The Charlie Kirk Show - Charlie’s Lifelong Education + No Stupid Questions With Gen Z

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Charlie never went to college, but that didn’t mean he hated education. Hillsdale’s Larry Arnn talks about Charlie’s lifelong pursuit of knowledge and true wisdom that went far beyon...d the classroom. Plus, what should Gen Z know about Venezuela and the East Wing of the White House? Thirty-something Blake fields the queries of the show’s twenty-something cast members Daisy and Danny.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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 much.
Starting point is 00:00:30 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.
Starting point is 00:00:46 Lord, use me. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold. leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers. Welcome back for our two of the Charlie Kurt Show. So the top talent of this operation is off at Ole Miss.
Starting point is 00:01:15 We've got Erica out there. But we've got our talented team of Zoomers here and also me. And so we wanted to bring back a segment that was a lot of fun last summer. And I think a lot of people liked it. Last summer, we had the conflict, you know, the temporary war with Iran. And so we sort of did a segment where we had one of our Gen Z members, Daisy, asked me questions about Iran. And we wanted to bring that back.
Starting point is 00:01:36 I think it would be fun. We just talked about the need to outreach to Gen Z. Well, we have Gen Z right in this office. And I am a sage, elder millennial with the bald head of an even older person. And we're going to do a Q&A. And if you are in Gen Z and watching, you should also send in questions to Freedom at Charlie Kirk that you would like them to ask. And we can do those in the second segment. Yes, I told Blake, I always love doing this segment.
Starting point is 00:02:00 because I don't have to prepare because these are actual questions that I have about actual things that I don't understand. All righty. Well, what's question number one? So when we did the segment about Iran, I had questions because I didn't understand what's happening, but I still knew that there's always been some sort of conflict we've had in the Middle East. This conflict with Venezuela seems to be coming out of nowhere, at least from my perspective.
Starting point is 00:02:25 I don't really remember hearing much about Venezuela being in the news. I don't remember hearing much about us being in conflict with Venezuela. So I don't know if, are they at war and with who? That's a good question. That's a good opening question. Are they at war? Right now, they are not. There are signs.
Starting point is 00:02:43 We are moving in that direction that the administration says it's not for that purpose, but just for context, we've sent a carrier group to the Caribbean. I believe it's the Gerald Ford. So a carrier group is, you know, a big aircraft carrier, and not just that, but all the ships that go with it. So it's basically like sending a miniature entire U.S. military to a region. We don't normally have a lot of security concerns going on in the Caribbean. So what could they be there for?
Starting point is 00:03:12 Well, it would be Venezuela. Now, you're probably wondering, as you were saying, what is the deal with Venezuela? It actually has been a source of tension with the U.S. for some time, not as dramatic as anything going on in the Middle East with Iran. We're worried about them getting a nuclear weapon. We're worried about them supporting militants fighting us in, you know, Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Syria, and so on. This is more dialed back, but it's in our own backyard.
Starting point is 00:03:42 So have you ever heard of Hugo Chavez? Yes, but I would associate that with like a drug lord. I don't know if that's true, but that's where my head goes. Hugo Chavez, Hugo Chavez was a guy. He was a sort of presidential dictator of Venezuela. I say presidential because he did win an election, but he was very authoritarian, and then he sort of converted to being a strong man. In a lot of ways, he actually, he was a colorful figure. He could give these, he had a radio show and he'd just ramble for three or four hours at a time, which is a funny thing for a president to do.
Starting point is 00:04:17 But he was this like left-wing Marxist, so he did a lot of very bad stuff to the Venezuelan economy. They have, Venezuela has more oil than any other country on earth. They have more oil than America, more than Russia, more than Saudi Arabia, more than any of them. And yet, Venezuela is one of the poorest countries in the world because communism and Marxism are that dumb. And he messed up the economy that bad that they can't properly produce oil. They can't properly run their economy. And as a result, a lot of people have left Venezuela. A ton of Venezuelans, especially their middle class, fled.
Starting point is 00:04:53 a lot of them to the U.S. So it's kind of like an updated version of the Cuba issue. So Castro took over Cuba, a ton of Cubans moved to Florida, and we have these kind of conservative Cubans who always have, you know, are interested in Cuban regime. Now we also have a lot of Venezuelans, and there are also a lot of them live in Florida. And so a lot of those want to see, frankly, they want to see regime change in Venezuela. They want to see the government switch to someone else. And it's just been this nagging sore in U.S. foreign policy.
