The Charlie Kirk Show - Charlie's Friends And Charlie's Mentors + A Corn Maze for Charlie

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

This week will mark the one-year mark of Charlie's death, so the show opens the week by speaking with some of his closest allies. Steve Bannon joins fresh out of War Room, followed by Charlie's academic mentor Larry Arnn. Michael Knowles joins, along with Indiana farmer Jeremy Goebel, who is honoring Charlie with his very own corn maze. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com!    Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You've got to stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a turning point USA college chapter. Go start a turning point you would say high school chapter.

Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life and I encourage you to do the same. Here I am. Lord, use me. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go.

Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with noble gold investments at noble goldinvestments.com. That is noble goldinvestments.com. All right, welcome everybody. September 8th, 2026. We're here at the Y Reefi Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. And it's going to be a tough week. It's going to be a really tough week. I still can't believe it's one year without him. And we miss him profoundly still today. Doesn't feel real. It's never felt real. I think you would agree, Blake. And so we're going to be paying tribute to our friend Charlie, and we're going to be leaning on our friends to help us do it, just like we did a year ago today.

And first up out of the box is Steve Bannon, host of War Room. And Steve, welcome to the show. It doesn't feel real, but having you start the week off with us is very helpful. And so we're grateful for your time. time, Steve. And by the way, I got to say the piece that you did yesterday and you invited us all to be on it. I got, my phone was blowing up. And so I just want to thank you for doing that and remembering Charlie in that way. Well, you guys did it. You saw. The introduction to your show is always so powerful. I get goosebumps every time I watch it in, particularly play Scotland, the Brave. I always think of Charlie Kirk in a brief. But those speeches and everything you see, that's the point of delivery. For Charlie to be like that, as you know, it took so much work, every different way.

Intellectually, to know how to make sure you could control yourself by the discipline he put in in these college campuses when he's just being attacked relentlessly, the speeches, all of it. And so I thought what would be appropriate is let's just talk about the work of the work ethic of Charlie Kirk behind the scenes, what it was that made the band that the world saw and the world came to admire and love and do it with people that, and that was so great that we could have, you and Tyler and Blake,

who are different aspects, you know, Tyler, more of the political operative, you more of the media part, and Blake, the driving force, you know, of Charlie's kind of getting up to speed intellectually on all these different topics that he had to master. That's what I thought the power of it was, and I'm glad Real America's voice helped us split together, you guys cooperated. And I just think it was a great way to start the week off because a lot of people are going we talking about Charlie at a macro level. To understand Charlie Kirk, you've got to understand Charlie Kirk,

really the intellectual and political and spiritual athlete. And to do that, it's like any athlete. It's all about the reps. And I think that's what the show showed. And I'm so glad that you guys came on because you're kind of the tripartite piece of Charlie Kirk.

So thank you guys. Yeah, the reps thing you can attest. It's the greatest thing about Charlie is that he wasn't a true workaholic. It was just that he was the most disciplined man in the world about using his time exactly as he meant to. Like he didn't have a single moment to waste at any point. And it's like he knew in some special way. He knew his time was limited and he shouldn't waste a single second of it. And compared to anyone else we've ever met, I don't think he did.

Yeah. He was the most remarkable man I've ever met. genuinely and when you work with somebody that closely for eight years to be able to say that at the end and not have it be you know rose-colored glasses looking back he just truly was that great and Steve you got to ask us a bunch of questions and so I want to ask you that some of the same questions you asked us what did charlie mean to you what did you see in him that maybe others didn't from your unique vantage point you know what blake just said there it's it's very haunting because one of the things about charlie was the urgency he wasn't maybe

be a workaholic, but the urgency of which he approached everything was pretty remarkable. We had the opportunity to see him from the time he came at Breitbart as a writer. I said in some of the earliest pitches he made for Turning Point. You guys remember at the time, I believe the initial pitches for Turning Point, he was going to go after this college campus situation by going after student governments. And I had been student government president or student body president at the school I went to. and then the same on the 26th campaign as Don Jr's a body man is the guy that travel with Don Jr. And then, of course, the podcast and the Real America's voice and then the Polico operation and what you guys learned, you know, the 22, not just 2020, but the 22 with Kerry Lake and everything you guys learned.

And what I found to be the most inspirational is that every time Charlie started endeavor, It didn't start off as a home run right away. A lot of people are just, particularly younger people, think that, hey, if I don't do this and it doesn't explode and it does not absolutely spot on at the beginning, then, oh, I'm just going to give it up because the resistance, the house is always five to seven against people being successful. And Charlie was the exact opposite. Charlie just went back and did the reps. And so everything that he did from Breitbart to to, you know, the college, the turning point, to the ground game, to the being Trump's advisor at the White House, the podcast, this huge shit show, everything became great because he grinded it out. And I think that's a huge lesson for people and a huge lesson for our movement that if it just, it's not going to come easy. And Charlie Kirk made it look effortless.

he had this gentleman demeanor kind of an old school gentleman but he did it behind the scenes with hard work and to me that's the lesson particularly younger people have to understand it's not going to come easy everything is difficult particularly when you're trying to make changes on a national and global level and charlie was you know john solomon had him on the show today and he said hey he had met with or talked with charlie two weeks before the assassination nation. He said, Charlie, the work you've done and what you accomplished in 2024 with the ground game, and particularly in Pennsylvania and Arizona, these other battleground states, really, you've teed us up to help save the nation. And Charlie goes, John, we're really, we are going to save the nation and

doing that. My real focus is saving Western civilization. So that shows you the ambition in the scale of what he thought, but it all gets back, and particularly Blake, it gets back to those eight or 10 briefing books. Because people sit there and go, hey, Charlie just show up these campuses and he had this, you know, rap and he gives, Charlie Kirk would go through these eight or ten briefing books on every topic with subject matter experts. And you guys would murder board everything. Murder board it.

They don't understand. And this is why I think people need to understand the commitment this guy put in on every single aspect of his life. And so what you saw and you loved came from just tremendous dedication and tremendous commitment. and really personal sacrifice. So that's why he's always, I've always seen this guy as a young man and a kid from the time I think he was 18 years old, 19 years old,

and just incredible, incredible work ethic and incredible individual. Well, and you did see it up close, Steve, and I remember when we started kind of working together more and when we brought the show on Real America's voice and just how instantly you got it. I remember one time you came to HQ and you met with all of us.

It was Tyler, me, Charlie, and you just said, this is the real deal. I remember you, I thought you were going to be skeptical about kind of what we were building out, and you were like, n-uh, you saw it instantly. And I give you a lot of credit for that because you could have just scoffed at it, but you didn't. Listen, I knew you guys were beyond real,

just knowing Charlie and what you had gone through, but one of the things that impressed me along the way, I think it was in 22. When you did those nightly broadcast, these things had to be six or eight hours. You were doing the Kerry Lake, you know, the stealing of the election. Of course, you did 2020. You were critical on that.

Just the commitment and dedication. People don't realize you're live for six, seven hours. And Charlie is always sitting there, hey, what do we got? What do we got? I said, these guys are beyond real. This turning point thing is not just the wave of the future of how we're going to win elections. It's also that these guys are tremendous carriers of a message of American rejuvenation. And that came, quite frankly, and seeing you guys said, man, this goes, I would come on for

15 minutes, but you guys would be on for hour after hour after hour. People don't realize how tough that is when you're doing it live, and particularly on things that people don't think that's exciting, like going through precinct by precinct in Arizona and Maricopa County and showing it. And here's the thing, the lessons that Tyler and you guys learned, where I was so impressed, a lot of people would turn on each other, argue the lessons you learn in 12. and particularly the lessons you learned in 22, you learned from that was not perfect. And you set up, you set upon,

you set out to say we got to make this perfect. This ballot chasing thing is a way we're going to unite young, bring young people in the movement and win elections, particularly with lower propensity voters. In 24, the comeback of President Trump is predicated upon the work, the ground game of turning point in that attitude. And just like I hope in a couple weeks the same thing. but no.

