The Charlie Kirk Show - Mangione's Guilty Plea + "Thank You For Sharing" + AMA 275

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Luigi Mangione is pleading guilty to his assassination of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Blake explains why he's suddenly admitted guilt, what should happen next, and how this all connects back to Charlie's message about helping young American men. Director Sonia Zawitkowski talks about her new documentary which asks a provocative question: Should America stop talking so much about mental health? Then, it's another hour of AMA with subscribers, with questions about the worst Communist government of the 20th century, quirks about Charlie that the team remembers fondly, how to host a successful TPUSA Communities event, and more. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com!    Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of, precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with noble gold investments at nobelgoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. Welcome, everybody. Happy Friday. Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. We had a very fun show yesterday. I hope a lot of you got to see it. We had Royce Roycia White on the show. And I feel obliged. It pains me to say this. But now that we're out of out of that segment directly, because it did confuse a few people, Yes, that was a satirical segment.

Royce White is trolling the WNBA to show how insane transgender ideology is. And we are cheering him on because it is incoherent. You guys should all watch that. It's one of the funniest segments we've ever done. So I encourage you guys to check that out if you missed it. But we have some exciting stuff to dive right into. We have breaking news this morning. Luigi Mangione, the Brian Thompson, healthcare CEO, assassin,

Hero of the Left is pleading guilty in federal court today on federal charges. So let's get that right away. Clip 13. Luigi Anjione has just pleaded guilty to the stocking course charges against him in federal court. So he says now he is prepared to plead guilty. His defense attorney Karen Anya Filo has just stated, quote, Mr. Mangoni is prepared to plead guilty to the individual. indictment at this time. The judge then asked Mangione, he confirmed saying yes. So the judge said,

is that the truth to Mangoni? Manjone confirms yes. Now, this might be a little confusing. It's been, this case has been unfolding a year and a half at this point. Why did he suddenly about-face and plead guilty? Well, Fox makes a good point on this, so we'll just let them say it. Clip 14. The team has done a very good job up to this point. Think about what they have done for him thus far. They got rid of the terrorism charge. They got the death penalty off the table. They got mandatory life sentence off the table in this state case. So they have demonstrated significant strategic, I would say, ability and skill. And so I think what they're doing here, they must believe it's their best shot for a number of reasons, many of which have already been discussed. So I was diving into this this morning. What's their reasoning here?

And it looks like basically their strategic plan that is likely is he is pleading guilty to a federal, it's not even a federal terrorism charge. They got that thrown out. It's not a federal murder charge. It is a federal stalking charge, two of them, I believe, where the charge is technically stalking that results in death. Now, that still leaves life imprisonment on the table. But it's likely that they're going to argue because he's pleading guilty in federal

court that double jeopardy applies and they need to throw out his New York state murder case. Normally that wouldn't work in most states, but New York has a stronger law on this than most states that they're going to cite and say, got to throw this case out. Now, why are they doing that? Because he can still get life at the federal level. I don't know. It might be his lawyers have decided the judge in this case is more likely to impose a sentence that is below life without parole. They might believe they're more likely to be able to out some other appeal, some sort of legal strategy in the future. But as she pointed out, they are clever. They know what they are doing and they're playing the long game. And this matters to all of us. I think we need to realize

how important this actually is to the left. It is Mangione should have gotten the death penalty. He should have gotten the death penalty because what he did is corrosive to the entire American body politic. He is a person who, for political reasons, chose a specific target who he didn't know. He didn't have any cause of personal grievance against him. He went, targeted that person, assassinated him. And the left has made him a hero for this. They idolize him. They want to turn him into an icon. Clip 20. I'm here because Luigi has a surprise hearing in federal court. We're not really sure what's going on, but there have been murmurs of a possible plea deal. And how do you feel about that possible plea deal?

I've always said I support Luigi whether or not he did it. So for me, I always knew this could be on the table. So I wouldn't really be phased by one. I support Luigi whether or not he did it. That's the view of a lot of people on the left. And the only way that you can check this, the first step towards checking this is you have to be maximally punitive when this sort of behavior happens.

The state, the government, our society must send a message that this is totally and completely. unacceptable. And to be clear, this is going to be a long-term struggle. The left has no compunctions about taking a political assassin, a murderer, and making them a long-term cause celeb, something that they fight for for years, decades on end. There are plenty of examples from the 60s and 70s and 80s, heinous murderers that they fought for to get out of prison. John Hinkley tried to murder the President of the United States, and eventually lawyers got him out of prison. He is a free man sending messages to Jody.

foster again. They want to make Mangione someone like that as well. And so we've got to fight for this. And we should change our laws. This is something we've talked about in the Tyler Robinson case, that the state is having to make somewhat challenging arguments for why he deserves the death penalty about endangering others or about the fact that there were children present at the scene, when it should just be core fact. If you are committing a politically motivated assassination, if you're doing a public assassination, that should just by default, carry the death penalty. But, and we'll get into this in the next segment,

the Mangione case matters because it speaks to a bigger picture. It speaks to the message that Charlie was touting in the days and weeks and months leading up to his own death. I'm going to play this clip. You've seen it many times by now, but it so importantly speaks to what Charlie's big message was that America faces a choice. Maga versus Mangioneism. Let's play it again, clip 21. Look, you've got two options.

You can go maga. or Magionism. You can go Maga or you can go Mamdaniism. You can go Maga or you can go Mohammedism. It's very funny how all the M's, MAGA is the only option on the right. Neo-conservators are not coming back. The corporate oligarchs were not going to let happen.

So MAGA has cemented the worldview of the American right. But the left, we don't know. It could go Maggioni, which is the most extreme. You could go Mamdani, which is very, very extreme. Or you go Mohammedism, which is just Muslim Islamic takeover. You get reform or you get revolution. We at Maga want to reform stuff. Political undercurrent underneath Maggioni that cannot be ignored.

That should not be dismissed. And that political reality is that is on the American left. Reform or revolution. It might look funny that there is this early 20s white chick outside the courthouse saying, I love Mangione, even if he did it, especially if he did it. but that is not something you should laugh at. That is not something that should make you chuckle. That is something that should make the blood in your body feel a chill.

