The Charlie Kirk Show - Democrats' Secret, Embarrassing 2024 Autopsy + American Fables

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Democrats suffered a humiliating loss in 2024 — a result so devastating they tried to keep their post-election autopsy a secret. Now, that autopsy has suddenly released and is full of amusing and interesting contents — and evidence of a party in disarray. The team dives in, then covers a wave of new fraud indictments in the Minnesota Somali fraud saga. Hillsdale professor Matthew Mehan debuts a new book of American fables to honor our nation's 250th birthday. 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 USA high school chapter.

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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 noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. It is May 21st, 2026. We're here at the Y-ReFi Studios live in Phoenix, Arizona. Honor to be with you all. Looks like President Trump is conducting a press gaggle inside the Oval Office after signing an executive order. seen regulations on refrigerant and other cooling that they claim is going to save American

taxpayers $2.4 billion, which would be great. We're going to continue on. The big story of the news this morning, however, is that the DNC, led by DNC Chair Ken Martin, has released their long-awaited secret autopsy report, and boy, it's a doozy. It's a lot of fun. Dozy is the right word for it. Yeah, I think Blake's least favorite headline that Republicans are probably guilty of falling into is Democrats in disarray because it can often be hope and opium and cope. But today it's really true. And so we're going to just have a lot of fun diving into this autopsy report. Now, of course, 2024, President Trump chelacked in their own words. The Democrats, they lost every single swing state, wasn't even close. And they are

trying to now do a post-mortem, an autopsy on a dead body. That's what you do with an autopsy, obviously. And it looks like it's rife with heirs, spelling heirs, this sort of thing. Now, if you go back in time, Ken Martin was refusing to release this autopsy report. He claimed it was not ready for prime time. So let's take you back, Memory Lane, and show you a clip of this, Sot 3. And you've got this autopsy on the Democratic side that's never been made public on 2024 and everything that went wrong. Will you ever realize?

that autopsy? We did hundreds of interviews with people to really get a sense of what happened not only in 2024, but with the Democratic Party for the last 20 years. And the point of that was to learn the lessons that can help inform the future election. We have an authoritarian in the White House right now. And what I've always said is none of us have a time machine. We can't go back and change the past. And so trying to relitigate the 2024 election takes us away from actually our focus on 2026 and 2028. So that's their whole schick here, is that it was going to be distracting.

It was going to be a bad move for the party to look backwards. They wanted to look to the future. Ken Martin, obviously, spinning, spinning, spinning. But what's also notable here is that this has been released without an executive summary. There are annotations throughout that contradict the findings or say that there's no data to back it up. And it doesn't go into a couple of key.

topics namely how was Kamala Harris selected as the nominee without a primary how was Joe Biden's debate performance done and why did he ultimately drop out all of that is missing yeah I mean it's very funny about it is it's kind of vindicated and not wanting to release it because it seems the reason the biggest reason they didn't want to release it is it seems really bad in fact they're releasing it with an apologies so Martin he actually said this is a statement he has said this does not meet my standards and it won't meet your standards, but I am doing this because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word.

And if you go through it, there's actually just clown show mistakes in this. So for example, they kind of do, the report includes this extended history of American politics from 2008 when Obama got elected to the present. And in the 2022 election, it goes on this digression about the Senate race and Georgia. That was the Herschel Walker one, went to a runoff, and Herschel Walker lost. And it says it's bashing the Republican campaign here for some reason. And it says, this was a blatant attempt by the Republican power base to take advantage of name recognition and a tough economy to push through an unqualified candidate whose job would have been

little more than rubber stamping the president's agenda. And CNN has a helpful annotation here. In 2022, Joe Biden was president. And there's mistakes like this throughout. They'll just, it'll throw out these assertions and it's annotated. There's no data to back this up. This contradicts claims elsewhere in the report. And when you dive into it, it seems that this report was done by Paul Rivera, a veteran Democrat strategist. But apparently, he hadn't worked on a presidential campaign in at least 20 years. And he worked on this part-time. So this was a lazy half-done job by a guy who's been out of the game. And so if you go through it, the report, it feels like an AI could have generated this. Like give me a plausible Democrat defeat autopsy and you know just throw in whatever.

Well, and it would have been done without the spelling airs, which is noteworthy. Let's go ahead and play. This is a MS now. They're trying to break down the report as it's come out. Again, it's only been out for a couple of hours here. CNN had to cajole and basically do some actual reporting here to get this. They got the majority of the findings. So the DNC was sort of backed up against a wall, forced to release it, apologized. for the way they handled it. I mean, it's all, the disarray is disarray all over the place. And it's glorious to watch SOT-6. They argue that the reduction in support and training for state parties has contributed to a shift

in voter registration issues, organizing capacity for the state at the state level, and persistent problems with their candidates to listen to voters. They also say that regaining trust and confidence in the party where voters have an affirmative reason to support Democrats will take a comprehensive strategy and considerable effort over multiple cycles. So this is not some short of short term change they're seeing here, saying that Democrats need to do it right now because the future could become even more difficult. Okay, so let me sum that up for you. According to the DNC's own disastrous after-action report, this autopsy, they admit that they have pulled money from Obama-era grassroots efforts,

and now they're paying for it at the ballot box. They literally said lasting repercussions. So I just want to compare and contrast. Compare that to what we've been doing at Turning Point Action. We literally went back to the 2008 literature from the Democrats. We took their best practices that they've been building up over those years, this grassroots, low propensity voter outreach, turn out the vote. We call it ballot chasing attorney point action.

We rebuilt all of their systems and deployed them in states like Airways. Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan. Now we're doing it in Nevada. We're doing it in New Hampshire. So we've been building up the infrastructure that they bailed on. And they went full national apparatus and they stopped investing at the state level. And their messaging was all over the place. Right. So they lost trust here and there. This is what I was trying to tell people. It's like, we looked at this report this morning, the team. And I'm like, we know all this stuff already. What's the big deal? And I was like, you have to understand. Democrats have an adverse. relationship with the truth. They don't like it. They like to spin. They don't want to admit to their far-left activist base, where they get all their energy from, that they have been basically sucked down a rabbit hole of far-left social issues. And one of the admissions in this report is that the day, them, ad worked really, really well from President Trump. We knew that because Kamala Harris wanted to give, you know, prisoners sex change operations on the taxpayers' time. That's stuff we already knew. But you got to understand, the left doesn't want to be honest with their own

activist base. And they don't want to be honest about where the money went, because there's a lot in the report that says there was misallocation of funds. But here's the thing. To Blake's point, it's an awful report. It's done poorly. They can't even get their story straight when they're trying to lie. And that's ultimately why Ken Martin didn't want to release this disaster, this flaming heap of garbage. Anyways, Dems are in disarray. All right, I want to keep going I found something. I decided to just check it. Did you know we're in this report? What?

