The Charlie Kirk Show - How “Consequentialism” Killed Charlie

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

In Charlie's final months, he zeroed in on what he believed to currently be the most serious threat to the future of the West. Dr. Gad Saad joins Andrew Kolvet and Jack Posobiec to expose those threats and to discuss suicidal empathy, peace in the Middle East, the rise of leftwing political violence, and the role "consequentialism" in Charlie's assassination. 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 much.

many kids as possible. Go start a turning point USA College Chapter. Go start a turning point you would say high school chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life and I encourage you to do the same. Here I am.

Lord, use me. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. 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. All right. Welcome back to the Charlie Kirk show, Andrew Colvin, in here, executive producer of this show,

joined by Jack Posobic, host of Human Events Daily with Jack Posobic. I was so honored to have our next guest here, Dr. Gad Sad, who is a great friend of the show, has been a great friend to Charlie Kirk. He is also the scholar, I want to get this title right, because he has, he's actually a new, wonderful title. Dr. Gadsad, Scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at University of Mississippi is also the author of a bunch of amazing books, the parasitic mind. He's working on a new one. I want to talk to him about that. Dr. Sad, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show, and thank you for making the time.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. Cheers. Yeah. Well, Dr. Sadd, I want to let you start where, you know, I think it makes sense most. And that is, you know, we haven't had you back on the show since, you know, Charlie was taken from us on September 10th. And I just want to give you a chance to reflect on what this last month and plus has meant to you. And just let you reflect on what a loss we've all suffered. I mean, I sort of oscillated from sadness to anger. Only maybe, I think it was maybe a month prior to the tragic day, I had appeared on the show with Charlie. And I've told the story before, but it's worth repeating here. You know, I've spoken to many wonderful people, you know, throughout my professional career, many of whom have come on my show. I mean, really, really top people.

My daughter, who's 16 years old, never asked for me to introduce her to anybody. When I was appearing on Charlie's show this last time, she came home excitedly and said, could you please just introduce me to Charlie? And so that kind of gives you a sense. I'm 61 years old and a fan of Charlie, and my 16-year-old is a fan of Charlie. So it is an immeasurable tragedy, but here we are promoting his legacy. So hopefully he lives on in all our hearts and minds. And Dr. Sadd, maybe that's the next best place to start,

you know, you talk about his legacy. I don't typically throw this question out to people, but you are a public intellectual. You are a great thinker. You have a way of distilling ideas. What is Charlie's legacy in your mind? And what do you hope that it will grow into? You know, there are several ways by which I could answer this question. I'll take a stab at one or two ways. Number one, you know, in chapter, in the last chapter of the parasitic mind, I ask people to activate their inner honey badger. And I use that terminology because the honey badger has been officially classified as the most fierce animal in the animal kingdom. Now, I don't mean when I say activate your inner honey badger for you to be violently ferocious, but it means, you know,

get off the couch and do big things, stand tall. And Charlie was not only physically tall at six foot four, but he was a tall honey badger in that at 18 years old, when most of the of us are worried about how we're going to get through the next day, as you know, with teenage angst. He starts off something that is absolutely impossible that most people in their 80s wouldn't dare start. And so first of all, the fact that he had the chutzpah, right, which is a Yiddish word for sort of existential gall, the fact that he had the confidence to say at 18 years old, I'm not going to university, I've got better ways to be able to contribute to the cause is something that we could all cherish and be inspired by. But then the fact that he was

able to cater to the young people, to get involved, to get excited so that my daughter is not asking me to introduce her to Elon Musk, but is asking me to introduce her to Charlie Kirk that says everything you need to hear about his legacy. He is a unique individual in that he had the intellect, he had the political ability to organize, he had the warmth, right? He always has a smile, even when he's engaging in difficult debates. He's warm. He's engaging. So he's, he's an immeasurable loss, truly, one in a generation type of fellow. Yeah, absolutely. Giant of our generation. But he, his memory and his legacy will live on. And, you know, we're committed at turning point on the show to growing it, to expanding it as best we can.

can. And the outpouring of love and support that we've seen, both at the show, but the students on campuses, has been truly, truly wonderful and heartening to see. Now, Dr. Sad, we are going to get into some news the day with you because you have a way of making sense of the chaos, unlike few can. But I do want to pick up on something we touched on in the previous hour, and that is the rise of Islam. It's something you and Charlie talked a lot about, and I just want to play one clip from a conversation that you had with Charlie on this show, 290. What would you said the West is a woman to be

mounted? That is the Islamic Creed. Remind us of it. I would repeatedly hear from Arabic speaking, Muslim speaking, immigrants, in this case it was in Canada, always say that the West is a woman to be mounted.