It is terrifying that young people would love someone who heinously murdered a father that he didn't even know. And we have to think about what allows people to even have that thought enter their brain and what can we do about it? What is Mangionism? It's this violent, radical rejection of, you might say, the American experiment that says the problem with this country is capitalism. The problem is rich people and billionaires. And what's the solution? Targeted assassinations. Burn it all down. Blow it all up. No solution is too radical. And that appeals to the radicals of young America. Earlier this week, we were talking about one of Charlie's

last events that he did. He spoke at the Win the Storm, I believe, was the name of it, 2025. It was an event in Dallas, despite the name, it was actually about, it was kind of a roofers convention. And it was an interesting event because Charlie was taking question after question from these business owners and entrepreneurs who were basically saying, Charlie, we love you on Christianity, we love you on faith, we love you on the college scam, we love you on basically every issue, but could we please, could we please just get amnesty? And it was actually quite frustrating, and I just want to remind you what it was like. Let's do clip nine.

So why don't you educate me of what mass deportations would do to your industry? There'd be no one to work on the, to build back. We've already seen it in Florida. So then allow me to provocatively then have me tell you how I hear it. Are you telling me everyone in this room is hiring illegal labor? Not everyone, but I know I have it in the past. Okay, so everyone is saying yes. So, and again, you guys can boom me off stage, and I want to respectfully have it, and if I'm wrong, come to the mic.

So is everyone here in this room committing a felony? Yes. Okay. Good to know. And there's another clip. It's even more drawing a very brief one, clip eight. I'm white. I don't want white people doing the roofs because we're, you know, I got people complaining it's hot outside.

Charlie was very aghast about it. The other day we talked about, this shows the difficulty that's facing us of, are we ready? ready to pay any short-term cost at all to save this country. And we need to be able to say yes to that, or we will lose this country. But this actually links to the Mangione question as well. And there's additional clips I want to get to from this event. Because think about what it means when these business owners say only illegal immigrants are able to do this entire sector of the economy. What they're saying is that economy, that has basically become closed off to ordinary Americans. And they can say, oh, they don't want to do this.

those jobs. But there's two sides of that. What's one reason they don't want to do them? Because that job has become associated with the lowest wage workers. It's become associated with the legal immigrant. They don't know anyone who works in those fields because those fields have been totally taken over by an immigrant subculture. And that happens in more elite fields too. Why don't Americans get as many STEM degrees as they used to? One factor might be that half or more of their department is people from China, people from India, people from foreign countries who have set up their own networks of people who share their language, share their background. And the long-term effect of this is all the paths to having a good middle-class American life. It's becoming narrower, more circumscribed.

There's more fighting over it, stuff like DEI is playing a bigger role if you're going to college, and it's making people feel, whether they're on the right or on the left, that there's fewer opportunities for them and that there's not as much of a direct reward between hard work and success. And to be clear, there still is a connection between hard work and success, but we can make it more obvious and we can make it better. So there's a great remark that Charlie made at this same event, and I want to play it. Let's do clip 11. You know, back in the 60s and 70s, we were a nation where it was an expectation when you hit the age of 14, 15 or 16, you would go get some sort of a summer job. You'd work at a diner, you'd be working in a kitchen and cleaning dishes. And as a

a parent of two young kids, I think to myself, I hope I'm a good enough parent by the time that they get to be a teenager, that I'm going to say, no, go work on some job that is maybe below our income level. And that's a big problem, right? Because once we reach the upper middle class, we have this idea that our kids should not have to do the jobs that we once did. But the idea of a summer job, I think it made kids understand the value of hard work, of discipline, of sacrifice, waking up early. And it's especially humbling if you come. from an upper middle class family to have to go caddy for a summer. He was a very wise man. Let's get another one. We just love to hear him talk. Let's do,

this is a short one, clip three. How do we treat an 18 year old right now at a local high school that says, I don't want to go to high school, I don't want to go to college, I just want to start a business or something. Well, the traditional path is, well, you know, go get your four-year degree, just think instead we should be celebrating an 18-year-old to want to go take that risk and want to go create value, to want to go out into the marketplace and do something unique and interesting and creative. This is the challenge before us, and this links back to the Mangioneism phenomenon, that in America, we must make it as clear as possible that there is a direct link between how hard you work and how willing you are to work and the success that you

can experience later in life. And there's various ways we can do that. We can make it so more jobs don't require a degree at all that you could maybe take a test to get it. We should encourage employers to do this. We should encourage employers to just say, if you can show this set of skills, we will hire you. We should encourage more employers to be willing to train new employees. There's various ways we can incentivize this. This is a big thing that drives the H-1B phenomenon, that you can bring in a foreign worker who's tied to your company that are not able to leave, and they're probably already got all the entry-level training abroad. So they just don't want to train new entry-level workers. We can make it so there's more advantages, more opportunities to start

a business fresh out of school, and it's not stigmatized and not penalized. The long-term effect of doing things like this is Americans from all backgrounds, all socioeconomic levels, will have that feeling. If I work, it will be rewarded. And it is that phenomenon, the sense of it doesn't matter what I do. It doesn't matter if I do certain things that I think creates a lot of radicalism. Even stuff people support. You have people who are victims of DEI won't blame DEI for their problems. They'll decide, I need to shoot a CEO instead. But if we get rid of that DEI, I still think they're less likely to go down that insane route. So that's the challenge Charlie is laying out before us. Can we embrace reform before we suffer a revolution?

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or call 972 Patriot today. All right, I'm very excited for this one. So we love having Lomaz, Jonathan Keeperman, on this show, with passage press, passage publishing, and they have their first, I believe, documentary release that they have endorsed and it's called Thank You for Sharing. We've got the intro of this movie.

Let's play clip 15. It is widely agreed. that there is a mental health crisis of sorts. There is also, it seems, widespread agreement on what the solutions to this crisis are, that mental health initiatives should receive more funding, that the mentally ill should receive more better diagnoses and treatment,

that the public should be made more aware of mental illness as a concept, and also that there should be a general and all-consuming push for everyone to participate in mental health culture and share their stories about mental illness. What few seem to be asking is, in one way for any of these solutions in short supply? So we're joined now by the director of that movie, Sonia Zawakoski.

I hope I got that right. She is a Canadian film director. Sonia, thank you for joining us. And why don't you just lay out for our viewers? What's the thrust of this documentary that they can actually watch for free right now if they want? The main question that I was trying to answer was, why is it that? despite all this attention and all these resources going to a problem like mental health, why is it that the problem just keeps getting worse?

And so in order to question the assumptions that people have about mental health today, I thought it would be effective to go back through history and look at a time before this narrative existed and how it came into being. and all the interesting and surprising things that pushed it along, like asylums at the beginning, of course, but World War II was a huge catalyst as well. And one of the surprising things that you'll find is that this narrative has been persisting for a really long time, actually.