We're in this report? Oh, good. So they're kind of complaining how Democrats need to change their engagement, their strategy, and it basically goes, the party, they're talking about Democrats, has to decide whether it will continue to rely on the tactic of dropping people into states as opposed to hiring locally. It's easier and cheaper for some to develop and deploy seasonal talent, even if it puts Democrats in a situation where cycle after cycle, campaigns and parties have to find new people, to go work the same turf.

Instead of teaching people within the community and funding and empowering them to organize their neighbors year round. The Republicans do this differently. Turning Point USA is not a seasonal churn and burn ecosystem. They run programs around the calendar and across the nation.

And then they blast Coke-funded entities, which, man, I feel like that's a blast from 2010. That shows that this guy's like not in the game. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, hey, that's great. We'll take it.

There is this brutal report in this autopsy. And I just sent it to the team, so give them a second to get it up. But if you look at... So there's a lot of doom and gloom, okay? There's a lot of people that are upset about this massy stuff. There's a lot of people upset about Iran, still have affordability issues.

You know, President Trump made a promise that has been often mocked, but he'll go back to it. And that's that he said, he said you'll get so sick of winning that you'll not know what to do with it there'll be so much winning you'll get sick of winning and oftentimes when you're in the day to day you don't feel that but when you zoom out like the democrats did and you realize just how much they have lost politically since 2009 it becomes fairly awe-inspiring what we've been able to accomplish by being innovative by being pioneering by being driven out of the mainstriving

institutions, mainstream media, and building our own ecosystems, shows like this, institutions like Turning Point. We've accomplished a lot, and this graph is absolutely brutal if you're a Democrat. So if you go back to 2009, and I'm just taking this straight from their autopsy, they had a 60-40 advantage when it came to senators. In Congress, they were 256 to 178. Governors, they had 28 Democrat governors to 22 Republicans. State legislature legislators they had 4,882 Dems to 3,223 Republicans and state trifectas where they control the governorship in both houses. I don't know if that would include

judicial branch in that. Usually it means both houses of the state legislature and the governorship. Yeah, the governor's mentioned. They had 17 Republicans only had nine and then 23 split. And so fast forward to 2025. We have a six-seat advantage in the Senate. So we have changed R-plus-13 senators since 2009. We have a five-seat advantage in the House, and that means since 2009 it's R-plus-41 seats. We have, when it comes to governors, we now have a three-seat advantage, which means we've gone R-plus-5. When it comes to state legislatures, I'll avoid the minutia and just say, we've gained 800, almost 1,000 state legislators.

in that time. And then state trifectas were R plus 13, which is tremendous. We went from 9 to 22, where we can control both houses and the governorship. So that's R plus 13. That is a massive improvement over the Obama wave. And if you think back, Charlie was inspired to start Turning Point USA when he was a teen in Chicago watching the Obama mania sweep across his generation. And that's the result of all of our efforts and all of our labors. And this is the thing. President Trump does stuff every day. I mean, like, I'll give you guys a little insight here. He does stuff every day that drives me nuts.

But I love the guy because he reinstilled the fighting spirit in the Republican base, in the activist base. Part of this was the Tea Party movement. We got to give some credit to the Ron Pauls and the Tea Party leaders of the time. But President Trump took the baton and ran with it and fought back. like we've never seen any conservative and modern American politics fight back, at least since Reagan. And look at the fruit of our work. Throw that graph up again. Senators, R-13, R-plus-13, Congress, R-plus 41, governors, R-plus-5, state legislatures,

R-plus-1,000. Yeah, it's state trifectas, R-plus-13. Yeah, and some of that's, you know, it's even gone backwards, too. I think we were peaking, I think we had, you know, if there's 22 trifectas, I think we had 30 or 30. 31 trifectas at the absolute peak. Really? Yeah, we got really high at some points. Because we've lost a little ground.

In some of those in like Michigan, I don't think we have it anymore. We don't have as many governors as we used to. But yeah, it's such a different situation on the ground. We've rebuilt so many state parties to be much more, they have more of a killer instinct. They're much more combative. And it's not even just that we control more offices. I feel like we're so much better. at getting Republicans at the state level to achieve things.

This redrawing the districts that we've been doing across the South and in Texas and in Florida, that would not have happened 20 years ago. Getting everyone lined up to pass things like we've got constitutional carry in so many states. We're getting states to pass those education tax credits and vouchers. And also a lot of great pro-life legislation. We're getting stuff done in politics that just Republicans used to be these huge wimps. who would not do these things. They have learned to fight so much harder.

And of course, the transgenderism thing. I think that's one of the best examples. Every single social issue, basically going back to 1960, it was some slow frog boil to where the left would win. And this is a case where they actually tried hard, and they got smacked in the face, and the public said no, and they rolled it back. And that's tremendous.

You're absolutely right. I mean, you know, the old adage that Republicans are just Democrats five years back, We're just a little bit behind them. That has changed. That has changed. You look at Matt Walsh, what is a woman, the taking down of the transgender insanity? We haven't seen that. That's new.

Have hope. We can get things done. You can just do things sometimes. All right. America is entering its 250th year. And the direction of this country is being decided right now in our culture and our economy. And who we choose to support matters more than ever. Most wireless companies, they don't care about who you are, what you believe.

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And well, how are you guys doing? You've been traveling around, doing polling for all of these campaigns all over the country. you're a busy man. So this autopsy report, I know you've been kind of going into it like all of us diving into what are the findings. Big picture. What's your initial take? I mean, one, it's 18 months post-election. They have an autopsy that's inconclusive, doesn't have a lot of actual findings there. You didn't need 18 months to do this. I could have given you this in two days. There's a lot of central elements of why they lost. One of them is, again, just how the DNC is currently structured compared to the RNC. DNC doesn't invest a lot anymore in their state operations. And so it's this wide

network of dark money that really isn't traceable while the RNC has money in their coffers and is developing a ground game to get out the vote and to register voters. So on a serious and practical note, that is one thing there. Secondary, again, it's pretty simple to boil down what their mistakes. for one. I mean, I'm in Wisconsin right now. I'm doing focus groups here, a state that, again, Trump carried in 24, carried in 16, despite Democrats thinking this one was in the bag. Again, the main issue here was one that they didn't address and that the current administration, the Trump team does need to get in front of now, and that was prices. I'm hearing that again today. The same thing that, again, caused a lot of these Rust Belt states to flip in 24. It was that issue of