And what the reflex that that captures is that all of the virtues that we think as laudable in the West can passion, magnanimity, generosity, empathy, are heard as weakness, weakness, and weakness by cultures that don't necessarily share our infinite largesse. And so it's exactly what they're saying, West is weak, it's a woman, therefore you mount. Yeah, powerful stuff.

And we've seen those clips go viral where you can actually hear them in their own words, say the West is a woman to be mounted, especially I think the clip that I've seen was from the UK, a place that Charlie visited relatively recently before, I mean, soon before the tragic events of September 10th happened. And so he saw it up close. And you had zeroed in on this idea of suicidal empathy. It's almost an opening that both the left and Islam were exploiting. Exactly. Maybe I could give you a quick synopsis of the framework of suicidal empathy. Many people have wrongly presumed that what I mean by suicidal empathy is that empathy is a bad thing. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

We are a social species, and therefore it makes perfect evolutionary sense that empathy would be part of our repertoire of possible strategies, right? For you and I to have a meaningful conversation, I need to put myself in your mind and vice versa. that's called theory of mind, which is part of cognitive empathy. Autistic children, for example, fail a theory of mind test. This is how we diagnose them as being autistic. So empathy, when properly modulated to the right targets and the right situations and the right amounts, is a perfectly relevant and appropriate evolutionary response.

The problem arises, as is the case with many psychiatric disorders, when you have a dysregulation of this otherwise beneficial virtue, right? So, for example, laughter is great, right? It has medicinal properties, but then you could have pseudo-balbar effect, what the Joker in the movie had where he, because of abuse, he starts laughing uncontrollably in wrong situations, or the way Kamala Harris can cackle the way that she does, that becomes an inappropriate form of laughter.

And so suicidal empathy takes this beautiful virtue, and then because it becomes dysregulated, it becomes hyperactive, and it targets the wrong targets leads to the demise of the West. And unless we get rid of this reflex really quickly, I can assure you that the West will fall. It might take five years. It might take 50 years or it might take 500 years, but it will fall the way many other societies have. Yeah, no, that's really well said. I, you know, and I think of basically what MAGA is, what conservatism has transformed into, in large part, thanks to President Trump, but also to Charlie Kirk and others, is that it now has a muscularness to it. It has a backbone. It has a fighting chance. Ultimately, that's why the left hates it so much because it's effective, because it is the it is the anti-vement. It is the counteraction to what the left has been doing in this country since essentially post-World War II in the, the evasion, the move in our institutions, the long march through the institutions of

progressivism, of liberalism, in a negative sense, obviously, in that second sense, and the second word. But yeah, this is the, this is the antivenom of what we're doing at MAGA, what we're doing in the conservative movement in President Trump. That's why the fight is so intense. Hey, Andrew Colvette here. Do you want to own a home? The time to act is now. For the first time in years, buyers finally have the upper hand. There's more inventory, more negotiating power, and less competition, but this window of opportunity won't stay open for long. As soon as the Fed cuts rates, buyer demand is expected to spike driving prices up and giving sellers the advantage once again.

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Call 8-3-8-3-8-1172 or go to Andrewentodd.com. That is Andrew and Todd.com. I want to share with the audience a little bit of breaking news right now. President Trump has just concluded his with Vladimir Putin. They've been on a very long call. And it looks like he's saying that they have agreed to send high-ranking delegates led by Marco Rubio to meet.