Starting point is 00:05:23 Mostly because it's a country in our own backyard. They're very close by. A lot of illegal immigrants have come from there. A lot of criminals have come from there. And now, and this is very important, what the Trump administration says is they claim a lot of drugs are coming from Venezuela as well. Okay, so it does have something to do with drugs. Yes. Okay.
Starting point is 00:05:40 So my next question is there are other countries that I know of like Somalia or elsewhere where we've just had a military presence. We just have people there, whether or not we're at war with them. Is this different than that? Yeah, it's definitely different. The most important thing, of course, is this doesn't have anything to do with, you know, it doesn't have anything to do with containing, like, China or Russia. It doesn't have anything to do with fighting Islamic extremists. I shouldn't say it has nothing to do with China because Venezuela has aligned with these countries
Starting point is 00:06:11 that are hostile to us, mostly because they just don't like us. They're like, we're going to join the other team of countries that don't like America. But the biggest factor with it is primarily just that they're a pretty, radically left-wing anti-American government that is only a few hundred miles away from the U.S., and they have persistently been problematic. They've had some fraudulent elections, so they still tend to have elections, but they're highly disputed results. And so I believe in 2024, most recently, they had a pretty rigged election where the opposition wasn't allowed to seriously compete. The announced numbers were not considered very credible. And the
Starting point is 00:06:53 The dissident wing of Venezuelan politics has been very pro-Trump as a result. You may have heard the Nobel Peace Prize that Trump wanted to win. It instead went to a Venezuelan political dissident who, in turn, dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize win to Donald Trump. So who is currently in charge of Venezuela? The current head, so the Hugo Chavez guy mentioned he died. He was a quite fat man. And so he died rather abruptly about 15 years ago. And then since then, Nicholas Maduro has ruled.
Starting point is 00:07:23 Venezuela. For 15 years. About that. I might be off on the year he died, but he's about that long, yeah, at least a decade. How did he come to power? Do you say they kind of vote, but not really? He was just the, I think he was the vice president or otherwise immediate successor when Chavez died, and then he has won elections since that took place. So does he have problems with the United States? Yes. So he says he doesn't. We had a very funny clip the other day where he's saying, no war, and war bad. He says he doesn't want conflict with us. But he is still a guy who has clung to power through illegitimate elections who is running this incredibly bad regime. They're not as bad as, you know, like ISIS.
Starting point is 00:08:06 They're not mass murdering thousands of people. But they've definitely been authoritarian with dissidents in their country. They have had rigged elections. And they've totally ruined their country. That's the saddest thing is Venezuela should be, has essentially free money buried underneath it in the form of oil. And yet they remain a poor country. because that is how bad left-wing economics is. And there's been this tension.
Starting point is 00:08:27 There was tension in the first Trump administration. There are people who just want to overthrow that government. Lindsey Graham has wanted to do it. The Trump administration has not said it wants to do it, but like I said, now we're seeing there's a carrier in the Caribbean. We have a ship that's in Trinidad. That's another country that's right next to Venezuela. And we're also bombing drugboats that we say are coming from Venezuela.
Starting point is 00:08:48 And so it's unclear where this could go from here, but there's clearly signs of escalating tension. with the country. Escalating with us or have they retaliated yet or else? I think they'd be very dumb to retaliate to us. I think this would be like, you know, a three-year-old trying to retaliate against Mike Tyson. Okay. Jen Z knows who Mike Tyson is. Yes. Okay. Don't worry. Don't worry. So, okay, Danny, let me know what you think about this because in my friend group circles, we're not really discussing Venezuela, which is different because when October 7th, Israel, Hamas, like, that has been a huge topic of conversation as well as Iran, huge topic of conversation just amongst
Starting point is 00:09:29 very apolitical people. Are your friends discussing or worried about Venezuela at all? No, not really. The only thing that we had talked about with Venezuela ever is bombing the drugs coming in from Venezuela on the boats, as we've seen in those videos that Trump has posted on social media. That's really all that I've ever talked about with my friend group about. Do they support that? Do they think it's cool to blow up the drug dealers? Yeah, they love that.
