Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
What I believe is common sense, I'm learning is not that common. The public has been left out of so many conversations on community issues, and as a publicly elected official, I want to change this. I want to invite my community in a new space, where you can listen in behind the scenes to the discussions that lead to the decisions that are impacting our lives. In a podcast I named Common Sense, I'm inviting the whole world to see these conversations happening in real time! Subscribe to listen in on these conversations!
What I believe is common sense. I'm learning it's not that common.
This podcast has always been about inviting community conversations and
allowing people to walk into this room and dialogue about the issues that are
impacting our day. There has been nothing more significant in the
recent time that has really galvanized the soul of this country.
Like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, it has really ripped
people's hearts. It's been a gut wrenching season for Americans and many
conservatives like myself. I invited into the room today
Ben Davis. Ben Davis a political consultant, Ben Davis a
conservative, Ben Davis an intellect. And Ben Davis did
what Ben Davis does. He was unfiltered in the conversation. And what I want people
to hear in this discussion is I want them to hear the thoughts and the
frustrations and the energy behind conservatism and why so
many conservatives today feel incredibly violated by what took place
with Charlie Kirk. You're going to hear a lot. You're going to listen to a
lot, and you're going to be moved in many ways. Some to anger, some will
come into agreement. But here's what you cannot deny this country, this nation
needs more people like Charlie Kirk. Hope you enjoy this conversation with my
friend Ben Davis. Ben Davis, welcome back. Thank you.
You're coming on. Obviously, this has been a heavy few weeks. Yeah.
I wanted to bring you on, Ben, and talk through some things publicly,
and we'll get into some details about some specific areas. But obviously,
what's happening in the country today, we're on the backside of this
assassination of a conservative that you and I both
were keenly aware of, keenly fond of. Charlie Kirk,
you've been very vocal on social media. When I
invite you into this seat, I know what I'm going to get from you. And
the public should know what they're going to get from you. They're going to get
the unadulterated truth from your heart, from your mind.
They're going to get energy. You're passionate about this and you're mad
and you're upset. So to be completely
candid, we initially were going to have three people sitting here today. We had an
individual that's going to come that was going to give a perspective on the left,
and it wasn't able to work out, and that's fine. And we wanted to sit
down and have this conversation anyway because this has really.
It's really struck at the soul of this country in many ways, in my
view. Tell me you were in D.C. I think you might even have been at the
White House when this took place when Charlie Kirk was. Was
murdered. How are you doing? Give me your thoughts on this.
Yeah, this is a very, you know, somber and sober occasion
to be here. I would much rather be on your podcast for other
circumstances than this. I was in D.C.
last week. I had just been at the White House for two hours
and got the news as I was walking into Club for Growth,
which is probably the largest super conservative super PAC in the
country. I walked into that meeting and the entire meeting, which
was supposed to be one of, you know, strategizing over politics
and different things. I mean, it cast a pall over the entire thing. And we
were all just sitting there on our phones looking and waiting to get
updates on what was going on. And literally in the middle of the meeting,
everybody's phone starts going off that he had died. None of us knew or
got. Had any information about what had actually happened. I didn't know that they had
struck an artery, which is like, that's the death sentence right there.
I'd heard conflicting reports over things. And then we got the thing that he had
died and the news that he had died. And I'll just tell you right now,
I mean, there were five grown men in the room, and
almost every one of us were in tears over this, and not just
because here's Charlie Kirk, who's this, you know, conservative warrior. And
I would call him a happy conservative warrior. Anybody who paid attention to Charlie Kirk,
there was not a bitter, nasty, hateful bone
in that man's body. He was a happy warrior. And he went
right into what I would call the belly of the beast in college campuses, which
unfortunately, the right had largely conceded over to the left. Went right there
and took it straight to the students. Anybody was welcome to be there. And. And
he engaged and debated students and professors in the general public
in a winsome, gregarious, affable,
charming way, but with truth and with logic and with
facts and with evidence and a large part. Of it, and with decency and
civility. Decency and civility. And engage these people largely by
asking questions and helping, almost like a. Like a modern Socrates,
asking them penetrating questions to get to the root of their worldview or
the root of their. Of their positions on things. All of
that aside, I think the biggest thing for us sitting in that room,
obviously we've lost an iconic figure, a
culture. Happy, culture warrior, political warrior. But more than that,
we lost a really good man who was a husband and a father to two
little kids. And as a husband and a father,
and everybody in that room was A husband and a father. It struck a
nerve. Yeah, because this was a really good
man. Who just went around exercising and
honestly was an evangelist for the First Amendment. Which the left used to believe
in and increasingly does not, and whose life was taken,
taken far too soon for, for, for horrible, horrible
reasons and circumstances that he did not deserve at all.
And so that entire meeting, the rest of the day, the rest of the week
was just consumed by this, by, by the news of it, by the, the
manhunt to, to catch this guy who, who murdered Charlie in cold
blood, let's not mince words about it, murdered this man in cold blood
and has since I guess not shed a tear about it and is actually
proud of the work that he, that he did. And his own story itself being
very tragic, seeing now the news reports that have come out about his own family
and all these things and we can get into those that we will. But
what was an otherwise very productive week for me and for others
in D.C. was completely
changed in the moment of learning about Charlie's death and
then seeing the response, I think on both
sides, but seeing the outpouring of people
who maybe didn't even know that much about Charlie Kirk, but what they did know
was that a really good guy had been murdered in cold blood.
And just the outpouring of support, passion, we can talk about
more of those types of things. And then of course, seeing the response of
people. And this is one of the things I posted about, and this is one
of the things I think that's most disturbing and I want it to be a
wake up call for everybody who watches and listens to this podcast
that we were not talking about, you know, antifa radicals
or a bunch of left wing activists who were coming out saying, well,
Charlie deserved what he got or whatever. We're talking about teachers,
we're talking about hospital workers, nurses, we're talking about
people who you see at the gym, your coworkers, people you mingle with in
the bank, people who maybe parents of kids who play on your
kids sports teams. We're talking about otherwise normal people
who were taking to Facebook and other social media platforms and
they were celebrating, supporting and cheering
on the fact that Charlie Kirk had been murdered in cold blood. Yeah,
that is absolutely unconscionable. It's evil. It's
evil. And that's exactly what it should be called out as. It is evil. And
here's the other thing that we need to be very, very precise and certain about.
These are people who find allegiance and alliances
with the left and the Democrat party in this country. Does that mean that everybody
in the Democrat party said those things? No, it does not. It does not. But
it is very, very clear that there is one party, one
party in this country that at least
implicitly if not explicitly supports,
allows foments these
types of radical ideologies within, within its party and would court these
people's votes on, on an, on an election against you just as much as
they would an election against Donald Trump. And these are the otherwise normal people
who have very evil things hidden in their heart that
came out immediately upon learning of the death of Charlie Kirk. And regardless of the
politics, regardless of the politics, a good man, a good
father, a good husband was murdered in cold blood.