And then they are going to, after that meeting with high-level advisors, the United States will be meeting or President Trump will be meeting with Putin in Budapest. So President Trump hot off the heels of getting peace in the Middle East is now going to be meeting with President Putin in the near term. So hopefully we can get that, as he calls it, in glorious war between Russian or Ukraine,

brought to an end. He is going to be meeting with President Zelenskyy tomorrow here in Washington, D.C. So, Jack, that feels like a good time to throw to you. Jess, you are, you do have a bit of a feel for Eastern Europe as well as war analysis in general. Yeah, no. I mean, look, I've traveled to the war a couple weeks after it started back in March or 2022, excuse me, May of 2022. I've been to Budapest a few times. I was at the Anchorage meeting. I accompanied the president's delegation as a new media member there aboard Air Force One when he met with Putin just in Alaska. Just a few weeks ago in Alaska. So I was in the room with himself, Putin, Lavrov, all the rest. And what can I say? It looks like I'm going to Budapest. Oh, wow. There you go. Dr. Sad, and we'll keep Jack involved in. I want to make sure we're working in, Jack, here. No, no, please. But Dr. Sad, maybe comment really quickly. We've been told that American leadership on the world stage was coming to an end, that Trump was going to ruin America's standing in the world. And yet here he is pulling off win after win after win, achieving peace. Tie that into what it means for the West, that America's leadership is strong and robust and we're leading the way. Look, to go back to our earlier conversation where many Muslims say the West is a woman to be mounted,

President Trump lives in the real world where he actually understands human nature. He may not call himself an evolutionary psychologist, but he is an evolutionary psychologist because throughout his long and successful life, he's had to deal with many people, whether it be in his real estate life or in his TV life, where his ability to succeed in those forums stems from his, you know, understanding of human nature. And so having people like Joe Biden and the others super sweet and kind and empathetic diplomats who cross their legs like Justin Trudeau might look nice because you could show off your really colorful socks. But that's not what really nasty folks around the world respect, right? So, you know, I come from the Middle East.

In the Middle East, we have the creed, right, might is right. Or as you probably, of course, know, the old term, you know, if you wish to have peace, prepare for war. There are endless, you know, military dictums that speak to the fact that it's nice to have a velvet glove while you're shaking someone's hands. But make sure that behind your back, you have a really big stick, right? as you also know, speak softly, but carry a big stick, right? So all of these maxims exist throughout history because the world doesn't exist in a utopia, in a democratic, progressive utopia. It exists in the real world where people respect might.

And Donald Trump exemplifies that. That's why you're seeing win after win. Well, Dr. Sadd, you know, you're reminding me of something you said on the show with Charlie years ago. I remember it very clearly because we were at Berkeley, and he was about to do a campus stop at Berkeley and a tabling stop there. And we had to do the show. So we set up, you know, in some backroom. We set up kind of a mobile studio in some backroom at Berkeley.

And you guys were talking about gender ideology and the transing of youth and this thing. But it relates to this conversation, too. The line you used and he stole it. don't know that he always gave you attribution, but I remember hearing it and going, oh, that's a good line. I texted to him. He's like, oh, totally. It's great. But you said the pesky shackles of reality, the pesky shackles of reality, these things like, you might think you can fly, but you're going to jump off a building and find out really quick that gravity still pulls you down. You might think that the rules of nature, nature's God don't apply to you, but just test

nature's God and find out. So I love that because you are a realist. Trump is a pragmatist and he knows that the vile monsters on the stage it's better to work with them it's better to have them fear you and respect you than to be cowed by them so uh dr sad i'm a little upset at jack right now because jack uh spilled the news that uh i spilled coffee in it's not all that's being spilled around here yeah and now you're spilling tea coffee all the things uh but but listen i i love this because uh well i don't love the coffee spilled there's like memes being made I warned him about the curing. I said, we got a bum curing in here, and he did not heed my warning.