prices. Secondary one was just how the Biden team was talking about that and the whole DNC at they were basically yelling at people, no, actually everything was great right now. Your life's not more expensive. Everything's going really, really well. Don't worry about it. The numbers tell us so. But third, I mean, we had an entire party that wasn't willing to admit they had someone with cognitive decline sitting in the Oval Office until the whole world got to see it on a debate stage and then post that instead of saying, hey, we need to clean up our act. Let's immediately. get to a convention-style process where people can have a vote, they said, you know what, no, we're going to throw that away. We are a kingmaker. Here is your selection, a woman that no one

really liked. Yeah, that's pretty good analysis, I would say, Mitchell. You know, you bring, you bring up this affordability crisis. Like, I guess the first thought that came to mind. Now, I want to just state my beliefs, but then let's talk about the politics and the messaging of it now. my belief is that listen we had gas prices pretty down pretty far down and then the iran war happened that's a that was a political and a policy choice that was made by the president there's going to be political cost to it right just from price of the pump standpoint but you had you know nearly 30% of inflation over four years with joe biden massive money printing it was a theft of from the working class absolutely made things more expensive uh getting access to

to the American dream, buying a home, starting a family, all of these things, health care costs, education costs. But these things don't happen and they don't turn on a dime. They happen over time. They happen over multiple policies decisions. And we are still climbing out of what Biden did to us. Now, I understand that when you are a low information voter, and I don't mean that as a pejorative, but you're working, you're raising your family, you're dealing with your everyday things. You're not looking at this as closely as we are on this show. And your instinct is to just blame whoever's in power. But there has been great strides made on slowing the rate of inflation.

It's down into 3%, as opposed to the 9%. There has been great strides in affordability and rents. Rents have come down. But again, these things are like turning the Titanic. They're not going to happen overnight. What are we at risk? And so now let me get to my question. Are we at risk of repeating the same mistake the Democrats made in 2024 by telling our voters,

everything's great, you're living in the golden age, and you're richer the next. ever. Your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, this is a common refrain that I go through with most of our statewide campaigns right now is to, you have to one lead with understanding. Again, so whether these, again, the voters aren't going to, we're not here to explain macroeconomics or what inflation is or these things. But it's, hey, understanding, I get it that things are still high, that there's work to be done. Here are some of the reasons why it's still that high. Here's what we're doing to address it. So it's not ignoring the issue and saying, no, everything's It's, hey, there are some structural issues that we are addressing.

Here is a plan. I understand and we are working for it. Again, people need to be heard. Again, especially when you talk to even just young voters, again, that what we talked about of the, again, trying to actually start a family, own a home, these things. Again, when the issue is, yes, we're having strong employment, but it's not really people that are excelling. That younger group of people is not hitting that job quality and that salary intake to start

a family and have a home. they're seeing some of these lagging vectors there. So when we're talking to these people, it's one understanding what's going on in their view. Again, always talking about it from there. Again, if you look back at it, someone who was great at this, again, Bill Clinton was a master of empathy, whether it was feigned or real empathy, is he always led with that. And I think it's something that a lot of other people and a lot of Republicans need to understand for this election cycle to not be bashed over the head with that. Because yes, there was a few, 6040 social issues that helped Trump win, one being immigration, one being anything involving children, transgender stuff, kids in sports.

Those two were pretty much 60, 40 issues. But other than that, these swing voters, again, it all came down to they thought their life was easier and cheaper in 2019 than it was in 24. So we need to, by election day, convince them that it's still better right now in 26 than it was right before the election in 24. Yeah, and you think about the Democrats that, you know, I've seen some of the fallout here, just their early reaction saying, hey, we've started to invest in state parties and we're messaging on affordability. The problem is, is that obviously, you know, I'm a conservative, Blake's a conservative, I believe you're a conservative. So it's like we know that their ideas simply don't work. You know, you can promise free grocery stores, but somebody's paying for that, and is it really going to make a dent in the problem? You can promise rent control, but then you realize rent control ends up drying up supply on the market and causing all other types of structural problems. The way you unleash affordability is you increase competitiveness, you get rid of regulations, you let the free market do its thing, and then you stop flooding the market with illegals and millions of people that are sucking up housing supply.

You've got structural issues that affect health care, right? Trump R.X is in the most favorite nation. status. These are things that will have a material impact on that. The question is, what's the way to message it? Because Democrats are going to message on affordability, but we know that their ideas ultimately make matters worse. They prove that during the Obama year, or the Biden years, and in the Obama years. So the question is, okay, yeah, we can relate to your pain, but how do we educate you that the solutions? Just because they're mentioning the magic word affordability doesn't mean they've got any ideas that are actually going to address it. Yeah, I think it's twofold. One, you also have the problem set that Donald Trump is not on the ballot. And so there is a whole group of people who

can even skip a lot of midterm elections that are Trump voters. They're again, a unique, younger working class man, and especially like in Wisconsin where I'm now. So that group of people, you have to have the challenge of not just persuading them and showing them what you're doing to help them, but even getting that group to the ballot box. And that's where other Republicans have always struggled compared to Trump, not having him the ballot's one thing there. But other people, it's finding individual audiences. Okay. all, say if you're running a Senate race here in Wisconsin or gubernatorial in Michigan, you have to understand, okay, what group of people is responding to health care? That's where they're feeling

the most brunt. Micro-targeting, though. Yes, exactly. So, okay, the Trump RX message, okay, that has to be played to this audience. That's who they need to hear this because maybe they aren't aware of it. They haven't seen it where it is. It's meeting people where they are and addressing it on a localized level. Again, without Trump on the top of the ticket, localizing these elections making it about their state and affordability that way is a much better option. So we mentioned gas prices from Iran, but another driver of affordability issues is the impact of tariffs. President Trump obviously has some, has a plan there, but it does raise prices, at least in the short term. How does that play into things? Would any adjustment to tariff policy

possibly create that short term shift? That is what we're looking at. And how are tariffs playing out How are they? Like, what do people think? A few states, it's troublesome. Iowa, again, I do a lot of work in Iowa. In past 14 months, every time you're there, those targeted ads are about what tariffs are doing to farmers and what they're doing to people in Iowa. And so Iowa, again, there's going to be a swing state this year.