Just to me, it was easy, it was easy to get. It wasn't hard. Seeing you guys down at the first time I went to headquarters, I was blown away about the scale of it. It's just what you guys had built. And not been, Charlie, you guys didn't brag about it. So many people take a little thing and they just go on and on and on about how great they are.

You guys never talked about it. So to go down there and see it and see the team that you guys had was just very impressive. And I know you'll go forward and be just as, just as powerful and just to have just as big an impact as you had with the now with the legacy of charlie kirk and what he means to the country and what he means to people yeah it's really amazing you know we've been having to do all this press because all every single outlet i'm not kidding just like every single outlet on planet earth wants to do a year looking back and you know

it's it's interesting because we've had to kind of tell our own story over the last year and it's remarkable the legacy that charlie has left and it's remarkable the legacy that charlie has left and the amount of ground swell support from students. You know, we tell people it's like, we're now at over a million students that are part of turning point. And I think that blows people's minds, you know, and it keeps growing.

Every single different aspect and vertical, whether it's the ground game on the action side. You know, we got offices now in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nevada. We're putting people out in each of those states. We're light years ahead of where we were in 2024. And then the chapter growth, the student growth, the donor growth. And it's such a testament to what Charlie meant to so many in his life and legacy.

And I tell people this all the time. The staff around here are heroes. They're my heroes. What they have endured over this last year, whether it's the conspiracies or just losing Charlie to begin with, but just forging forward and growing and building just like Charlie. You know, we laughed like in the immediate aftermath. I mean, it was a macabre, but it was like, you know, we knew Charlie. Charlie was like, you guys should be streaming right now.

That's what we, you know, it was that, that was how Charlie was. And so people didn't understand why we immediately threw ourselves in the work because we knew Charlie would want that, you know, and that's how he would have done it. Final word to you, Steve, I know your time is short and you got to, you, you made, graciously made time for us. Just keep grinding. I think the other day when we did the, we finished with the last, I think 45 minutes, with the three of you, to me, I told that my peers, I said it was perfect.

You had Tyler, you know, who grinded it out on the ground game and really perfected that model and even perfected you, Andrew, on the media side and with the show and all the content. And Blake, kind of the intellectual that helped Charlie so much to have a deeper understanding. One thing is powerful about Charlie as an activist and a guy in the field. You don't see many people there in Charlie's position have such a depth of understanding of the different issues. and Blake you you provided that so I just think it's going to be you know I don't want to leave on a negative note but my one of the schools I went to and got a degree from Georgetown which used to be a Catholic university you know they're they're doing some like mock Charlie Kirk on you know let's dress up like Charlie Kirk on Thursday that shows you the level of depravity of the left and you have to understand they've come after Charlie Kirk because he is a he is a he is a he is a symbol of America at its best, of what America can produce, and people that not just the best, but someone not just out to make money for himself, not just to go to Hollywood and get fame, not just go to Wall Street and be a hedge fund guy. It's all about me, me, me. Charlie Kirk is the

best of us because it shows you what America can produce when someone dedicates himself to hard work and then rededicated himself to his country and to his country men. I mean, Charlie Kirk was a fire-breathing populist nationalist and America first. And that's one of the reasons the left hates him so much. And they do hate him. And I think you're seeing the demonic power of the left coming out. And at a Catholic university run by the Jesuits, they should be more than ashamed of what their students have tried to work up over this weekend.

But I think it shows you in high relief the divisions we have in this country. And that like Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk was not going to back down. Charlie Kirk did not need to go do that tour in the fall. Charlie Kirk went and did that because he noticed his duty, his Dharma, his purpose, his task and purpose was continued not just to be in the White House and helping out, not just doing the Charlie Kirk Show and RAV, not just doing the speeches and all that, but it was to go back and do the basic work that had really been the key thing that happened to change people's minds from the very beginning. And that is one-on-one communication in a group setting to change people's. attitudes with new information and presented by a true classic American gentleman. So a lot of work ahead of us, guys. And hey, the easiest days are behind us.

Just remember that. All the easy days are behind us. Everything else now in the future, every day is going to be harder. Every day is going to be harder. Yeah, well said, Steve. And, you know, I'll never forget one of Charlie's first interviews on Fox News. He must have had 10, 15 chapters. And he said, you know,

We're not going to, he's still got a Chicago boy accent on it. He said, we're not just going to be some flash in the pan. We're building an institution here that's going to stand the test of time. And, you know, for Charlie, I can tell you all the team, all the staff at every level is dedicated to doing just that. Thank you, Steve, for being one of his champions. And thank you for giving us some of your time. Thank you, guys. Always love tossing the show.

Always love tossing the show to you every day of 12. Thank you, sir. It means a lot. Steve Bannon, War Room. grateful to him he had a very packed schedule and he wedged us in this morning so god bless him for that this is um as i said it's going to be a tough week on many different levels marking the one year without charlie feels surreal it you know i told somebody else blake i said it feels like i feels like just yesterday i doesn't feel like a year has gone by and yet it on a whole other

level it feels like i've lived 10 lifetimes this year and marking this year and marking this one year is uh and that we're going to talk about this we've got larry arne um we've got jeremy uh who the the farmer that made the corn maze we got to have that so we're going to have him at one o'clock eastern and then we've got michael knolls and i you know marking this year is difficult i don't there's no roadmap for anything that we've lived through this year there's no roadmap at all and i mean banon steve's right that it only does get tougher because i think for the past year it's there's been a lot of us we're still in the post losing charlie environment and it's it's gone on a long time precisely because we've seen what a void he's left in terms

of our political environment our religious environment that we all do miss him tremendously but we have as charlie would say onward we have an obligation to move forward and continue the fight and it's only going to get more challenging as a result because he's not here to provide that leadership that he was so exceptional at providing and we can look to his example but every day brings new challenges that Charlie himself didn't have to face and we can only do our very best to imitate him to look to him for inspiration but the struggle the struggle never It never ends. No, it doesn't. And I want to make one quick note, and we're going to bring Dr. Arnon in the next segment, one of Charlie's mentors. I'm going to ask him, what does this week really mean? What does it actually mean for us, for the movement, for you at home watching? And I want to know your guys' thoughts as well. And we're going to have an opportunity this week. If you want to send us an email, Freedom at Charliekirk.com, if you want to do a selfie video, we're going to be playing a bunch of self-futely. videos. We're doing all these montages from our turning point students. And so we'll play those on the air this week.

I believe we got J.D. Vance is going to call in. Don Jr. probably do that on Thursday on the one year itself. But I want to hear from you. So this show belongs to all of you as much as it does to any of us. And so please send us an email. Freedom and Charlie Kirk. Do a selfie video if you want. We got so many. One we got just a moment ago, literally in the last. last 10 minutes from Tia who said I always wanted to share my testimony to Charlie because he helped convert me to Christianity from Islam. Wow. And she sent a drawing of Charlie says that you know quotes the book of Corinthians where oh death is your victory where oh death is your sting and a few other lines. Jesus is the son of God. I love Jesus, love liberty and love America. Let's debate. Let's debate. Yeah. That's amazing.