I have my coffee right here. What I love here, though, Dr. Sadd, is that you and Jack Posobuk are on a show together. I think you and Jack have disagreed on minor, honestly, very minor things in the past. But in this post-era, this post-Charlie era, we all have to come together, and I love that. And, you know, I feel like if you look at the medal ceremony, Dr. Sad, you had all these Fox host. You had senators and congressmen that don't always see eye to eye coming together to celebrate Charlie. And so I'm just glad this moment is happening. And Jack, I don't know if you want to. Well, no, I actually, the question that I had and honestly was, you know, really to kind of pick your

brain because you have such a good theory of mind of the left and such a good theory of mind of you have this ability to really get into what makes them tick. And one of the things that we've all been grappling with here, Dr. Sadd, is this, this idea that. that there was this kid, Tyler Robinson, an ex-Mormon, or comes from a Mormon family, would then find himself on a roof hundreds of miles away from where he lives, in a relationship with a trans boyfriend, so a biological male who was transitioning to a female, and then somehow thinks he's defending his boyfriend by, and again, allegedly, lily speaking, pulling a trigger and shooting Charlie Kirk.

and I wonder at all if you could possibly attempt to unpack that twisted psychology for us. Yeah. Thank you for that question. So I don't know if you guys have heard me discuss the difference between deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics. So it might be worth repeating it here, even if some of the viewers might be familiar with it. The entological ethics are absolute statements. So for example, if I say it is never okay to lie, that would be deontological statement. If I were to say, it's okay to lie to spare someone's feelings, I would be engaging in consequentialism. And of course, for many things in life, we are all consequentialists. I always joke, although I'm being serious, that if you wish to have a long,

happy marriage, if you hear the following question, do I look fat in those genes? Very quickly put on your consequentialist hat. And even if you have to slightly lie, you're doing it because you love your spouse and you don't want to hurt her feelings. So that's perfectly fine. But when it comes to certain foundational principles that certainly define the unique American experience, presumption of innocence in the courtroom, freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry, those things cannot be consequentialist principles, right? So if I say, I believe in freedom of speech, but not if you marginalize a particular group, then I'm succumbing to consequentialism. So to now wrap that up to your question, I think what this, the alleged assassin has done is he's drank from the Kool-Aid of the pool of consequentialism, which basically says, Charlie Kirk is such a dangerous guy that the deontological principle of freedom of speech and exchange of ideas no longer applies to Charlie Kirk. He is saying words that are akin to violence. So if I stand on that rooftop and take him out, boy, I should be lauded as a hero rather than be put in prison.

So that's what makes consequentialism so dangerous. And so in his mind, it's almost like he feels as though he's defending his boyfriend, his lover. Again, we don't know all the specific details there, but I'm just going off of what we've seen. And it's a complete, you know, you talk about the toxic, suicidal. toxic empathy. It seems like it's almost that suicidal empathy, but in the person of one individual here. Well, exactly. But that's why. So suicidal empathy is targeting the wrong targets, right? We love the Hamas fighters, but we have no empathy for the Jews. So there is no empathy for Charlie Kirk and his right to speak freely. There is only empathy for the trans community.

Right. Or his wife, his children, his friends, and everyone else. And so on. Israeli hostages have been released from captivity and those who are killed will finally rest in peace near their loved ones. Praise God. In this time of celebration, our good friends at the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews send their deepest gratitude for your prayers and unwavering support. Thanks to you, the fellowship has provided $300 million in emergency aid since October 7th, including millions in direct support for the hostages and their families. Of course, the road ahead is still a long one.

much needs to be done to restore and revive these victims of terrorism, but that's exactly what the fellowship does. For example, they're assisting returned hostages along with their families and friends with immediate medical, psychological, and financial support. They're also providing mental health care for Israelis of all ages. Find out how you two can help, visit iFCJ.org. That's IFCJ.org. We are with Dr. Gad Sad, who is a scholar at the University of Mississippi. So you are, you know, you're just loving the South now, huh, Dr. Sad?