People have been trying to tackle destigmatization for since really like the 1800s, maybe even before. So I thought that that was really interesting, and I thought that should be brought to people's attention. Yeah, I think all of us have lived through this experience of often, anytime something happens, it happens after mass shootings, it happens after atrocities like this unfortunate, a Lindsay Clancy case, or this mother murdered her children,

that's getting a lot of attention. And we just, we'll hear that we'll say, we have a mental health crisis in this country, and it's not talked about enough. We need to have more conversation. about it. And yet it seems we're having this discussion all the time and we've been having it for ages and the numbers only go up. I love this bit from the documentary that's actually near the end of it. Let's play clip 19.

The 10th man is the one man in 10 in your community who will need emotional guidance. Are you unhappy, depressed? One out of five American adults is mentally ill. One in four of us at some point in our lives will have a mental health condition. This is a paradigm shift. Welcome to the expert panel on climate change and mental health. He was diagnosed with a canine compulsive disorder. One in three Americans.

One in three Canadians are experiencing increased levels of exhaustion, frustration, and anxiety as part of their daily lives. So we go from one in ten, back in it looked like a 50s documentary, and then it's one in five, one in four, one and three. And I think it was actually cut off at the end there. It's that 50% of people supposedly have a mental health situation. condition of some sort. Now, do you believe that this was always the case and we uncovered it, or are we creating our own mental health crisis, as it were? That's what I was kind of trying to look into and get different perspectives on from historians of psychiatry and also just people with, I guess you could call lived experience. I think it's clear that people have always suffered. I mean,

every major religion, every ancient philosophy, addresses and discusses suffering. And it's interesting how suffering, which can be very meaningful and is an inevitability really has turned into this mental health issue. So the way we think about our problems, of course, changes the way we approach. them. So framing it as a mental health issue allows experts and professionals to take the issue on and it persuades people to put issues of their lives and their psyches and their emotions and whatever else. It persuades them to kind of outsource those to these professionals. Exactly. There's a very interesting part. And I should also mention, by the way, so right now

you guys can go to at passage press on X for this the next I think four days it's one week this is freely available on X it's an hour and 20 minutes you can watch that in less time than it takes to watch the show so I encourage all of you to check it out but it was it was near the end and it was speaking to a man who you identify as formerly mentally unwell I don't know his full history but he actually talks about this fact where he actually started to explore for example his faith more and that gives it just gives a different dimension to things. Like if you're struggling to get up in the morning to go to work, a mental health version might be you have this psychologically induced fatigue,

you have anxiety, you have depression. And whereas a traditional Christian point of view might be, well, you know, sloth is a sin and all of us are tempted by sin. Do you think there is something where maybe even if it would be justified to have a mental health framing of this, it's in a way just better if you avoid that because it's more productive to have different lens for viewing problems? Yeah, I think a big problem with the mental health system is that it just is so totalizing. And it turns all these different things that are happening in people's lives into one thing, which is a mental illness.

And that actually makes it very difficult for people to find out how they can live their lives in a meaningful way. especially because the mental health discourse, I found it to be really, you know, cliche and alienating and just kind of hokey. And I can never understand how this appealed to anyone at all. And that's part of my motivation for making this documentary. But yeah, I interview lots of people who have a different take on the mental health issue. And then, of course, I asked them, well, how did you kind of get better or recover or whatever word you want to use? And there's lots of different things. There's literature.

There's religion. There's art. There's like companionship, real companionship, not going to a therapist who you're paying. And yeah, that's just aberrant to the system because the system needs things to be regulated and predictable. And human beings aren't that. And suffering isn't that.

And so I think there needs to be more space and understanding for that in people's lives. And of course, religion was a huge source of that for a long time and now that's disappeared. And so I think people just need to get back in touch with that maybe in a way. Yeah, I thought that was so interesting. One of the interviews basically says like, how about if you want to help with your mental health, try reading Shakespeare more.

Try reading, I think, I can't remember if he says the Bible as well, but it's pointing out a lot of our earliest psychologists and psychiatrists really are just the author of Ecclesiastes, the author of Proverbs, the author of Romeo and Juliet, that we are able to get this. I want to say, by the way, if anyone has thoughts on this, please send in emails. Maybe we can read a question or two for Ms. Zawakowski here. But can you elaborate more on that hokeyness? Someone points out that basically any, almost any book written before the rise of this, any airport literature written before maybe 1990 or so,

before we had the biggest explosion of this mental health industry, it just sounds wiser, it sounds deeper. What is that hoax? What's making modern discourse so? hokey and lame in comparison to what came before. Yeah, I mean, that was another surprising thing. Looking back through the history is just how, you know, we assume that we're smarter and more technologically advanced.

And you go back and ordinary people seem to possess just a lot more like linguistic capabilities and intelligence and wisdom, like you said. And that's all gone away. And I think a lot of that is just the mass production of ideology. and in order to mass produce something, you need to appeal to the lowest common denominator. You need to make it simple. You need to strip away complexity.

So it just becomes very banal and just as straightforward as possible. So that's basically the reason, I think. It's like that's why the film begins in the 18th century when markets start becoming busier and more and more things start entering the market, one of those things being mental health, services. And eventually we're today, you know, now ideologies are marketed, so they do have to be as simplistic as possible. And that's why today political discourse is so just aggravating.

Oh, man. Do you think this is an America-Canada-specific problem, or do you think it really is globalized at this point? It's getting globalized. It started in the West, and it's being exported. And there's lots of evidence for that, yeah. And there was evidence that actually developing nations were handling mental health issues, better than we were, but that's all going away too. Sonia, there's a very funny clip here from your documentary, just kind of highlighting the way we generate new disorders all of the time. Clip 16. This morning, the World Health Organization raising a red flag for the first time adding gaming disorder to their list of addictive activities. Can grief be diagnosed?

Well, one of America's most prestigious psychiatric body says yes, and it has a name. They're calling it prolonged grief. Apparently there's like a diagnosis they give you. Oh. It's called highly sensitive person. I've always been called hypersensitive and I was like, you're just trying to keep me down. But it was someone we had on my podcast who was like, oh, it's called an HSP. I was like, now I have a diagnosis.