And what we got was either platitudes from the
left and this both sidesism, which is complete and utter
bullshit, absolute bullshit, or we got,
or we got absolute celebration of a man who had been gunned down and who
going to be held accountable for any of this. Who's going to be held accountable
for any of these things. If you know, if you know of
someone who went out and celebrated this, they absolutely should be reported to their superior
and these people should be fired immediately. Immediately. These are not people whose
judgment should be trusted, especially around children, around anything to do with
seniors health care. These are people who have absolute evil intent
in their heart and they should not be, have any kind of a platform and
they should be the, they should be fired immediately. You know what is so wild
about this, Ben? And I appreciate the energy you're bringing to this and the conviction.
You and I have talked a few times. I could tell that you were like
many of us, very hurt, very heartbroken. It was like a gut punch in many
ways. And the reason it was such a gut punch is
interesting in my view to actually analyze why does this hurt so
bad. I had never met Charlie Kirk. Now I have probably watched a thousand plus
videos. I've known of Charlie Kirk for the better part of a decade. I've watched
Charlie Kirk impact young people, young people that worked in my campaign, young
people that I've met on college campuses, young people when I was involved in youth
ministry, young people like my 13 year old daughter, my 13 year old
daughter who was very much aware, my wife and others didn't really know who
Charlie Kirk was, but my daughter and her friends certainly did. You know what they
talk when they talked about Charlie, you know what they said, that he was civil,
that he went, he engaged people that disagreed with him and he did it in
a kind way. You know, what else? They noted that he talked about Jesus publicly.
That. That he talked about. When I asked my daughter after this happened and we
were processing this as a family, I said, what did you admire most about Charlie
Kirk? And she said that he was nice to people that didn't like him. She
said that he talked about getting married, having kids, loving God, loving your
family. It's the greatest thing we can do as a patriot today.
So that's the individual that was murdered in cold blood. But the
other thing is that's the individual that
celebrated the First Amendment and defending freedom of speech,
as you called a happy warrior, more so than most people in this country do
today. And he was killed because of it. And that's why it hurts so bad
I think. That's why it's such a violation of what
took place. I had never met him before, but I felt like I knew him,
and I felt like I understood his heart and his mind, and I
appreciated the sincerity in which he brought. He cared about people. Absolutely. He
cared about the truth. He cared about free speech. And whether you agreed or you
disagreed with his opinion, he was going to listen and hear people
out and share, and that's why it felt like such a violation for so many
people. Yeah, absolutely. And. And I think, you know, I would challenge anyone
who. Who's maybe still confused about who Charlie Kirk,
Who Charlie Kirk was and what he did to just go on YouTube and watch
the countless videos and. Give it an honest investigation.
Yes. Don't listen to the one clip that is. That is clip short.
Give it an honest investigation. Nothing short of five minutes, at least
five minutes or more of listening to him debate and how he would engage
with college students and professors and all of these things. The university
used to be the place where unfettered ideas. Where everything could be brought on
the table. We could discuss these things openly. It used to teach students
how to think, and it used to instill in them a sense of
intellectual virtue, if nothing else, because it was teaching them how to think and
how to ask critical questions and do all these things. And I would say that
the university system now, in most cases, has completely abandoned that. That
task, which is why Charlie went in and kept saying, look,
going to college is not. Does not have the same value proposition that it once
did. He called it a scam. And this is a massive scam. You're spending a
lot of money here to get a gender studies degree or, as you know, a
sociology degree. And what are you going to go do with that in the marketplace?
How are you Going to go and help somebody else or add value to their,
to their lives. And maybe if those degrees were like engaging students
to ask critical questions, that would be one thing, but all they're doing is
basically just indoctrinating them with a bunch of, you know, wacko
left wing ideas. And then they're coming out with that and then spewing that vial
on the rest of the public and then they end up trying to go get
a dead end job anyway and with mountains full of debt. And so he criticized
that entire system. He absolutely went right in there and did it. And I like
the fact again, that the right had largely conceded this and then he
went right in there and did it. Or if the right did engage it, it
was always, well, give me a big speaking fee and then I'll come in and
I'll give you a 30 minute lecture. But you know, if the students get a
little too rowdy, then I'm out of there. He was like, screw that. He went
right in. He created a whole turning point as a whole organization,
nonprofit I believe, is a nonprofit, and went right in there, out in the middle
of open forums and engaged anybody who would come up and do it. And if
you watch this, what you'll see are these students, professors, calling him the most
horrible names, insulting him to his face. He does not
return insult. He sits there, he takes, he listens. I mean, some of these students,
you can tell, are very, have very, very disturbing ideas, if not just
totally incoherent ideas. And he would allow these people, and give these people a platform
to, and engage them in a way as respectfully as possible, trying
to even help them form their own arguments, which were horrible.
So they were somewhat coherent. So he had something to work with. That's the kind
of guy, just on the professional or political side who we were dealing with
here. He was a model in many ways. And obviously
my heart goes out to his widow, Erika. Of course my prayers
go out. But I think here's one thing I'll say, the left has had this
one thing. They've said, you know, no more thoughts and prayers. We need action. Okay,
you know what? I agree with that. I agree with that. Thoughts and prayers are
not enough. I'm a praying person. We need more prayer in this country for sure.
But it's not just prayer alone. And what we have done, what they have done,
what this cold blooded murderer has done, is Erika, Erika
Kirk was right. Has unleashed a movement the likes of which we have not seen
in this country in decades. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about the legacy
on the right in particular. Then I want to ask you the legacy and the
perception on the left. And. And I'm trying not to. Ben, please hear what I'm
trying to do. I'm trying not to make this a left versus right issue. I'm
really not. I hear what you're saying, and I do believe that the
propensity of this worldview is more prevalent on the
left. I'm stopped right here. Okay, so here's what I'm gonna say.
I won't name names right now. I'll give you the courtesy of that. There is
someone who ran at the same time you were running for county commission
against Pete Meitzner. So just go look up for 20,
23 against Pete Meitzner. And this person who I don't think lives in
Wichita anymore, but she lives in the area, this person took to
Facebook and basically said, charlie Kirk got exactly what
he deserved. So
that's absolutely insane. It is. Thank God that woman did
not hold public office. Thank God she did not. And at the time when she
ran k. You know, I actually thought that she seemed like kind of a kind
person. And I even sent her an email or something like that after
the election saying, you know what? You put up a good fight, and
I would have never voted for you, but, you know, thanks for throwing your hat
in the arena. Something like that. I remember. And then to see what this person
who is going out trying to champion and help people with mental illness, for her
to go and say all those things, and she genuinely believes it. And I've seen
her online, defending her comments and challenging people.
Defend me if you don't like what I'm saying. This person should not be.
Should not be working with other people, should certainly not be working with people with
mental illness. For sure. Nothing in social work. Thank God she doesn't hold
public office. I mean, again, I don't
want to make it so much a partisan issue, but there is very clearly
a separation in worldviews that is going to the heart of where we
are, as in these parties and left and right philosophy. Let's name that a little
bit. And I think this is the conversation. What I want do to the public
to hear is the rationale on the right versus the
rationale on the left. And. And I. I think the vast
majority of people left and right do not justify the murder and political
violence. But there is a segment. Yeah, there is a remnant of
those that have said, no, no speech is violence. He. He elicited violence on other
people and he got what he deserved. And that is just pure evil. Yeah. There's
no other way to chalk that up. And it's evil. And if you subscribe to
that thought, you're subscribing an evil doing. Yep. Subscribing with darkness.