Yeah, we have that image, too. We should throw it up there. She just sent us a drawing that she did of Charlie. That is pretty great. This is the kind of stuff that you guys sent us. It's amazing. So this week, please flood the inbox. Give Blake too many emails to review.

And if you send us a video or selfie, maybe send it in a link or whatever, or post it on your own social and send us that. But let's flood the airwaves. Let's flood social media with tributes to Charlie and what he meant. Because as Banda just said, There's a whole move. These leftists, they will not even give us one year to mourn our friend. They're going to use it as an opportunity to mock Charlie, to mock conservatives, to mock his death.

Really sick stuff. And as Bannon said and I would agree, I do think it's demonic. You know, we are not in a battle against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. Never, ever, ever forget that. and their reaction to Charlie's murder is yet more proof that these people are truly sick. They need Jesus. And we've got a country to save. And there are some of the people that need the most help.

So I'm going to try my best this week not to give in to anger or rage at them. I'm going to pray for them. And maybe I do get a little righteous anger. But this week is not about them. This week is about remembering a truly great American, a friend, a father, a husband, a movement leader. I believe Charlie Kirk is a modern day founding father, and he was the very, very best of us. And Blake and I can attest that even in private, even behind the scenes, he was that good. And every, you know, it wasn't perfect, but man, he was remarkable.

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All right. Without further ado, Dr. Larry Arne, Hillsdale College. Welcome to the show, sir. it's so good to have you back and you honor us by making this a priority. So thank you so much. Oh, it's a priority, Andrew. How are you both? Like, good to see you both.

It's a weird week. As well as we can. Yeah, it's a weird week. I woke up this morning feeling like it's hard to make heads or tails of what it means. And so, you know, Peter on your team, he said, what kind of questions you want to ask Dr. Arn? And I said, I just want to know what he thinks this means. What is it supposed to mean? What should this mean?

Well, Charlie's loss is a tragedy. Tragedy is actually a weird word. It comes from a couple of Greek words that oddly combined to mean great song. And we sing great songs about losses. Loss of Charlie is partly just a personal thing, right? Charlie, what he was like? When you met Charlie, what you think? The first thing is Charlie was fun.

Charlie was, he was very lively. He was alert. He was quick as a cat. He had a lot of joy in him all the time. He absorbed information like a sponge. Well, if you know somebody like that, the loss of them is, you know, you miss them. Of course you do. Never met anybody.

You know, everybody's unique. Charlie is unique in some beautiful ways. And then Charlie was important. He was a voice to a confused generation. And the loss of him is felt. You know, I think this assassin, probably they got the guy. And what a vapid.

and pitiable human being, but given his objects what they appear to be, his act was well chosen because the things that Charlie represented and that he hated have suffered a blow. It's weaker because Charlie is gone. And so we mourn both those things, you know, the personal side, the fun side, the engaging side, the lively side. we miss the effect of him. And his effect, you know, you don't have to agree with all of Charlie's positions.

Charlie himself changed his mind about things. Everybody does. But the main strains of it, what was he saying? He was saying we should live free and serious lives. We should be serious

people. We should give to others. We should found a family. We should serve. We should grow. to grow you have to suffer. I think Charlie might have picked that up from me because I told him that the first time I ever talked to him. You're hitting something very profound, Dr. Arn, you mentioned he was,

he was very serious, he had a very serious message in terms of, as you said, embrace faith, start a family, fight for your country, and yet at the same time, he was a very cheerful individual, very upbeat all of the time. And we often think of those as intention. if you say, as intention with each other, if you say someone is a very serious person, you think they're very neutral, they don't laugh much, they don't get excited very much. Charlie actually was both those things, immensely serious in his endeavors,

and yet also a cheerful, upbeat, lovable individual. And I think those two things in harmony go a long way towards explaining why he resonated with so many people. Yeah, he was just a good, good man, right? I've been corrupted by my education and partially helped to corrupt Charlie, who got his own education, I just helped him. But the Greek word for serious is spudaios. I always just love the word, the way that word sounds. It doesn't mean grave. It means getting things right.

And one of the things you've got to get right is you shouldn't miss the joy of life. among the things I say sometimes lately when I say my prayers is remember the joy of life well Charlie was a constant reminder of that he had a lot of fun he counted his blessings and he enjoyed them he didn't live in fear he was married to a beautiful woman you know who's your you know head of turning point now right and she's just an awesome woman and you could spend your time worrying about the loss of her or you could spend your time serving her and enjoying her well he did that and that's serious see that's not you know you can be a whiner you can

always fret i've got this thing i can't keep it you know i'm going to die ultimately well he's He didn't, he was serious. Serious doesn't mean grave. As a matter of fact, people who are down in the mouth all the time are not serious people. That's, you know, what was Winston Churchill like? This afternoon I'm talking to somebody who wants to make a movie about Winston Churchill

in a certain plaintive story in his life about a dream he had about his father. There were a lot of frustrations there. But one of the things I'm going to tell them is Winston Churchill was happy. Winston Churchill was hilarious. You know, to be around him, he was always sparking. Charlie was like that, too. So Charlie was a, what does it mean to be engaging?

It means that people engage with you and you engage with them. And people don't like to do that with people who are, you know, a drag. So, yeah, he, you know, I, I did this interview, I guess the Guardian is writing a big article, the British left-week newspaper, is writing a big article about you guys. And so you guys asked me to talk to the guy, so I spent 45 minutes talking to him. And I don't know how the article is going to come out, or I don't even know if it's come out. I don't read The Guardian. But the interview was really good, because I just explained Charlie to him, you know,

and he wanted me to do that, let me do it, help me do it. Ask the right questions, right? Well, when you get to talking about Charlie, they're just stories, you know? He's just... So many stories. He was always up to something cool. And he was always excited about it. And then if you ever had a suggestion for him, I had a few.

You know, mostly I talked to Charlie about things he wanted to understand. that I happened to have studied a long time. But once in a while, I would have a suggestion for him about his work. And he would become there serious in the grave way. He would always stop and pay close attention. I once told him a tweet he had sent out, somebody I knew was affected by it, somebody important, and complained of it to me.

And I said, yeah, you should think about whether that was right or not. And he goes, you know what he said to me? And, you know, Charlie was, you know, an important man, right? I am not an important man at all in the way he was. I don't hang around the ruling people, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and such, hours at a time the way he did. My life doesn't work that way, and I don't really even want it to. But he did.

And so, of course, I was very respectful of that. I didn't try to tell him how to do it. But in this one occasion, I said, you should think about that. And you know what he said? He said, yes, sir, to me. And I thought, who that's good? I said, Charlie, you'd want to doing this. You got to figure this out.

But maybe it's too early to take side of those issues. Yes, sir. He said, what a respectful, self-disciplined man. And he was. You know, it just had all the qualities. Well, I want to play a clip of you with him here. This was from March 2025, SOT 8. I will be coming back.

Accumulated. I'm going to give you an honorary degree, Charlie Carr. Oh, well, that would be quite, that that would be the honor of my life. But I got a lot more learning yet to do. I have to be able to pass your Aristotle course. And I say this, the Hillsdale courses have changed my life. And the more I take, the more I learn. And it is, as you have taught me, Dr. Arnd, Aristotle wrote that all men seek to know.

And I find that when I go to these college campuses, that students deep down, they want to know. And it's time that we teach them something. And so, Dr. Arnd, God bless you. Thank you for your contribution to this country. Wonderful as always. Everyone should take the online courses. By the way, you know, we have a great partnership with Hillsdale. But he would just do that all the time.

