The Charlie Kirk Show - Tyler Robinson: The State Responds + Vindman Crashes Out

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Utah prosecutors have dropped their final argument ahead of Sept. 1's hearing, and they point out the obvious: Even Tyler Robinson's defense isn't contesting the murder charge against him. Jay Town breaks down the filing. Mark Halperin discusses 2028 Democrat options and the total flop of 20019 impeachment star Alexander Vindman's Senate run. Nathan Cofnas, the blogger who exposed fraudulent professor Jason Arday, joins the show to discuss being the target of a left-wing hate mob. 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 noble goldinvestments.com. All right. Welcome, everybody. It is August 19th, 2026. Lots to get through today. They're very, very packed and busy show. We obviously had some important primary races yesterday. We're going to be covering that. the half hour mark with rich berris at the beginning however here by the way we've got mark halpern coming on and we're going to revisit the arde case out of the uk yes yes we have the

guy who exposed it who blew the lid so a massive massive show today um but first here we have to get to the news and that is breaking that the state of utah has responded to the defense in the Tyler Robinson hearing. And we have Jay Town joining us. He's a career federal prosecutor, knows this stuff inside or not. You've known him if you watch this show. He's helped us break down ATF reports and the like

because he's seen hundreds and hundreds of them himself. Jay, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk show. Honor to have you. You've read the state's reply memo. Again, it's sort of a, it's a bit of a volley back and forth. So the state, it's called a bindover. the state issued its first position, a memo, a brief, then the defense responds basically says, if all of these things are true, it's still not, shouldn't be a death penalty case, basically.

The aggravated, you know, add-ons should not be relevant. They made their argument. Now, the state has responded. When you look at this 19-page memo, what are you looking at? What do you see? Do you think they did a competent job here? I thought they did a great job. In fact, the prosecution hip-checked the defense pretty hard against the boards of Utah jurisprudence. It was actually pretty systematic in their response. The evidence is overwhelming against Tyler Robinson.

So to me, some of this didn't probably have to happen because anybody with a functioning limbic system would know that there's probable cause. to believe that Tyler Robertson killed Charlie Kirk and that there were other people in the, you know, and he did so for his political expression, which is one of the aggravators and also that it was endangering the public, the people around Charlie Kirk or behind Charlie Kirk are in that line of fire. But the prosecution took the extra step, which I think the Kirk family appreciates and everybody watching this appreciates to explain why. And explain why the

arguments made by the defense were false. Their reading of the law was just wrong. Right on down to them calling reasonable inferences, which is always a postulate in the law that is for a fact finder and calling that such things as speculation. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so Jay, pause right there. So when I'm reading the brief, again, I'm not a lawyer, Blake sometimes plays one on TV, but there is this, a lot of ink spilled in this memo that is arguing about the difference between reasonable inferences and speculation from a legal perspective. Why is that important? And what is the distinction? Right. So speculation is if you're speculating, you can't get to even probable cause or certainly not beyond a reasonable doubt. But let me give you a great example. And this is what I would tell juries in my

murder cases and my death penalty cases. If you went to bed and then you woke up and across your drive, there were deer tracks across the snow. You would know three things. Now, you weren't there. You didn't see any of the following, but you would be able to reasonably infer that the following three things happen. One, that it snowed last night. Two, that a deer crossed your driveway last night.

And three, that the deer crossed the driveway after it snowed. And those are all reasonable inferences that none of us saw. None of the 12 jurors were there that day. None of the, and this is just sort of common misdirection by defense counsel to say, you're just speculating, sure. You know, somebody could have hung from a platform like Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible and with a snow machine and planted, you know, little deer tracks in the driveway. That's possible, but it's not reasonable to infer that, right? That can't be your first thought. And so, and that's really what the state is saying.

It is the function of every fact finder. case it's the judge later on it will be a jury to determine whether or not these reasonable inferences that people were in the line of fire or that if he had missed the that you know he could he could have killed somebody else and put other people in the public in great danger and let's just get something clear and here's why that's such an idiotic argument by the defense we wouldn't be here if he didn't miss right so or if he missed rather i mean the the the the the the the the the the the the the The fact is, yeah, he hit his target because he had political motivations to kill Charlie Kirk, but he still endangered others by taking that shot.

There's always a risk that Tyler Robinson doesn't shoot so well that it actually lodges into the spine of Charlie Kirk, such that only small particles of that 30-odd-six round, that 30-caliber-class bullet, exited Charlie Kirk. And so, you know, the defense is doing all they can to make arguments. To be clear, Jay, yeah, there wasn't any of those. Nothing did exit. Apparently the bullet broke apart, ended up in his chest cavity. But, yeah, he didn't know that that was going to be the outcome of that.

Also, they made the point in the brief that the questioner's head was about at the same head level as Charlie's, was about at the same level, if not slightly above. So he endangered the questioner if nobody else. But obviously, then they make the point that there are other people to the left and to the right behind in the proximity. They made the point that he visited the location twice earlier that morning. He saw that there was people around the perimeter of that tent. Blake, you wanted to chime in. Well, I just, you know, they have the back and forth about aggravating factors.

Is this valid? What does Supreme Court precedent say? But I think the most important thing that people care about most is we have 60 or so pages. between the defense filing and the prosecution filing and maybe a grand total of one one and a half pages dedicated to the core question of is Tyler Robinson credibly accused of murder. This is a great point. Because the defense basically didn't contest anything other than to throw out one page to say, uh, we said some of the stuff was hearsay. Just the text message, Lance Twig stuff. They don't address DNA.

They don't address the rifle. They don't address the camera footage, whether that's Robinson. And that's what they say in this prosecution filing. Yeah, here, here's the opening from this prosecution memo, I guess it was filed last night. Defendant does not challenge the substance of the evidence demonstrating that he was the person who crawled to the sniper's perch on the Losey building rooftop, fired the fatal shot that killed Mr. Charlie Kirk, had the rifle in a wooded, or hit the rifle in a wooded area, got rid of some of the clothing he was wearing, and told his roommate to delete their texts about the shooting. prosecutors wrote. So that's that part. That's the very beginning. I mean, straight to the point. Do you like that approach? Did you like the way that they kind of just led with that and then

deliberated the aggravating factors? I do because look, at the end of the day, right now, I think that the prosecution and the defense would agree. The defense is trying to save Tyler Robinson's life. They don't believe that he's going to be found not guilty of anything. and the prosecution wants to put him to death. And what the prosecution did just in that one sentence was tamped down any ridiculous arguments that anybody is making, whether it's in the Twitter sphere or in the state of Utah,

that it could have been somebody else. Jay, there was a big debate that happened on Friday between Andrew Wilson and Candace Owens. And one of the things that came up was this concept of, well, the parents apparently had a role in turning them in. We know this from the charging documents. they recognized their son based on surveillance images,

a stills that were taken from the surveillance footage. There was a phone call. They worked with a local sheriff or a former sheriff deputy or whatever his particular title was. And he ended up turning himself in, right? Partly because of the surveillance images. Now, there is a suggestion that maybe the parents don't believe that he's guilty or something like that.