Oh, I got to tell you. I am, the only thing that I'm lacking to be a full southerner is that I grotesquely lack in height. Now, if you want to feel like your self-esteem is going to take a hit, if you're six feet tall in the South, you're rather high challenge. And so the only complaint I have about Mississippi, thus far is that everyone is over six foot four when I am merely the height of Lena L. Messi. So I'm struggling with those ego issues, but otherwise, I am loving the South. I am

immersed in the South. Love the place. Well, I mean, you just got to get that accent, too, Dr. Said. We're going to wait for that. Y'all, y'all. Have you picked an SEC team yet? That's the real, that's the real, you know, the college football. You've got to, there you go. All right. I'll miss. There it is. See? He's in. So I'm going to play a clip for you, Dr. Set. I went to this News Nation town hall last. I got put in a panel with this Midas Touch Kid. I never met him before. He seemed very nice. As soon as we got on stage, it was, he was coming. He wanted his clip. He wanted his viral clip. Sure enough, he's supposed to run. The left seems to love it because I'm not disavowing the New York Republicans. I have no idea about the context of them.

My position on disavowing the New York Young Republicans is that when, listen, the Democrat Party gets to a point where they want to call Jay Jones to pull out of the race and they disavow him by actually disavowing him and saying they denounce anybody that would run for the top cop in the state of Virginia that would fetishize murdering his political opponents, which obviously is an issue very near and dear to me. Anyways, this is a clip 274. Political violence overwhelmingly comes from the right. these mass shootings come from the right. My dear friend was just killed by left-wing violence, assassinated in cold blood. There has been how many ice facilities that have been targeted?

What about George Floyd? What about that whole summer of looting and rioting? Listen, but there is a justification for political violence. It shows up in every poll, and it's coming from progressives. And, of course, there is this poll that I was thinking about in my head. Go ahead and throw up image 31. This was from September 12th through the 15th. So just in the immediate aftermath of Charlie's murder.

And it shows that almost 30% of liberals that are self-described liberals between the ages of 18 and 39 justify political violence. You see that blue dot over on the left side of the screen. It is an outlier of outliers, Dr. Sad. Your thoughts. And by the way, this perfectly segues

into what we discussed earlier with deontological versus consequential. This is exactly consequentialism. I'm speaking now if I were one of the progressives. It is perfectly fine to engage in political violence when you are facing the existential threat of Orange Himmler, Donald Trump, and so on. Right. So again, look, I don't know if you remember. In 1960, the Mossad had identified where Adolf Eichmann was hiding, and he was in Argentina.

And they could have easily put a bullet in his head to, you know, you know, met out justice. But they wanted to stay true to the deontological principle, which is that even someone like Adolf Eichmann deserves his day in court. So they ended up at great personal cost or risk and great diplomatic risk, tried to get him out of Argentina so that he could have his day in court in Israel. Of course, eventually he was found guilty and was hung, but that shows you the difference between what the left does, and in this case what Israel did, which is even Eichmann deserves his day in court. Yeah, well, that's a fascinating insight, Dr. Sad.

You know, listen, I think my belief here is that, of course, we want to get to a point of political unity, unanimity on the issue of political violence. But in order to get there, we have to confront. a very unfortunate truth in this country, and that is that there is one side of the political aisle that has begun to justify, and you put it beautifully, the rationale or the philosophical under-runnings of why, but that is the truth that we must confront, that they have completely abandoned the liberal values of a constitutional republic of open debate, open dialogue, the very values that Charlie himself espoused and championed. And we cannot forget that the assassin

on these bullets, had Bella Chow had catch fascist, hey, fascist, catch on the bullet casings. This is, this is, and he may not have been a card carrying member of Antifa, but he was certainly inspired by them. You had a question for Dr. Seth. Dr. Sad, so, you know, we've identified this. It's spreading. You've talked about it as if it's a parasite, which continues, but we're also talking about anti-venom. We're also talking about potential cures. Is there a way to reach people who, and again, but perhaps not so that are, some that are so far gone that they would, you know, pull the trigger themselves, but we also saw in the wake of Charlie's murder, thousands upon thousands of people taking into social

media, celebrating, clapping, cheering this on. And these were not card carrying members of Antifa. These were people in positions of authority. You saw, you had pilots, you had doctors, nurses, HR departments, all over the place where people seem to share in this belief. Is there any way to kind of break them out of this? Yeah, that's a great question. And one that I struggle with often when I'm trying to decide whether to engage someone in terms of whether I could flip them, if I could administer the mind vaccine to them or not. And it's not always obvious that your time is not going to be wasted on some people.