And, and. But let's talk about that worldview. What is the worldview on the
left that leads to that sort of impression? What's the lead view? What is
the worldview on the right that leads to an alternate perception of what we're describing
here? So I think, I think there's always been something on the left that was
the propensity for just, you know, larger government. And that government
could solve problems of, of people and that
government could be a solution. And I, that's just kind of in a
nutshell. I think there's more to it than that. But that's. There, I think is.
There's a lot of different factors that play into this. And it's no longer just,
well, here's a bunch of big government liberals. I mean, quite honestly, the right's been
pretty good at playing the big government. Games without a shadow of a doubt. And
that's been one thing that's I've been very disappointed by. But we move beyond
that, into segments of the left
that I think actually reminisce back to
the radicals of the French Revolution. I think they share more in terms of that,
of like the ends justify the means. And so I would
challenge people to go back and I would challenge them to look at, specifically at,
at the, at the radicals of the French Revolution in particular, people like
Robespierre and others who were, they were originally, it was
a movement to try to help the, the poor of the disenfranchised. They were, they
were anti monarchy. I mean, almost like similar to the, to the American
Revolution. But then things take a very, very nasty turn. Yeah, they
begin turning on one another and there's
massive conspiracy. And then what you have on basically on the left
is they start eating their own and it becomes the terror. And the
terror is mass public executions and beheadings. This is where basically you
get kind of the rise of the guillotine and all these types of things show
trials, anti free speech. You know, it's all. But it's all in the name
of democracy, of liberty. It's all in the name of liberty, democracy,
all these types of things. If you hear a lot of the rhetoric, I mean,
just look at the 2024 campaign. What did we hear? This is all in the
defense of democracy. Donald Trump is an evil, brutal dictator, a
fascist. A fascist who's out to destroy democracy.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader just a few weeks ago, and Tammy
Baldwin, a US Senator, said as recently as last week
that Donald Trump is trying to going to institute some
type of a military takeover in our cities
that is going to inhibit, if not prohibit,
the midterm elections in 2026.
This is from a sitting US senator and from the House Minority Leader that Donald
Trump is instituting a military dictatorship that is going to
prohibit the midterm elections. And if they didn't say it
outright, they definitely alluded to it. The meaning was very, very clear. So
the ends justify the means. I mean, let's just, let's just look at this. So
we need to protect ourselves from Donald Trump.
So all in the names of democracy. So we'll put up a woman who has
not gotten one single vote as now the nominee to
protect democracy. We will completely, without
any apology, without a shred of shame,
lie, systematically lie and gaslight the American people for four
years on the mental state of Joe Biden, the fact that he
was not basically losing his mind. We
will absolutely lie about this, all in the name of
protecting democracy. Jill Biden, the President's wife, went on the View,
however many months before the 2024 election and said, this is a war between good
and evil, and Donald Trump is evil and we are good. And she knew perfectly
well, probably more than anybody else, about the, the, the, the, the
machinations and the power grabs that she and, and Hunter Biden and
their family had to do to keep that man, to try to keep that man
in office. Of course, the Hunter laptop scandal, the,
the Russia hoax, all of these things. And you can all say, well, this is
just propaganda from the right. Go look into it. Go read. Matt Taibbi,
an independent journalist now writing at Substack, who got canned over writing about
these things. All of these independent journalists, all the people who used to be on
the left, who have now at least moved into the independent category, if not further
to the right, because they were like, this entire thing, what we were led
to believe for so long, was all a massive sham, the
end of protecting democracy, even though
democracy is never really defined and was certainly like almost
a boogeyman to the founders, they wanted representative government, not direct
democracy. Because it's mob rule. Yes, that's increasingly
what we hear from the left. And so the ends justify the means, and
the end is not something necessarily greater than yourself.
It's not Sacrificing for your country. It's certainly not
the party of jfk. It's increasingly an, a sense of like
an over, I wouldn't even call it majority rule. Cause they don't have the majority.
I would say a small pocket of vocal people. And it's about identity
politics and being affirmed in identity politics.
Politics. Government, Government rule has
become almost a religion. It's religiosity to a lot of
the left. Does that say that everybody believes that? No, I'm sure there are still
some Democrats left who are just like we just want to, you know, protect Social
Security and help America workers. And to those people I say fine, you've got an
immense amount of work to do in your party. Why don't you just leave it
and come on over to the right. We're far sensible but I think that's,
there's a lot of other things we could say about it. But I think that's
becoming the worldview which is far more reminiscent to the, to the, to
the terror of the French Revolution. I mean just look, look at the people who
are. Now we have a lot of these mass shootings, things like that. I think
I've counted what five, this six where somehow somebody who is either
gender fluid or trans is now involved in this.
So it just came out that the, that the, that the cold blooded assassin,
alleged cold blooded assassin is, is, is was living with a, was
living with, with somebody who was identifying as trans. And all the
stuff, the engravings that were on the, the clips of the gun had all kinds
of things dealing with trans furry. I mean there's all kinds of wacky
things that are in all of that. So your conclusion would be,
if I'm following the train of thought, is that the left, not just necessarily the
Democratic Party but the left, the movement, the worldview of the left is
shielding philosophy,
shielding individual, shielding a worldview that props up and
elicits mental health challenges. Is that what you're saying? Oh, a huge portion of
it, absolutely. A huge part. I think they're, they're, they're fomenting it. I mean what
we're going to hear and I mean they may give it a rest on a
couple, for a couple of days, but it's going to happen and mark my words,
it'll happen this week. What we're going to hear, if it's not already happened
in mass from, from the left is now, well, we've forgotten
about Charlie Kirk and this is going to be. They're going to try to turn
this thing into the right is now going to go start persecuting trans people in
Mass. That's the. That's going to be the new narrative, and it's going to be
about all this stuff of protecting trans and all this other stuff. And
the right only wants to talk about trans issues insofar as
we don't want to do mutilation on children, which. That's a whole other thing. I
mean, just. Let's. Just men and women's sports. Or men. Yes, men and
women's sports and all this other stuff. We've got to. Frank, quite honestly,
the right has got to start growing a pair on this issue, and we need
to start broadening this way beyond children into adults who have
mental illness. Look, a lot of these people who have
genuine gender dysmorphia are carrying really, really heavy burdens, and I want
to fully acknowledge that. But being affirmed
and fomented into a radical political ideology
is not the way to deal with that. Mutilating children is not
the way to deal with that. And. And there is no settled science. There is
no science. That's just it. It's a complete denial of it. And that's just one
instance. That's just one issue that we see on, that we see on the left.
I mean, one of the heads of BLM was just taking to the streets
at a vigil for Charlie Kirk, saying, f Charlie Kirk. F Charlie Kirk.
I mean, there was another woman who, again, a radical
leftist activist who does groundwork for the Democrat Party, who did a
podcast recently, and she was like, we shouldn't have stopped there. We should have just
taken out Charlie's entire bloodline. These are people who
have active roles in Democrat campaigns.
