Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - REPLAY | My 2019 Interview with Charlie Kirk

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

Due to the tragic death of Charlie Kirk, we are honoring his legacy by returning to an episode where Allie interviewed him back in 2019. Being a young conservative in today's climate is hard work. Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA is on the front lines of the fight for freedom, working tirelessly to bring a message of common sense, responsibility, and liberty to the country's college campuses. He answers the question: How do we appeal to young people who love socialism?

Hey guys, what is up? Happy Friday. Today I am talking to my good friend Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA. He just got a new podcast that you guys should go subscribe to. He of course travels the country all the time, talking about conservative values. And we are going to talk about conservatism and what it looks like for us to be kind of on the front lines of that, especially him and how we relate to these younger generations that seem to not really know what conservatism is or why they should buy into it and why that work is really important. Now I am going to bring in my friend Charlie Kirk. Charlie, thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, of course. Thank you. Big fan of your podcast. So thanks for having me. Yeah. Okay, tell everyone, well, I'm sure most people listening right now know exactly who you are and what you do, but tell everyone

a little bit about your background, turning point, how you started this whole thing that is now a massive movement. Well, thank you. I mean, I started Turning Point USA when I was 18 years old. I had no connections, no money, and no idea what I was doing. But I had this kind of crazy idea that young people could be conservative and that we needed to do more, that our generation didn't have to kind of fall in this radical leftist direction. The great irony is I never went to college and to start a college movement, which is kind of in the fun kind of twisted. And yeah, it's just grown now to 1400 high school and college campuses. Yeah. We have an amazing team, tons of spirit, lots of energy. And just like really, honestly, just really blessed and super thankful and lucky

to have to have to have. So you were 18 when you started it. How old are you now? I'm 25 now. 25. So it's been about seven years. Could you have imagined that it would grow this much in really this quickly relative to how long it typically takes these kinds of organizations to grow? No, I didn't even know things could grow to be this big. Meaning, I was just so naive. I didn't, naive's not the wrong word. I was just, I didn't. Yeah, it wasn't worldly. I didn't know how organizations worked or budgets or staff or employees, but what's so beautiful about our country and what I'm fighting for is a kid with a dream can still succeed. And that's a uniquely American concept.

It really is that you have a vision. And you're going to make mistakes. You're going to have to take a risk. But large in part, if you have this good idea and you work really, really hard, you can show progress over a couple years. And that's a beautiful thing about our country that, you know, you and I are both working to preserve and protect because not every country has that kind of. guarantee where a young person can take a risk and then succeed. Yeah. Were you raised conservative? Mostly, yeah. I mean, I was raised center right. I was raised with really conservative values, but they never used the word conservative. And that's like a real, I think a lot of people have

this kind of upbringing where my dad would always just talk about how great of a country America is. My mom raised me as a Christian, but they vote Republican. Don't get me wrong. But it wasn't, it wasn't part of there our conversation. It wasn't like, now here's why you have to be a conservative. It was just totally you need to realize how great of a country you live in. Yeah. And those are all naturally conservative things now. Now, of course, my parents like many other people, I think, have become more involved in politics as our country has become more in jeopardy, honestly. Yeah. And they're much more likely to say that they're conservatives today than they were 10 years ago. But I think, I think even for any parents listen to this or, you know, new parents,

like, you know, to soon be parents like yourself, just teach the values. Just teach the ideas. Forget about the political labels. Talk about American exceptionalism and faith and reverence and all these things. Yeah. And that will make such a bigger difference in someone's upbringing and just like, oh, this side is good and this side is bad. Yeah. Because the fact of the matter is these are conservative, almost partisan values nowadays. It used to be that patriotism and thinking of these things like America First and America is the greatest country in the world, a lot of people thought that on both sides of the aisle, but now it seems like that's almost strictly a conservative idea. And I really have, yeah, I really have the same story. My parents

never really talked about being a Republican. I knew that they were. I knew that we liked George W. Bush. I knew after 9-11, we really revered him and all of this stuff. But they were entrepreneurs. They came from nothing. They always told me, you can do anything that you want to do. do kind of like what your parents told you it sounds like. And that just always appealed to me. It never made sense that you would want bureaucrats controlling your life or that you would want a limit or a cap on your success. And I think that's what I want to communicate to young people is that is a huge part of what conservatism is. And young people do like freedom and flexibility and independence. So why do you think there has been among so many people around our age? I'm a little

older than you, why do you think that they can't connect the values of freedom and independence and flexibility, the things that they really like with conservatism? Well, I think, first of all, there's a massive misinformation campaign against conservatives starting for, you know, in the education system and media. But, Ali, I'm going to kind of just say a lot of students, I think they want to change the world. I think they want to do what's right. A lot of students, I think most students do, at least the ones in politics. And the ones on the left, they've been told the best way that they can change the world is by giving government all this power and giving government all this authority over everyone and other people's lives.