But I do think, and maybe here I'm being naively optimistic, I do think that with enough showing of the evidence, people can come around. But it takes a lot of dogged efforts. So, for example, I had a person who in 2010, I had had a very, very difficult email exchange with. Well, it took her 14 years, but then last year she came around and said, oh, boy, I wish I could have listened to you back in 2010. 10. She was one of those super progressive, liberal Jews who was very upset that I was saying some detrimental things about Islam because her friend is a Muslim woman and she's very peaceful and kind and empathetic. And I was not adding to the ecosystem of love by spreading hateful things about Islam and so on. Well, 14 years later, she said, oops, I guess I was wrong. So I'd

like to think that with enough evidence, people can potentially be reached. But here's where I'm going to hit you with the counterpoint that's slightly more pessimistic. I was recently asked on a show by a British psychiatrist, what is the singular thing that has most surprised me about human nature in all the years that I've studied human behavior? And I don't think you're going to be happy to hear this. I said, the difficulty to get someone to change their opinions once they are fully anchored. So it takes a Herculean effort, but hopefully we're all up for the challenge. Well, that's exactly why we were devoting so much, and we are devoting so much of our energies, Dr. Sadd, to ensuring that these high school chapters get off the ground. I will never forget

it was, we were in Aspen. A couple weeks before we were having a retreat for donors of Turning Point USA, and Charlie was working on the presentation the night before he was going to present it to everybody and he he his vision was very clear he wanted a club america after in every high school in the country and you know getting getting to students before they get completely ideologically brainwashed at the university universities where dr sad is not is not a professor of course is critical yeah obviously the university chapters are are critical as well but you see you you you do see this it's very it's very interesting i'm i'm learning something with this clip, right? Because this gentleman from my distouch, his name's Adam, I guess, he is clipping

it for his audience and his audience loves it because I refuse to disavow the New York Republicans, young Republicans. Well, they also talked over you. You didn't have a chance. I basically said, listen, I'm willing to have a conversation about it. But until you tell me that you're willing to disavow the John, what the, I just blame you. Jay Jones. Gosh. Jay Jones. J. Jones. Two Js. Jay Jones, Attorney General candidate, Democrat in the state of Virginia. You're thinking of John James in Michigan who we like. Jay Jones. So until you're willing to actually tell him he needs to drop out of the race, then listen, we have, we're going to be at an impasse here.

I'm willing to have a conversation about some of the things that were said. I don't agree with some of the things that were said. I don't understand the context of them. But this is what's funny. We are in this hyper-polarized environment because I have never gotten so many compliments from people about my performance last night saying, based, you know, way to go, way not to, you know, they were proud of me. for not doing the disavow ritual on stage with Chris Cuomo and this Midas Touch Kid because that's what he wanted. He wanted this clip to be able to put it on social media. There was no civil dialogue.

There was none of this. And it does raise an interesting point about, you know, social media. I'm being told by authorities, a lot of this stuff happens on gamer chats, right? This is a lot of this radicalization fully anchoring into these idea is happening on these discord chats and things like this. So what is the solution when it comes to the fact that? we are just living in completely different algorithms where we seem to be getting further apart because of the machines. Yeah, well, I mean, I try to do my part in terms of reaching the young people at the university level.

But I think what made, you know, to your original question about Charlie's legacy, the fact that he's able to reach, I mean, nobody wants to listen to, you know, a 61-year-old professor with gray hair, but kids want to listen to Charlie, right? because he seems only slightly older than him. And his brilliance is actually, I mean, it really needs to be highlighted. Let me draw an analogy. When I teach consumer psychology and I explain to the students that we can't sell chewing gum to 10-year-olds because they don't yet have the cognitive apparatus

to fight against the advertising message that's thrown at them. So that's why all the ideologues try to get to your children early, right? That's why we have, you know, twerking drag queens during, you know, reading hour when they're five and six years old. Because the ideologues understand that we need to get to the children very early before they have developed the cognitive armory to protect themselves against the nonsense. And so I did my part of the university level. God willing, you guys will be doing it at an earlier age bracket and hopefully we can administer the mind vaccine globally. Hey, everybody. This is Andrew Colvette, executive producer of The Charlie Kirk Show. Burna is proud to continue supporting Charlie Kirk's mission and the important work of Turning Point USA,

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I've personally tested the Burna pistol and can vouch for its effectiveness and its ease of use. Be prepared. Be confident. Be safe. Go to Burna, b-y-r-R-N-A.com. That's burna.com. and see why tens of thousands of Americans are choosing Berna for peace of mind. I want to talk about this AOC Bernie Sanders Town Hall, Dr. Sad. You know, well, they were talking about social media, so let's play this clip, 248. Does Republican messaging on social media seem so much more effective than Democratic messaging, and what can we do about it? Well, that's a great question.