So it's like these are just. These are just a couple of instances
of an entire ideology that is completely moving off the
rails that it sees power. I'm not even
talking about government. I'm talking about just pure political power
as the goal for all of this. I would ask, what election
has not taken place or is not taking place since Donald Trump has
been elected? As far as I can see, we've had two state special state
elections. One in Iowa a few weeks ago and one in Pennsylvania back, I think,
end of January, beginning of February, both of which Democrats won. That's correct. And
will be seated. So where is this brutal military
dictatorship that Donald Trump is instituting? What Democrat has not now been. Look at
the House special House race in Virginia last week. Democrat won by
70 points. That person's gonna be seated in Congress.
Where is it? Let's look at the case of John Bolton. Certainly no friend
to President Trump at all. Certainly no friend. Normally FBI raids, when
they go into somebody, it's like, you know, four in the morning when it's dark,
nobody's around. They do it in broad daylight, almost 8 o' clock in the morning,
and they haul off a bunch of documents and leave him. He's not even been
arrested yet. I don't even think the guy's been indicted, nothing. So we're
persecuting political enemies, putting these people in prison. Why? Where? Where is
it? I am so sick and tired of this crap. I am
so sick and tired of being gaslit by these people, manipulated
by these people. Whether, I mean, and no one listening to this should ever
forget that a majority of the mainstream media and the
entirety, when the entirety of the Democrat Party, except for that one lone
house dude, I can't remember what his name is, who ran for president against Joe
Biden and was shunned by the party, that one guy, and I can't remember his
name, but almost the entirety of the Democrat Party went along with the fact that
Joe Biden was mentally incapacitated. And they, either
they lied about it or they didn't give a shit about it.
Straight up to you and me. And if we brought up anything, it's just right
wing propaganda and it's, it's gaslighting all this stuff.
One of the things I brought to you before the show that I wanted to
talk about are all the people. And if you thought about it
for five minutes, I'm sure you can identify them too. All the people over
the last five years who I, who have been friends of mine who would
absolutely have described themselves or I would have described them as apolitical, didn't follow
politics, really want nothing to do with politics. Like I've scores and scores and
scores. Stay away from it. And if you tried to pin him down on something
and say, oh, I'm very middle of the road, very moderate. And this was a
circle, a business circle that I ran around. And they weren't, they, they may have
leaned right or maybe lean. They described themselves as more moderate. They were very
apolitical. Absolutely. I would say
85, 90% of those people right now have been completely
radicalized. And I don't mean radicalized into some violent ideology. I mean
radicalized to the right, frankly,
to just say, I cannot believe the lengths,
the lengths that just the mainstream of the Democrat
Party has gone to to justify their
actions and get gaslighting the American people for so long about everything.
I mean, you had Secretary Mayorkas go up and just say, the border's
closed. There's nobody crossing this border. There's nobody here crossing this border.
Under oath, under oath, said it. Now we're uncovering
documents in the Justice Department and Homeland Security that we were
actually, whether they realized it or not, the U.S. government, our tax dollars, were being
funneled to cartels that were
trafficking children across the border. And that's a whole other
discussion. That's a whole other discussion. Don't even get me started. I won't get the
border. That's a whole other thing. I mean, talk about an absolute. Talk about evil.
I've never seen such evil like I've seen there. But this is the party
that straight up lied and gaslit the American people. And so many people who were
otherwise apolitical are on the right. Look at Elon Musk. The
Democrat Party used to have Elon Musk. If you go back to 2008,
he's walking around with Obama talking about Tesla, all this stuff.
And because of the trans issue with his own child, who is basically being
taken away from him by being pitted against him.
He went over to the right. And I know he and Donald Trump have had
their issues or whatever, but that's a personal thing. Philosophically,
he's there. He was radicalized because of these issues. Let's talk about
philosophically, because what you said is a trend that we have noticed and we've started
noticing it ever since 2024 as we
start to see more people moving to the right. People that were apolitical.
Use the term radicalize. I think what's just happened with Charlie Kirk and the recent
90 days, 120 days. I think some of the rhetoric that's coming
particularly from the national media and some of these things has radicalized some
people and moved them more to the right. But we've seen a gravitos
of people saying, you know what? I am more maga.
I am more of a nationalist. I am.
Donald Trump is speaking truth. I hear this everywhere I go. Now, I didn't
hear this, Ben, in 2016. No, but today it
is different. What is that? Why? And let me just, let me
preface it by saying this. Anytime I bring you onto this
show, people get very frustrated because you're going to speak the way you're speaking
right now. And I. My inbox is going to be filled. People are going to
be frustrated. There'll be all types of comments on the. On Facebook. Don't get frustrated.
Just start thinking Just start thinking. But my point, what I continue to say is,
do you want to understand the MAGA mind? Do they, do you want to understand
what message, what is the worldview that propelled Donald
Trump into office? This, this mindset of what has
shaped and what has left its imprint on the Republican Party? Do you want to
understand. If you want to understand it, listen, he'll tell you. Let me,
Let me also say that when I grew up as a kid,
conservatism, Republicanism was really shaped by Ronald
Reagan. This was Morning in America again. This was about an
energy in the country. There was a decency, there was a man in office that
everyone looked up to. Whether you were Republican, Democrat, liberal,
progressive, conservative. People cared very deeply about who was in the
White House, and he shaped that for us. And then you had
Bush 41, and he was people.
He has a legacy, certainly, and I'm certain most people don't think that's a conservative
legacy by any stretch, but he was a decent man.
And then from that point forward, things really started to accelerate on a
downward trend in regards to the integrity of the office.
And so that was my, this was my trajectory. As I, as I, as I
view politicians, presidents, our federal government, I want you to think about our
children. Okay, so why has populism, why
has Donald Trump. Why is the MAGA movement really seeded into the
hearts of so many young people? The people that listen to Charlie Kirk listen to
what? These children had a growing debt that's out of
control. War after war after war, 24, 7
media, that's constant negativity filling their minds. Covid, the shutdown
of their schools, political assassinations. These are what these
children are seeing. If you're older, it's harder to get into a home.
College is unaffordable. You have student loan debt. You see homelessness on the rise.
It is. We are not better in the country. We are not. But it's
darker. It is darker in this country. And these kids,
these teenagers that understand, these college kids, these young
professionals, they're walking into the world and they're saying, I'm
pissed. This isn't working for me. This is not what I imagine it's going
to be. And I want someone that's going to fight. I want someone that will
take a stand against the man and take a stand against the system.
And that is what's made him. Pop. Popular. Yeah, that's what's made him popular
amongst young people. And Charlie Kirk spoke to that. He did. And,
and I would say that the irony of the whole Thing with maga.
I mean, yes, make America great again. That. That has its own line,
has taken on a whole life of its own. But if you look at the
platform, in large part, not in every aspect of it, but in large
part, a lot of the platform would almost be
indistinguishable from, like, Bill Clinton in the 90s. I
know. Welfare reform. Bill
Clinton did welfare reform with Newt Gingrich after the Republicans took back
in 1994. I mean, some of those very common sense things that we tried to
do in terms of, like, you know, just work requirements and things like that for
Medicaid and some of this other stuff, I mean, the left is like, absolutely. We're
not even. We're not touching that. Absolutely not. You're trying to destroy Medicaid. I mean,
so the maga, in one sense, on policy, not again, not on everything.
It's like, almost indistinguishable from Bill Clinton in the 90s in many ways. I mean,
it may be, like, morphed here, they're amplified here, there. But barring
some tweaks, like, it's a lot of the same stuff. That's the irony of it.