And first of all, that's just not true. But it's also just not logical when you think about it. And it's also not correct in the sense that if you, the best way to improve anything is the first to improve yourself is to act more ethically, act more honestly, do the correct things. I fall short of this. Everyone does, right? We as Christians believe you're always going to fall short of it. But you also believe you can be a better person over time. And if you do that, you'll actually make the world a better place.

But it's so easy, Allie, it's so easy to sell utopianism to a generation that doesn't know any different, but also wants to change the world. And so I'm careful not to do this whole like, oh, our generation is so stupid type thing. I don't think that does and does any good. Yeah. I think these students are misinformed, but that's different. I think a lot of students mean well.

I think they really think they're on the right side of history when they're arguing for socialism or they found some like new idea. Well, it's not, you didn't find anything. Yeah. Not any sort of, you know, you didn't discover plutonium. Okay. And and, and, but if I can connect with them, I say, listen, do you want to make the world a better place? Believe it or not, I actually want to make the world a better place too. So they attack my emotives immediately, right?

I'm a horrible person. I want polluting. I want billionaires running around with machine guns. engage in communities and they only go to private schools, you know, like all these like ridiculous stereotypes, right? They only, they fly private jets to work, whatever, right? Some crazy thing. Yeah.

Listen, I actually, the first thing that's most important to me is the matrix of maximizing human freedom while also ensuring that our natural rights are protected while also having some sort of compromise that the least of these are taken care of in some form of equitable, charitable way, whether that be charity, churches, government, fine. So that's the first thing, right? But I want to be able to help people without having to sacrifice human freedom. That's a really, that conversation is one that Republicans and Democrats used to be able to have while both respecting the country.

Now I feel as if you can't have a conversation about health care unless it descends into, oh, this is a horrible country, like with Bernie Sanders. How dare we not have this as a country? We're a horrible place. Well, hold on. You can have this conversation logically and ethically without having to say that this whole place has been a mistake. Have we made mistakes? Yes. Is America a mistake? No. And so anyway, Ellie, you put it long and short, students, they're the prime audience for utopian values because they want to believe in them. They really do. And what, I mean, you're 19, you have very little responsibility. You want to lean in. You want to say, yes, we can change the world.

yeah, start with yourself, but it's not that simple. Yeah, and it's not necessarily the government's job to do that. I think that there is, like you said, not just a desire to change the world and utopianism for themselves, but to give millennials the benefit of the doubt, I mean, a lot of times we are, and younger generation, I guess Generation Z is in college now. We're often talked about as selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed. And I do think that's true in a large way. We've all been raised with personal technology. Every price possession that we have starts with the letter I. We are all kind of focused on ourselves and how we present ourselves on the internet. But I also think that a characteristic of young people is empathy, that they truly do care about people that are

different than them. They don't want people to be ostracized. They want people to be taking care of. And so they hear these grand ideas from someone like Bernie Sanders. So like, you know, the very blanket statement, well, I believe that everyone should have enough. working 40 hours a week should have enough dignity to live or to have enough to live on. You hear that and you're like, well, I don't want to argue with that. Like, I don't want to say that someone who works at McDonald's doesn't have enough dignity. But like you said, that's a bad faith argument. And so what I'm hearing is that when you approach these students, you try to kind of go in

and say, here's what we agree on. Like, here's the baseline. Whether you believe it or not, we both want people to be taking care of in a way. way. We both want people to succeed in a way. We both want to make the world a better place. But look, we just have different strategies to get there. So let's have a conversation about what's better. Do you think that that has been effective or have you received a bunch of pushback or both? Yeah. I mean, it's definitely become, it's becoming very effective. And I never attack students' motives or anything like that. I am critical of some Democrat leader's motives because I don't think

they actually want people to get off of food stamps, that's different, right? But when I talk to students, I'm like, listen, what, what, what, no matter if you're a Republican or Democrat, Marxist or libertarian, you should think it's a good thing. In fact, you should think it's a great thing that five million people are no longer on food stamps. Yeah. And they're now getting jobs. That's a huge success. Like right now, let's just talk about that success story of the Trump presidency. Because under Obama, there is nothing but food stamp increase. And almost never went back. All of a sudden under Trump, five million people no longer have to look to government. They can now provide for themselves and their family without government. Amazing thing. Why do I talk

about that? This is self-reliance. There's more dignity in that. Right. So we talk about the dignity of work, right? Like Bernie Sanders, I want everyone to have dignity. Of course I do. I mean, yes. Of course I want dignity. Like, I mean, yeah, is the insinuation I don't or something? Yeah. Are you trying to use it as like a wedge issue? It's kind of saying like, I want everyone to live forever. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I mean, you know what I'm saying? So they use these things as if they position them as if the opposition doesn't want dignity. Right. Okay, but you know what my idea of dignity is? Is maximizing the workers' freedom, maximizing their capacity to get raised, to keep all their money, to be able to provide for their family. So that's dignity to me

is the sovereignty of the individual. And it's, by the way, this is what's really interesting is you cannot have both liberty. You cannot have both liberty and assuredness. You can't. So let's use this extreme example, right? And Bernie Sanders loves talking about prisoners to vote. It's like one of the stupidest things. And I could break that down to you if you want.