Oh, yeah. Because he really believed in what you were doing. And so when he said, yes, sir, it's because he loved you and valued you and knew that you were an important person in so many ways and to so many students. He kept doing big favors, you know, all kinds of things. The month didn't go by that I didn't find out. Charlie Kirk did some handsome thing. And he never told us about them.

And if I brought it up and thanked him, he didn't want to talk about it. You know, he was doing what he thought was right. And, yeah, he just was a golden soul, you know. That thing, you know, about learning. The reason he could go on college campuses and sit at those tables, and the reason he was effective was he respected those people and he had prepared himself to talk with them through hours of labor. And he could find good things to say in response

because he thought about it all the time. And therefore he was modeling. Yeah, you helped him do that in a really important way. And we love sending people to Charlie for Hillsdale.com because that's where you get to access so much of what Charlie learned from. And when we talk about just the quality of, it's free, it's 100% free but the quality is so tremendous you get to take actual college courses that will help you be a better citizen a better family member friend father um so charlie for hillsdale dot com i don't even

mind plugging it just all the time just like him thank you it's a tough week it's a tough week but i i go back and forth and i'm sure some of you guys are feeling this too sometimes i'm just thinking about how awful it all is that we still don't have charlie and we're never going to to have Charlie back and just the permanency of it. And then I think about all the good times as well. And Dr. Arne, you were mentioning this engaging nature that Charlie had. And sometimes when I hear other people describe Charlie, it reminds me of different aspects of his personality and the way he was. Well, I just think we're getting tons of emails throughout this entire show. And I suspect we'll be getting them all of this week. I hope we'll be getting them all this week. We're saving as many as we can.

We'll try to read a lot of them when we have the opportunity. But Dr. Aron, you mentioned how engaging he was. So many people, there are people who met him maybe once, but they remember the rest of their lives, or they never met him at all, but they feel like he spoke to them directly. He just had such a direct line to them. And that's such a rare ability for people to have.

Why do you think Charlie had that it factor? Because everybody wants to be good. And so when they see an example of it, they want to be it, right? And, you know, what is it to be good? It's to be a good thing of the kind that you are. And it is, you know, there's a list of the virtues, four cardinal and three theological virtues,

courage, wisdom, justice, moderation, faith, hope, and charity. Everybody wants those things. Those are good things, right? and you're a better person and a happier person if you have those things. When you see them in somebody, they come together.

You know, there's that wonderful thing that Mark is in Julius Caesar, describing Caesar, he was sanguine, and the elements were so mixed up in him that all the world could look at him and see that this is a man. You see, everybody wants to be that.

And so when you see him in action, vile spirits want to destroy that. That's what despotism is, right? But ordinary spirits want to emulate that. Engage with that. See that. What should operate? I mean, why did they flock, you know, including to that last event in Utah, Why did they flock there like that?

College kids are busy, right? They have plenty of things to do without going to that thing. And they would come in their tens of thousands. And that's because they want to be good, want to learn how to be. So they have an instinct, even if they don't put the arguments together, that in order to be happy they have to be good, and they have to learn how to do that.

It's a striving. So yeah, that's what he was. And, you know, he was so determined. And it, you know, over, so I knew him for 12 years. He grew so much. Last thing, he gave a speech for Hillel College a few months before he was killed. And after it was over, I walked up, I said, okay, boy, you have learned a lot.

And he said, thank you. Dr. Arn, that's an interesting story about you guys as well. And that's why he said yes, sir, to you, because you were sort of part of a Mount Rushmore of people that he looked up to. But when he first encountered you, I don't think you were quite so impressed. You always liked him. But then he grew on you. So in the last three minutes we have here, what did you notice about, because that's the real story of Charlie Kirk, I think, is that he started off this baggy suits and it's kind of rough around the edges. And then he became something. He did it through sheer will and work. And he so badly wanted to impress you. And a few others, of course. But he wanted to win your approval. So the reason I didn't like him before I met him was because everybody kept coming.

to me and saying there's this 18 and 19 year old boy and he's the greatest of all the boys ever born you know and i don't believe you ought to talk to young people like about about young people or to them like that i don't think it's good for them right and you know i'm in the business of torturing the young so you know i i did not seek him out but foster freeze you know who helped to launch charlie in life and he was a very good man caused him to be so sat next to me at a Hillsdale College event in Wyoming. And I'm annoyed when I see that he's sitting beside me. So I'd on a list before, and I thought, what's that about?

I never met him, right? And so I pretended I didn't know who he was, and I asked him some hard questions, and he couldn't answer him. And I said, so you're going to fix the world, and you don't know much about it. He used two words, culture and college. I asked them to define them. He couldn't. You know, he could, but he stumbled around, right?

And I, so he, and by the time the conversation was over, you know, there were 400 and some people, I think, at that event, it was a lunch. And I was supposed to be talking to all those people, right? Well, I gave my talk, but apart from that, I didn't talk to anyone else. Charlie would not leave me alone. And by the time, and he, I was late for my next appointment, He was late for his next, and about two-thirds of the way, through all that, he had just won me over. I just could see what he was, right?

He didn't. He was a show pony. He was becoming an important man. He was admired all over the place by powerful people. And I beat him up, and his reaction to that was exactly right. He was a student, right? He wanted to know. and so I could see that in him

so it took 30 minutes and I thought this young man something made me look at him I feel it speaks so much it speaks so much to what you were saying you know so you meet this kid and he strives for years to learn

and you finally tell him last year Charlie I want to give you an honorary degree you've passed and he just goes actually no I still need to learn so much more that's Charlie in a nutshell always more always wanting to improve always wanting to be better upwards, onward at all times. You've done me two favors.

One is you reminded me that I had promised him an honorary degree, which I have now given him, and I forgot that I had done that. I would have remembered, but I had forgotten that until you showed that clip a minute ago. But that's the first thing. The second thing is, you guys are carrying on, you know, good on you both. you guys we have not lost charlie he is alive in this conversation right now and he will live if we live well and that's what you guys are doing and i am grateful to you for that and to erika and to the whole bunch there you guys are a great bunch dr arn god bless you charlie loved you

dearly and you know that uh so thank you for honoring him and us with uh a little bit of your time on this Tuesday. God bless you, Dr. Arnd. God bless Hillsdale College, too. Bless you too. Charlie loved Hillsdale. I had the honor of a lifetime to call Charlie a friend. And what I remember most wasn't just what people saw on stage. It was what was behind the scenes. That was an unwavering commitment to his faith, his love for his family, and his genuine desire to encourage others to live with courage and conviction. Charlie believed that following Christ wasn't something you compartmentalize. He didn't put it in a box. He lived it out loud. It shaped how he lived, how he served, how he treated

people every single day. Charlie Kirk, American martyr, captures that heart. This documentary isn't just simply about remembering Charlie. It's an invitation for each of us to ask what kind of legacy we're building and whether we're willing to stand firm in our own faith when it's tested. I hope that you'll watch it with your family and have those conversations together. Go to angel.com slash kirk. That's angel.com slash kirk. Become an angel guild member. Watch Charlie Kirk American martyr and help bring more stories of faith, courage, and conviction to audiences around the world. It's going to be a hard week, but it's also kind of going to be great in a sense because so many wonderful people are going to be on this show and around the country and

in different places honoring Charlie. And one of the more unique, I guess, demonstrations of people honoring Charlie feeling moved is out of Goebel Farms. And there's this corn maze design, which is just remarkable. We're going to throw it up 142. It is such a unique way to do it. I just think it's so beautiful. So when you're flying over, you see this beautiful corn maze.