Again, look at this. There's a very tough gubernatorial election there and a Senate race that's going to be much closer than it probably should be. That state it's playing here. And Wisconsin's also playing. But again, these states, these states, that are again have been traditionally Trumpian voters who felt like they were fighting for him, have felt some of this brunt at home now. And without that quick adjustment before the midterm,

that is going to be something that every other Republican has to defend. And how they word that defense is going to be a challenge. Mitchell, I know that we've talked about this in the past. And I will tell you, you know, Charlie was even worried about the state of young voters, saw what was kind of the writing on the wall with Midnight Hammer, saw it with Epstein, You know, how big is the Iranian war playing into everything and how big is Epstein playing into everything? Obviously, that became front and center this week with Thomas Massey's race in Kentucky's fourth. But more broadly, how is that playing? Yeah, I mean, I think the Epstein one is more.

That's just a kind of a phase and a current thing. But structurally, like the Iran war is a large component of the Trumpian audience. It was people who were more restrictionist. And I, the army vet, like most of my veteran friends are anti-Iran war. They're anti-getting into more conflict in the Middle East, similar to Charlie. And while so many of my former army buddies found Charlie was talking like that, that's where you see the massive generational divide. And another telling thing from that massy race is, if you look at the age breaks in that vote there,

to where it is the boomers that's ousted. Thomas Massey. It was no young voters. Again, he won every voter or every voting group. He won a majority of under the age of 55, or sorry, under the age of 65, every group over there is where Gowrene overperformed. And that's not unique to Kentucky. That is pretty much everywhere to where when things are harder for young people at home, they become even more restrictionist on their views abroad. And so when these young people who came wanting something different, and we're told actually know we're going to do that, that group has repelled on that idea. So again, a quick wrap to this conflict is key. It can't be another point on there. We can't, if we already have to go out

and do the work of persuading on the economy and inflation, we can't sit there and have to defend more conflict. Yeah, I mean, that becomes a problem, right? Because we've often said on the show, you can always choose when to start a war. You can't necessarily choose when to end it. And it sounds like some of the reporting that President Trump has had some stern conversations with BB Netanyahu out of Israel, basically telling him this is how it's going to be. I think President Trump, his political instincts are probably kicking in. And he's looking for an immediate get out of Iran card, right?

It feels like you can feel that momentum building, which I would be in support of, candidly. I think there was an argument to be made that this was the right geopolitical and national security decision, and it might have just been one of those things where politically it's going to have an impact. And when we talk about that race in Kentucky's fourth, though, and you talk about the 65 and over, Galran won that group, but he lost every other group, how much did they punch above their weight class? So they out index, turnout rates between Gen Z and the over 65? Yeah. So, I mean, naturally, when you're sitting in a Republican primary audience, it's much older

and much wider, much more male. So when you're sitting there, okay, that's already a larger chunk of the audience there. They performed a slightly higher and a slight underperform. So Massey overall did better. I'm talking about in relation to where those groups should be, not overall turnout amongst those groups, but percentage based on what percent over 65 compared to what percent under 65. It was, again, about a 10 percent overperformance of older voters being there compared to the younger voters.

Fascinating. Blake, you got anything? I just, so we're saying the president's instincts are kicking, and he does have extremely strong political instincts. That's why he could essentially wing it in 2016, win the nomination, and win the presidency. He's always been going. He's a good marketer. He's great at marketing. He's great at the sense of how things will play out. And so that's why we say he seems to be trying to wind down the Iran thing now because I think he senses that it could be very destructive.

But how quickly does the public adjust on something like that? Because what we've talked about with the Iran war is there's the effect of the price at the pump. There's the effect of economic stuff. But how much of a role does the bigger sense? We know from a lot of young voters, swing voters, that they just feel let down by the fact that the war happened because they thought that was just not going to happen. No new wars. Yeah, no new wars and so forth. Do they get over that relatively quickly?

Is that something they can move on? Or is that more likely to be sticky? Yeah. Well, the point that you make again, Donald Trump has a great political intuition. It's the kind of the double-edged sword here to work he is not running right now. So it's great that he can go out and say these things. things, but it's still end of the day. It's if you're running in Georgia, if you're running in North Carolina, you're running in Arizona, you, the candidate, have to answer that. And again,

Trump's a lure and why he's always been so successful is he can hit an audience and talk to people in a way most other Republicans can't. And so without that, that's where it gets harder. It's, it's going to take a much larger effort from outside groups like Turning Point, like TP Action, like the White House political team moving over and getting out there and doing everything they can to help these candidates in those seats. Because again, we can go out and do that and explain and persuade, but we need to get on it. We can't just be, hey, we're leaving these senators out to defend themselves. All right.

Let's go round Robin here and tell us how you like our chances here, Mitchell, because it does feel like there's been a bit of a momentum shift. We were kind of in the doldrums, and we've gotten our groove back a little bit after Indiana, after the VRA, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Let's go to Georgia. Mike Collins, does he have a shot to knock off Asoff? No, that's probably the toughest one uphill battle.

I think, and we're much better suited, obviously, to keep the gubernatorial house there, but that's going to be a tough seat because of Asoff's cash. Okay. Mike Rogers, Michigan. Mike Rogers, I would put us slightly above Collins in the chance to flip that seat. Okay.

What do we think about keeping the house? Keeping the house again, obviously, we kind of left four more seats on the table by not having Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina draw there and we'll see how Louisiana finals out. I think with that change there, we're looking at most likely we can,

it's going to be within three this time. So again, it's hard to fully say, but I think we probably lose the house by one or two if I had to go bet on this today. And again, the issue though when we're talking about all these other Senate races, guys, is that we were virtually seeing a map where we have North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, maybe one or two defends, but now we have to spend in Alaska, Maine, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas, in addition, that are going to be actual battles that people can't overlook. So the fundraising, yes, it's been great. We need to fundraise more and we need to start in all

of those. We can't take any of those seats for granted. Senate? Senate, I think we end up holding, probably lose one to two seats overall, but still have the majority. Listen, I don't disagree with me. Your takes all except for Georgia. I think some more structural changes have happened on the integrity, voting integrity side that are going to give

us a little bit more of a benefit than we predict. That's my prediction. Mitchell Brown, Signal. Thank you, my friend. Good to see you. Thanks, guys. How much are life liberty in the pursuit of happiness worth to you? This is the question America's founders had to answer. You see, for more than 150 years, America's 13 colonies governed themselves until Britain declared they had no right to self-rule. So ordinary people had to make extraordinary choices and risk their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to fight for independence.