Starting point is 00:09:55 Yeah. So I've thought has long been, I worry about it just because if you bomb the wrong boat once of innocent people, that's atrocious and that's very bad. But if they have the ability to be very highly certain on this, I have no problem blowing up drug dealers. Yeah, I'm all for blowing up
Starting point is 00:10:11 drug dealers that are trying to kill thousands of Americans. As we have established, I have a highly unmillennial view towards capital punishment generally. So I should not be taken as a representative elder on that front. But I can kind of, to reframe this, it's sounding more similar to like any sort of conflict we've had with Mexico. Similar to that, similar to that. But we're not going to try to regime change Mexico. Look, I know there are a lot of choices when it comes to who you choose for your cell phone service.
Starting point is 00:10:41 There are new ones popping up all the time. But the truth is, there's only one that. boldly stands in the gap for every American that believes that freedom is worth fighting for. And that is Patriot Mobile. For more than 12 years, Patriot Mobile has been on the front lines fighting for our God-given rights of freedom while also providing exceptional nationwide cell phone service with access to all three of the main networks. Don't just take my word for it. Ask the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have made the switch and are now supporting causes they believe in simply by switching to Patriot Mobile. It's easier than it's ever been
Starting point is 00:11:12 activate in minutes from the comfort of your own home. Keep your number, keep your phone or upgrade. PatriotMobil's all-U.S.-based support team is standing by to take care of you. Charlie and Glenn over at Patriot Mobile, dear, dear friends, so I'll give the last word to Charlie. Call 972 Patriot today, or go to patriotmobile.com slash Charlie, use promo code Charlie for a free month of service. That's Patriotmobile.com slash Charlie, or call 972 Patriot and make the switch today. Tell them about the text messages. I am getting text messages from my friends that are watching right now. And they're also. saying how much they support blowing up all the drug dealers and they want us to go further and
Starting point is 00:11:50 start blowing up the cartels in Mexico, which I would also support. But as Blake was saying, we'd need to have some intelligence. It's not good if you blow up innocent people. It is very good if you blow up evil, the guilty though. We would have to do a whole other no dumb segments, no dumb question segments on that than if we, if we're considering Mexico. Does Gen Z know what Mexico is? Have they heard of it? Yeah, I know more about Mexico that situation than I do about Venezuela, but I still have questions. Really, name 50 Mexican cities. I, Cabo, Cancun. All right, but I'm not the one who's asking questions.
Starting point is 00:12:21 You're the one who's asking questions. Something else I don't know is why everyone on my Instagram and TikTok is freaking out about the East Wing construction. Okay. I, because I run in a very conservative bubble, I have seen all Caroline Levitts, everything we've talked about that Trump is building this beautiful ballroom that can't wait to see. but why I mean there have been arguments that this is unconstitutional there have been arguments that he's not allowed to do this that this is desecrating American property what is why are people so upset and what is happening this might be that you're a younger person Daisy but those of us who are older we know that the east wing is the heart of America it is the heart of our republic that's what it seems like there is no building that is more important than the east wing of the White House I'm just kidding I don't I could tell you everything about the The boring answer. So the White House is the house the president lives in. I believe the technical term is the executive mansion.
Starting point is 00:13:19 White House is only a nickname. And as America got bigger and the president's staff got larger, the White House was not really big enough to house everything that you needed to do with the White House. So they added wings to it, hence why they're called East and West Wing. Now, contrary to what you think, I think a lot of people in their heads, they think the East Wing of the White House means like the eastern half of the White House. and there were photos going viral when they were knocking it down.
Starting point is 00:13:44 And I think people thought they literally clawed off the side of the White House. They have not done that. Though I will note, they've done it in the past. We once did a total renovation of the White House, gutted the entire interior, replaced the whole thing. When was that? In the 40s.
Starting point is 00:13:57 Truman didn't live in the White House for about two years because of how extensive it was. But they added these new wings. So the West Wing, you've all heard of. That's where, you know, the Rose Garden is outside the West Wing. I've been. It's beautiful. I've never even heard of the East Wing.
Starting point is 00:14:11 It's actually a quite cramped building, if you were ever inside it. It's like a lot of people in there. The hallways are very narrow. But that's where the Oval Office is. That's where some of the other, you know, the Roosevelt room is. There's some famous buildings there. The East Wing is a sort of events venue building that they have, but it's not very large. I want to say about 200 people can be in it, which this is the United States of America.