And it's a picture of Charlie, which is remarkable. And we actually have the gentleman because it's so unique and extraordinary. I mean, I don't even know how you do this. I guess you map it out on some. Maybe they have software that does this and the tractors help you. I don't know. But it's so remarkable. And I just love it so much.

So we have Jeremy Goebel, who is the manager of Goebel's Farms here to tell us about this story. Jeremy, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. Thank you for doing this for honoring our friend. And how did you come up with this idea? I mean, this is a remarkable thing to do. Very unique. Well, Charlie was important to me and what he stood for. And I just wanted to honor him.

Whenever he passed last year, I immediately said that, you know, this is what we're doing next year. And mom and dad wholeheartedly agree. Wow. So you planned this a year ago. And I mean, I want to get into why Charlie meant so much to you. but how do you even do something like this? How does one make a corn maze? Yeah, how do you do this?

Well, initially 25 years ago, we cut it out by hand and it was a big painful process. Nowadays, the last 11 years, I've been creating it on the computer and then planting it that way. So you can almost think of the planter as a printer. Got it. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So you've been watching this grow now for a couple months, many months maybe. And so how did this story just, I mean, because people didn't see that you were doing this

if it was growing over the course of the year? They wouldn't necessarily even know what it is unless they blew over it themselves. Got it. Okay. Yeah. I mean, how big is this field, by the way? It's not a huge field. It's about five acres. I mean, that's big. That's actually pretty big. For us, it's not. Well, fair enough.

Does it actually function like a maze? You can actually travel through it? Yes. Wow. And there will be people going through it. Hopefully people don't hurt it because, you know, it would be easy to knock over, but yes. Well, yeah, you can sadly usually count on the left to be as nasty as possible.

Exactly. But we can hope rural Indiana doesn't have too many of them. A note on that. It's like, if you do not have enough common decency and self-respect, not to clown yourself and debase yourself by mocking the dead or by attacking a man that is not here to defend himself, I just shame on you, first of all, but please don't. This week, would you just resist the urge if you're a leftist? Don't do it. Don't do it. Fight us on the ideas. Fight us on. the policies. Do not mock a man that's not here to defend himself. And I just, I want to get that out of the way because we talked about something similar with Georgetown University in Hour 1 and Steve Bannon. But you have gotten some pushback on this, but you've also got a lot of love. I don't want to focus too much on the pushback, but tell us, what, what has it been like since this story came onto the fold last week? So we posted it on our Facebook page from our website,

and like immediately people started reacting negatively, positively too. But the comments got so bad we shut comments off on our website and deleted them. And ended up getting like over 100 one-star reviews before our profile on Google got shut down. And then we appealed it and we're actually able to get our profile back up. There's been a whole lot of people reaching out positively, sending emails and Facebook messages and all the above since the negative stuff happen. Well, yeah, I mean, there's a whole, you know, corner of the internet that lives to do nothing else but to, you know, brigade the comments or downvote things just because they're nasty people and they have nothing better to do with their lives. how do people support your farm i'm tremendously honored as somebody that was a charlie was one of my dear friends and i'm so touched by what you've done and by the way i didn't

realize you spent a year doing it basically plotting this out planting the seeds that would grow in this in this pattern that's amazing how do people support global farms and you're in indiana right and so how do they can they go on your your website and buy things and you'll ship it or do they have to go there in person. I just want everybody within the sound of my voice, I want them to flood your farm and honor you guys and bless you guys. So the primary way would be to come here and either go through the corn maze, take a hayride by pumpkins, Christmas trees, you know, all of the above. We also offer wholesale, but that's, you know, not very many people are going to be able to do that. But, you know, and we don't have a tremendous capacity. We have decent capacity. But, you know,

that can be shipped, but we don't have any products that we can just ship by UPS or anything like that. It's Goebel Farms, right? Goble Farms. Yeah, you guys are near Evansville. So I'm checking. And if you guys are in St. Louisville, that's a two and a half hour drive, Nashville, two and a half hour drive, Louisville. There's a lot of pretty big cities out there that you could make a day trip out to this guy's farm. So, yeah, make a trek out there. And if you're buying wholesale like wholesale, Christmas trees, pumpkins, things like that. Is that what you mean? We don't do Christmas trees, but we do do pumpkins.

Okay. So, hey, we've got Halloween coming up and harvest festivals, which people, you know, pumpkins are great for that. Can't celebrate Halloween too much. Charlie would frown. It's funny. You know, I grew up celebrating Halloween, but my wife's family didn't. They only did harvest festivals.

And Charlie was kind of more of a harvest festival. He was more of a harvest guy. So anyways, the point is, would you please listening to this, bless Jeremy and his family that have a family run operation here, and they've taken upon themselves to, you know, get the, get the inundation from the haters online. So let's show gobblefarms.com all the love you can. If you're a, if you are somewhere out there that buys pumpkins for whatever reason,

there are pumpkins. There are people that are running stores and running shops that need to sell them. Please bless this family. If you're in the area, go to global farms right now. make a plan to go, do the corn maze, and bless a family that's standing up for our values. And final minute to you, sir, just on what Charlie meant to you, and why was he an inspiration to you and your family? So for me personally, I did agree with, you know, pretty much everything that I heard him talk about.

I just, I mean, I love the fact that he stood up for the ideas, you know, that he put out there. and he didn't back down but he also wanted open dialogue and he wanted to just talk to people and so for that he should never have been killed and I just think it's

hard to wrap my brain around why somebody would kill somebody over that yeah you and us both and unfortunately that's a sign of the times there are a lot of people on the left that think political violence

is just fine and they'll mock a dead man that was an innocent man and a great man. But there's also stories like yours that give us all a lot of inspiration, a lot of hope, people that are willing to put their business out there like this. And we had a Froyo shop out of Idaho. We had on the show that does Charlie's face on their cups. And there's so many stories like that coming in from around the country. and I just think that this is one of the cooler ways that somebody has chosen to honor Charlie.

And so a big old hat tip to you, sir. And once again, please, if you are in the Indiana area or if you say, Louisville, Nashville, St. Louisville, they're all like two and a half hours away. Flood in to Goebel Farms and bless this family, an all-American patriotic family. God bless you, Jeremy. Thank you for making the time.

Thank you. And, you know, don't sweat the haters. That means you're over the target. That means you're doing something good. Before he ever stepped onto a debate stage or behind a microphone, Charlie understood something really important that if you want to lead, you first have to learn. Charlie believed that ideas shaped character, conviction, and courage. That's why he spent years studying the classics, the American founding, and the Bible through Hillsdale College's free online courses. He would

rave about these courses all the time. These free online courses are taught by Hillsdale College professors and draw from the same great books and enduring ideas. studied on Hillsdale's campus. Hillsdale's newest free online course is the Iliad, where Professor Stephen Smith guides students through Homer's great epic of honor, courage, friendship, leadership, and the pursuit of true greatness. For nearly 3,000 years, the Iliad has shaped the Western imagination. It tells the story of Achilles as he confronts injustice, rage, grief, responsibility, and the terrible costs of war. But Homer's epic is more than a story of ancient battles. It raises enduring questions about courage, duty, leadership,

sacrifice and self-command. Achilles is the greatest warrior among the Greeks, but Homer asked whether strength alone is enough to make a man truly great. In this new free online course, you'll follow Achilles through the defining trials of his life and discover why one of the greatest works of Western literature still speaks to the permanent questions of human life. Charlie understood that learning isn't just about gaining knowledge. It's about forming the mind and character needed to face the challenges of life with wisdom and courage. You can enroll today completely free and take this class or their 40 plus other free online courses. Just visit Charlie for Hillsdale.com to start learning today.