And against all odds, they won. And in victory, they built one of the most stable and lasting republics in huge. human history. Now, experience the American Revolution like never before, thanks to our friends at Hillsdale College. Revolutionary America, a new documentary from Hillsdale Studios, and narrated by Tom Selleck, brings the founding of our nation to life through the voices of those who lived it, alongside insights from leading scholars and commentator. I'm telling you, Hillsdale has outdone themselves with this. It's amazing. You've got to check this out. You've got to, frankly, you've got to buy tickets to see this film. So please, please, please. It's something you could take the whole family

to, you can take your friends. I mean, listen, at a time when history is often distorted in schools and classes immediate, this is your chance to see the story as it really happened and ask yourself, what would you risk for freedom? Face the decisions our founders grappled with in Revolutionary American, a Hillsdale Studios film only in theaters May 31st through June 2nd. So get your tickets now by going to hillsdale.edu slash revolution. You do not want to miss this opportunity to see this on the big screen. Hillsdale.edu slash revolution to locate a theater near you and buy tickets for revolutionary American.

One more time, that's hillsdale.edu slash revolution. There is a massive press conference happening in Minnesota. They are nailing the state of Minnesota for fraud right now. Remember when, like, I remember when the Nick Shirley stuff started to come out. I remember before that. And people saying nothing will come of this. This is all just going to be slot. Nothing will happen.

And before that as well, yeah. No, I mean, so I remember when we had, I always forget his name, Ryan. Oh, man. We were early on this. Thorpe. Thorpe. City Journal came out with some initial reporting on it, which is I think partly what inspired Nick Shirley to go to Minnesota. Now, we didn't realize Nick's, you know, whole investigation was going to be.

to go so viral. But here's what's happening. The DOJ is doing a big press conference right now talking about the first round of indictments against the fraudsters. Go ahead and play SOT 9. Today, we are announcing criminal charges against 15 defendants in Minnesota for fraud schemes that targeted over 90 million in taxpayer dollars. The fraud here in Minnesota is shocking. Our cases today involve seven different state-managed Medicaid programs that have been systematically pilfered by fraudsters who treated Minnesota-run programs as their personal piggy bank. Pilford as their personal piggy bank. That's a strong word from, that is Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, who is in charge of the Fraud Division. now that the anti-fraud task force which the uh which president trumped up obviously it's being

chaired by jd vance and uh it looks like also fdc chairman ftc chairman who we had on the show andrew ferguson so that is just one of those uh big storylines that's happening um representative ilhan omar has been asked about her ties to some of this fraud this just happens sod 11 Did you ask Minnesota Democrats to block the subpoena for the investigation of feeding our future on the state level? The House Republicans are considering investigating feeding our future now. Your role in it, would you cooperate with that subpoena and provide documents if they requested here in the House Oversight Committee? welcome to Washington that's exactly what happens in the hallways and the byways and the

and the steps they get asked difficult questions that they don't want to answer and so they just bypass them altogether she's got no good answers for it because ilhan omar is legitimately a scourge on our congress that's exactly right she's she she is a disgrace to the city of washington dc and to the american people she probably engaged in immigration fraud she's engaged in in some other issues that are causing her complaints with the ethics complaints within the house so ilhan omar has got i think some bad things in her future she's going to be continued to be investigated to help us break this down we've got mike davis the article three project joining us

now mike welcome back to the show my friend um big news out of minnesota with the fraud case this is the first series of indictments brought by the doj uh we were talking about the doj uh we were told nothing was going to happen. You are a, we're all cynical, Mike. You are an insider with this world. You know, a lot of these people behind the scenes. Is more stuff going to continue happening? Yes, absolutely. This combating this fraud is a top priority of President Trump. He's tasked his vice president to lead the effort along with Andrew Ferguson, my friends, who is the FTC. Chairman, we have Colin McDonald at the Justice Department who is leading the National Fraud Division, the new national fraud division, Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General

is fully behind this cash Patel. This is a whole of government's approach. You saw Bobby Kennedy, the HHS, excuse me, the Secretary Kennedy from HHS at this press conference today along with Dr. Oz, the Medicare. Medicare and Medicaid CMS administrator. They're taking this extraordinarily seriously in the Trump administration. This is, as they said at this press conference today, this is just the beginning of these indictments.

There are many more indictments coming. I think it was like $90 million in fraud that they brought indictments for today. There are so much fraud across the government government, particularly in these Democrat states in Minnesota, it was these Somali pirates who were looting the Minnesota Medicare and Medicaid systems. It seems pretty obvious that the governor Tim Walts and his team were at a minimum turning a blind eye and reckless in this. So maybe you should see investigations into these Democrat politicians who allowed this broad to happen.

Elon Omar, as you guys were talking about this. If you are a Somali pirates in Minnesota who defraud it's the government, you're going to have a very rough next three years. Yeah, you know, you put the nail, whatever the expression is. I'm losing it right now. But you hit the nail on the head there, Mike. And I think, you know, I did an op-ed actually came out this morning on J.D. Vance and Ferguson, their leadership in this anti-fraud task force. and how refreshing it is. They are our instrument of justice.

The American taxpayers are sick of getting fleeced by Somali pirates, other foreigners, but they're also sick of the politicians who enable it. And again, I say this with caution, Mike, because I know you have to have some discretion here. But are we going to see justice for the politicians that enable this? Because I truly believe that fraud is not a bug. It is a feature. And this is all designed to sort of enrich and empower constituencies that vote Democrat.

And we want to see actual leaders get indicted here. Let's just ask this question. How does Nick Shirley a young, bold and fearless reporter with the camera go into Minnesota and find and expose this fraud? but the governor of Minnesota doesn't know what's happening right under his nose. It's just not believable that Minnesota Governor, Ten Wolves, did not, at a minimum, know about this widespread fraud among the Somali community, the Somali pirates. And the reason he would turn to blind eye is obvious. He wants their support. He wants their political support.

He wants their votes. He wants their political don't. nations. I think the FBI, the Justice Departments, the inspectors General and HHS, CMS, all these government programs, they need to open investigations on these Democrat politicians. Just real quick, some

a breaking here. The Feeding Our Futures Mastermind has just been sentenced. South 13. Breaking news. A Minnesota judge has just sentenced the mastermind behind the feeding our future fraud scheme. Amy Bach. She just got more than 41 years in prison. The scheme involved the theft of nearly $250 million in COVID funding. That money was meant to feed hungry children. 41.5. That's good. I mean, I was thinking it was going to be 4.1 years. That's 41 years. That's it.

We need stuff like that for a lot of the others too. Yeah, we do. All right. I got to play one more clip here because they're just too good. I mean, they're insulting, Mike, but it's just, I'm just so happy overjoyed to see them actually taking action, because again, so much cynicism is set in. You know, we're used to the vice president getting a policy, you know, something in his portfolio, and just sitting on it. It's just a lot of grand speeches, no action. You might remember Kamala Harris's borders are comes to mind. Not this time. They're speaking, frankly, they're taking direct action, SOP4 team. Today's charges are unprecedented.