Starting point is 00:14:34 We have slightly larger events that more people. It's not, you can't exactly hold a turning point event in the East Wing. So Trump wanted to expand it. it's been known we need to expand it for a long time and he announced plans to expand it many months ago and he said that it would include you know expanding it and it would include replacing the current east wing building no one has actually strongly cared about the east wing nobody could tell you what a famous room in the east wing is probably if you showed people a photo of it they would not be able to idea it just by design no i don't think i could i don't think i could i've been to the white house i don't think i could oh yeah that's definitely
Starting point is 00:15:10 this room at the East Wing. Yeah, precisely. And so the real answer is, is people are freaking out because Trump went and just did a thing. And you used to be able to do this in the past. People could just go do things. The president could build,
Starting point is 00:15:23 try to build something or try to enact a policy. But what they want, they want total paralysis in America. There have been complaints where they've said, how was he able to do this without the approval of historians? So, you know, you have to go find historians. I'm sure we could find some historical. Yeah, you know, you need to ask all the historians for their permission before you knock over any building.
Starting point is 00:15:46 And that's what they're angry about is Trump actually just said, we need a bigger building at the White House. I am the president. I control the White House. And so I'm going to knock this over and build a bigger ballroom. And it's probably going to be very Trumpy in an appearance. He likes his gold leaf. But it's going to be able to house 600 people. And the problem he's solving is up to this point if we wanted to do a state dinner at the White House with a lot of people at it. You had to put up tents on the White House lawn.
Starting point is 00:16:13 You had to put up porta-potties. Do you want the prime minister of Japan to go into a port-a-potty? Do you want Vladimir Putin in a port-a-potty is kind of funny to envision. But it's not befitting of a nation of our caliber. And so that's why Trump did it. And people are freaking out because they freak out about everything. So there are no actual legal issues or ramifications for this. Well, they'll probably find some district court judge who's going to say that it was illegal.
Starting point is 00:16:35 But they find district court judges who say everything's illegal. Right. Yeah. same question as before danny are are other people freaking out about this as much as I'm seeing or is it just that I'm on the wrong side of text messages like the east wing I'm torn up they're just as upset about the drugs
Starting point is 00:16:51 no not at all I don't think I don't think they really care at all but I would like to know what Blake if you were present what would you do with the East Wing let's get in the mind of Blake real quick oh dear that's a lot to put on me with 40 seconds to go that is my vision a reality I don't know
Starting point is 00:17:10 That's really hard I don't even know if we're making it big and enough To go from 200 to 600 I would build a bigger ballroom I would name it after Charlie I would probably not have full leave I'm very German I don't like the fancy stuff
Starting point is 00:17:22 I would have it be very humble looking And just have a lot of portraits of American presidents And like great Americans around That would be my aesthetic thing In the Charles Kirk National Ballroom Which we should build I think that's a great name personally
Starting point is 00:17:35 I have no issues with that That's great many of us are hopeful about the direction the country is headed but after years of abuse and mismanagement things could fall apart at any moment that's why i and americans from all walks of life have taken action to prepare for what's coming next and that starts with having an emergency food supply storing food in your home is the right thing to do because we're living in crazy times which explains why so many people are preparing right now you can get ready too with a three-month emergency food kit from My Patriot Supply.
Starting point is 00:18:08 It comes with delicious foods like creamy stroganoff, honey wheat bread, and mushroom rice pilaf. The entire kit offers over 2,000 calories a day. This food kit lasts up to 25 years. Who knows what our country will look like then, but when that day comes, you'll be ready. Now, hear from Charlie, in his own words. Just go to MyPatriotsupply.com slash KIRK and join millions of Americans who are preparing today at mypatriotsupply.com slash kirk that is my patriot supply dot com slash kirk so without further ado i am so honored to have the one and only dr larry arne president of hillsdale college in the studio here we are uh it's a it's a pleasure
Starting point is 00:18:49 sir because of so many reasons but namely because of how much charlie loved and adored and respected you both in your role at the college but just as a as a personal friend of his and i know that That was a bond you both shared, and you loved each other, and you supported each other. So it's an honor to have you here. The floor is yours. You know, reflect on whatever you want to reflect on. Well, Charlie is the best student I ever saw who didn't go to Hillsdale College, except he did. He was such a high-minded, generous, powerful, capable young man with amazing self-restraint and self-discipline.