That's Charlie for Hillsdale.com. Learn deeply. Think clearly, lead boldly and carry it forward just like Charlie. So, okay, do you want to read an email or do you want to play a Sinfeld? We've got so many emails. How about this? I'm going to do the Sinefield clip. So Charlie loves Sinefield.

Is a matter of fact, and then you'll pick the email a couple of you want to read. So when Charlie died, I just, the hard, one of the hardest parts for me was just late at night, you know, when you're trying to go to bed. So I just started watching Seinfeld from like the first episode all the way through. And I would just kind of watch it. I'd fall asleep to it. And I'd find where I left it last night and keep going. And it's, it's been a great joy for me. So we have some of Charlie's favorite Seinfeld episodes.

And I think I'm going to start with this one. It's not 12. You want to go with me to NBC? Yeah, I think we really got something in. What do we got? An idea. What idea? An idea for the show.

I still don't know what the idea is. It's about nothing. Right. Everybody's doing something. We'll do nothing. So we go into NBC, we tell them we got an idea for a show about nothing. Exactly. They say, what's your show about?

I say nothing. There you go. I think you may have something here. It's so funny that Charlie loved that clip because it occurs to me now that Charlie was one of the biggest something doers of all time. He would die if you told them, oh, we're doing nothing. We're going to go somewhere and do nothing.

He would lose his mind. This one's great. Sat 11. What's today? What's Thursday? Really? Feels like Tuesday. Tuesday has no feel.

Monday has a feel. Friday has a feel. Sunday has a feel. I feel Tuesday and Wednesday. All right. Shut up to both of you. They're making me nervous. Tuesday has no feel.

No feel. Tuesday is kind of the weird day that... I remember an ad once. It's the most boring day of the week. It's not even the hump day. Tuesday has no feel. Just the slog day. All right.

And then this is probably the most oft-played clip of Seinfeld on this show. And it's the ribbon because it was so prescient about the ML or the BLM black squares and all this. He was starting this at peak woke, peak BLM, peak COVID insanity. This spoke to Charlie. so much. This is deep. This is a deep cut. It's not 10. You're checked in? Thank you. Here's your AIDS ribbon. No, thanks.

You don't want to wear an AIDS ribbon? No, no. But you have to wear an AIDS ribbon. I have to? Yes. Yeah, see, that's why I don't want to. But everyone wears the ribbon. You must wear the ribbon. You know what you are?

You're a ribbon bully. Hey, you come on! Hey, where's your ribbon? Oh, I don't wear the ribbon. You don't wear the ribbon? Who do you think you are? Put the ribbon on. Hey, Cedric.

This guy won't wear a ribbon. Who? Who doesn't want to wear the ribbon? That is the woke insanity in one humorous clip. We got some emails. We got so many emails. I grabbed this one almost at random, but there's so many and they're all so good. This is one we got from Taylor.

And she sent in a photo she took in 2024 when Charlie came to her church in Albuquerque. I was so excited I got to meet him. I felt like I was meeting a celebrity. but he was so gracious. He took the time to have a quick chat and a picture. He saw me in the crowd and gave me a shout out because I brought a Trump shirt from his website. I knew he was friends with our pastor. He said he wanted to make it an annual trip to our town and church.

We miss him dearly. I also remember Charlie one time responded to some of my emails. He read one on air during the Trump indictment saga and I got so excited. I'm forever grateful for this memory. I have this photo to hang up in my house forever. prayers to everyone this week. We love Charlie and TPP USA. Thank you for that, Taylor. Look how tall he was. He was a giant. He was a giant. You know, and I was invited to write an op-ed for Fox and I'm drafting it right now. And I was relating. I was remembering the first time I met Charlie. And that was the first thing I noticed. I was like, man, this guy's tall. And he's six, five, very tall. But somehow he felt even bigger. It's just because of his presence and the way he carried himself. But yeah, let's keep going.

Let's see. Sorry, got a few things in here. This is one of my favorite memories when thinking about the impact Charlie had on his life. I took the screenshot at 151 a.m. on November 4th, 2024, while watching the stream of election coverage. My husband and I watched Charlie every day after war room. We attended TPSA events. We were always in awe of Charlie's mind, impact, and dedication to God, family, and country. He was a unique and fearless individual.

I mourn his loss every day. But when I feel down, I think of Charlie's smile and his sense of humor. And it brings me peace and a smile to my face. God bless you all. God bless Charlie and his family. That's from Jill. Thank you very much, Jill. Love that.

And we do have, I told the team, oh, yeah, that's what, yeah. I love this one, Nicole. I always wanted to be Charlie's hat thrower. Okay, I tried throwing the hats. It was not nearly as easy. It's difficult. He really, like, perfected it. Yes.

Look how far that goes. Yeah, no, he got really good at, like, throwing him real far. And the first one, I just like, you know, because I played baseball. I had, you know, fancy myself an athlete. And I tried to throw it as far as Charlie, and the thing just, like, tumbled. I like it when, it's good when he can throw it far because it means it shows, it shows you're a man of the people that you want to get to those people who are further back. Yeah. Further deep in the grassroots.

Get the hat out there. He was very proud of how far he could throw those. his hats. We do have Golden Boy. So how long is it? It's going to be too long. We'll play it. We'll play it at another time. That was one of Charlie's favorite clips was Golden Boy. We should shout out another thing about Charlie that he loved. He loved Oregon football. Yeah, he would have been very exasperated. He would have been very exasperated this weekend as they won, but it was a close game over Boise State. This is actually Coach Lannning with Erica and the team. They went up and met him. Coach Lanning has been a totally gentleman doesn't let the politics get involved in anything he didn't know charlie was a big fan until after the fact but he's been supportive and very gracious so you know but grudgingly i guess

i'm a u-dub fan so it's it was charlie and i always had a bone to pick on this but you know go ducks it's charlie's weeks i want to talk to you about an issue so many americans face and that's health insurance there's an organization i really really appreciate called christian health care ministries. CHM is a faith-based alternative to health insurance. And this is real stuff, folks. Like, you've got to listen in. With CHM, you're not paying into a company's profit margin.

You're investing in a community with less overhead than the competition. You get reliable support through the giving and prayer of fellow members. Members contribute every month to help pay for each other's medical bills, allowing believers to afford the care they need. Because they're not insurance, you get access to your preferred doctor hospital without network restrictions. You heard that right. If you want to see massive savings in your healthcare budget, CHM has four low-cost programs for every stage of life, starting at just $150 a month. Plus, you can enroll or switch your program at any time. See why so many believers are taking a leap

of faith. Start today by visiting ch ministries.org slash Charlie and use promo code Charlie for a 50% credit towards your first month. That's C-H ministries.org slash Charlie and use promo code Charlie. Without further ado, I want to bring on Michael Knowles, one of Charlie's dear friends,

and a great American himself. Great Catholic. Oh, man, I'm thinking about all of your Catholic. There it is. I'm really sad. We never got just a nice, great, full three-hour throw-down. The part two of that, I remember, you know, so the way this would work, so people aren't aware of this,

Charlie would, you know, he's running a thousand miles a minute at our events. And, you know, we'd reach out to Michael's team and be like, hey, you want to do a podcast with Charlie in the podcast room at Amfest or whatever. And Knowles would come in. And some of the teams are like, I want to know exactly what topics we're going to be talking to that and knows is just like, yeah, wherever it goes. It's fine. Whatever, man.