I think that's hogwash. There's no evidence to suggest that at this point. But had that been the case, would that be something that the defense would have reasonably brought up during a preliminary hearing? Yes, they would have brought all of these ridiculous conspiracy theories would have been brought out at the prelim because the whole goal was to not have the most significant charges like murder bound over for trial. And so every theory that was available to the defense could have been brought up. And they never brought up the fact that it was somebody else. They never,

they contested the DNA findings and things like that, but that's just going to happen. What we haven't seen yet really in evidence, we know about it and we can infer some of it, but the mom and dad are going to testify. That sheriff's deputy are going to testify. Twiggs is going to testify under oath about the admissions that Tyler Robinson made to them. That's why if you're the defense lawyer, you know that evidence is coming. which is why you're not saying, you know, oh, somebody else, right? I mean, it's absolutely a ridiculous statement to make, given the evidence that I've seen.

I haven't seen a stronger murder case in the 28 years that I've served in the prosecution business, and I prosecuted well over 10,000 defendants and investigated and prosecuted hundreds of homicide cases, to include death penalty cases. I've never seen evidence this strong. The only defense that I see they have left is to just try to save his life, saying he's a young man and get the jury to nullify some of these aggravators. But the fact is, Charlie Kirk was murdered because of his political viewpoints by Tyler Robinson. The evidence is overwhelming and even Tyler Robinson's parents know this. Yeah, and we talked with, just I texted

briefly with Andrea Burkart, who's an online, she's a streamer, covers these cases. I believe she was a former, actually courtroom attorney. Anyways, she, she, I wrote back basically and said, you know, the defense brief is pretty much exactly what I predicted. They'd argue, and this was back when the defense brief just dropped, I think the one witness tampering charge gets dropped, but the aggravator sticks. Is that how you see this probably playing out, or do you think the witness tampering is strong as well? I don't know why anybody would argue that the witness tampering wasn't strong, because he said, delete all these text messages. is where I'm telling you what I did.

Right? So I've admitted to a crime. There's evidence of a crime now on your phone, Lance, but delete it. Delete that evidence, right? And don't talk to anybody. Don't tell anybody about this. So I think it all gets found over. Well, so I do want to bring up one other thing that I have been personally really interested in.

I just saw this on X from an account called Allie J KISS, A-L-L-L-Y-J-K-Kiss. People can check it out for themselves. But basically, one of the ones. of the ongoing questions that a lot of people have had was there was there seemed to be prior knowledge in the social media sphere people were suggesting that charlie was going to be murdered that day before it happened now the truth is is that a lot of people say a lot of crazy things on the internet okay but this has been an ongoing question that i have and still have i want to know more about the discord chats there was some new evidence apparently this person uh found a a warrant that

had been served and it says this was obtained personally through a record search of utah courts exchange public case search so they went through and they found a uh this one you can throw up the yeah there there's the the the warrant and it was served against one of these people in this account was uh somebody named omar nage r a galves and it says charlie kirk is coming to my college tomorrow i really hope someone evaporates him literally next quote let's just say something big will happen tomorrow and it's got this phase. So these are the kind of things that we want to be, we want answers to, right? Was there prior knowledge? Was there a greater network that radicalized him? Did people on the Discord chats know? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And this is the first evidence that

I've seen, maybe others exist, that this investigators looked into this guy, issued a search warrant of the person that posted this and actually went after him. Is this, would you expect that there's a number of these search warrants out there for people that expressed seemingly prior knowledge? Well, I don't know if there'd be search warrants as often as there would be law enforcement that actually just go knock on the door. This is making a terroristic threat or an online threat and depending on the state or the jurisdiction that necessitates law enforcement knocking on your door. I would bet, and Andrew, you would know this better than maybe anybody except for Erica that every time Charlie appeared somewhere. There was a lot of it.

a similar sort of ugly statement of. I hope something bad happens to Charlie Kirk. So I don't think it's evidence of anything. That second tweet, you know, let's just say something big is going to happen. You know, I mean, who knows? But I don't think that that's some guy with insider knowledge, you know, but I think they would get to the bottom of it pretty quickly. This caused investigators to execute a search warrant on this guy's and the contents of his phone. They, investigators did not believe this individual is the shooter, but he posted these things that seemed to indicate prior knowledge. So that is the first piece of evidence I've seen, because one of the narratives out there is that the feds looked only at Tyler Robinson. They didn't investigate anybody else,

and they ignored all the other surrounding evidence. This suggests that that's not true. At least there's one. I would presume there's more. Ten seconds. Yeah, and I would just simply say, it was Tyler Robinson. It's clear to everybody to include the judge and the 12 people that will judge him guilty in a couple of weeks or a couple months rather. Thank you Jay. Appreciate your insights there. Thanks, Andrew. If you think wireless companies are all the same, you might need to take a look at our friends over at Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile isn't just different because of its mission. It's actually built to outperform the other carriers. They offer premium, priority, nationwide service on any of the three major U.S. networks helping you get the best possible coverage wherever life takes you. With Patriot

Mobile, you can even have two separate networks on a single device, eliminating the need to carry multiple phones and giving you peace of mind you just can't get with other carriers. Need internet on the go? Patriot mobile Wi-Fi hotspots connect to multiple networks to keep you connected while traveling or working remotely. They also offer international roaming and enterprise solution for businesses that need dependable connectivity and U.S.-based customer support. Keep your number, keep your phone or upgrade, switch from your home or office at just

takes a few minutes. And when you call Patriot Mobile, you'll talk to real people right here in the United States. Superior coverage, superior product, superior customer support, that's Patriot mobile. Go to patriot.com slash Charlie or call 972 Patriot. Use promo code Charlie for a free month of service. That's Patriotmobile.com slash Charlie or call 972 Patriot today. Joining us now is Rich Barris, the great Rich Barris, the people's pundit, big data poll rich we had a big night last night lots to take in i'll start with alaska i know everybody's wants to talk about florida and we will get there in just a second but let's talk about alaska because you just put up this tweet right here uh throw up 176 you're a little worried about alaska now they

were trying to cheat they had like multiple dan sullivans on the ballot on the republican side but you're more looking at overall turnout and you're a little bit concerned because democrats look to be outpacing Republicans. Yeah, let me just, I mean, it's a simple problem to spell out. And thanks for having me on, as always. It's a simple problem to spell out, guys, we need higher Republican turnout because we can't have in red states, Democrats garner more votes like we see in Alaska. Because come the general election, we're going to get bludgeoned by independence. And it's just the reality. It's not black pilling. You can't lose independence and then not have sufficient turnout. We're going to have to swamp. The way that