Starting point is 00:19:29 I never met a better person and I did fall in love with him in the beginning I thought he was just a he was a 19 year old show pony and I ask him a lot of hard questions and he didn't know the answer he's 19
Starting point is 00:19:45 and he just immediately was determined to learn the answer and so I knew him for the rest of his life 13 years and I he grew on me to be to a great friendship I adored him I think what he's built here is a wonderful thing I never really talked about you know Charlie I run a big old business and Charlie runs a big
Starting point is 00:20:13 business and he built it I never talked to him about that very much I came here and went around and talked to the staff one day at the end of it I said Charlie you really know what you're doing don't you? So this place is very vibrant, and Erica is heroic, and you guys are practiced and principled and good at your jobs. The turning point is growing, I understand. I'm not surprised by that, and I'm confident that will continue. Well, thank you for saying that, and I will say that and Blake can attest one of the speeches from the memorial that has been most oft-quoted to me or referenced as this moment of the powerful moment that helped encapsulate the memorial at State Farm Stadium was your speech.
Starting point is 00:21:00 You had four minutes. We all got rushed through there because there was a whole, we had a whole program and it was executed with precision. But your speech, this clip, just listening to it back, is one of the most poignant, I don't know how many words, it's got to be like 25 words, 30 words. and I've had more people tell me about this and so I'm going to play it here and get your reaction and maybe your reflection rather on what you said.
Starting point is 00:21:28 Play cut 193. You know, a good thing is the thing that has being an assassin is not a thing that has being. The assassin must give up his humanity to destroy something that has being. Charlie lives on the assassin will die it's a powerful moment
Starting point is 00:21:56 Dr. Arne yeah well that's one of the first conversations I had with Charlie what is a good thing what is it good what does it mean for a thing to be good Charlie got
Starting point is 00:22:12 you know that's the fundamental question in philosophy by the way that's what Socrates is always asking And Charlie wanted to know the answer to that, and he, Erica gave, you know, it's probably the best speech at the memorial, very powerful woman, and sort of deeply aggrieved. She read from his journals, two, I think, maybe three, but two for sure of the stories were class notes on Aristotle class. She told me my name was at the top of the pages Because I know something about Aristotle and got him reading it And see, that's like what you have to do
Starting point is 00:22:57 I mean this is what turning point has to do You can only save America By making it good again And young people can only contribute to America If they live well and to live well is to learn and know and practice the moral and the intellectual virtues and Charlie was a model of that
Starting point is 00:23:22 he you know he became very knowledgeable young man and he had these enormous gifts he was a very powerful guy very charming very fun you know to be around Charlie every time I was around him a lot every time I was around him it was a giggle
Starting point is 00:23:39 and also serious right well we have to live like that to be a free people and you know so many young people are lost today because they go off to college and they tell them nothing is good or true objectively which by the way is a statement about the truth isn't it
Starting point is 00:24:04 the right response to that is is that true you know And Charlie got into that, and he led millions of young people toward a better path. I just think that whole discussion, what is it to be good? What are we ultimately aimed at? It's sort of the bigger picture thing. Charlie wrote a book called The College Scam.
Starting point is 00:24:33 He routinely said college was a scam. But then we did these ads for Hillsdale. He would have him on. He always spoke well of Hillsdale as the best college in America. And it's because you're probably one of the only college heads in America who could give an answer to that about why a university, why a college education would matter, why, you know, what the goal of it should be beyond just, you know, sending a bunch of money to a college bureaucrat or getting some credential. And it's the ability to actually answer that question. Why are you bothering to learn any of these things in the first place? Why does it actually matter that you read these books or understand these things?
Starting point is 00:25:10 And that's, you know, I think I imagine that's why we're going to continue touting Hillsdale going forward is because there aren't many schools that do that. And our goal still remains to make more schools like that. And that's what Charlie would care about. He didn't just want to burn down higher education because it, you know, caused him a tiff. He wanted it to be something more worthy of the people who attend it. This is a really good point that you're making because often Charlie would be accused of being anti-intellectual or anti-education. Charlie was the most pro-education person I have ever met.
Starting point is 00:25:44 He was the most pro-intellectual person I have ever met. And he loved being connected to you, Dr. Arne. He loved being connected to Hillsdale because he believed that you were doing it the right way. Well, he called me once before he published that book and said, I'm going to publish a book telling kids not to go to college, but I'm exempting Hillsdale. And I said, thank you very much.