Right. So that just goes to show you, actually, both for the right and the
left, how things have kind of shifted and moved a little bit.
But Donald Trump's MAGA thing, I think it's a. It's a
culmination of a lot of things, and I think some of
it has to do with policy. Yes. I think a lot of it, too, just
has to do with just perception and rhetoric. And
Donald Trump is not ashamed of this country. Yeah, he's
not ashamed of this country. Donald Trump loves this country. And
whether you agree or disagree with the policy proposals put
forward, I don't know how anybody who's just being intellectually honest,
okay. Could. Could say that Donald Trump wasn't trying.
Let's just take the war in Russia and Ukraine, for instance, trying
to literally end a war. And I think originally it was like, why is
America involved in this? We don't need to be involved. This. I think it's turned
now into, like, a bigger thing of. I just. I really want to just stop
the killing. This is not good for anybody. I agreed. Definitely not for America, but
for anybody else. But I think that on a whole host of different issues,
obviously the immigration thing is really big. Bill Clinton deported
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of illegal aliens. George
W. Bush did the same. Obama did that, did exactly the same. And you can
talk about the child cages that Obama administration Built
and there's a whole line of policy around all of that, but now they're
trying to run away from it. So I think there's the make America great
again because Donald Trump genuinely loves his country. He doesn't want America in
forever wars like what you said. I mean, if you just look at like military
recruitment, FBI, ice, law enforcement, I mean, if you look at
their recruiting numbers, I mean they have exceeded their entire yearly goals in many of
these ways in a handful of months. There's an instilled sense of progress,
pride in this country. But I also think there's just a sense of, just common
sense. Yeah. I mean, you can't
deny biology, you can't deny basic,
you know, DNA. And yet we have a
party that has gone down the road of saying, yeah, if, if you feel like
it, boys can become girls and girls can become boys. We have a party. Look
at, look at the Democrat Party in Colorado and the Democrat governor who is
passing a bill that if you misgender your child, the state
can come and take them. We're talking about something that's
so beyond radical at this point. And I
mean, all we're talking about here is like you talk about Ronald Reagan. I mean,
I just think about the parties back then and you know, of course we're in
the height of the Cold War and all of this stuff, but at bottom there
was still shared worldview on some things. Yeah, there
was, it was the, it's interesting you say that, I mean that
this motto of E plurious pluribus unum. Yeah. Out of many, one.
And, and there were many factions, there were many cultures or, but
we were Americans and there was a shared sense with a common enemy,
the Soviet Union and communism. And there was a common
enemy and. And there may have been disagreement between the parties on, on how
to deal with the Soviet Union, but that the Soviet Union was an
existential threat, that they were our enemy. We were united. Yes. And the, and the,
and the Democrat Party, the ones who are, you know, the so
called intellectuals who were writing in the New York Times, the New Yorker, whatever,
like saying, oh, we've been over to the Soviet Union, it's the model and whatever,
all this stuff, in many ways those people, not in every instance but a lot,
they were kind of very much pushed out to the side and like we don't,
you know, they may be somewhat mainstream in New York, but for the rest of
the Democrat Party in America, absolutely not. Certainly not in the south, all
of that. And so, but that's, that's changed now
in many ways. And honestly, I don't know if you could be
a, I mean, I don't know what a moderate Democrat, at least at the federal
level, really looks like now because there are certain litmus tests, I mean, you could,
they could say about the Republican Party. There are, there are so many pro
choice Republicans right now. I mean, it's, it's, I mean, you can run as a
pro choice Republican in a lot of places and still win an election very, very
handily. Change in the Democrat Party. Where's the last
pro life Democrat? I was actually with a guy, an African American gentleman in
Tennessee who was a Democrat leader in the Tennessee
legislature. But he was adamantly pro life
and the party kicked him out. They kicked him out of the party because he
was pro life and he was a Democrat. Lifelong, lifelong Democrat. His, he, he
and his father marched with Martin Luther King Jr. And he's now kicked out of
the party because of this. So MAGA is, it's
the, the rhetoric and the perception and the focus is on putting
America and Americans first, a pride in this country, a sense
of just common sense. Like here boys, here girls,
there are certain, you know, differences between them that need to be
respected. And we're not trying to deny anybody equal rights or
whatever, but I mean, if we're going down and just saying that boys can become
girls and vice versa, there's something majorly wrong with all of this. There's
no science to back that up. And I mean, Europe is already down the road
in this saying we're not doing. This was a conversation that Charlie, and that's one
issue. But this was a conversation he was able to master in a civil way.
And he did it with logic. And, you know, and you and I have talked
about this multiple times trying. I always enjoy your
perspective of the Republican Party, how it has changed under Donald Trump,
the role of populism, that he is a very, I think he does lean right
without a shadow of a doubt. Of course he does. But he's very much pragmatist.
Very pragmatist, very populous and populist movements and
populist leaders rise on the back of frustration and a frustrated
populace. And that's what we have seen here. But I, you and I have talked
and you've talked me through this many times. You know, those of us that read
Buckley, that read Kirk, that read Frank Myers
and the traditional conservative movement. Conservative movement. It's taken
a bit for conservatives to say, okay, what's happening here? Where do we
fit our Conservatives, traditional conservatives being pushed out of this new
party. And when I ask you that question, what is your answer?
I'd say no, they, they absolutely have a home in, in this party. I mean,
I, I would consider myself in many ways a traditional conservative, but I would also
consider myself very much a MAGA Republican. Ronald Reagan talked about making
America great as well. Now, I, I think that some of
the things, you know, such as the tariffs, that seems to be a little bit
more of a hobby horse for Donald Trump. I think this is an idea that
he has had for a very, very, very long time that he has been, that
he has been set on wanting to do. If you go back to interviews that
he was doing back in the 1980s, he was talking about tariffs and these types
of things. So it's interesting on that. And
I used to say, oh my gosh, these tariffs, like, what a joke. I mean,
this is not, and I'm not saying I'm all in for tariffs, but I think
what I've understood more and more is that Donald Trump sees them as a means
to an end, as a bargaining to try to reset on trade negotiations. Because
for a long time we were being, I mean, it was like we were being
completely cut out of a lot of these other markets, but yet we were allowing
to come in and which it did open markets up, it created a lot of
wealth. I don't think anybody's going to deny that. But then it was also becoming
a problem for, for, for us in other places. And he's wanting to try to
reset all of that. Now it remains to see whether or not we'll be successful
in that. Obviously it's bringing in a lot of revenue and my hope is that
we can use a lot of that revenue to pay down the national debt. But,
but in terms of a long term play, I don't really know. Agreed. But
other than the tariff issue, I think, I think for the large
part, a lot of conservatives will be on board. I think what we should acknowledge
in this isn't so much that we've gone away from traditional conservatism,
but maybe what we thought was traditional conservatism was itself a
deviation. And we're coming back and on that would be specifically around immigration.
Yeah. Dwight Eisenhower, President from
Kansas, he had a massive national deportation effort. Over
3 million illegal aliens deported from this country.
And again, this was, this has been an absolute debacle. I mean, we should
do a whole podcast on this. I'm very, very, very passionate about this issue.