So that's just a few examples and I think there's others that are generated over time. Did you find any other particularly bizarre examples of them creating a new mental health diagnosis? And is it basically the case that we should just, should we just, should we just, we shut this down, should we say it is destructive to keep inventing new disorders that maybe we hadn't articulated before 1950? Yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of things, right? There's gender stuff. There's like there was a Tourette's craze that didn't last very long. And interestingly, that one people were more open about being skeptical of, I guess, because there's less ideology surrounding that one. But things pop up all the time and they always have. You go back

their history again and people used to get odd disorders like men would walk into the into fields for days and that was a memetic disorder and uh you know hysteria there's so many examples but before mass media these things would be shut down pretty quickly and they would fizzle out on their own pretty quickly let's elaborate on that point because i think people will find it interesting can you describe the hysteria craze of the late 1800s early 1900s and who did it affect what did it do and what happened to it well it affected primarily women which is interesting because a lot of times today you sometimes see a lot of these memetic diagnoses traveling through women and they were just presenting with those sorts of strange disorders or strange symptoms and they

would ride around and you know in school I learned that this was like a patriarchal designation that women weren't being taken seriously and maybe that's part of the story, but another interesting and important part of the story is that this disorder had a lot of glamour to it. People were really interested in women who had hysteria. It got them a lot of attention if they had hysteria. Clinicians would really kind of, it seems now in hindsight, encourage these symptoms in women, even on stages. They would make like an entire performance about it. So you can see the beginnings of a lot of the problems we have now happening then. And it's funny because it just kind of like was over one day. Everyone got tired and bored of it. They're like, this isn't interesting

anymore. They moved on. Well, it's also incredible. I love the bit. It highlights that part of one of the manifestations of hysteria was it was like hysterical paralysis. They would be unable to move. And then a doctor came up with a test. Basically, I think it was like you'd hit the heel of someone's foot. And it's basically like that test whether you have real paralysis or not, because it goes right to your your brain stem. And once you had a real test for whether paralysis was all in your head or not, suddenly this basically went away. So do you basically think it's the case that the people who were getting hysteria in the late 1800s are probably maybe the same women who were getting anorexia in the 90s? And then if they were around today, they might be saying, I'm transgender.

Yeah, pretty much. And, you know, I'm not even, some people watch the movie and they think I'm trying to say like mental illness is fake. And I actually don't, or that the mental health crisis, I don't know, isn't real or doesn't matter. And I'm actually not trying to say that at all. I think suffering is very real at the beginning. I have an interviewee saying the mental health crisis is kind of real. Things are getting really weird. People are really unstable and they don't know how to live in modern society,

but just calling it a mental health crisis is what is the problem. Offsourcing all of this to experts and professionals is part of the problem because it really reifies these ideas and it just imports onto them this gravitas that makes it really hard for people to extricate themselves from it. And again, it then precludes other ways of living that can help you manage your life and your suffering and precludes other ways of thinking about your suffering. It can be beneficial for people to use religion instead or all these other things. So I think that that's the big problem.

Exactly. I think that's the key point. As you say, the suffering in many cases is real. These people are not faking it. They do not lack these feelings internally and just do them for attention. But it's more like what mental illnesses we see in society are very socially mediated. It's almost like there's an er problem that a person is in distress or upset or anxious somehow. And it's like their brain is generating this is what a person like you does.

Am I understanding that correctly? Yeah, exactly. The professor of psychiatry, Edward Schroeder, calls these symptom pools. There are symptoms out there that you can kind of grab onto that will legitimate your suffering. People will see your suffering as legitimate if you express your suffering in these symptoms. So, you know, are people faking it? Like, you know, you see people online and they're having a breakdown over like being misgendered or something.

And it's like, I mean, I don't think their problem is transgenderism, but they do clearly have a problem. They clearly have some mental stuff going on. And they need, I don't know, they need to. they need a different way of just looking at their problems maybe. Yeah. I want one more clip just because I think it's actually very entertaining. So it illustrates this exact point.

Clip 17. In the Middle Ages, one of the most common psychological difficulties was something known as the glass delusion. I think it was like Charles the sixth in France, who was the first sufferer. And he believed at times that he was made of glass. And so he had to be wrapped in very soft blankets and sit on very soft cushions and handled very, very carefully. People would gather this idea that they were made of glass.

And in that presentation, they could have their suffering taken seriously. Today, if you said to your friend, I'm actually made of glass, you would be laughed at. But if you said to your friend, I'm cutting, or I have bulimia or any other kind of kind of current diagnosis that has cultural currency, you would gain a lot of sympathy. It's a very interesting documentary and only eight minutes long so you can check it out. Sonia, do you want to explain where's the best place for people to check out that documentary or any other work you've done? Right now, it's available for free on Twitter, and I believe it's going to be available

after that on Amazon and a few other places. I'm sure Passage will tweet about it. Oh, very much so, and I'm sure we'll profile it, and we look for it. forward to what work you do in the future. So thank you very much for coming on, Sonia. Thank you for the work you did with this documentary. We did get an email from Steve who says, Sonia Z, fabulous, repeat, repeat, and repeat. So thank you for coming on the show with us today. Thank you so much for having me. Before he ever stepped onto a debate stage or behind a microphone, Charlie understood something really important that if you want to lead, you first have to learn. Charlie,

believe that ideas shaped character, conviction, and courage. That's why he spent years studying the classics, the American founding and the Bible through Hillsdale College's free online courses. He would rave about these courses all the time. These free online courses are taught by Hillsdale College professors and draw from the same great books and enduring ideas studied on Hillsdale's campus. Hillsdale's newest free online course is the Iliad, where Professor Stephen Smith guides students through Homer's great epic of honor, courage, friendship, leadership, and the pursuit of true greatness. For nearly 3,000 years, the Iliad has shaped the Western imagination. It tells the story of Achilles as he confronts injustice, rage, grief, responsibility,

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We're here with Tyler Bowyer, head of Turning Point Action, and the man who's the reason we're in Arizona, and Arizona Cardinals fan, but the logo's all dark so that he can cover it up and make it hard to see. Hey, the Cardinals won yesterday in their preseason game. No one cares about the preseason. You know that's true. Yeah, but we'll take it.

As a Cardinals fan, we'll take anyway. What's your favorite Super Bowl win by the Cardinals? You mean back in like in like 1900 or whatever the last one was? I'm not sure if they've ever won a championship. Not in the Super Bowl, not a Super Bowl. Not in the Super Bowl era, but they won a championship. They're pretty dire. Honestly, the best Cardinals win ever is probably that time that you guys facemasked Aaron Rogers

and then it got returned for a touchdown. That Kurt Warner game that was like 51 to 45 or something. We've had some incredible playoff games, incredible playoff wins, just not in the Super Bowl. Okay. And we probably should have won that one against the Steelers. but had they not coughed up the football at half time, then we probably would have won.