Starting point is 00:26:14 He was giving me a warning, and I said, thank you very much. And he said, do you think it's right? I should publish that book? And I said, yeah, I said, you know, there are, you know, there are some marvelous teachers scattered here and there. If you go to, if you encounter one of them, college will be a golden experience. But otherwise, it's not institutionalized
Starting point is 00:26:43 that it's a golden experience in very many places anymore. So that's what Charlie is saying. And Charlie, you know, Charlie was a student in our online courses, assiduous student. He took a lot of them, took nearly all of them, I think. And people are always asking me which one?
Starting point is 00:27:03 So we're not at the college. We're not using Charlie's name except to praise him, because there's a flurry of that right now. Probably, you know, people have been given us money for scholarships for turning, in honor of Charlie. And if Erica wants me to, I'm going to turn those into scholarships for kids recommended by Turning Point. Wonderful. And she probably will. today. But I, you know, mostly the most important thing, you know, from my point
Starting point is 00:27:40 of view, Charlie was a student who succeeded in making himself knowledgeable of the best things to know and living in light of them. And he was an encouragement to kids, one of young, especially young men
Starting point is 00:28:00 who are lost these days, right? They just flocked. to him. At Hillsdale College, the night of his assassination, it wasn't organized. Our chapel, which holds 1,500,
Starting point is 00:28:16 was full for five hours in a prayer vigil. And I brought Erica a box, a big box, of letters that Hillsdale students wrote to her. We didn't ask them to do that. They got up a letter writing
Starting point is 00:28:32 campaign. you know we have a i don't know if erika showed you but we have a whole basic warehouse i looked yeah filled with these beautiful presence and letters that come in from all over the country and people have dropped them off and the outpouring of love and support i mean we make much of some of the negativity some of the really vile behavior that we've seen because it deserves to be taboo it deserves to be shamed but I will never, ever forget how much people have prayed for us, how much people have poured out their love for Charlie through us.
Starting point is 00:29:16 And it is, I will tell you, it's truly life-changing. So it's beautiful to hear that. This is the Charlie Kirk Show. We are all about saving babies with preborn. There are 24,836 kindergartners, starting school this month who would not be alive if it hadn't been for what pre-born did in 2019. That's how many babies were saved that year because of gifts of ultrasounds from people just like you in this audience. When a woman considering abortion sees her baby on that ultrasound
Starting point is 00:29:51 and hears that baby's heartbeat, it doubles, let me repeat, it doubles the chance that she will choose life. $140 gives five mothers a free ultrasound and saves babies. $280 can save 10 babies, and just $28 a month can save a baby a month for less than a dollar a day. A $15,000 gift will provide an ultrasound machine that will save babies' lives for years and years to come. Charlie and Erica love pre-born. Charlie loved it so much. He believed in it so much. He was a donor.
Starting point is 00:30:24 Whether you want to save one baby or five or hundreds, it's just a phone call or a click away. Join me now, saving babies. call 833-850-229 or click on the pre-born banner at charliekirk.com today. I wanted to play this clip really quick for you. For the audience to see you and Charlie interact a little bit together, let's go ahead and play, I believe we have this clip. Let's just play 197. Hillsdale is the cutting edge, and I mean it.
Starting point is 00:30:52 It is America's greatest college. What are you seeing with the new students coming into Hillsdale? It's an overwhelmingly Christian college, almost everybody. We've never, in 182 years, required a faith statement to attend the college. Our official doctrine is mere Christianity. That is to say, we got our Catholics, and we got our Protestants, and we got our Orthodox, and we got every kind of Protestant. And we talk about that.
Starting point is 00:31:18 I like to say we have the arguments of the Reformation going on all the time here, not the wars of the Reformation. there is a prayer service on every floor and wing of every dormitory every day well there you go there's a little piece a little taste I mean you guys had these conversations we could have picked any number of clips but I just think it's powerful to see you and Charlie just interacting it just like the comfort the casualness of it the ability you guys had to riff off one another was you were singing from the same Same hymnal.
Starting point is 00:31:53 I did, the last time I was on his show, when did that happen? I can't remember. He gave a speech for us here in Phoenix, and that was, and I will tell you what I thought about that speech. We had a big crowd. We had 900 people there, I think. And he, I sat there and watched him give the speech, and I said, boy. And see, Charlie is always a boy to me, right?