Let me know. Yeah, exactly. And so you just like stroll in and you'd sit down and Charlie go like, hey, Michael, probably hasn't thought about what he's going to ask at all. You know, literally he gets it. He's running for one thing and the next. Probably just got off a phone with President Trump or something. He sits down next to you and he goes, so let's talk about Catholics.

Yeah, and the Pope communist. It was so funny. You know, I remember there was one of these, probably the most recent one that we did before Charlie was murdered. And typically, you know, because Charlie was managing like a thousand things at once, I'm certain he gave absolutely no thought whatsoever to what we were going to talk about. I didn't really either. And so we go in and it's this kind of like pep rally. We had just won the election.

It was a ton of fun. And so we go in, but I don't know, Charlie was probably just sick and tired of talking about the victory of the election and all the regular politics. So then, you know, of course, Charlie out of the blue, he goes, hey, why is the Pope a communist? Wait, what? Excuse me? And, you know, it was amazing because, I mean, this is the sort of thing that we're all going to reflect on probably this week. Charlie was the most prominent political activist of our generation and the most influential and he scored the most wins and there's no doubt about it. but the only thing he really wanted to think about was religion and obviously politics comes off of that culture comes off of that family like all this other stuff but he really did bring it back to first principles and it was very funny i mean we and i would razz each other for 10 years or almost

about about religion and but then you know he also had a very deep curiosity to him about it so it's like you'd get the jokes in there a lot but then even as he's kind of making some joke about veneration of the saints or whatever some aspects of theology, he would also be trying to learn about it and try to figure it out and come up with the arguments against it, maybe move his view a little bit. You know, he really was moving like a mile a minute on everything. And, you know, that obviously is just one instance talking to one friend about one subject, but then he would just do that with his 10 billion other friends about 10 billion other subjects, too. Well, and it was funny because, you know, it really was a compliment to you that he

knew he could just trust you and we didn't have to worry about sweat the small stuff he could just go wherever you wanted to take the conversation and it was going to be it was going to be great content it was going to be a lot of fun he was going to be able to enjoy it and that was the thing you know it's a little like behind the scenes you know so we have this big speaker list for for amfest and it would be like well charlie who do you who do you want to do a podcast with and he'd go down it like yep yep no yep no and like it was always when he got to knolls it was like oh yeah yeah that'll be great well we'll have fun with because he knew he could have fun with you, but it would be serious and substantive,

and he knew that you would come kind of with just baked in knowledge about whatever subject he thought it was interesting. So he could learn from you. And it was interesting that the one about the Catholic Protestant debate, it actually got kind of like, you know, you can see him getting kind of like frustrated a couple times. And those clips went really viral. Because people just were like, I always wanted you guys to do a part two of that. Yeah, we should have. It's too bad because that was really just off the cuff at an event. that was political. But I know, I certainly love that stuff, and I know Charlie did too. And it was also, you know, in his development, because Charlie started in politics when he was about three

and a half years old at the very highest levels, he really did learn a lot of things on the fly. I remember this was now a number of years ago. I was encouraging him to do the Claremont Institute fellowship. I thought that it would really benefit him because he didn't go to college. famously didn't go to college and thought it was a waste of time. But I knew he was so smart and he was so curious, I knew he could benefit from like 10 days of reading books in a formal classroom setting that Charlie could get out of 10 days what most people would get out of undergraduate plus graduate school and maybe into a PhD. And so it was amazing because he might be the single person I know who was the most busy and yet was able to develop his.

ideas the most as well and I never could figure out when he had time to do it because usually if you want to develop your ideas you actually do have to kind of sit and just you know either lock yourself in a room or sit in conversation with people privately and I realized he was working out the ideas on stage he was working out the ideas on on the podcast he was working out the ideas on a on the stump you know at a campaign event or something like that that it we actually were able to see publicly Early's education.

And I mean, one of the many sad things that came out of his being killed is that was never going to end. You know, he was just constantly getting better, learning more, adapting, honing his arguments, honing his beliefs. And you could have seen that go on until he was 95 years old had he not been struck down. Just a tremendously, I think we underappreciate how fearless you have to be because if you're working that stuff out publicly, it means you're accepting the risk. You'll have an exchange where you look like you don't know exactly what you're talking about. You might look like the loser in an exchange. And he had zero fear that that might happen to him. He didn't care.

He was just, oh, good chance to learn. And we had exchanges with the left where it would go viral with among the left. And we would just think, okay, well, what was good about this? What was bad about this? How do we move on from it? And he would get him the next time. Yeah, get him the next time. Right.

Always planning. Always getting ready. We were discussing earlier in today's show, his binders, how he would just memorize certain things, so they would be ready on recall. A number of times I got a message, Blake, give me four things about this because I can memorize those four things. Don't give me 50. I'm not going to memorize 50, but I can memorize four. And he did that over and over. And after a while, you have 50 memorized things.

Yeah, and by the way, you mentioned the Claremont Institute. He loved that. That was a big turning point. Sorry, I didn't actually mean to do that. It was a big turning point for him. It really was. And gave him a lot of confidence and the Hillsdale learnings. He took those really to heart. So I'm glad you mentioned that because it meant a lot to him. Yeah, I knew. I knew it would be hard to convince him to do it because to get him to take 10 days off to do anything was, you know, a huge ask. But I knew that if he did it, he would love it and he would benefit from it. And he would continue on.

And, you know, he actually remained involved with Claremont afterward. And I knew it would really. benefit Claremont because Charlie was this rock star and his star was only rising. So I was really glad that he kind of trusted the plan, you know, and did that because I agree. Some people, you know, if you don't go to college, even if you know that's the right thing and you know that so much of what's taught in college is a bunch of nonsense, still you can have this fear. There's a little bit of an intimidation. He said, well, I just don't know. You know, I didn't have this experience. And for Charlie, that was really unnecessary. I mean, he was obviously such a generational talent.

But then once you get a little bit of that book learning in there, you say, oh, wait a say, I have nothing to be intimidated about at all. And, you know, it's such a great point on, on give me four bullet points and I'll memorize those. Don't give me 50. Just give me the ones I can hold on to. Because that was one side of it. And Charlie had his talking points down perfectly.

And he had amazing recall. Because that many had four bullet points on like 300 topics. You know, it was, he had the four bullet points on really anything. you could ask him at one of these change my mind events or anywhere else. But the thing that really separated Charlie from other people who can memorize talking points is he would revisit them. A lot of times you see this in elected politics. The member of Congress or the senator becomes a captive of the class that he gets elected in.

So the Tea Party guy, he never changes. He's just always using the Tea Party talking points. The 2016 populist MAGA guy, he's always stuck in that. We're talking about the 90s, whatever. You're always kind of stuck in the one that. you most prepared for, you get your script and you're just going to read it for the rest of your life. And Charlie didn't do that. He got his talking points down, but he was constantly reevaluating. He wasn't afraid, as you point out, he wasn't afraid to look foolish and, you know, have a couple

knocks in a debate because he was working out an idea on stage. Well, he also wasn't afraid to say, yeah, I used to believe this, but my views have changed a little bit. They haven't completely flipped, but they've become more complicated. He had no problem with that. I mean, you know, to to change is human and to change many, many times is basically the definition of sanctity. You know, that's the definition of perfection. And he was really able to do that. And what it revealed was not a pride, you know, of saying, well, I'm just going to say how it is and whatever I believe today is true. What it reveals is a humility to say, oh, yeah, I didn't have a perfect picture of it a year ago or two years ago.