It's so beyond. And I could, it's so silly. But so in the most extreme example, if you want to just be taken care of, that's what prison is, right? You think about it. And a really extreme example, get three meals a day. You have a house, you have a place to sleep, you have a shower,

but there's no freedom, right? There's really no freedom because people want to get out, right? So that's the extreme example. I'm not saying that's what the left wants. Media matters. If you're watching this, that's not what I'm saying. But I will say the other extreme example is liberty. You can do whatever you want to do, however you want to do it. But what does liberty take? It takes responsibility. Why do the people, why are people in prison? Because they didn't take responsibility. They made a mistake. right so you know Bernie and all these people were the freedom people we're all this well you could say that but you also have to tell the audience and this is this is like being brutally true in politics and no one wants to be brutally true in politics I'm going to give you freedom I'm going to

give you liberty but if you screw up you got to take you got to take responsibility for yourself yeah and everyone's going to kind of clap like wait a second I have to do what yeah like to wake up earlier yeah you see what I'm saying but here's the thing is And this is why we as conservatives are always going to be punching up, Allie, always. This is why talk radio is so successful. This is why your podcast works because it takes effort to explain conservative values. Yeah. They are natural.

They are embedded, but it takes maturity. It takes work because it's so much easier to sell everything with no responsibility. Yeah. By the way, I wish my job is to go to college campuses and say, three education, student loan debt, climate change renewal. My job would be so easy. I'd be done in 10 minutes. Yeah. And so anyway, the long and short of it is this takes explanation.

It takes theory. It takes observation. It takes maturity. But it also demonstrates we're on the right side of history to use Ben Shapiro quote, who we love, or to use the right side of the argument. Yeah. And I don't think that's talked about enough. Yeah.

I always say that it's so much easier to be a progressive millennial or a progressive jinz-eer than it is to be a conservative millennial, not because, like you said, the ideas are complicated. They are very natural and I think embedded in the human spirit, but because they are being indoctrinated by every megaphone that's out there, by their professors, by social media, by the mainstream media, by all of these outlets. And so we are swimming upstream. We are like the voices in the wilderness saying, hang on just one second.

Hang on a second. I have something to say to that. And if anyone wants to listen to me, great. But we have to kind of put our voices out there, knowing that we're going to be criticized and lambasted by the mainstream and hope that there are some people out there who are thinking, wait, I'm listening to this progressive stuff too. And I'm not so sure that it's right. Like, I'm not, I'm not so sure that I'm on board with, you know, with abortion. I'm not so sure that I'm on board with socialism. And so they start listening to people like you, like Candace, like me, like Ben.

And they say, okay, someone please make sense of this for me and give me another alternative. And they hear it and the hope is anyway that they're like, oh, okay, okay, that makes more sense now. But you're right. Right. And that it is difficult because what you're presenting to them is not a guarantee. You're presenting to them risk. And, you know, it's difficult. It's just like selling any kind of investment.

It's like, okay, there's a risk in this. There's a big risk in this. But the reward is so much greater than collectivism, so much greater. and convincing someone of that without any kind of guarantee, it's difficult. And so here's a couple thought exercises. You're totally right, Ellie. It's difficult, and it takes effort, and it takes a mature society. And so what I tell people is, for any benefit that you want to receive from the government,

be ready to pay for the equivalent of it at any time. Right. So, okay, I want free education. Okay, what does that cost? I don't know. It's free. No, it's not. Whatever it is.

$21,000 a year. Be ready to write that check because you might have a cost. to. Well, no, that's not how it words. No, sure. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Don't try to make other people pay for what you think is a good idea. By the way, most times you will end up paying for it. That's actually, the data shows that. The people that advocate for these free handouts actually end up paying for it, right? They actually end up, you know, they end up having to carry that burden. And you said it best is there is risk in this. But there's also fulfillment. And this is what really upsets me is that these students are like, well, I just want to live a happy life and get

taken care of. And they don't say it that, you know, flippantly, some do. Yeah. You know, like, well, hold on a second. You just, your idea of happiness is just getting a bunch of stuff from the government. Yeah. Like, I'm sure you had like dreams, right? I mean, you must do, want to do something in your life. You might want to start a business, start a family, travel. I say, you maximize freedom to the greatest extent you can without encroaching on other people's rights, right? And still protecting the least of these in a very compromised, you know, in a position that we can come to a consensus with, right?