Barack Obama and Democrats did in 2012, that is what we're going to have to do. So Obama and Democrats decided in 2012, I don't think we can win this independent vote back. I think we're in a deficit that's a little bit too hard to overcome at this point. So what we need to do is make sure we juice our own base enough that it really doesn't matter. And that is in fact what they did. The good news is Republicans have the numbers. They're just not getting them out. So what I really want everyone to go do right now. Let's go to TVaction.com slash chase the vote. I'm not

kidding. I am not kidding. And I need you to go to chase the vote, guys, and I need you to hit the sign up button. I need you to do it right now. Because we're going to lose states that we can't lose because we're not doing enough. By the way, that's Commit 100. That is our volunteer program. By the way, we will give you 100 names to go call, knock on doors, send

postcards. send text messages to. We automate everything to make it as easy as possible. And you're just kindly reminding them. We're not feeding you into the meat grinder of here's a hundred Democrats. You need to convince them to be conservative. These are people we've identified as Republican or as very likely Republican voters. And it's all about getting over that hump.

We point out in a midterm, the person who wins the race every single time would have been steamrolled if it was 2020. 24 because turnout is down. The winner is who loses fewer votes compared to 24. And it's base turnout. Namely, it's base turnout, which is why we have to ask the base, what do you care about the most? What is going to animate you the most and what is going to give you, you know, assurances that voting Republican actually gets something done? This is one of the reasons why getting the Save America Act passed is not a simple matter of,

you know, preference. No, it's existential to the midterms because if you get. get that passed and we keep putting up big ice deportation numbers, you're sending a message to the base, hey, we hear you, we know what your priorities were, and we're getting them accomplished. I would also add on that list getting some sort of peace resolution in Iran, which feels like the great white whale at this point, getting that wrapped up and put a bow on it because we need to see gas prices come back down. We need to see energy prices come back down. That's specifically true, rich, in a state like Alaska, where inflation hits these guys harder than most.

Just the cost of getting goods anywhere in the interior of that state. And explain the dynamics, by the way, Rich, with, you know, Alaska's kind of an odd duck in the sense that urban cores tend to vote Republican. It's the, it's the rurals that vote Democrat, right? Why is that? That's right. It's backward. It's one of these amazing relics of a bygone era, which is if you go back and read, Kevin Phillips, the emerging Republican majority. You can see it in other states.

It's like, why does Alaska still do this? You have indigenous and Eskimo and, you know, Native American and other tribal voters that live on the outskirts and in the, you know, the rural areas. And they have been Democratic for a while. The I would, okay, let me put it this one. This is why Lisa Murkowski really did a lot of damage, trying to survive a primary. They did change how voting is done. So the ranked choice issue. It's disaster.

Yeah, she, guys, I'll tell you right now, when it, when it happened, I, I basically said that Lisa Murkowski has single-handedly ensured that a Democrat will win Alaska in a bad cycle for Republicans. Because you need that turnout to swamp the rest of the state. And it's like the, I don't want to say inner city, because it's not an inner city like we know inner cities. But in the urban areas in Alaska tends to be the more big business once upon a time, almost gentrifying these. areas and that used to be a Republican voting block. The reason it's held up until now is because of the kind of economy that Alaska supports. So in other states like Georgia, when you see a place like Atlantic, it gentrified and more urban and population growth in Phoenix. This happened to Phoenix, too.

It goes blue. But in Alaska, economy is politics. So when a Republican governor like Kemp invites a tiny tinseltown to Atlanta so they can have a mini Hollywood there, you're bringing a liberal industry, which will bring liberal jobs and liberal families and liberal people, and that's going to turn the state. But in Alaska, it's different. We're talking about energy and other industries that are actually pro-Republican industries. What Lisa Mikowski did with Rankosk voting was a betrayal of the highest order. And she pretended she didn't, but it was literally her staffer who left her office and went back to Anchorage to lobby for it. She's a Democrat. I mean, she's a Democrat.

She's a Democrat. McCasky is a Democrat with an R next to her name. Which, let me just say, which is why we can't lose these seats, guys, because I have been told, and I don't know if you guys know this, but I have been told by more than one person on multiple occasions, Lisa Murkowski has said that if my vote is going to be the balance of power, I'm going to leave the Republican Party. I will caucus with Democrats and call myself an independent, and she's definitely going to do it if Susan Collins loses in Maine. and then her vote matters because that is her friend and you will take her little tantrum like the rhino establishment does all the time this is real so you can't afford to lose seats like this we just can't do it um just to tell people who may be like concerned well i don't want to chase the vote because i don't want to it it's uncomfortable i'm a little nervous i don't want to talk to angry people anyone you run into who's angry at the war look what happened last week i mean of course you're always nice people are

easier to talk to than you might think they are. But you can just simply point to them. I love talking to Americans. I love, I love it. I think they're great. I know some of them are mean. It happens. You get a bad apple. But overall, they're really pleasant and interesting people to talk to. And I mean, simply put guys, you could answer that very easily. Look what happened

last week with the vice president and secretary Kennedy. If Harris was elected, no matter how angry you are with Iran or anything else, if Harris was elected, do you think we would have gotten the White Wolves and the Wolves and White Coats report showing that doctors mutilated our children with these trans surgeries for profit

for the prospect of having a lifetime patient who needed to be on their care like they're acting like stockbrokers or something who are trying to build a book we never would have gotten that I mean that that report alone that may be one of the most evil things we've ever seen and the vice president and Secretary Kennedy uncovered that We would never have gotten.

I immigration. Absolutely. There are lots of wins you can avoid to. Exactly. Exactly. So, hey, Rich, I wanted to. This could be worse. So we're going to put a pin in Alaska, but five alarm fire.

We need to hold that seat. And right now, turnout is down. We need to get turnout up. Yes. We need to invest money. You know, we got to talk about Alaska more. Secondly, Rich, Alexander Vindman went down. Bad.

He outspent this. ZSA upon it like 16 million to 500,000. Something like that. Total humiliation. What's the takeaway here, Rich? Interesting. The map tells the story, guys. I hope we've seen the last of Alexander Vindman who should be in a hole.

He should not, he should be in a hole somewhere for what he did to Trump in the first administration, let alone running for U.S. Senate. You mean, I mean in a deep dark hole under the state. Yes, yes. Yes, I mean like in a deep dark hole for traders. I don't mean in a whole. Oh, yeah. You know, people's pundit. and dig a grade.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm bailing you out of that one, Rick. Thank you. Thank you for that one. No, I mean, he should be in a hole where traders go, brother, like where Robert Hansen was thrown after he got caught, spying on behalf of the Russians. That's where people like Alexander Vindman should be.