That was pretty bad. I'm sure they'll win a Super Bowl eventually, but probably not when either of us is alive. No, we have a real Phoenix area sports issue. We have like the... We? I don't. The only team that's won is the Diamondbacks,

and it was like... That was pretty good. That was one of the greatest World Series. It's one of the greatest World Series. So you guys have that. I don't know if you're ever going to get a car. Beating the Yankees right after September 11th. But, you know, you beat Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the night.

It was very dramatic. It was dramatic. But anyway, I'm going to keep bullying you about Phoenix Sports because it's fun. But we're in our AMA hour. We've got people queued up to ask some questions. And let's dive right into them. I think we have Ian first. Ian, unmute yourself.

And what's your question? Hey, guys. How you doing? Howdy. Hey, also, just real quick, the Redskins have been to the NFC championship, way more recently than the Packers have, so just remember that, Blake. Whatever. Look, the Packers have won Super Bowls.

They've won a Super Bowl in my lifetime so that I was able to watch. So I'm able to handle the fact that for the past 16 years, they've been a Minnesota Vikings level of playoff chokers. We're always pulling for the Redskins over the Cowboys, so it's... Yeah, bro. And we're calling them the Redskins. Yeah, I want them to be the Redskins still, man. And it's hard being a Redskins fan.

I know when they change your team name. Exactly, exactly. But what's your question? I just wanted to say I'm so excited about TPSA communities. I've been working in that for the last couple months. And I know they just launched it this week. And I'm going to be hosting a prayer vigil on September 10th. Oh, God bless you.

Yeah. And it's just I just want to know what you guys think. Like you guys have been around a lot of these bigger events. And this has kind of grown a lot more than I thought it would. I was just planning on like 50 to 100 people. Now there's like, you know, almost 400 people just, you know, RSPing to it. So it's a might be a lot more than that because, you know, a lot of people just, they just show up. But, yeah, what are the keys to like a good event?

And also, how can we be praying for you guys at the Charlie Kirk Show and at Turning Point? Oh, man. Tyler, you've done some events. You organized the first Trump rally ever, I think? What's the secret to a good event? Well, first off, we're so excited about the launch. of TPSA communities because that's the culmination of bringing together Rise, which formerly was Blexit, and so many other communities that they've launched

TPSA Families, which is focused on families and family involvement outside of... Well, it's really the culmination of just that Charlie started as a guy speaking to young people students, but his message was so powerful, it spread so much. So we have infinite emails of, hey, I want to get involved, but I'm a 45-year-old dad. outside the student or faith zone. So this is kind of the culmination of if you're outside of, again, the students and faith zone, then you have a place between rise, families, young professionals, and what they've launched as TPSA Heroes, which is focused on military veterans and first responders.

And so it's really exciting. And congratulations, Ian, for getting involved so intricately here and launching some of the first events, because this is where I think this starts to really spread. You have, and it's hard, and it's a little bit challenging to the beginning because hosting events is not easy. It's not an easy thing to do, but it starts with really this grassroots operation of knowing 10 people you can count on and building around that. What about for an event itself? Any good guidelines just day of, make sure it goes well? And turning point action, we're doing a ton of the.

types of events through our coalition's events as well again it's all preparation it's talking to people know it building your list managing your list every activist that exists within the conservative movement should be developing a list of about a thousand people that they're remaining in in general constant contact with so really hardcore activists that are doing the job are trying to build a list and you're not gonna have a thousand people that are your followers to begin with, but Jack Posobic talks about this all the time online as well. If you have a thousand people you can kind of count on, all of a sudden it starts to spread, right?

You start, everything starts, all the activism starts to metastasize a lot. And so it is really important that in your community, no matter what the vertical is that you're getting involved in the communities, is that you're starting to identify those people and Rolodex those people basically through, tools that that community should be providing you, but then also just kind of on your own, because you've got to stay in contact with them by email, by text message, try to have as much face-to-face interaction. And this is where it really blends together with what we're doing at Turning Point Action, because when elections roll around, if you become the community leader, that then is a person that can remind people that an election's coming up, be that go-to for

any information that's coming up with elections, that parlayes really nicely into the C4 element of it. So the C3s, communities, C4 on action is our coalitions. But yeah, that's... Yeah, I'm thinking even just of the basics of the event itself. I'm thinking to, for example, good advice just going forward. Charlie was very good at promotion angle. I'm thinking even of little bits of wisdom he knew it. Wasn't it like go wide, not deep, for example? Food is important at every event, right? Doing a little bit of something, even if it's, even if it's small, people like food they they congregate around food things like that having speakers that are interesting in promoting those people right so every event that we do we try to have some kind of some kind of

hook right of this is the person even if it's small and in the community but also building events around people who are big names that are coming into town so if you know like again a riley gains is going to be in town she yeah she works with us at turning point like rope her into a community event, right? Like that, like everyone should be, and it's not always going to work out, right? You're not always going to be able to get everybody. But this is what I say is like, this is kind of the, the parling that we did with Charlie a lot was, you know, okay, JD's going to be in town or, you know, again, one of the Trump family is going to be in town. Offer, you know, make the offer that you can build something, even if it's a local community event. And, and by the way, some people start

to feel like, oh, man, I don't know. This is only going to be like a few dozen people or, you know, less than 100 people or whatever that's going to show up to it and people are like, I'm too embarrassed. I don't want to invite that person. No. In fact, some of the most critical times I think in Charlie's career was when we had him go to smaller events and be able to speak directly to small community style groups like this.

So that's what would be my advice. Don't be ashamed or bashful or anything like that or embarrassed that something's smaller, like from small things. It sounds like his first event is really cool. I mean, hundreds of people, I would say, be ready to brag about that and tout it. That's the other piece. Get videos. That's the other piece.

That's the other piece. That's the other piece. Get photos, videos, posted on X all over, so all the media sees it. Exactly. So that's definitely a big piece of advice. Thank you, Ian, for getting involved in that. We're very excited about communities and we're looking forward to what you and so many others will be able to accomplish.

I want to do this email question very quick because it might be one that other people have had. Ellie writes, hey Blake, my mom and I just bought tickets for our very first Amphist and are so excited. God bless you guys. I have a quick question and I thought I'd ask it here. We both have VIP tickets, but I'm the only one with a membership to the Charlie Kirk show. Since she is family and attending with me as an adult, would she be able to join in the members only area at Amfest? That's where we have members only room. We have interviews. We've had them with Don Jr. We've had it with a lot of people, like a lot of interested characters, the Korean pastor's sons were at the last

Amfest. That was a great interview. And we have this in a member's only room. We've had this in a members only room. She asks, would my mom be able to join even if she doesn't have a membership? I checked with Daisy and she says, yes, you are able to bring in your family members as long as one of you does have membership and can show proof of it. We would be glad to have you. Though, if she becomes a member, she can call in and ask a question here. So maybe, maybe worth considering. But that's great. All right. Now our next full question, I believe we have Elizabeth next. Elizabeth, unmute yourself. And what's your question? Oh, yeah. Hi, Blake. Hi, Tyler. How are you today?