I think the Republicans are effective. They have learned a lot about social media. And by the way, it doesn't hurt that they have friends on all of the major social media platform. That's factually inaccurate. But, you know, there is this thought that I've been having, Dr. Sad, is that this reaction, that they're resorting to violence. There is this thought that keeps occurring to me. And I said this last night at the town hall, you just need better ideas. I mean, part of the reason that the left is losing the social media.

battle is because their ideas do not hold up to scrutiny. And once they are allowed to be scrutinized in an equal setting, equal footing, they tend to fall apart. Ours go viral because they're common sense. Can I just say something about X and Elon, which by the only one, right? We have like X and I guess like a little bit of CBS right now maybe. I don't know. And and and and Elon didn't come in and start boosting conservatives though. What he did is he came in and he stopped. banning conservatives. He stopped censoring conservatives and he instituted one tier standard for everyone. And then he also instituted community notes and all the rest. And that for some reason to them made them so upset that they all started running over to blue sky. It wasn't in a boost of

engagement that Bernie Sanders is saying it was actually leveling the playing field to an equal standard. Indeed. And I'll just yeah, maybe I'll add a point. So it is true, of course, that in the battle of ideas, the conservative ideas, of course, we would all agree are much better than the progressive ones. But I want to introduce a slight cosmetic point that speaks to sort of the virality on social media. In my happiness book, the book after the parasitic mind, I talk about the research, not my own research, but there's unequivocal research that shows that on average, conservative score much higher on happiness than do. progressives and liberals. And the research is unequivocal. So that if you look at the reason, by the way,

if I can just explain it very quickly, the conservative, I argue, wakes up in the morning. He may not live in a perfect society, but there are things worth conserving if you are a conservative by the definition of that term. The progressive wakes up with unbelievable existential angst. I live in a supremacist society, white supremacy, transphobic, Islamophobic, built on slavery. Therefore, I need to eradicate the current society, and around the corner, they'll be unicornia. So I'm sullen. I'm dower. I'm angry.

Look at Bernie Sanders. I mean, he is more scary looking than, you know, the black Mamba. Whereas you look at you guys, you look at all of the beautiful women on Fox, they look happy. They are easy to, on the eyes. And so I think that certainly is an additional element beyond just the quality of the ideas. that makes people more drawn to some of the leading conservative figures. I think that's a really smart point. I've never actually thought about it that way, Dr. said.

We live in a state of gratitude and of a sense of, I would say, obligation of duty to conserve the good, the true, and the beautiful. Things we're grateful for, things we have joy knowing that they exist. The progressive mind lives in a state of existential dread because they believe the world is not good, true, or beautiful right now, and they want to make it that way. And so they're willing to tear down all the edifices they see as in between them and their utopia that is simply never going to exist on planet Earth. And that dichotomy is why you, you liberals tend to wear their dread on their face, whereas conservatives tend to be happy. We tend to be jovial. And it was

funny because I also, I read also kind of like, like, like, it's like self-effacing, right? It's like, it's like you, you, you hate yourself, so you look worse. And then it's like, you know, I mean. But it's funny because I, you know, sometimes I would notice on social media in the wake of this tragedy, Dr. Sad, that some people would say, oh, you guys aren't mourning enough. And it's like, okay, first of all, like, that's not true. If you could just see us in private. But secondly, we do not mourn the way the world mourns. I have faith that Charlie is staring Jesus in the face. And that's our Christian faith. And I believe that he is, he's wearing a crown of glory. And he's a, he's a martyr. for the faith and for the country. I believe that God has a plan. I trust God's plan. I don't understand God's plan. I don't have to like God's plan all the time, at least in my flesh, but I trust it. And there is a sense of higher purpose at play that I am willing to, you know, park my emotions and my flesh at the door and trust the Lord. I want to play this other clip, Dr. Sad, because it's, again, we're talking about this AOC, Bernie Town Hall. Caroline Levitt's weighing in saying