It's a safety net, not a hammock. Right. Not anarchist, people, whatever gets a crazy idea. But maximizing freedom, right? Then at that moment, you will have a more functioning, productive, healthy society. And this is hard. It's just not easy because as soon as there's some form of, not dysfunction, but you have some form of irregularity, people immediately say,

oh, the government should fix that. Yeah. You know, the government should do this. The government should come in and have, you know, free education or bail out the banks. And it's so tempting to turn to government to try to fix all these problems. When in reality, government is actually the root cause of most of them. Yeah. And so, look, this message that you and I are bringing to young people is resonating.

It's going to take more effort. And this is why the work we're doing at Turning Point USA, you know, is so important. and you chairing our young women's leadership summit. Anyone listening to this should come to our young women's leadership summit in early June. TPSA.com slash YWS. And I just started my new podcast, which is so much fun. I love it. I love it.

Yeah, wait. Tell everyone about your podcast where they can find it, what it's called, all that, what you'll be doing, how long it is, all that. Yeah, it's going to be once a week, kind of just like a cultural update from the front lines. Is it every Wednesday? Every Wednesday. Yeah, every Wednesday. Okay.

They go to Apple Podcasts or iTunes, just type in Charlie Kirk Show, hit to subscribe, five-star rating if you want. Yes, top charts. It's already it's already soared in the charts, which is amazing. That tells you that the first episode was awesome. Everyone needs to go listen to it. Yeah, we're really happy. We're going to have a live show next week in Phoenix if anyone's interested to come by,

kind of as a cool second episode. And look, we're just, we're going to see if I'm good at it and all that sort of stuff. I think I'm going to really enjoy it. love long form. Your podcast is amazing. It's a top 100 podcast in the world from the charts I've seen, which is awesome. And I think our generation is looking for this kind of longer form or intellectual deeper defense of these ideas. Yeah, I think they're looking for nuance. And I think a lot of people don't realize, they might only see you in a 30 second clip to where you're just destroying a stupid argument from someone on the left, or they see you on Fox. You're everywhere doing all of these

things, but I think they maybe don't know how much work you put into this in how long you've been studying this stuff, how much you really know about all this. There's a million things that I could talk to you about socialism, Venezuela, all of that. But you'll just have to come back and we'll have another conversation. But everyone who does, I'm sure everyone who listens to this already follows you. You've got, I think, a million followers on it on Twitter. A million? Yep. Yep. That's freaking crazy. That's crazy. Well, thank you. so much for taking the time to join me. Everyone go to tpUSA.com slash YWLS, correct? Yes. Everyone to sign up. A female between ages 18 and 27. That's right. Correct.

And we will, we're going to work on some kind of, I've gotten a lot of messages from young moms in their 30s saying, hey, we want something for us. And so we'll have to think about that. Thank you so much, Allie, for having me. This is great. Thank you. I'll see you soon. Bye. I hope that you enjoy that conversation with Charlie. There were so many other things. things that I wanted to talk to him about. I mean, the guy, well, he just speaks well, first of all, but he also knows a lot. He just knows a lot. He knows a lot of facts. He's been doing a lot of reading on capitalism and socialism and American exceptionalism for a really long time.

So he's just a good resource on all of this. If you go on social media and you look at the clips in which he is engaging with these students, it's really incredible how he's able to just kind of recall these facts so quickly. But I just really, I just really, appreciate the work that he is doing for conservatism and how long he's been in this fight at such a young age. It's really crazy. I wanted to talk to him about Venezuela and socialism and everything that's going on there. And I also wanted to bring up the assault on the dignity of work. That's a reason why we're having such a hard time, I think, reasoning with people like AOC and Bernie Sanders is because they don't believe there is an inherent dignity in someone working. They think

it is just as dignified for someone to live off the government and, you know, watercolor paint all day, even though no one is buying their pieces. Like, that's what they think is just as dignified as someone working hard and providing for their family. And so when you don't have the same idea of the dignity of work that there is inherent dignity and work, then that's difficult. And part of that is because the left has become so secular. they have become so not everyone on the left but in general the left has become secular the left has

abandoned this idea of the centrality of god the centrality of morality of biblical morality and the bible is what tells us that one personal property is a thing the tenth commandment is do not covet and also uh that work is good work existed before the fall of man it existed before sin so work is inherently good. It is what part of what the human spirit runs on is productivity. And so when there's an assault on that, there's an assault on the individual. There's an assault on the dignity of human beings as image bearers of God and as God created us to be. Okay, that's all I have for today and all I have for this week. Love you guys.