But if you look at the map, it tells the story, and it's interesting. All of the white, Democratic, you know, rich Democrat, Uber kind of credentialed class areas voted for Vindman. Everywhere else did not. So he got the vote. of that kind of crybaby old school Mitt Romney Rhino who converted to being a Democrat, which was a tiny, tiny, I mean, Republicans have been romping with voter registration by party because those people were never enough to offset the gains that you get from Trumpism.

And that's what he represents. It's so textbook and it's so appropriate. He represents the dying wing of the party that should be cast aside. They're Democrats anyway. and we should move forward with Trumpism in its purest form because you get so much more out of it. And looking at the map, that's what you see. You know, parts of Monroe, which is southwestern and the Keys, of course, that's exactly where I would have expected Vindman to get some of his support. In some of the Tampa Bay areas where, you know, there was once upon a time Republican slides until Trump came along.

You have those Orphan Romney whiny voters who still think it's 1980, right? I mean, that's who Alexander Vindman got. And she got everywhere else. And he got humiliated. And it was a poetic justice. Listen to this. I mean, listen, I'm not going to cry any tears, but the polling was off here big. And the prediction markets were off big.

But look, listen is Angie mixed in character. Sat 12. I don't understand. Like, there's no sexualization at a drag show. It's just people dressing up and singing and performing. I've taken my children to drag shows. And it's fun. It's entertainment. It's wholesome entertainment. And it's nothing wrong. It's just like I don't, I don't get it. She just beat out. Thank you, Democrats. Thank you. Dear God. That's what you'll hand the country to.

Midterm elections are coming up and control of Congress is on the line. If there's one thing financial markets hate, it's uncertainty. And uncertainty. is exactly what the next few months are going to bring. In 2024, if it taught us anything, it's that uncertainty breeds volatility. Between now and November could be one of the most volatile stretches for the stock market and the economy. So you owe it to yourself to have a plan. Here's the good part. There's a simple way to protect what you've built, and that's gold. Physical gold and silver let you hedge against that volatility. And there's no better partner for it than noble gold investments. For over a decade, Noble gold has helped everyday Americans protect their wealth with precious metals.

They make it simple. They make it easy and they make it safe. You can trust them. Give them a call 877-6-446-5347. That's 877-6-447 or visit them online at Noblegoldinvestments.com slash kirk and find out how to protect yourself, your wealth and your family. Noblegoldinvestments.com slash Kirk. Election day is coming. Don't let it arrive without a plan. And here's the best part. To celebrate America's 250, just mentioned the Charlie Kirk Show when you call Noble Gold, and they'll send you a free 10-ounce silver bar when you open a new qualified account.

Mention the Charlie Kirk Show, that's all you got to do, and they'll do the rest. We turn our sights with the Great Rich Beres to Florida. Florida, man, what a state. What a state. It just seems to do things well. I was so excited yet again when we were watching the primary results that we were 30 minutes past when polls.

had closed. Not even in the entire state. The panhandle still had polls open. And we were at 60% of the vote counted. And we knew basically 100% of the result before I had dinner. I understand that DeSantis, Trump, there's bad blood there, all that stuff. But you got to give credit where it's due. DeSantis has done phenomenal. He is the model for a Republican governor. There is no doubt. I think, by the way, we talk about the Floridification of Arizona. There's something Charlie really believed in. And I think we have a great shot with Biggs. Plus, our chase the vote operation in Arizona. We're way ahead of where we were in 2024.

We're way ahead as far as staffing. Yeah. I mean, Arizona, the primary results alone is a testament to chase the vote. It's a testament to what you guys are doing. Because in a, you know, guy like me who does what I do, in a sea of like bad news with primary turnout, Arizona was the one area where he said, oh, thank God. You know, in Florida wasn't terrible.

It wasn't as good as people are making it out to be last night. But it wasn't terrible. Florida Republicans, you can typically the core of the Republican Party, you can count on getting out. They did this in 182, by the way, the only way that we were able to defeat Bill Nelson and thank the Lord, prevent Andrew Gillum, who some of us did know who Andrew Gillum was and what he did with his nightlife, by the way. The media just wouldn't cover it. We, I mean, 30,000 votes, guys. I know, I know, man. Those are the most important 30,000 votes ever. Ever. Like, I mean, you That's more important.

History hinges on that. History hinges on that. Seriously, because you lose Florida, you know, maybe we don't get Trump. You know, maybe we don't get the majorities that we have. So anyways, Florida has been a success story. We have to give credit where it's due. Throughout Glenda, you know, I mean, this was important. Broward County, look at how much our vote chairs have risen since Brenda was thrown

out of that at the supervisor of elections. Of course, because the people running the elections matters a great deal. And that's another proof point. Oh, it's the most secure election. Oh, how come when you get rid of these crooks, things turn around real quick? Suddenly. Stunningly. Suddenly.

So, oh, okay. So everything's on the up and up. We can totally trust this stuff. Oh, you get rid of a crook and things turn around. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So let's talk about Byron Donald's. Everybody wants to talk about that.

He wins handily, which we expected. James Fishback. We've got a couple graphs here. And I know the reason I want to bring this up is because you made a big deal. and rightly so with the Thomas Massey where he lost his primary but it was like it was you know 55 65 and over that got him over the top meanwhile all the younger voters that's right we're voting for Thomas Massey we see a similar trend with James Fishback I saw this with the enthusiasm for him with younger voters in that state so throw some of these graphics up where he's getting basically he's he's edging out Byron Donald's with the 35 and under crowd uh yeah Byron's holding his own but it's He was doing well with younger voters. What's your takeaway from the Byron Donald's race? Yeah, I think there are two things.

One is the age, and there's some overlap here with these demographics. But interestingly, Fishback was doing a lot better with younger voters. He won a lot of these university areas. I mean, he tied in one of them. And I think they tried to community note me because there was actually a reporting error at the time I made that statement. It was just this like pathetic attempt to try to cover up what we have been talking about now for months. This is an issue. I wish Byron would have handled.

this campaign a little bit differently. I wish you would have embraced the challenge. They had no chance to beat him. Let's be serious. Because I worry now that he may have turned off some of these younger voters that he will need, because unfortunately, this race is going to be closer than it should be. And what does that mean? I think Byron's going to win.