They include the highest loss amount ever charged in a Medicaid case. The common theme throughout these cases is fraudsters exploiting vulnerable programs and vulnerable people to enrich themselves, no matter the consequences to the programs or to the people. Two defendants have been charged in an over 22 million fraud scheme involving the individualized home supports program. These disabled individuals were used like lottery tickets by these defendants to generate millions of dollars, which these defendants used to expand their real estate holdings, purchase luxury vehicles, and splurge on expensive jewelry. And the Democrats let it

happen. And I'm sure some Republican politicians did as well. I know there's investigations in Ohio as well right now. Check this out, Mike. Since April 1st, The DOJ's fraud division has announced over 450 fraud enforcement actions nationwide, representing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. Yeah, the Democrat Party is the party of, well, first of all, they're the assassination party, as we all know, and they're also the party of fraud. And what they do is they let their low-life constituents like these Somali pirates come in illegally, get on our public dole, and,

siphon off the public dole, commit massive fraud, and then get rewarded with birthright citizenship, get rewarded with these government grants, this lavish lifestyle. I am so pleased that President Trump and his team, Vice President J.D. Vance, Andrew Ferguson, Todd Blanche, Colin McDonald, Cash Patel, Dr. Oz, Secretary RFK Jr. This is an all-star team. And they're going after this broad, they're going to put these scumbags in jail and wait until we start doing asset forfeiture. When we start going after these Somali pirates mansions and sports cars and bank accounts, this is just the beginning. And this is not going to just happen with the Somali pirates in Minnesota or the Somali pirates in Ohio.

This is going to be a nationwide effort. So the California, New York, is coming for you guys, and it's not just the people who committed the fraud, the scumbag, low lives who committed the fraud. It's the politicians. We need to remember this. And Dr. Ross talked about this at this press conference today. Remember, they are looting Medicare and Medicaid. These are the programs for the most vulnerable American seniors, the disabled, and the scumbags of all these are taking this money. It's criminal and it's evil. I completely agree. You got to remember. who's getting screwed here. You mentioned birthright citizenship. The president was asked about this. You and I were texting about this this morning

because there was some Supreme Court decisions that were released. We were sort of wondering, would they surprise us with the birthright decision? Sot 12. Birth right citizenship. And we're the only country in the world that has it. You step into our country

and you're all of a sudden a citizen. You come in a certain way. This was not meant for Chinese billionaires to have their children become citizens of our country. And if this is allowed to stand it, will be a disaster economically for our country, and you'll have 25% of the people coming into our country coming in through birthright citizenship,

and we won't have any control. This decision by the Supreme Court is a very big one. And, Mike, I hate to be the bear of bad news here, but I asked your opinion, and I guess you can be the bearer of bad news. I said, what's going to happen, Mike? What are you hearing? Look, if the Supreme Court actually has the courage to follow the law, which they should have, if you have lifetime tenure and pay protection, that's kind of our constitutional scheme,

this is such an easy question. We did not fight a civil war and grant birthright citizenship to Chinese birth tourists, 1.5 million Chinese birth tourists to come here, have their kids, go back to Beijing and become American citizens and mail in their votes from Beijing. That's not why we fought a civil war. The Supreme Court justices know that. They know that subject to the jurisdiction in the 14th Amendment means people who were born here with loyalty to the United States, like the freed black slaves. And so this should be an easy case. Unfortunately, it won't be. You said if, you said if they have the courage. They don't. They don't have the courage. And that's going to be

obvious at the end of June when this comes out, they're going to come up with some, they're probably going to say that a 1940 statute is what gives birthright citizenship to Chinese birth tourists and other illegal aliens. It's their way of trying to wheezzle out of this, their cowardly way to try to weasel out of this, because I'll say this, we the people as the sovereign citizens of America are most crucial sovereign powers to control who comes and goes and who becomes one of us. And we never gave that away. We never gave that away to Chinese birth tourists.

We didn't give it away after the Civil War with the 14th Amendment. We didn't give it away to any Congress subsequent to that, including that 1940 law. But these Supreme Court justices are not going to have the courage to follow the law. And they're going to say that Chinese birth tourists have birthright citizenship under this 1940 statutes. Is there another way out if we get stuck with this, if they rule against this? What's the alternative? But the other way out, apparently Congress is going to have to amend that statute to make clear we didn't give birthright citizenship to Chinese birth tours, which is not easy to do. You need 60 votes in the Senate. And then it goes back up to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court is going to have to decide if the 14th Amendment gives birthright citizenship to Chinese birth tours. This is just cowardice on their part. I see it coming. I work there. I know these just justices. I know these justices. I know. what's coming. Article 3 project, Mike Davis, great work. Thank you, my friend. We'll see you soon.

Thank you. How much are life liberty in the pursuit of happiness worth to you? This is the question America's founders had to answer. You see, for more than 150 years, America's 13 colonies governed themselves until Britain declared they had no right to self-rule. So ordinary people had to make extraordinary choices and risk their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to fight for independence. And against all odds, they won. And in victory, they built one of the most stable and lasting republics in human history. Now, experience the American revolution like never before, thanks to our friends at Hillsdale College. Revolutionary America, a new documentary from Hillsdale Studios and narrated by Tom Selleck, brings the founding of our nation to life through

the voices of those who lived it, alongside insights from leading scholars and commentator. I'm telling you, Hillsdale has outdone themselves with this. It's amazing. You've got to check this out. You've got to, frankly, you've got to buy tickets to see this film. So please, please, please. It's something you could take the whole family to. You could take your friends. I mean, listen, at a time when history is often distorted in schools and classes, immediate,

this is your chance to see the stories that really happened and ask yourself, what would you risk for freedom? Face the decisions our founders grappled with in Revolutionary American, a Hillsdale Studios film only in theaters May 31st through June 2nd. So get your tickets now by going to Hillsdale.edu slash revolution. You do not want to miss this opportunity to see this on the big screen. Hillsdale.edu slash revolution to locate a theater near you and buy tickets for revolutionary American.

One more time, that's Hillsdale.edu slash revolution. I'm very excited about this conversation because this book is just flying off the shelves right now. And it's by Dr. Meyenne. Dr. Matthew Meen, he's in studio here. right to my left here and he's got it's one of the most beautiful books that i've seen that's a nice it's really like it's when you put on a table yeah it's a it's a absolutely is a coffee table book if you want to uh the american book of fables um dr matthew mean you are the associate dean and assistant professor of government at hillsdale college dc and now you're also the author of the american

book of fables and apparently you are on track to be a new york times bestseller so we want to help do our part here to make sure that happens So get your copy today. Welcome to the show, Doctor. Thanks for having me. Congratulations on the book. I mean, something of this scale and scope is such a process. You've got, you traveled the country.