We're doing great. How you doing, Elizabeth? So good. I'm actually wanted to sort of tap Blake Sprang, because you're so good with history. If you were to choose a communist dictatorship and takeover that was the most brutal and godless and horrible of the 20th century, I know there's a lot to choose from, but which one would you choose and why? Oh, man. Which of those would you choose? I mean, obviously the answer is you don't want to choose. any of them. But for being the most brutal and godless. Most brutal. It's often a common one. Some people will like to say, I think Mao's, China was the worst. It has a very large body count. They have the cultural revolution and it's a

big national psychosis. They starved a lot of people. But I'm a bit old fashioned. I think I think the original Bolshevik revolution, the communists who took over Russia, really stands out for how particularly destructive and evil it was. that maybe it's just the fact that I've read the most about this one. There's a great book, A People's Tragedy by Orlando Fijis. If you heard anything, Tyler's trying to put it up with a go there. By Orlando Fijis, and it just describes the contours of the Bolshevik revolution and how horrifying it was.

And it's not just that they took over this country and there was famine and people died. It's that they're blowing up historic churches. They are torturing priests and religious people. people to death. They're one of the craziest ones, Jack, Pesopek, when he talks about it, loves this example. There's a breed of dog that I can't remember, but it was a breed of dog that was associated

with the aristocracy. And they would just massacre these dogs as a symbolic point. And they do that at the outset from the very beginning. Some people will spin it like, oh, Stalin is where it went bad. No, it was bad from the beginning. Then you have Stalin. He has the great terror. People

could be denounced for the slightest comments. They'd be arrested in the middle of night and shot and their identity. What happened to them would not be known for years. You have hundreds of thousands, millions of people shipped off to labor camps. It is, it sets the gold standard for a tyrannical authoritarian regime and its bad legacy lives on to this day for a very good reason. And I actually got my degree in this. Yeah. And the Bolshevik revolution, believe it or not, I speak Russian. And I would say one point that you're bringing up is that Lenin led to Stalin and now.

So all of the top intellectual leaders in the Chinese Communist Party all point to linen as the inspiration for what that allowed for the Chinese revolution, the Chinese reawakening as they put it.

And in Russia, you know, you wouldn't have, Stalin never would have existed had it not been for the Bolshevik revolution. So it points to, so lot of people, especially in today's modern American Communist Party that exist, and they call it the DSA, which is now the Democrat Party, they point to the Bolshev revolution as fairly peaceful.

And the reality of that is not true. It's not true at all. Complete lie. It's a complete lie. And it's a good point that bad ideas lead to death at some point, right? And so hundreds of millions of people have been killed. Russia today has not recovered from what the Bolshevik revolution. No, hundreds of millions of people have died by extension, either directly at the hands of communists during the communist phases of these countries or, you know, as a result of those things.

It's not even just the death. It's the way it just totally derailed a full civilization that Russia is the country of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. It's the country of the Orthodox Church. It was one of the most religious countries in the world. And they decapitated that. Has the most resources. Yeah. Land resources.

And this still shows today that. if you pull Russians, one of the things is they have more survival-based values. They're less likely to believe that charity is a good idea, that kindness towards others is an important value. This is all downstream of how badly the communist revolution, the communist regime, it messed with their psychology. It did deep and lasting damage to their psyche, and it killed millions of people. It's just a tremendous tragedy. It is the worst event to have happened in the 20th century that that occurred. I often tell people when I went to Russia, it felt it felt like alternate 1985 in a lot of ways, like from the, from back to the future.

Because it felt like something was off. Something went wrong, right? And because people, no matter where you go in the world, this is just what I've learned that people are generally very similar to one another. They have the same passions, the same loves, the same hates, the same desires, the same will to, you know, for the most part with different cultural things. But Russia felt like such like in all, like. like an oppositional America, right? Like, it's just like everything that went possibly wrong, that could have gone wrong, went wrong. And that was all thanks to. All thanks to a handful of incredibly evil people. And it was just a handful.

Just a handful. The 1917 Russian Revolution was a super minority. Super minority. Super minorities with bad ideas can destroy your country. I wanted to get to an email that was sent in because I think it's really good. This came from Judy. And it was about the start of the show where we were. We're talking about Mamdani or Maga, Mangionism versus Maga, the need for reform.

And I mentioned how a lot of people have fallen out of jobs that used to provide good opportunities because immigrants have totally replaced them. And she had this great email. She said, I have had the same experience that you saw with roofers in rural southeast Nebraska. I remember in 2000, I was leaving church after a funeral. There was a crew repairing or replacing the roof on the Elks Lodge. They were all local American guys, one of whom had gone. on to the same elementary school through high school with me. Fast forward to 2022, I needed a roof installed. I was horrified when the local company showed up and it was all foreign labor. None of them

spoke English. And they had come from Omaha. That's two and a half hours away. And that's a city in the middle of the country. I was furious. I mentioned this to another contractor and he said, that's how it is. Even if an American wants to work in a job and is satisfied with the wages and conditions, can you imagine being the only person there who doesn't speak Spanish? How would that work? How would be able to work on a roof and use heavy equipment if everyone else is a foreigner primarily using Spanish. I just thought that was a great email from Judy, very aware of what the crisis is. This is what we have to fix. We need blue collar jobs that are not just accessible to Americans, but welcoming to Americans. Important food for thought. Great questions today. Great week of shows.

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I really enjoyed that question. I mean, it's a horrible time. but that communist revolution thing. I want to just take a moment to note there are a lot of other really bad ones. And usually the only thing making them not as bad as the Bolsheviks is they were mercifully short. There's a guy, Belakun, took over Hungary, communist revolution. Incredibly violent, incredibly horrible, but thankfully he was defeated. Chalajisco.

Yeah. And Romania. Romania. I mean, those later ones, the Iron Curtain all horrible in their own way. But they all do flow out of that one Bolshevik revolution. Even the This was even It was mostly a marginal

extremist movement Until they happened to Pull off a fluke win in a revolution And it's been poisoning the West ever since There are all these academics Who embrace Marxism Not because there's any evidence in favor of it But just because

One of them took over a superpower Ideas have consequences As we see with them As we see with figures like Obama LBJ Zeron Mamdani today It bears emphasis this.