I'm not at a place where other people are. But it does mean money has to go to Byron that could go to Zach Lane in Iowa. You know what I mean? So it's kind of unnecessary. It's unfortunate. But Byron, this is the second. part that's interesting. Byron actually did well in the areas where there's like true new maga that's less white. So even though turnout wasn't gangbuster in Miami-Dade, look at how much better

he did in Miami-Dade. Look at how much better he did in the Gold Coast. So the reason he couldn't get above 50 is because in the Big Ben and in the Panhandle in some central Florida, he didn't do as well as he did in South Florida. So had there had been bigger turnout numbers among Hispanics and the new MAGA that Trump brought in in 24, Byron would have won by a larger margin. And by the way, just to put it in all in context, any other cycle, Byron's margin would have been sufficient to be escaping any kind of criticism. It's just that people are going to jump on it right now because, of course, it was the narrative surrounding, you know, this race and whether or not it was ever, he should have ever debated and, you know, nonsense like that. But any other, any other primary. And this

would have been a romping by any standard. I mean, he's just got work to do, and he's got to go out and talk to those voters. You know, guys, I mean, Charlie's Dorsbyron. Yeah, dismissing people and calling them, yeah, dismissing people and calling them anti-Semites is stupidity. Can we stop doing that now? We should stop doing that. I mean, it just is a general tactic.

Although there are, are we the left now? Are we the left now? There is legitimate anti-Semitism. I mean, I will say, be frank, James Fishback ran an anti-Semitic campaign. Well, and, and like a racist campaign, he called Byron Donald's a slave? I don't know. That comment there, the anti-Semite stuff. I mean, none of the people we spoke to who were supporting fishback said they were supporting

fishback because they hate Israel or they were anti-Sanidic. Here's where I agree with you, Rich. I don't think it's a good tactic. I don't think it's a winning tactic. Stupid. You can have that conversation and it can be legitimate, but as far as political tactics go, it's a loser. Here's what else I'll say, Rich.

Corey Mills goes down. This was a much watch. Yeah, and that was kind of my perspective. Apparently, President Trump had suggested he drop out. He refused. There's ethics complaints about him. He's had a really colorful history. Let's just say it that way with some ex-girlfriends restraining order.

I suggested the president never endorse him. He refused. So, you know, stay away from this one. Stay away from this one. This is not a good dude. This is not somebody we want to be the face of this movement. We all know his issues, and I don't have to go run them down here now on the show. But guys, this is the exact worst kind of Republican.

They're hurting our brand. They're out there pretending they embody evangelical values. He's on his knees to a law three days a week. I mean, three times a day. You know, he's chasing every tale out there under 21. I mean, let's just call it crap, bro. I mean, God, goodbye, Corey. Good, good reads.

So Ryan Elijah, how do we like his chances? Trump has now endorsed him, said Ryan Elijah running in this place. Ryan stands for everything. Maga and his respect. I like, yeah, yeah. I like it better than I like Corrie's. I mean, this is something, you have Mark on the show today, Mark Halper, and this is something, I mean, you know, the point I was trying to make, you have a candidate as Florida is Corey Mills.

You cannot keep that seat in the likely Republican category anymore. It's like in an election where you can get swept away. And if you're not careful, we will be. You can't have people like Corey Mills staining the ticket. And that is a seat that could have been gone. So I like our chances to hold it now. Of course, it's almost essentially an open seat race. but it's still a better shot at holding the seat now that Corey is gone.

He's a former TV anchor, good brand name ID in that area. So good communicator. Yeah, it's a good communicator. Rich Barris, big data poll, the people's pundit, got to focus on Alaska, got to shore up our ranks there. Get out the vote. Chase the vote. Join us at TPaction.com slash 100 to join our commit 100 and help chase down low propensity Republicans. That's what this is all about.

win win, win, fight, fight, fight, be a part of the solution. Hi folks, Andrew Colvette here. I'd like to tell you about my friends over at Y Reefi. You've probably been hearing me talk about Y Refi for some time now. We are all in with these guys. If you or someone you know is struggling with private student loan debt, take my advice and give them a call.

Maybe you're behind on your payments. Maybe you're even in default. You don't have to live in this nightmare anymore. Y Refi will provide you a custom payment based on your ability to pay. They tailor each loan individually. They can save you thousands of dollars and you can get your life back. We go to campuses all over America and we see student after student who's drowning in private student loan debt. Many of them don't even know how much they owe.

Why Refi can help. Just go to YREFI.com. That's the letter Y then refi.com. And remember, YREFI doesn't care what your credit score is. Just go to whyrefi.com and tell them your friend Andrews sent you. We have a treat in store for you, and that is, of course, Mark Halperin, friend of the show, editor-in-chief of 2A TV, host of Next Up on the Megan Kelly Network. Mark, welcome back to the show.

Thank you for making some time for us today. We had a big primary night last night, and there's some underlying stories about John Ossoff, Natalie Harp, Mark Kelly, all kinds of stuff to get to here. But let's start with Florida and Alexander Vindman. That was a big polling miss. It was a big betting markets miss. What do you take from that? Well, the betting markets often follow the polls since those folks don't often have other data to go by.

So I think those are correlated typically. He's, you know, he only moved to Florida a few years ago. He'd never run for anything. He was running against the state legislator who's part of the DSA, and that's a movement versus a campaign. he chose not to spend all his money on the assumption he'd win. So I know people are casting this as a shock and a surprise, but she ran a more energizing campaign, and he's an outsider.

And even though Florida is filled with outsiders, you know, all politics is local, and she's a local person and he's not. So I'm not too surprised in the disparity in the spending. We saw that in Michigan. We saw that to some extent in Wisconsin. DSA candidates have movements, and movements beat money.

every time. Mark, I wonder what you make. Dave Weigel at Semaphore. He had a take in response to Vindman's loss. And he said that Republicans have been smart to shift away from Democrats are going to impeach Trump if we lose the midterms to we have communism on the way. They're really radical. And he says the flip side of this is Democrats are learning all of the resistance stuff from 2019, people who are heroes of the first impeachment, people who have made their name by kind of of being these bold resistance figures against Trump in the bureaucracy or whatever, that it just, it doesn't have the mileage at once did. It maybe never had that much mileage. And maybe the messages, no one should care about 2019 or 2020 anymore. What do you think of that?

Well, I think there's some truth wound through that. But I think Trump's management syndrome may not be at its all time high, but it's still pretty high within the party. And I don't think, I don't think electability is top of mind for a lot of these Democratic voters. We'll be in the presidential, but I don't think it is here. So this guy is not a good candidate, and she ran an energized campaign. I think that's probably the main lesson. The notion that he was rejected because he's associated with impeachment, I just don't think that's true, given who the elector is.

The electorate is Democrats, a lot of whom are for anybody who does anything negative towards Donald Trump. What do you make of the general election prospects in that race? Ashley Moody, who filled the seat, right? So this will be her first actual election run here for Marco Rubio's old spot. And then versus Angela Nixon, who has said some absolutely nutty things. I mean, absolutely nutty things. And would she be the first, I think, like, lawmaker to have themselves been one of those, like, holding a megaphone, screaming at people in a legislative chamber?