I would say pro life taxes and illegal immigration are my, are my,
absolutely my top three. And I could not
be happier with what Donald Trump has done in terms of
securing the border and deporting illegal aliens.
And anybody who wants to challenge this should
acknowledge that over 300,000 children,
300,000 children trafficked into this country.
I know. Hundreds of thousands of which we still have no idea where they are.
And now that the effort is really ramping up that the big beautiful bill was
passed, we have more money going into ice, we're able to hire more agents. They're
doing it. I mean, I actually ran into Tom Homan at the White House last
week and we didn't talk about this, but I had an opportunity to meet him.
Wonderful guy. But I've read a lot of stuff and seen a lot
of the interviews. Talking now about the child effort and it's saying that at least
one out of three of the kids that they're finding they've already died. Oh, dear
God, they've already died. I would, I would just challenge. I'm going to say this
and this is going to be very graphic, but I'm, I'm going to say this
because people need to know because I can already just hear and I can picture
the people who are going to be making the comments here. Anybody who wants to
see Joe Biden's immigration plan, which was the, you
know, the loving thing to do to allow the world's poverty stricken to come into
America. All through the, all through cartels. All through cartels.
They become slaves to the cartels. By the way, they owe the cartels this money.
Should go down to the border and they should see the rape trees.
Rape trees. Ranchers on their land with
trees that were covered in blood stained
underwear, blood stained underwear. And these
were young children, girls and boys, who
the cartel members would sodomize and
their underwear would be soaked in blood and they would hang these up on these
trees to mark them. And anybody who thinks I'm lying
about this needs to go look it up. The grape trees,
ranchers showing. I had candidates going down, looking at this and I mean, it
was, it was like going into a concentration camp kind of evil. Oh, dear
God. Thousands of them. There was a, the, the, there was a
ministry down on the border that, that is run by the, by the Southern Baptist
Convention. And I think they're near Eagle Pass and
they receive a lot of these children who are basically just abandoned out there. And
they, they try to, you know, the government is working with them.
The, the Trump administration's working to get these Kids in a good safe place,
get a medical care, all of this time stuff. And the
guy who's leading the organization down there, who himself is very apolitical. I mean,
he was not one. He wanted Democrats to come down. He wanted everybody to come
down and see and be a party. He's a very kind hearted. He's a very,
very good man. And he said that on their own
study over about five years, they thought that for every
five girls who crossed the border, there were probably at least
two who had died on the way there. And this is from the
cartels. And this was the loving thing to do, to allow these people to come
in here to do it. The cartels, you know, who
wanted all that? Not America. Not America. Not the illegal
aliens. The cartels. The cartels. Here's the other thing that he said.
There are certain places that we couldn't go down at the border because
the cartels had snipers along there. And he said what they had
all discovered is that the cartels were rent, were basically renting
satellite space from the Chinese to monitor the entire
southern border. So they were trying to mark out
our border patrol. And this was just even last year when Biden was still in
office, trying to mark out our border patrol agents because they had just as good
a monitoring on the southern border as we did using Chinese satellites.
So. So with all due respect, as much respect as I can
muster for somebody like Dion Leffler, we're not talking about fruit pickers here.
We're talking about a lot of people who are, who are coming, who are being
trafficked across, who are being sold on lies so the cartels can make money,
who are then God knows what is happening to them. And that's not even to
mention all of the criminals who've been let into this country
and several other, you know, people who we have no desire to bring in here,
who are not going to be metabolized into American society, who are not doing any
kind of assimilation, nothing like that. And so now we're trying to
see what are we going to do with all of these people and starting with
the most heinous criminals first. And then if they find one criminal, then if there
are others who are here who are here illegally, they're being deported back to their
own country. There's nothing inhumane about deporting somebody back to their own country. We're
giving them free flights back to their home country or in some cases a country
of their choosing. And this was a massive thing created by the Biden administration
that has that has not contributed to the tax base that we've now
had. These kids in public schools, these people on Medicare,
excuse me, on Medicaid rolls and city resources completely
depleted. I mean, and we're not just talking about like people from South America. We're
people, people from all over the world. It is unsustainable coming through here. And that's
just one instance. And it's like we have the entire Democrat Party, with the exception
of John Fetterman up in Pennsylvania, the only common sense Democrat left
who just lied about it and just said, we nothing to see here, we don't
care. These are fruit pickers coming in. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.
So, I mean, young men, to get back to your original thing, young men
and young people in general, largely as a result of Charlie Kirk going
out and speaking the truth and standing for what's right, the young people
I've seen this generation, I've been so encouraged, as much as we can get depressed
about it, I've been so encouraged to the people that came to flock to Charlie
Kirk's rallies. Even some of the people who went there originally to debate
him, but then were like left thinking and like converting coming over. Not
because we want to convert them to the right. We just want to start thinking
to stop being bought into so many of these lies and these ridiculous
ideologies. Just start using your, your brain more. Just start poking holes
and ask questions of it. So to kind of come to your own conclusions and
not just be read the DNC talking points on this stuff and just seeing the
movement that was there and now the movement that is being unleashed as a result
of this young, of this young man's death and seeing these young people who are
craving, who are craving truth, who are craving
courage. I mean, they, and they saw it in Charlie Kirk. I think they large
part, they see it in Donald Trump. Harvard even released a study
saying, even at Harvard, I think it was a Harvard magazine. And they said,
we see the effects of young people turning to the right, even here at
Harvard, young men and young women going to the right, saying the
world is getting out of control. It's insane, it's dark. And the Democrat Party
isn't trying to solve problems. They're
trying to play identity politics and fomenting insane
ideologies and trying to run candidates like Mamdani and other people
who are just outright socialists with ideas that have been disproven a
million times over. But you know, they're saying we want something better, we
Want something more solid. And you see all these young men. I mean, I would
challenge people to go back and look at the podcast that Ezra Klein did for
the New York Times. I think it was back in March of this year with
the Democrat pollster. And they were just like, why did Donald Trump win? I mean,
finally somebody who's trying to ask honest questions about like, let's look, get into the
data. And I think they basically come to the conclusion that men 18 to
35 years old are now almost completely lost to the Democrat Party. And I would
say, well, thank God. And it was for many, many reasons, but in large part
it was because they were like, they don't even agree with Republicans on
every issue. Yeah, actually on a lot of issues. But they were like, this party
over here is weepy, whiny, soft, low T betas.
What do they have to offer us? What do they have to offer us? At
least Donald Trump has courage. I'm gonna stand for something. I'm gonna say,
dammit, I love this country and I'm gonna stand up for it. And you can
say, well, that's just kind of, you know, low brow patriotism. Well, you know what,
he's the president, he's the president because of that lowbrow patriotism. And
you're speaking to young men, not white men, African American men.
Donald Trump won his banks almost by 50%. He
increased his share among, among the black vote, especially black men.