Shoshishku and Romania, interesting story. So the place where the government operates out of is it's known as Shoshisku's palace. It's gigantic. You can see it from space. But they basically just murdered

every person that lived within that whatever that city block that they built the entire thing and took their property and just built this entire very ornate palace. It's quite the site, but it's so huge. I've walked through it. I think half of it's empty. More, yeah, I think more than half is empty.

I've walked through, I've actually been in a few times. It's like, but that's like, heaviest building in the world, I think. Scary stuff. But these people, like, and if you study in all these places, whether it's Romania, Bulgaria, where it's been tested in the Baltic states, you know, Russia, where I spent most of my time, it's, these are scary, scary ideas that have murdered people, have left people. wrecked civilizations. Wreck them.

People are poorer than they've ever been. There are places in some of these places in Eastern Europe that it looks like a, it looks like a third world country that you would never be able to envision anywhere else. It's so upsetting. They don't even have electricity or running water. We want a more upbeat question. So this is a great one. This is aimed right at you, Tyler, I believe.

Tim, you're next. Unmute yourself. And what's your question for Tyler? Hey, Tyler. Yeah, since you're on the show today, I thought this would be a good opportunity to have ask you about something I've wondered about. I'm very intrigued by the work you're doing with going out in the ballot harvesting. And I was just kind of curious some of the details around that. So if I'm looking at my calendar, how many, how many days typically does somebody come out for?

How many, you know, how many, how many days should I plan to be there? And I was just kind of wondering, is it typically done in the evenings? Is it something you do all day? Is it more on the weekends, weekdays? And what kind of training do you guys provide beforehand? So, yeah, just kind of some of the logistics about that would be helpful. No, we appreciate it. Thank you, Tim. And yeah, we're looking forward to having you out. So we actually are launching our Commit 100 program on Monday. So you can see it right behind me. It's tpaction.com slash 100. It's the thing that keeps falling down. That will be live this next Monday. And the idea is, is that we actually, and we're encouraging people to go to Arizona, New Hampshire, or Nevada. We need as many people as we humanly can in Arizona. So if you can, if you can bookmark yourself for any time. October, Arizona Zet. We generally like to schedule people through our Commit 100 program for about a week or more. So if you can spend a week, if you can take a week off work,

great. I mean, we'll take less time and we'll have different like levels of that, if you will. We'll start by booking people for weeks at a time starting on Monday and you come out and we do a training on day one. So you're right in your, either at our headquarters or your hotel that you're staying in, we usually do a training. I see them. It's a class. It's just right there in the action building.

It takes about three hours. We take you through everything and we give you more training than anyone's ever given people who volunteer for these types of things. And then you get a list of 100 people. So we call it the Kibbett 100 program because you have 100 people that we're trying to chase their vote. So October, when the time we book you for to come out, the early ballot, are already out. People have their ballot sitting on their countertop effectively, and you're going out and chasing 100 of those people to try to get their ballots in, obviously, for our guys.

In Arizona, it would be Andy Biggs in Nevada, Joe Lombardo, and Johnson, Nunu in New Hampshire. So, yes, if you can plan the time now, and this is for everyone that's listening, take the time now to plan one to two weeks, if you can in Arizona will put you in a hotel. You can spend the time. You can work mostly during the day. The question is when can you work? Generally, you have to get this work

done before the sunsets because people will get really freaked out if you come knock on their door or try to contact them after dark. And so most of this is during the day. And so then your nights are free. And so you can kind of do fun stuff and, you know, see Arizona or Vegas or New Hampshire. New Hampshire should be beautiful

that time of year. to just kind of go mill around and see the sites and all that stuff. And then have the weekends as well because most of the work can get done. If you do it well, Monday through Friday. So two weeks worth of work, you should be able to make contact and chase 100 ballots. Our target is 10 ballots per day. And obviously, that's if you get all of them. We don't expect everyone to get absolutely every vote out.

But we're trying to. And that's why we've done the commit 100 program, the way that we have. It's high intensity, high investment, but we're hoping it will pay big dividends. This last election cycle, our Commit 100 program chased 86% of the votes that we were chasing. That's the lowest of low propensity voters, 86% of them turned out. Obviously, President Trump helped a lot. And people were familiar with him, so that helped. But yeah, our ballot chasers did an incredible job who came out and volunteered. That's awesome. So we hope that you're able to take part. Thank you for that question. I think we have Anthony next.

Anthony, unmute yourself. What's your cue? Hey, guys. How are you both doing? We're doing great. Tyler, actually, I can add to something you said about food and stuff at events. The GOP in my town just did their first meet and greet for a town supervisor candidate. They've never done one.

And they raised almost $10,000 in two hours. Wow. They had food. Yeah. Got to have food. They had us. They did finger food so nobody was sitting down so people could still mingle and everything. And they talk with the candidate.

and people wrote checks of, I'll say this, $500 or more right than there and that night. It's great. In Wisconsin, they do something similar. They do a lot of these, a lot of beer and wine nights where they congregate. Everybody brings a bottle and they have, you know, sip and then they are able to kind of talk about these things. It's great. I mean, any way that you do it, whether it's donuts or whatever, right, like, you got to have something. The food matters.

But my question is this. So I've been reading in Massachusetts. that the governor is trying to create some Muslim commission to help Islamic Muslims get into state positions. Is that first legal? Also, is that another form of DEI because now you're making it one group and you're segregating the rest? So I've been reading about this and is it legal? It's all very dodgy. So what it is is it's a proposed bill.

So I think it's legislators. I don't know if the governor is endorsed. but it's coming out of the legislature and it would it's an old bill that they're reintroducing and it would basically create a formal 11 member commission so that's why it might be legal i don't know if there's really restrictions on you can make a body to suggest things and stick people on it but it is a group whose purpose is to advise and advocate for muslim americans and then you know make recommendations about how to respond to islamophobia and it does seem like one aspect of it is to suggest potential Muslims for positions in the state.

So I think they could straight up say maybe if there's a judicial vacancy, oh, this, you know, should have Muslims appointed to it. So it 100% is DEI. It is DEI because you are creating a special group for this like novel minority group to advocate for them. They're going to inevitably start suggesting, oh, here's how you should restrict freedom of speech to curb Islamophobia. Here's policies you should have at universities to prevent the rise of anti-Muslim hate.