There's footage of her doing that, too. There is. Yeah. Yeah. This is not my idea. I read it somewhere this morning, but I think it's the right thing to say. The Democrats are lucky. The establishment Democrats are lucky that she won the nomination. Had it been there would have been some donors who thought, yeah, that's a good investment. And they would have diverted money to an unwinnable race in Florida, whereas now the national donor class and even maybe even the grassroots donors, they're not going to see this as a winnable race. And so Democrats dodged wasting $20 to $50 million on a unwinnable race. Well, that's bad for us. Unfortunately, nevertheless. All right, so let's turn our attention to John Ossoff. We got a clip here to set the stage. Stop four. He doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. Why did you decide to invoke Natalie Harp specifically

in that speech? Well, Jen, thank you for having me. And here's the point. We're in wartime. The commander-in-chief has mired us in this geopolitical disaster. People have lost their lives. Our naval logistics are afraid. The global energy system is in crisis. And he retreats into this bubble of West Wing aides who are his security blanket to make him feel good about himself. All right. So he kind of walks it back a little bit.

has been all the talk right now. And then you've got CNN's Aaron Burnett bringing on Natalie Harp's brother. President Trump is calling him Pee Wee Herman. Everything under the surface, though, is it feels like John Ossoff is not only trying to win his Senate race. He's posturing as something of a national figure taking on Trump directly. And by the way, just I think a really gross smear of Natalie Harp, who we have no indication of anything other than she's just a sweetheart that is loyal to the president. He denies that he's running. What's your take? I don't think he's inclined to run, but I think he knows there could be a vacuum and the pull of which would be quite strong that he might have to consider it, but not until after he's re-elected. I really don't know what he was

doing. The fact that he backed off so quickly leads me to believe that perhaps he didn't think through what the reaction would be. Maybe he knew, and he cleverly just said, I'll say it once and never again. I'll be super curious to see if the word Natalie escapes his lips between now on election day. But he certainly has put a big target on his back. He certainly has made himself very unpopular with MAGA. I don't know that it's improved his ties to the Democrats or the enthusiasm for him because it was already pretty high. And he already says lots of things about Donald Trump that don't have any blowback from any quarter within the party. So I'm not really sure what he was up to. And I'm not really sure this

has any enduring meeting. I'd be surprised if it were alive next week as a story. Well, it is interesting. That question of was this design more to make Magamatta matter? Would it resonate with Democrats? Because I'll admit I feel like I'd not heard a lot of this woman. Like, I

sort of jogged my memory once people were talking about it. But I guess, is this a blue sky meme, maybe? That if you're really invested in Democrat politics, they just throw around like, oh, Trump has this mistress who runs around with and they just take it as a given? She's blonde and all this stuff.

Yeah, Mark. I mean, the reaction of the room suggested the people there knew. I'm surprised at how many people on the right say they didn't really focus on her and didn't know who she was. She's been written about quite a bit, primarily because of some of the notes suggesting a lot of familiarity that she's written to the president. And this is true. There are people in the White House who do not like her influence over the president,

who do not like their closeness. And that has fueled leaking of some of her notes, the president, that has fueled some negative quotes about her, not from Democrats, not from the media, but from Trump loyalists within the White House. So I'm surprised at how little people seem to have known about her in some quarters. But as I said, you mentioned her two weeks ago before John Alsop spoke on MSN, MS now. They knew who she was. That constituency knows who she is. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, though, with it, I mean, not to get too much into the

palace intrigue of the White House. But I mean, there was people that didn't like Charlie's influence over the president, right? Of course. Absolutely. So that's going to happen anytime somebody wins the president's trust. But, you know, I just, I have to say, in general, the smearing without allegations, and by the way, if he didn't know that it was going to be taken as some sort of tawdry affair, a mistress of the president's, I don't believe that for a second. But I just think it's untoward. I think it should be it should remain out of our politics as much as we can. And then targeting people's family. The, the, you know, rapid response went after a CNN reporter's family. Then CNN had, I guess, somebody that claims to be the brother of Natalie on, and I didn't like

it either way. I'm just going to say it that way. As somebody that's lived through this stuff where, you know, unfairly maligned and smeared, I didn't like it either way. Let's talk about the horse race in 2028. We have you on because you have insights and you have sources within Democrat politics and you're willing to graciously share those with us here. Now, if you are now looking at the field, so there was this interesting quote that I saw. Mark Kelly was in Georgia campaigning for John Ossoff. He said, somebody asked him, what about an Ossoff Kelly ticket? And he said, why don't you reverse the names? What about reversing the name? So that added intrigue there. How do you see the shape? shaping up and understanding that it is a long ways out, but there is a vacuum on the left.

Asaf is Jewish. Shapiro's Jewish. Is that going to be a non-starter for them? What's your newest take on this? Freshest intel. Yeah. Thank you for your kind words. I think there's two big questions looming over this forming field, separate from the question of who's actually going to run. One is, who's going to fill the progressive lane? There are three names to hear. Bernie Sanders, maybe too old. AOC maybe doesn't want to run. Ro Khanna, maybe not up to leading a movement. One of those three, or a fourth person to be determined, is going to have to fill that lane. Until we know who fills that lane, it's very difficult to game at this process. Second, you named two people, Rahm Emanuel and Josh Shapiro, or maybe you said Osoff and Shapiro,

Rahm Emanuel, Governor Pritzker, Alyssa, Slotkin, all Jewish, Jared Polis, Jewish. It's an irony and a paradox that at a time when American Jews within the Democratic Party have never been more under siege in the modern era, you have more prospective Jewish candidates than we've ever seen, maybe total in American history, all potentially poised, all potentially poised to run. I think that you have to look at candidates who can do two or three of the following things. Name ID, fundraising, and draw attention. okay there's only one person in the race right now who can do all three of those things or one person who may run i should say who can do all three of those things um aOC i'm moving her way up in in my september 8 for 28 rankings

the most likely democrats i'm really thinking anew about her chances and the likelihood that she'll run because i think she and sanders are going to sit down and talk about it probably one of the two of them has to do it if they want their movement to have the person who can lead this. So that's one. And then on the question of who runs, if you can't raise tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, if you can't get on Monday night football and meet the press and your show and mine, if you can't become nationally known within the party, you're going to take a good, hard look at running and say, do I really have a chance to win this thing? Right now, Now, I see four people who are what I call aircraft carriers who can build those three things or has them already.

Newsom, Harris, AOC, and Josh Shapiro. Everybody else, I think, is going to take a look at this and wonder if it's really a decent enough chance that it's worth all the things you put your family through to run. Is there anyone who could pull a leapfrog where, you know, much like J.D. Vance was a senator only a couple of years. and then he's vice president. If Abdul al-Sayed wins his Senate race, could he plausibly just very abruptly rise up as a potential front-runner or any of these other high-profile candidates

they have running for Senate governor in purple or red states? They could. I mean, Barack Obama won in 2004 and didn't run until 2008. Mike Dukakis got re-elected governor of Massachusetts and then ran, but not elected for the first time. So, look, if El-Said does win,

he'll be a force in the party without doubt, without a doubt. Would he, could he turn right around and run for president? I think that's unlikely. I think it's unlikely. People talk all the time about people coming from nowhere that say, well, Obama came from nowhere. No, when Barack Obama was at the Harvard Law School, people talked about him as a potential president.

