change majors. So he went into microbiology and uh was converted later. It was a a success story, but basically men need to work hard and they need a challenge and they they should not be left an 18-year-old guy should not be left up to his own devices to seek out that which is hard because he they're going to make the path of least resistance very very easy for him. That's um so I would say get counsel, parents, pastor, other people, but young men, if you're between 17 and 22, do hard things. Basically, ensure that ensure that it's hard. Hey, straight from the front lines. Absolutely. Thank you for coming to Moscow, Charlie. My question is, I noticed your co-op drink there. Oh, yeah. You TPUSA works primarily on a national level. How can we fight local political battles? That's actually a better question for for Doug because I actually I don't do a lot of local political battles. Like I resist getting on my condo board. Um because that by the way that's vicious just so we're clear. Um I would be curious what your answer is. So I would say that locally we said earlier that cultures downstream from worship. I would say at the local level you want to get find find a church that teaches the Bible. Join it. Throw yourself into the work of it. Grow that community where where the community becomes salt and light at a local level such that non-believers notice and then some of the controversies after that will start taking care of themselves. Well said. Hi, I have a question. As a mom, I'm asking you for practical advice about how we fight against feminism. And I don't know how familiar how familiar you are with our community, but we have plenty of kids in our community. I have 10 um children. No, it's amazing. No, we have some we have five adopt Mormon with 10 kids I've met in Idaho. I'm kidding. In I'm kidding. Yeah. In our little bubble, it's not all