I love it that the front is kind of homage to the Southwest. So we're here in Phoenix, Arizona. So this looks like maybe Utah actually, potentially. Maybe I'm wrong. Well, what is this book? The American Book of Fables. It's basically a, a journey through the country

with a madcap group of characters Hugh Manity and his Hugh the manity his friends yeah exactly they go around the whole country on a mission that's a long story

but it's a book of for the whole family and yes I wanted for 8250 I'm sort of a go big or go home so this is a 395 page hardback heirloom coffee table

with tons of illustrations there's hundreds of pen and inks oils and watercolors from a beautiful and brilliant illustrator my dear friend and this is our third book together. But it has a section for Littles, which has nursery rhymes from the founding period

all the way up to today. I wrote some new ones for the A250 and for the themes of the book. Then it has, for Middles, it has fables that are Esop-like, but they've been adapted instead of the lion and the tiger. Now you have the bald eagle, the buffalo, and the beaver. And then there's also a section for Biggs

with primary sources from founding fathers and from brave settlers, and their memoirs and their struggles and the Indian wars and all kinds of cool stories about the heroism of the American people who settled the country. And then each of those chapters, there's 13 chapters in honor the 13 colonies.

They go from the Everglades to Yellowstone to the desert west. They go up to end of glacier, west coast, et cetera. But each chapter has these little's mills and bigs keyed to the region and then keyed to the Declaration of Independence. So each chapter takes a sentence or, a phrase from the declaration, and then those nursery rhymes, fables, and stories help to explain the declaration and the American way of life. So can you either read it or a quick summary,

what's one of the new fables you came up with that relates to America? So I have one about two California seals, brothers and sisters, and the starfish. In fact, I think I can show, I can find here. Oh, these are the original paintings? These are the watercolors. The huge ones are are three by five foot oils, but I couldn't bring those with me on a plane. You can zoom in. I mean, these are beautiful illustration, well,

paintings, and they're throughout the book. The book, like when you flip through it, page by page, it's genuinely beautiful to look at. The layout is beautiful. The pages are big and beautiful.

And, yeah. Big beautiful book. I'm just not used to beautiful books. Usually, you know, you get paper bags. It's even huge. It's huge. Yes. One huge, big, beautiful book.

Tell the president about that one. Yeah, exactly. Well, you're going to compete with. He's got some coffee table books there, too. That's right. So, you know, it occurs to me, you know, we are in America 250. There is this crisis of patriotism, especially with younger Americans. So for our audience out there, and I do want to Blake's earlier question, I would love to have you read something.

But the, how do you raise young people that are patriotic, that love. love America that get it. What's your advice for them? So I think you have to do patriotism just candidly and straightforwardly. The kids need to learn the Pledge of Allegiance. They need to go and stop at the roadside historical marker and just read and see men shed blood here for your liberty during the Revolutionary War or during the Civil War or a little easier to do out east. But yeah. But actually, when I go out west, I tell a lot of the local stories. The settlement is the way when you're in a Western state,

the struggles, the sorrows, the sacrifices, and the beauty and bravery of settling the country, that is a local story, and those historical markers are part of patriotism. We think of patriotism as fife and drum, revolutionary war, and just the founding fathers. But the full virtue of patriotism, which anchors you back into that founding,

is everyone of your fellow citizens who came before you, who gave you those goods. So I think you have to sort of, you know, think it through in that way. Like, this sounds ridiculous, but a father, you take a cold glass of water and a hot day and you give it to a kid and you go, think of all the people who sacrificed to build all the dams and dikes up into the mountains above Phoenix, right? So you have clean water. Like, that's part of patriotism too. And then I think religion is another virtue, right? Being thankful to God for what he's given you.

And then piety being thankful to your parents and grandparents for what they gave you. And so those three virtues together are like the three-legged stool, and they support someone who is grateful. And why we care about patriotism is because in one sense, it's how we pursue happiness. If you're not grateful, then you don't have any reason to serve and help. Because you're like, thank you for all you gave me, everyone, and then you want to give back and do good.

And people who have been given a lot of good and raised right kind of just do this, we kind of know it. But when, you know, like when frankly the left starts to tell you everything that came before is sick and evil and vile and corrupt and oppressive, you actually have to push back and foster that gratitude. And this is why I wrote this book. I was very keen to do so. I love that. I think gratitude is one of the most powerful virtues. And it seems to change everything about the way you think about your life, what you think about your country, where you think about your family.

and I just think when you look at the other side that the civilizational arsonists, as I like to call them, they hate everything. They're embittered about everything. They're angry. And we get to be grateful for the providence of God, the blessings of this great nation, the greatest nation in the history of the world. And you're right. I think like if I had to sum up what I'm seeing in these pages just sort of before me is this gratitude for the rich tapestry that is America from sea to shining sea. And I love how you have it broken down by regions. And, you know, from the brackish blackwaters and the, you know, to the, like I said, the Southwest on the cover.

They left to do a fable book about how those beavers that did the dams that were underpaid Phoenix. Yeah, yeah, no, they had underpaid workers. And actually one of the beavers, you know, said something racist. So we made the beaver's name. Yes, exactly. Yeah. All right.

So Blake wanted you to. read something. We've got two and a half minutes here. Is that enough time for you to read some summarize? I want to know what the California seals are about. That one's a little long. That one's a little long for the air. But basically, I'll hold it up here up close if you can. Starfish get bored and come out of the ocean and cover the eyes of two seals, a brother and sister. And they just basically say all you can see are the tubes of their feet. And it's like basically, and it takes places in the channel islands and it's sort of YouTube channels, right? That sort of

that you can become like totally addicted to social media and sort of lost. The ones off the coast like Santa Barbara. Exactly. Which is the westernmost part right off of L.A. And so the starfish basically tell the brother, hey, you're looking weak. You've got to bulk

up. So he's trying to like carboload on fish. So he collects tons of fish that the starfish eat at night. And they tell the sister who's going to eat the fish that he won't eat, you're looking pretty fat. You should really sort of thinned down sort of, you know, create. And basically, eventually a witty fox

reveals. So it's a kind of, that one's a pretty on the nose moral about the dangers of social media that you can see only stars, right, and think that you're going to be sort of the famous influencer, right, and sort of get lost in social media. And then they, they, the, the algorithm tells you to, to abuse

yourself, right? So that's a very, that's one of the most modern ones. Yeah, that's very new. But it works nicely. So the moral of the story is get rid of the star That's right. Yeah. Well, put them back in the ocean. That's great. So where can people pick up a copy here, Doctor? So anywhere you buy a book. This week, frankly, until Saturday's done, Amazon and Barnes & Noble are the places that would help us get on the New York Times bestseller list. Because that's important because this, I don't want this to just be something for us on the

conservative side of the aisle. I leave in the national parks and all kinds of beautiful things that I think will attract people who aren't on board with what we care about so that we can actually sort of extend the community of patriots. That needs to be a bandwagon thing. Man, you got excerpts from George Washington, a letter from George Washington, John Hancock. You got a letter from Samuel Ward to his son, which is a Civil War era.