People say Donald Trump came for nowhere. No, Donald Trump talked about running for president for three decades. So mark me down as a skeptic that somebody who people have never talked about running for president. suddenly steps into this thing and wins the nomination. I think you're going to have some combination of Harris, Newsome, and Shapiro running, probably two of those three. And I think it would be very hard to take the nomination away from any of those three

if you've never played the game before. What about names? I feel like I heard a decent amount in the past, and yet they've fallen off, which is we have Roy Cooper, who's been governor of North Carolina a long time, and it's now running, exactly, Andy Bashir. So we have these. Westmore. moderate-ish Democrats in purple or in Kentucky's case, deep red states who've been pretty politically successful.

They have, you know, they're just old white guys. It's a very safe look. They don't have any DEI stuff. They don't have any radicalism concerns. I feel we heard these names thrown around actually in 24 a little bit. And they've gone away, but could one of them come roaring back? Well, I'm not skeptical of them because they're white men. I'm skeptical of them because I don't think they have the pizzazz required to win. a nomination. I don't think they have the capacity to navigate the dominant ascendant socialist wing of the party. So I'm skeptical that those guys can do it. But let's see who goes actually, not just up to the starting line, but enters the race. Because while people talk lively about there being 20 candidates, I think a lot of these people who are talked about aren't going to run.

And maybe somebody like a Cooper who's not talked about much does run. Remember, you got to survive a vet running for Senate, running for governor, it's not the same. And some of these folks have things in their background that they, if they're wise, they'll know, they'll have to answer for, even though they don't have to answer for them when they run for these lower offices. And they may not want to put themselves in their family through that. What about Buttigieg, Whitmer, just throwing out some more names. I don't think, I don't think, I don't think Whitmer will run. I take Buttigieg much more seriously than most people. I put him in the second tier now behind the four I mentioned. look, first of all, of all the people talked about, I think he's one of the few who I have a high degree of confidence he'll run.

And that, you know, you got to play to win. You can't be the nominee if you don't run. So there's that. Number two, he's, I don't think anybody else is going to run who's won a primary or caucus unless Bernie won. And that shows you something. He won Iowa when he ran for president. That ain't easy to win the Iowa caucuses. And I think he's got enormous skill.

I know he's, I know he's got some drawbacks in terms of, uh, winning votes, including a lack of support from black voters so far. But he's a very smart, able guy. He works really hard. And I'll tell you this, he's got probably the sharpest elbows and his team have the sharpest elbows of any of these camps. And that, you know, in a competitive primary, having sharp elbows is usually pretty good trait to have. Yeah. And he's passed his paternity leave now. So he can devote himself fully to. Got nothing but time. Yeah, he's, dear Lord. I, I, I, You know, if we can get a JD Marco ticket, I would still like our chances of 2020. But that's way far down the line.

And we got a lot of work to do. And the years goes by pretty fast. Yeah. Well, we've got work to do right now. It won't be two years. By next summer, by less than a year from now, we'll have a pretty good sense of what the contours of both sides look like, I think. Mark Halperin, you're the man. Thank you for the time.

As always, my friend. Good to see you. Have a great day. You too. I had the honor. of a lifetime to call Charlie a friend. And what I remember most wasn't just what people saw on stage. It was what was behind the scenes. That was an unwavering commitment to his faith, his love for his family, and his genuine desire to encourage others to live with courage and conviction. Charlie believed

that following Christ wasn't something you compartmentalized. He didn't put it in a box. He lived it out loud. It shaped how he lived, how he served, how he treated people every single day. Charlie Kirk, American martyr, captures that heart. This documentary isn't just simply about remembering Charlie. It's an invitation for each of us to ask what kind of legacy we're building and whether we're willing to stand firm in our own faith when it's tested. I hope that you'll watch it with your family and have those conversations together. Go to angel.com slash kirk. That's angel.com slash kirk. Become an angel guild member. Watch Charlie Kirk, American Martyr, and help bring more stories of faith, courage, and conviction to audiences around the world.

Our next guest is Nathan Kauffness. He's an author, and you can sign up for his newsletter at N-Koffness.com. That's N-C-O-F-N-A-S dot com. And you will know him because we've mentioned him on the show yesterday, Blake. Yes, all right. So we've talked a bit over the last few. I'll go about the last couple weeks about the Jason Ardei saga in the UK. We covered it when he was just a professor under fire.

Tragically, he took his own life. And that's exploded to huge proportions. But Nathan, welcome to the show. You're the guy who originally wrote an article on Substack, exposing a lot of his plagiarism, raising an eyebrow at some of his other claims. And you were the one doing this on Substack because at every step of the way, journalists, his own institution, other schools. Lawyers.

They were ignoring that he was a fabulous from top to bottom. Why don't you tell your story of how you ended up being the author of that piece? Well, thank you for having me on. Now, by the time I published the story on July 21st, literally thousands of people had known about it for a year. A year ago, first, Cambridge definitely knew about it in 2003. Because as soon as Jason Ardeh was hired, everybody knows the youngest black professor, a DEI

hire for a very, very prestigious position as chair professor at Cambridge in the Faculty of Education. So he's hired in 2023, clearly unqualified for the job. But within a few months, there was another academic at Plymouth, Merrigon University in the UK. who contacted the authorities at Cambridge and showed them the evidence for his plagiarism. They basically told him to get lost, and Dave Harris posted something on his personal website, which nobody paid attention to.

So that went nowhere. But Cambridge knew about the story then. They knew about the plagiarism then, for sure. And they would have known for sure that Jason Arde was a fabulous, too, because a year ago, he claimed that he was attacked by a racist with a knife in his office at Cambridge. And he said he was attacked twice, but none of this was captured on CCTV. So that means the administration knew he was a plagiarist.

They knew it was a fabulous for years. And they've been covering it up. And it's anybody who asks questions is intimidated, either with lawyers or with veiled threats. It's not just a story about Cambridge, though. I asked the chat GPT so that I can't be accused of cherry picking to give a list of all the institutions that had formal ties to Jason Ardei, and it came up with 46.