It's not good to create entities like this, really for any group, but especially a group that we're worried is not very ideologically amenable to the West, to Christendom. It is a bad sign to say the least. Yeah, to put this in the context. And some of this is happening, by the way, because there were some commissions and some laws that have been put into place to fight anti-Semitism in the similar way, which a lot of people attacked some Republicans who voted against those

for this very reason. A lot of Freedom Caucus members had actually voted against ideas like this. It's playing on the left's playing field if you do too much of that. And we oppose anti-Semitism strongly. Charlie was worried about this, though, that if you're creating a group to generate solutions,

it's very likely going to end up being... And now here we are. We want carve-outs. We want hate speech laws. Now here we are. now they're putting these same commissions together for Islam. And to your point, it's far, like, far more dangerous. And there's not, there's not dangerous introductions that we're seeing that are similar to or akin to Sharia law in your local community.

And so this is, this is a horrible idea. This is a terrible idea. This is a part of the reason why, you know, we shouldn't have these types of groups for, you know, any, any religious minority. Like there's, we don't need any permanent commission whose job is to go around and find ways to solve any phobia crisis. Government never solves problems. It inflates a crisis. So that's definitely our take on this. We have one minute until the break here, but maybe you could answer this quick.

We have a written question from Zach. He says, I'm seeing polls that Hustead will lose in Ohio. That's the Senate race, I believe. And Vivek is within 1%. Is this true? I live in Ohio. I don't see that happening. How worried should we be?

One of the things right now, remember, early to mid-odagh. August is usually the worst polling era when you hold the presidency for the party in power. So these weeks are the worst polls typically historically that we've seen. So there's a lot of freaking out going on because there's a lot of bad polls that seemingly bad polls that are out there right now in many of the swing states. I would just say kind of hold onto your pants. See where we end up. About a month from now, we'll know, we'll have a much better idea of how things are shaking

out. It's much more likely that things are going to tighten up in all the swing states by early September. We've got a few questions to go. We got this written question that I really like, Tyler. Kelsey asks, I enjoy thinking about the random small things I loved about Charlie, like when he would give Blake the Hillsdale Roman history quizzes for fun during breaks. Are there any quirky or small things Charlie did that you miss about him that people might not know about? I was thinking about a funny one. We had Sonia Zawakus. I'm inheriting it here. We had the documentary filmmaker of thank you for sharing who has a long Polish sounding last

name. And I was remembering, do you remember how Charlie, he could not usually pronounce like weird names that well? And what was funny about it was you could repeat it for him right to him. And it like still wouldn't quite work. It was just a very funny quirk of his. And I got such a kick out of it every time. Yeah.

I miss on the day to day basis. So I've had, I've been. obviously in one-on-one chat with charlie for you know 11 now almost 12 years and i miss so much this last year of just like we would just drop the funniest things into our chats right it would be like a lot of our chats was especially the last few years was like me andrew and charlie the political stuff and handling all the media and stuff like that but his response oftentimes was yeah i quit i love to i quit Now, all cabs, LMAO. Like, that would be his, like, most frequent thing.

Yeah, his common ones, OMG, oh, my gosh, LMAO. I liked I quit, which would be, like, there would be, like, some email that was, like, really bizarre or something. So I never, I was never an LMAO guy, but this last year, I've kind of adopted the LMAO with things when, so I see something funny. And sometimes it just makes me feel like Charlie's in the room. And it just makes me sad that I can't drop it to him and have him do it. Oh, for real. feel like we have to fulfill a lot of stuff right i've you know fun stuff and serious stuff where i always think like how would he react to this what would he do well and i go back through our chats and i

read them you know and you know i'm so against people sharing his private communications i've been so disgusted with people who drop i have literally thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of chats of charlie and i would never even think about sharing even semi-positive stuff and i even the positive of things that are not controversial or trying to make a point or something like that. You know, I feel bad even, you know, sharing. But I think people that do that have been awful. But I will read through all those chats and kind of just it makes me feel like you're back in that moment, right?

And get inspiration for kind of where we're at now. And that's really, I read the things that he said like even like almost 10 years ago, right? And it's, and the difference between obviously Charlie. You know, grew up. He matured, like, in so many different ways. But he was so much of the same person. People have no idea. Like, in 20, when I met him in 2014, 2015, he was such a brilliant person that gave so much insight. You know, even before some of these things were a big deal. And he was so right about so many things. It's early on before he. It's almost like in many ways, you know, he was just so ahead of his time. I like this. Caboose points out, I miss playing music before segments. and him trying to guess the song artist. That's another one. It's very funny because Charlie, he had a few bits of pop culture he really liked,

but it was very limited. And so... He didn't really know. He didn't know. Yeah, he didn't know huge swaths of artists. It was always so funny, so cute. The pop punk era. And, you know, that was one of his strengths, to be honest.

We all miss him so much. And you'll be hearing... You'll be hearing us say more about that, of course, as the anniversary approaches. We have one more question, I think. We have Ben. Ben, unmute yourself. You have a question.

What is it? All right. Can you hear me? There we go. Yeah, we can hear you. Ben, what's your question? Hi. All right. So something off topic. I know it's not something that you guys were talking about, but I have a concern when presidents do pardons. And I was wondering, is there a certain extent that a president cannot pardon? Or does something have to happen in order for the people to address this issue? So this has been litigated a bit, and the answer basically is there is essentially no limit to a president's pardon power over federal charges. A big reason for this.

The U.S. president, in a lot of ways, is the successor to the old king of England, like a royal monarch. And the pardon power is traditionally a royal power, that a monarch has this power of life and death over his subjects. He has the power to punish, but also the power to grant mercy. and that was inherited by the United States president. The Constitution says he just has the power of pardon. It's generally being interpreted extremely broadly. So the president, he can do a total pardon before someone even goes on trial. That's what Nixon received, for example.

They can commute certain parts of a sentence, but not all of it. They can pardon some charges, but not others. The only limit is they are limited to federal crimes. So this has come up, for example, people want President Trump to pardon Derek. But you could only get rid of the federal charge, not the Minnesota state charge. That would come down to the governor. Obviously, we've seen there's a lot of controversy that comes from this, that some presidents have, you know, they've given pardons to people who are donors or are linked with donors. They've given pardons to family members.

A lot of that's controversial and understandably so. But there isn't a limit on it in the Constitution. we would almost certainly need an amendment to curb that. And I think there's arguments to be made in favor of it, but there's also arguments to be made in favor of the full pardon power just because it is a little bit of a safety valve that we have for the Republic, where you can have something like J6. It got out of control.

It became this big tumor on the American Republic. And President Trump said, I am going to lance that boil, squeeze out the pus, make that problem that just resolve it like, that. And I think that's the best argument in favor of it. Thank you for your question, Ben. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.