Because men, I think this is a whole other conversation. What we're seeing with all
these shootings, you have these men who are misguided, who have no
plan for life, they're not pursuing women,
they're, I mean, they, they have no drive, they're, they've, they've been
completely abandoned. And I think a lot of these guys were maybe even on the
cusp of it and they started seeing something in the MAGA movement, maybe not even
some of Donald Trump, but just within the movement that pulled them back from the
brink of that. That's a hunch. I don't have any data for that, but I
don't think there's, I don't think it's an accident that you have all of These
young men, 35 to 18, who went in mass, who were not somehow
going down that road saying, this party is this party. I don't agree with
everything for this party, but this party has been completely unhinged from reality,
has nothing to offer me, has nothing to offer me. And I think what we're
seeing more and more with young men who are Aimless in life,
who are living with their parents at 30 years old or whatever the case may
be, who have no drive. You know, and I do, I am
serious. It's not just trying to be funny. On the, on the low testosterone. I
think there's a whole conversation we could have about that. But low testosterone and all
these types of things. They have no drive, they're not pursuing women, they're not going
on dates. I mean, all this sociological evidence is now coming out. I mean, there
was a recent thing, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal. It's just
saying young people in general are having less sex than they've ever, than they've ever
had in a generation. And that's just, I mean, young men are just,
they're wandering around aimlessly. And I think Jordan Peterson talks about this. I
mean, you have a young guy who has no drive in life, who does not
know true north where they're going, pursuing things, whether it's marriage,
family, stability. It's dangerous. That's the most dangerous person. It's dangerous. That's the
most dangerous person. And you have one party who's saying, no, it's good to be
a man. It's good to be a man. And I'm not talking about some type
of, you know, like the nasty, you know,
machismo's, that kind of stuff. I mean, and if that is happening, that should be
condemned. I'd be the first one to condemn it. I'm just talking about just like
being a man, providing for your family, taking care of people who are,
who are, who are, who are, you know, weaker than you or
defenseless or whatever. Standing up for what, Being a great. Husband, being a good
husband. And Charlie Kirk talked about that. Young men, go get married, have a
family at 22 years old, join a, you know,
join a church, serve in a civic group, like, go just be
normal. That's the real revolution right there. And I think a lot of
these young guys are like, well, that sounds a hell of a lot better than
over here where they're saying, you know, if you just wake up one morning and
feel like that, you can be a woman. You can be a woman. That's why
men are gone. 18 to 35 are gone from that party because
they will promote that crap. They absolutely, openly promote that nonsense. Let's
chat. I have to take it here, Ben, because you know, my heart. Sorry, this
has been kind of aimless here. I know, but I mean, I, I think it
all, it's all the piece. I think I, I I told you I wanted to
flip the switch because I want people to hear the sentiment
from so many young maga, Republican, young conservatives.
And you were in dc, you were. When this happened. You, you were interfacing with
a lot of these people that know Charlie and knew him personally. So I
wanted, I want to just, I. You and I have talked a number of times
since this took place. I want people to hear and try to understand.
Invariably people are going to be pissed off that these are your opinions, but
this is the opinion that is a growing sentiment of the nation.
Yeah. As people are frustrated, they understand that this is a
dark place we're in right now as a country. There is, there are
more suicides, there are more anxiousness, there is more.
More. Challenges with the family. There are more single parent households.
We have children that are having mental health issues, behavioral health issues. We're in a
really, really dark place. And as someone who is a, is an ascribed
Christian, I cannot separate the spiritual component of these,
these things. Yeah. And I'll tell you where I really struggled this last week on
a personal level is I was angry. Yeah. I was angry because I
saw, I think what initially for
me, we found out about this. I was actually sitting right here.
Sheriff Jeff Easter was across from me. He walked out. I was standing in here
talking and I got a message from Sheriff Easter and
he sent me the video and said, this just happened. It didn't look real. It
was the most barbaric assassination, cold blooded murder I could
ever fathom. And that in and of itself, I have
not been able to erase this image of my. In my mind. And then I
draw the connection to his wife, his children, the people that
loved him and cared for him, the way he dealt with people, his civility.
I was pissed, man. I was mad. I was mad because
I've seen his impact with younger people, the way he represented
Christians that are conservatives. And he's
irreplaceable. He's irreplaceable. So I
was mad, but I was also laboring spiritually, thinking, gosh,
what's going on with this darkness? How do I, do I. How do I lead
politically but also lead spiritually? Like this tension is real.
Yeah. The scriptures that I ascribe to tell us that our battle is not against
flesh and blood, it's against the spiritual realm.
I sense darkness spiritually. My discernment
bells are ringing about what's happening in our nation today. How
do Christians interpret these things? How do we lead in these moments? How do we
do this? Especially Christians that are Involved politically and care politically like
yourself, like me in elected office. Like, how do we lead in this dark,
dark season? Speak the truth with
boldness and don't stop praying. I mean,
we need more truth tellers. We need more truth tellers.
We need more prayer warriors.
We need more young men, young women
standing up with courage, being unafraid to,
to go and, and not fight. I mean,
the irony of the whole protect democracy thing is I think that at the core
of it, the right still believes that we fight battles at ballot boxes or
in a free exchange of ideas now with a bullet. And,
and we must never succumb to that. We must not succumb to
that. And I've been criticized because I, I wrote, I wrote something like
basically, you know, the war, the war is here. Like, well, we just, that we
just don't need that kind of heightened rhetoric. No, but we, we are, we, we
are at war. And, and war can, can take lots of different forms. I'm not
saying we're picking up loaded weapons and shooting at each other. War,
I'm talking about we're in a war of worldviews, a war of ideas,
a spiritual warfare in, in many, many ways. And we need,
we need more people to speak the truth. And I'll just say this is always
like, you know, speak the truth in love. Speaking the truth is always love. That's
always the loving thing to do. Yes. Agreed. Always the loving thing to do is
to, is to say the truth, to speak the truth as best as you understand
the truth and can see it. Agreed. Speak the truth with courage and
boldness. Don't stop, don't stop praying. Don't
stop engaging people with ideas. I would love. Bring
every hater who's going to on your thing, bring them around this table and let's
go, let's go, let's go. Let's
talk about ideas. Let's talk about worldview. I'm going to call out your
bullshit and you can call out mine and let's, let's go at it.
But if you're going to take to Facebook and you're going to make all these
comments and you're going to say all this stuff about, you know, how I'm in
with toxic masculinity and, you know, my son's all going to be, you know,
Mr. Empathy and whatever, I mean, I could just hear all the comments now and
you know, you're going to catch so much crap for having me on here and
there's a part of me that loves that, but you know, I can just hear.
But you know what? All you people, get your butt in here. Get in here.
Let's engage. Get in here, and let's start talking about things. Yeah, I don't. I
don't care what you want to say on Facebook. We need more. Get in public
and start doing it. And that's. That's the violation with what's taking place with
Charlie is because we need more communication, not less. We need more
engagement, not less. We need to advance the expression, advance ideas,
advance. And let the logic carry the day. Let. Let the.
Let the merit of the idea and the evidence of the idea carry the day.
And that's not happening now. It's not happening because they'll silence
someone who is the chief amongst them in advocating for free expression
in the lion's den. Himself. Man. It's such a violation
to everything that we believe he's irreplaceable in so many ways.
What's the long shot? Last question. What's the long shot? Where
do we go from here? Are these things. Can we reconcile these
things between two factions, two worldviews? Where
do we go from here? Does this nation hill, or was this a watershed
moment that has changed America forever? Oh, I. I think it. I think it certainly
changed. I think it certainly changed America for. For. For a while.