Starting point is 00:32:17 He, he's, you know, that boy has learned a lot. It was masterful. And it was the crisis in America is a crisis of principle and thought, which has given rise to a distortion in our institutions in America. The Constitution is not working right, right? Charlie, you know, to the extent that he helped get Donald Trump elected, and that is some considerable extent, it's fundamentally important that now it's been shown that you can dismiss
Starting point is 00:32:52 a civil servant and that's you know who would have thought it you know well charlie had to do with that right but he understood the arguments behind that he you know i mean first of all politics you know politics it's like a bad word right politics is the method by which a free people govern themselves and they have to be in control of it and so we've built this state that that is not Lots of, you know, in the scholarship on the administrative state, there's an argument how many rulemaking bodies in America there are. Not how many rules. How many bodies are making them? Hard to tell. That's a great question. I had this great conversation with Alex Marlowe, who was in the studio with us for two shows. And he was just telling me about some of what he experienced with when Andrew Breitbart died.
Starting point is 00:33:55 And a lot of people said that Breitbart was going to be no more. And then he said he experienced another wave of that with Steve Bannon when he left Breitbart. And, you know, Breitbart's going to be no more. And, you know, he was saying, he was like, listen, you know, part of Andrew's legacy was us carrying it on. Part of the institution that Andrew built at Breitbart was what he trained people like Alex Marlowe to do. do and to carry on it. And to this day, Breitbart is two, three, four times bigger than it was when Andrew was alive. And obviously we've gotten this, you know, we are, there is no replacing Charlie. That's not what I'm saying, but Charlie would want us to get every ounce of enthusiasm and
Starting point is 00:34:35 love that has been poured out after his death and make use of it and turn it to good. And I think it's a holy duty. It's a sacred honor that we have to continue his work. Yeah, you will too. I mean, first of all, no America without George Washington, and it continued after he died, in part because of his work. What is an institution? It's a set of principles and people serving them in some organized way. Charlie built that, right, and if all he wanted to do was, you know, there are people who make money just going around giving speeches on college campuses.
Starting point is 00:35:18 And they might have, you know, an assistant or an agent, right? Charlie built this whack and big old thing. It's all over the place. And that meant before he died, turning point was not only Charlie. So what you've lost is your founder. But if you found it well, then it will continue. And he did. Well, you've done that as well at Hillsdale.
Starting point is 00:35:43 I mean, you did not found Hillsdale College. I didn't, no. The only job I've ever had in a college is the one I have right now. And, you know, I went to graduate school. I got a fabulous. I happened upon the right things to know. And, of course, I was surrounded by people who hated those things. So I was never ambitious to work in a college.
Starting point is 00:36:08 And because most of my friends are PhDs and Charlie, who's kind of, he's getting a PhD in May at Hillsdale College. The point is they always hold college presidents in contempt. So of all the jobs in the world, that would be the last one I wanted. And then I discovered that our college was beautifully founded by people who became friends of Abraham Lincoln. And I love that stuff. So in 50 years and 100 years, won praise and beliefs, people will be honored to work at Turning Point because it was so well begun. And if a thing is well begun, by the way,
Starting point is 00:36:50 how would you refound America to make it better than the American founding? It is actually as perfect as a human thing can be in the modern world, right? After the birth of Jesus, date the modern world from that because politics changes after Jesus is born because he's every one savior and he doesn't set up a government.
Starting point is 00:37:14 and so you have to have freedom of religion and you still have to have all the things that countries do now devoted to freedom the name on the T-shirt the day Charlie was shot you see so we our founders solved that problem
Starting point is 00:37:31 and there's no progress possible beyond that we can only remember it and revive it when it flags and that's our work as Americans today every American has has two jobs and one is to live an excellent life. Charlie is a model of that and the other is to repair his country and Charlie was a model of that. I think we should, you know, I think we could maybe end with another. We have a video of Charlie actually what he said about Hillsdale.
Starting point is 00:38:02 Darn it. Okay. Well, I guess we didn't have that one in time. Let me quote him. Charlie said Hillsdale was great. Yes. Charlie said Hillsdale was great. He said it was America's finest college there's a tape we haven't used it because we don't but there's a tape of Charlie talking to a young and he went all over the internet and he's talking to a young woman and and she's like 10 or 11 right and he said if you're going to go to college go to Hillsdale College or don't go so well that is a good uh we endorse that message
Starting point is 00:38:34 we endorse that message Dr. Larry Arne what a privilege thank you for making time out of your busy schedule to join us here and come visit us all at... Thank you guys for carrying on noble work. Thank you, sir. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.