Of course I didn't. I was like 17 years old. But I have a better picture of it now, and I'm going to explain to you my thought process. I think he really brought a lot of people along the journey with him and showed them not only what they should vote for and what they should believe about issues, but even how they should go about thinking and talking about issues. Yeah, that's really well said. It kind of reminds me of, you know, when you see your dad is still dressing like he did in the 1990s or something, you know, just they get frozen in time. It's like no fashion trends have happened since. Charlie was the exact opposite.

When I first met Charlie, he was the over, you know, overfitted suits. They were too big for him. And the shoes that looked like they were supposed to be on like a 70-year-old man, you know. And then you fast forward. And, you know, him coming on campus with the athleisure wear, the cool, like, the cool sneakers and kind of the, he got his swag. I mean, it was cool to watch him just develop all those years. Michael Knowles, you are going to be speaking, Michael. I want to make sure we give a shout out.

UVU on Thursday night. You're a total mensch for doing it. Freedom built to last. Throw the graphic up here. And I mean, lots and lots of, please come out to this event. If you were in the Utah area, if you want to, we have a ton of people, by the way, that have emailed and sent us notes or texted and saying, hey, I want to go to this. You got Glenn Beck, Michael Knowles.

It's Frank Turrick. We've got Andrew Seifer, who runs our field program, Caleb Chilket, who was our chapter president the day this happened at UVU. It's going to be an amazing, amazing evening. Michael, thank you for doing it. And just a quick word from you on this evening. It's my honor. I was really honored to be asked to do it.

I'm happy to do it. I think it's really important to go out there. I'm actually, I'm very impressed that TPSA is going to because it's obviously very painful. We're going to do a memorial for Charlie on the year anniversary of his murder, of course. But to do it on the campus is, of course, very painful. especially to TPSA. And so the fact that you guys had the guts to do it, I think, is good, and it shows a lot of courage, especially at this moment,

looking back after a year, a lot of us are just thinking of it from the personal standpoint. This guy was our friend, and he's a husband and a father, and you just think of the personal injustice in all of it. But, of course, the reason that millions and millions of people around the world are paying attention to it is because he was a major political leader as well. and this has major political import. And I'm very sorry to say that looking back after a year, this could have been expected, but the left has not learned any lesson.

The left, in many ways, I think, believes that it got away with something here. You're seeing people on TikTok and social media who are celebrating the anniversary of Charlie's murder. You have the intellectual thought leader, as it were of the left right now, Hassan Piker. He's a guy who's called for the murder of Republican senators, who's called for political violence against conservatives, who's even said rather nasty things about Charlie Kirk before he was killed. That's the guy campaigning with the Democrat Senate candidates. He's the one being promoted in the New York Times.

So as a result, Charlie had this amazing ability to help maintain the conservative coalition, score these big wins, and the left killed him for it. A leftist activist killed him for it after many other leftists had tried to attack him and others. And as a result of that, the right is weaker today than it was when Charles. was still alive. And I think the left feels strong. And I don't think they feel very, very much regret at all. So I think it was a very courageous choice by you guys and TPSA to hold the memorial at the campus. And if I can help it anyway, I'm more than happy to do it. But it shows the kind of guts that we've come to expect from our pal Charlie and TPSA for many years at this point. And I think it's

very urgent to stand up and say, you know, listen, you guys, you think you score to win. think that we're going to take this lying down, but we're not going to do it. We're still going to be here standing, and we're going to fight for the things that our pal was fighting for. I was looking at our emails that have been coming in all this hour, and one of them that came in is that every time the left gloats over Charlie's death, it's actually an admission of defeat. It's an admission that they could never produce a person of his caliber.

They could never have their version of Charlie. every person who's put forward as the left's version of Charlie is just so clearly morally deficient leadership deficient institutionally deficient just he was an exceptional individual and that is that's why they have to try to gloat over it because yeah i think it was your colleague at the daily wire matt walsh who said when we die may may our enemies celebrate because that means that you did something that they feared you that you were that that effective if the world So, but I just want to, I got to put the URL out there. Charlie Kirk legacy.com. If you guys want to see Michael Knowles, Glenn Beck, Frank Turk, and a bunch of others at UVU, please make, make the effort.

You won't regret it. It's going to be a really special night, a deliberate act, a defiant act of celebrating Charlie's life and legacy. Okay, Knowles, three minutes left, three and a half minutes left. There is all the controversy online, you were right in the middle of it, my friend, is that they're taking this $12 billion HHS fund that basically paid for. stay-at-home moms, or sorry, paid for working moms to send their kids to daycare. Daycare. And now all of a sudden they're like, hey, if you're a stay-at-home mom and you're doing things the right way and your dad's at work, like, we want to help you guys out too. Up to $9,000 a year.

Everybody's losing their mind. It's socialism. It's terrible. I happen to think it's a great policy. Let's reward the people that are doing it the right way instead of subsidizing, you know, the wrong way. And kids growing up, you know, being taken care of by their, you know, some, I don't know, some daycare somewhere.

You like it. I like it, but it's all this controversy. The floor is yours. I think Charlie would have liked it just for what it's worth. Yeah. Your take. It's difficult to understand the opposition to this.

You had a very good tweet on this, Andrew, which is that it's a policy so good that only the GOP establishment could oppose it. And I think that's obviously what's at play here, because they're accusing Vance. I guess Vance is really pushing this in the admin, though it's a Trump administration policy. They're accusing him of socialism because the administration wants to take a program that's existed for 30 years with mandatory spending. And they're trying to reform it in such a way that if we have to spend the money anyway, it's not only going to incentivize single parenthood and subsidize corporate daycares.

It might also like a little bit help mothers who want to take care of their own kids. That is the fullest extent of this proposal. And you've got some people in the GOP establishment calling this socialism. What's really, really bizarre about the whole thing is that the argument for this reform for a fund that basically none of these people even knew existed. I don't remember any of them trying to abolish this fund until two days ago. But now because Trump and Vance are doing something about it, they're all upset. The argument for this policy is the exact same argument as school choice. School choice, which is one of the most popular policies on the right,

It's a way broader policy than what we're talking about here with the CCDF. School Choice says we're already paying all these tax dollars to the government. The government's spending it on a bunch of programs. Well, you know what? Instead of only spending those taxpayer dollars so that you can drop your kid off at a state-run institution, we're going to send some back to parents if they want it so that they can raise their kids the way they see fit. This is exactly the same thing that you're seeing with this HHS reform. And I think we all basically agree that kids do better when they're being raised.

by their mother than when they're being raised by some corporate day care. Of course. By the way, there was a Gallup poll that came out a few years ago showed that 54% of working mothers wish that they could stay home and spend some time with their kids. So again, this is not a new welfare program. It's not expanding a welfare program. I think a lot of it is they're trying to take shots at J.D. Vance as part of the Shadow War. It's a lot.

It's a proxy 2028 then, of course. You know what's funny about that, though, is that a lot of people are trying to pit Vance against Rubio. in a big flavor 28. Rubio basically wrote this policy when he was a senator. So they actually used the language of Rubio. I don't know. To me,

this is total common sense. Rubio has a whole book about basically what you want to, if you want to call it common good or whatever, you know, like capitalism. He had a whole book about it. Like, so if you think you're going to get,

anyways, it's a funny thing. Well said, Michael Knowles. And by the way, the years are few. When the babies are small and they're growing, it's such a precious time.

Don't work at some cubicle. When your kids are that young, spend time with them. And if we can help, we should. Michael Knowles, you're a great friend. Thank you. Thank you for honoring Charlie. God bless you. Good to see you guys.

For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliecirk.com.