We now have the two new leaders of the Democrat Party. It's tough to argue with that observation. But she really struggles to give Trump credit for this peace deal in the Middle East. And I want to dive into what that says at a deeper level about our politics in this country, 261. Maybe I'm wrong about the ceasefire in Gaza. Do you believe President Trump deserves credit for that? Well, you know, I find these, there have been several ceasefire announcements and developments that have happened. over the past two years. As President Trump was on the plane back to the United States,

there's already indications and questions about whether this ceasefire will hold. Do you give him credit, though, for getting to this point where it did get those 20 hostages back home with their families? In this particular development, yes, but we also know that President Trump was an obstacle to peace previously as well. Okay, so he was an obstacle. The whole world, celebrated when this happened and everybody said that nobody could do this except for Trump and yet somehow he is an obstacle

she says yes he gets credit but instantly has to say oh but the piece is fragile well of course it's fragile doctor said what does this tell us about the state of politics where we can't leave our domestic issues at the shoreline like we used to and sort of present a united front internationally you know I thank you for that question because in the way that I'm going to answer it, it shows the power of studying psychology and behavioral science. So here's the answer to your wonderful question. There is a great book by two French cognitive psychologists by name of

Sperber and Merci. The book is titled The Enigma of Reason, where they argued that our capacity to reason did not evolve in order to achieve some objective truth, but rather it evolved to win arguments so that even when we are applying our faculty of reasoning, we are doing it in a tribal coalitional manner, right? So it doesn't matter if Andrew convinces me that my position is wrong and therefore I will have the humility to say, thank you for correcting me, Andrew. You're right and I was wrong. I will double down, triple down forever more because my team can't lose. That's exactly what AOC is showing. She is showing that she's not an honest interlocutor. All that matters is that I don't give credit where credit is due. I can never accept

the fact that Trump might have done something that was decent and therefore I'm going to try to avoid giving him the due credit. Jack, anything to add to that? So I suppose is it possible then that we are able to return to a point in this country where things like being an American are where what we see as our tribe and this is one of the reasons that i think that uh trump's defense of the american flag uh fighting against the the the kneeling at the during the national anthem during uh the the super bowl and NFL games that if you bring everyone under one umbrella of saying we're all american citizens we made disagreement on uh on our cc team and our our our super ball team or and i are crosswise because his dodgers beat my fillies and

in the uh three to one in the darn nearest well yeah yeah okay all right i remember thank you you didn't make it interesting anyway we had the one okay it was eight to two the one yeah it was anyway we'd love too many men on base but the point is we can still all be american and i think that it's it's the it's the messing around with those nuts and bolts of the country that have gotten us to this place one minute one hundred percent yeah let me let me give you an example i recently had on my show, Ennis Kander Freedom, the former NBA player, right, who retired after playing for Boston Celtics, right? Now, this guy's from Muslim background, but I don't care that he's Muslim, even though I don't have nice things to say about Islam, because he

exemplifies the types of immigrants that we want in the United States or in the West. He comes to the United States and says, I want to be, to Jack's point, I want to be united under the common rubric called the United States. I'm Canadian, yet I'm at Old Miss. at a center called the Declaration of Independence Center for the study of American freedom because I embody and I'd like to think I exemplify all of the values of American exceptionalism. So you're exactly spot on. No more hyphenated Americans. If you are American, you believe in our foundational principles and then welcome in my brother.

If you don't, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. And that is a perfect place to leave it. Dr. Gadsad, a southerner from who's rooting for Ole Miss. I never thought I'd see the day, but it's, but it's, but it's all building bridges. We're all building bridges. Post-September 10th, I think it's fitting somehow. Dr. Sad, thank you for so much of your time. Thank you.

That was great. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.