I'm going to say for all the illustrations that are in it, for it's a big, it's a big, well-made thing. On Amazon, it's only 40 bucks. Samuel, Ward was a Rhode Island delegate. I apologize. I was thinking about Seward. No, yeah. But all the stories keep pointing to Providence and how blessed the revolution was and the entire settlement of this country. We've got a little treat here for the audience. You're going to do a live reading. We've got even some imagery to go along with it of one of your poems that you've written.

This is an original. So you have stuff that you've borrowed from different eras, letters from some of our founding father. Something old, something new, something red, white, and blue. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Something called, something new, something red, white, and blue. Floor is yours, sir. Yeah, this is the benedictory poem, the sort of send-off poem. And it's about that issue of gratitude we talked about before. But it's called American Mourning, which is a pun on, you could mourn, you could take the black pill,

you could be sad, or you could see, no, a new dawn, America's mourning, right? Which, how is it spelled? It spelled like a new dawn. but you hear what you want to hear if you're a sad soul, right, but you have to govern yourself. American Morning If we could till the earth as our fathers did and look on loam that Providence long hid and drink from gin clear rivers overflowing through meadow traces full of bison lowing, if we could step beyond that blackest tillage and wander into hunting ground and village

and smoke the peace pipe trading well for furs and find a spring before we die of thirst if we could make a track without a rest and end at peaceful waters in the west and build the dams and raise the towers up and from them ring the bells for all to sup if we could dredge the harbor and port the air

and send our ships abroad to make things fair and rise beyond the curvature of earth and in one step both wax and wane man's worth if we could do what our fathers did before then what on earth would we be grateful for the sun now shines on us to play our part as holy as we orient our heart beautiful

beautiful and that was read at the rededicate event the White House and Freedom 250 made a beautiful video. I think some of it was in the B-roll maybe, but it was a video with using murals from the history of the West, and they had a professional reader, and they put it up during the dedication to God ceremony. So what is that when you, you're writing about gratitude, but maybe dive in, what, I mean, I love poetry because it's sort of eye the beholder and everybody gets something different out of it. What do you get out of your own words? Each line, it's 20 lines, five beat lines so that you have sort of

250 honored, even in the structure of the thing. Forgive me, I'm a poetic nerd. But each line is actually a part of the steps of our history, all the way up through the space race, rising above the curvature of the earth, the invention of flight to port the air. We make airports, that's

us. We made that, we did that. But also, we sent our ships abroad to make things fair, World War I, World War II. Right? Like, we actually sort of gave to the world from our store of riches and sacrifice. But it's also about looking back and seeing all that and going, oh, shucks, I can't live like the cowboys. I can't live that old adventures.

Yeah, but actually, that's the wrong way. You shouldn't be nostalgic. You should be thankful and then turn around and be that kind of soul for the next generation to look back and be moved. And so this sort of orient your heart, turn to the sun that rises in the east, right? You have to reorient, and there's a whole pun that you have to return and face the sun. And the end of the book in Glacier National is the going to the sun road. And there's a pun there. If you're witty why, it's like humanity is a stupid pun.

The puns get more and more complicated by the end of the book. Going to the Sun Road, which is a real place in Glacier National. It's beautiful. The son of God and the son of optimism. American optimism for the future, but also American optimism for our future that rests beyond the grave. That's, I think that's the kind of thing. that made America great. Yeah, I love what you're saying because, you know, it says

in scripture that God appoints the times and the place. And I do think there is a sense in our modern context that we are nostalgic for the greatness of the past. America is blessed with an incredible past and an incredible story, a founding story,

but also, you know, World War II, the sacrifices of the Civil War, overcoming slavery and segregation, all of these things, these myths that are not their actual history, but these are our founding myths that it's hard not sometimes they're not get stuck in them and you look at your present travails and struggles and issues that we're facing now and so much of the present vibe is that we are a nation in decline and i feel for you know the youngest americans gen z youngest voters

that are being raised in a country where they feel this decline they've internalized it in many ways they've given in denialism and the only way through nihilism is to find hope and purpose, greater than yourself, greater than your present sufferings. And I guess that's why I resonate with what you're saying so much, because you seem like an optimistic guy. And there is a lot of reasons with God, all things are possible. And I think that is the American story at its most foundational level, is that this is a providential nation that God has his hand on. And it is the duty of the poet, and that's my role. And this a book. It's the duty of the poet to

to represent these goods that are old and true in a new way so that the next generation can carry on that tradition. That's why you have seals with algorithms and channels. Yeah, I mean, we didn't even get to. I have a grok-powered character. Humanity versus

an AI-powered robotic elephant seal about what is a human nature and how do we actually engage with AI. That's this one right here. It's pretty ridiculous, but a lot of seals. It's actually a, well, this is the West Coast section you're working through. Well, somebody used to live in Santa Barbara, I can appreciate it.

You just tool around and like a boat and you see seals like climbing up on everything and sea lions. It really is a beautiful part of the country. I mean, it's spectacular. That chapter, I actually call it our West Coast. Because I know you guys are very good about like, no, collects it fine sort of as a tactical retreat, but we're taking California back, baby. Yes, exactly. No, listen.

That chapter's hour of west. And I win the L.A. mayor's race. Yeah, Spencer Pratt, Steve Hilton. Beechy, I'm looking at you. Yeah, exactly. Do we have a poem to Spencer Pratton here? If not, I'm sure his cracked team. Well, he could do a reading.

What animal would be? Yeah. Well, this is fantastic. So let's give it one last shout out here. Guys, help get this to the New York Times bestseller list. Dr. Meann, well, Mr. Meand. You're Mr. in this, but it's Dr. Matthew Meyin and the American Book of Fables.

A gift here. I just want to say, I mean, I know this is a personal pursuit of yours, but the work that Hillsdale is doing, the scholarship, the quality of people that are produced and, you know, enabled, empowered through that institution, never ceases to amaze me. So this has been a real treat, and we were grateful to have you, sir. Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Get your copy today, the American Book of Fables.

Get it for your kids and grandkids, please. And keep it around the house and make it go. big because we need more patriotism. And we need more gratitude. So be grateful today. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.