For. I don't know about forever, but I mean, I think for. For a long
time. Absolutely. And in terms of where
we go from here, I'm not exactly sure, other than I am
really encouraged, as difficult as it is as the circumstances that
have led to it. I mean, I think as of yesterday, and I've even checked
today, Turning Point had received over 33,000
chapter requests, people by the tens of
thousands signing up to. To. To Turning Point.
So this has now galvanized an entire. An
entire movement. And so we just need that. We need to keep it
going. We need. We need to keep it going. And, and again, it's not
like, what's our next little set of talking points.
It's. It's getting together with younger
people and investing in their lives and encouraging them to take place in
the real revolution, which is go get married,
have kids, or, Or. Or, you know, go dedicate your life to
something bigger than yourself and, and try to do
the right thing and love your neighbor and don't be unafraid to speak the
truth. It's finding these young, promising high school
college students and encouraging them to go on their campuses
fearlessly and debate professors and debate other students with ideas,
encouraging them to, you know, to read deeply in, you
know, in scripture, in the, in all the classics of the Western tradition,
to engage critically with these things and then to go out and then talk
about it and start a book. That's how we move this thing
forward. Quite honestly, I have no idea what happens to the left. I
genuinely don't. I genuinely don't. That
is a. That is a corrosive, rotting ideology and worldview
that I think eventually, like we saw with the French Revolution is they're going to
begin to turn and eat themselves alive and that
thing just needs to die. I saw the recent
polling for. I mean, you know, the polling for Republicans is never great politically, but
I saw the most recent polling that just came out. A good friend of mine
is a national pollster. She's one of the smartest people I know in politics. Yeah.
And she sends me a kind of a polling memo about once a month. And
every single month, the polling for the Democrat Party and for the Democrat
leaders has gotten worse and worse and worse. And so,
like, they don't have anything to offer anybody. There's nothing to advance
their agenda. It's just a lot of identity politics
and just. And we hate Donald Trump. That's all it is. And meanwhile, over here
on the right, it's like, no, we're trying to lead with ideas, with courage, with
at least a sense of, like, national identity and, and
patriotism and all these other things. And over here, it's just a lot of,
you know, warring it out and, and supporting
ideas that most of the country does not believe in. Is. Nothing is going to
go anywhere. And so the party needs to be completely remade.
And, and my hope is that, quite honestly is what you see are some younger
people who don't agree necessarily with Charlie Kirk
or with maga, but they do want to come back and reclaim the Democrat
Party as a common sense thing that is, in its
own way, America first and for the American people. And we can
ward out on policy. You know, we can get back to talking about
marginal tax rates and really boring stuff like that.
My hope is that this galvanizes some of those young leaders to say, we need
to take our party back. We're no longer about the regular American working
people. We have gone off to fringe. We are in dark places.
We are now known more as being the party that is
completely anti God. I mean, the leader,
Kamala Harris last year, when somebody at one of her rallies says, jesus is
Lord, looks right over laughingly and says, I think you're at the wrong rally.
And there's Been multiple instances like that. People within the party think
this is a godless party. These are led by godless
ideologues. So that party needs a major
revolution. And my hope is that the revolution that's been
kicked off by the cold blooded assassination of Charlie Kirk
is not just on the right, but on the left in a really good way
that moves the ball forward for this country. If it doesn't happen on the left,
I don't know what happens to them, quite honestly. But I know that this movement,
and I believe that this movement will keep going as long as you and I
keep having conversations and inviting other people, whether they want to show up or not,
to have the conversation. Then we're going to continue to talk to our kids about
this, my sons, and keep talking to them about the things that
do truly make this country great. And the things, honestly, the permanent things, the things
that last, the things that even transcend this country or whatever,
which are truth, goodness and beauty, you know, the truth of the,
of the triune God, all of these types of things. That we're going to continue
to instill these things and that hope that they raise them with, with courage
and tenacity to go out there and war against
other people with ideas, not with guns, with ideas and
with, and discover truth and discern truth and to welcome beauty into their
lives. That's how we go about this thing.
And I would just challenge anybody who wants to start being Mr. You know, Mr.
And Mrs. Keyboard Warrior after watching this and they want to just throw a bunch
of shade on me and say how, you know, disappointed they
are in you that you'd have me at this, you know, this right wing fascist
on your show and give me a platform that they would just say, you know
what, what can I do to actually engage people in real ideas? Like
instead of just saying all these things and throwing shade on us and calling me
a fascist, how can I actually engage people substantively in real
ideas? Can I evaluate my own arguments? Am I being intellectually honest? Look,
if you want to do a whole show where I can just see here and
say things that I don't like about MAGA or things I don't like about things
that Donald Trump has said, I'm more than happy to come. On here and talk
about, these are conversations with that. I want to be intellectually honest about all of
that stuff. I'm just asking the folks on the left to start being
as equally intellectually honest and being open about it and talking
about it and not just saying, well, you know, Our side's totally right, and we
know we're going to justify these really horrible things we did because we're protecting democracy.
And, oh, by the way, you're a fascist and Donald Trump's a pig and whatever.
Like, those aren't arguments. That's not doing anything for anyone.
And really start to drill down and examine their own worldview. I
mean, we always need to be in process, every one of us, of examining and
testing our own worldview against what reality is as we can discern it of what
the truth is. This is why we need people in our
lives who, if they don't think radically different than us, then at least can
challenge us with questions, critical questions. Before we came on this podcast, I'd say you
should just ask me a bunch of critical questions about stuff like this is how
we discern and discover the truth. That's right. Is we ask each other critical questions.
And if you're just living in a feedback loop,
then you're not helping anybody. And the right can do that, too. And we can
do that, too. We do, But, Ben. Yeah, we do. But a generation
needs to rise up that challenges ideas. It leads with ideas that you
and I have talked frequently about. The intellectual right, about the
birth of our movement. The conservative movement was built off of ideas and intellect
and engaging and debating in a civil way. And there's a rebirth in that.
And Charlie Kirk was part of that. It's why we admired him so much. That's
why he's irreplaceable. Charlie Kirk. I watched a
little exchange he had with the student who was saying, you know, Donald Trump is
the greatest threat to America, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. And Charlie Kirk,
who's on the right, said, was he more of a greater threat than George W.
Bush, the Republican president? We had before Donald Trump,
who basically led us into two wars and thousands of Americans
and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and everything died, and we accomplished literally nothing.
I mean, so Charlie Kirk was intellectually honest enough he could go
after his own people. Sure, sure. It's about being in good faith. And what I
appreciate so much is whether it's. It's my side or my
friends or my worldview or any opposing worldview. If we can have a
conversation in good faith and you have conviction and you can
reasonably address your thought process and you
can present it in a way in good faith, I appreciate that. I respect.
I may or may not agree with you, but if you do it in good
faith, and that's what's lacking so much in today's societies, we don't argue, we don't
debate, we don't present ideas in good faith. No men.
Unfiltered as usual, brother. Unfiltered as usual. I appreciate the time.
Yeah, I appreciate the time. I mean, I. You know. This is in honor of
Charlie Kirk, who was a really, really good man. He was, man. A really good.
Erika. Bless those babies. Yep. Continue on, my friend. Have courage. You,
too. Thank you.