So 46, like the Royal Society of Arts, and besides Cambridge at Glasgow University, Durham University, the BBC, where he had a prestigious position as editor, all of these institutions. And he was just running around telling ridiculous stories. Obviously, many people knew, but either because of the threats that were issued by Ardei or his supporters, or the fact that people simply didn't want to be called racist,

which was actually the most effective mechanism for ensuring people's silence. That kept the story from breaking containment. Now, how did I get the story? I had my own free speech issue with Cambridge. I got in a lot of trouble when I was an employee in the philosophy faculty in 2004, I wrote a substack essay called The Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution, which questioned some of the foundations of the,

the foundations of DEI ideology, particularly with respect to its claim that all groups of people are in average exactly the same in terms of socially relevant characteristics. The university placed me under investigation, and my college terminated my position. That was a manual college. and at the end of my contract with the university in August 2025, I left. And around the time that I left is when Ardae's plagiarism and lies became an open secret among the faculty. So I didn't hear about it at the time. But finally, in June 13th, a whistleblower who is on the faculty at Cambridge contacted me. and he told me about the story, and then I investigated it myself.

I saw there's extensive plagiarism, starting with his dissertation and continuing throughout his entire career, and even the work that wasn't plagiarized was at a high school level and was itself, arguably an even bigger scandal than the plagiarism. So I wrote up a report of my findings. I posted it on substack, and then it blew up from there. And it's continuing to blow up because, tragically, he did take his own life, and it's made this story grow bigger and bigger. There was a rally with thousands of people who were denouncing you by name.

There's left-wing publications and politicians saying, we need to hold the press accountable. Yesterday, a editor at one of these publications almost did this hostage video where he's apologizing for calling Professor Arde a con man. For covering the news. He was. And so what sort of attacks of you yourself faced? Because, let's be blunt, you did the work.

Others were too cowardly to do that you called out a fraud and a charlatan. Well, if you want to know why people, thousands of people knew about the story and didn't say anything, look at what's happening to me. besides hundreds of hate letters, hate emails, death threats, there was a rally at Trafalgar Square a few days ago with 15,000 people, speaker after speaker, denouncing me by name. I can't walk down the street in London anymore. I would be murdered. Now, even the press, everybody is looking for a scapegoat.

Who is actually responsible for this situation? Cambridge, who hired RDA, knowing he was unqualified, they knew since 2003 that he was a plagiarist and a fabulous. They had three years to find a way to let him down gently, to find some other position, some non-research position for him to take or pay him to go do something else. But what they did is they set him up for public humiliation. It was totally unrealistic to think that they could,

bury the story for 31 years until he retires. So they set him up and then, okay, so I broke the story. Then after I broke the story, the British press published 249 articles about our day in 22 days. far, even after he resigned from Cambridge. They were still dissecting every aspect of his life from the time he was a child. And even though this had no news value, because everyone on earth knew that he was a plagiarist and he had already effectively been fired from his job. And they weren't paying any attention to the people who were actually responsible for this situation,

which were the administration at Cambridge. So that's how Cambridge behaved. That's how the press behave. The union of British journalist yesterday published a statement about the death of Jason Ardei, and they criticize only one person by name, which is me. So they, insinuating that I led the harassment of Ardei causing him to commit suicide. You wrote one article, and I mean, you can check your ex. It's not like you're tweeting nonstop about this.

You've done, you know, you've made a reasonable number of statements. But you, but to be clear, your original substack that broke the story, did you take, did you, was there ad hominems? Were there personal attacks about all of these, like, fabulous, like, stories and illnesses and all that, or did you just focus on the plagiarism aspect? It was very careful and factual. And it's been right by. hundreds of thousands of people and no one has found even a single comma that was a mistake. I at that time, remember when I published this on July 21st, Ardei was the chair professor at Cambridge and backed by all these prestigious institutions.

And here I'm in Ghent, postdoctoral researcher with a substack and a Twitter account. So, you know, I was very cautious. I said he's made all these claims about his personal life. I don't see any evidence for it. I don't see how it can be true. But I can't definitively refute them without direct evidence. So I'm going to focus mainly on the plagiarism and the quality of his work, which are things that I can assess with the resources available to me.

So I just showed page after page after. after page of his writing and earlier writing that he copies from often verbatim or lightly paraphrasing. And there was just a factual report. And then I, yes, I did draw some conclusions about DEI because I think this is a story about DEI. It's not really a story about Ardei and his plagiarism. It's about the incentive structure and the same. system that made our day possible and motivated the cover up.

One of the things that makes me so angry is you have these publications in the UK and these politicians who are saying it was misconduct because they wrote an article about him. And so they placed him in danger or he was in distress. So they just had a responsibility to ignore that he had lied, that he had occupied a job he didn't deserve. And it just occurred to me, as Nathan was saying, he couldn't walk in London safely. someone might stab him or kill him. And I think you and I both know that if that happened,

these same people who say you have a moral responsibility to not write about this fraudulent professor, they would say he deserved this. Dr. Kaufness, he brought this on himself because he was hateful. He was bad. Well, yeah. And that exactly. It's a great point, Nathan, if you, something terrible happened to you and God forbid that would happen and we'll pray for your safety, but they would say, well, don't be a racist then.

That's what they would say. I mean, look at this screen grab I took from Andy Knows footage of this of this rally that was held in Jason Arde's honor. Look at that. Racism kills. See that? That so in what's wild to me. The thing is it's actually true because they were racist. They hired someone who was not qualified for this job.

He was called out on the fraud. It's very, very interesting that people are saying we shouldn't have criticized. criticized Ardei, who, by the way, held a position of great influence and prestige in society. He had a lot of power. He sought publicity. He wanted to be famous. He wanted attention. But now we have to treat him with kid gloves.

We're not allowed to point out his wrongdoing. That's absurd. But the people who are saying that we can't criticize Ardae because of his emotional state or whatever, No one has ever asked me about my emotional state. Nobody cares. Of course not about that. Is Koffness autistic? I'm probably at least as autistic as Arde was, frankly.

Yeah, you and Blake can have a conversation offline about that. So we, I mean, but I, I want to reframe this entire thing, right? So these thousands of people that march in London for this serial hoaxer con artist who then, by the way, I do think that him committing suicide is tragic and sad. I do. He obviously deserved help for that and needed help for that. But I also look at it as like the final act of cowardice from a man with a long string of cowardly acts. Because if you think about it, he can't control the narrative.

He's called out on his fraud. All of his lies are being exposed every day. Coward is a narcissism. It's like an act of revenge. And it's like his final act of being able to be the ultimate victim here, which is what his entire career. was built upon is that he was this victim and they so put upon and racism and overcoming all this ridiculous string of illnesses and mishaps and whatever and i don't yeah i do not want to lift up somebody taking the cowardly way out is somehow the ideal or somehow worthy of exceptional pathos

i don't look at you as the villain of this story at all as a matter of fact we need people like you exposing the rot in our academies and our institutions of higher learning because that you listen Jason Arde is now a a totem he's he's sort of like an avatar of a wider rot within the academy that must be exposed in the united states we had claudine gay who was a plagiarist who was leading harvard and christopher rufeo helped take her down among others right we have Nicole hannah jones you have you have a ibrax kendi these fake pseudo intellectuals that are actually activists that are being propped up by a whole system that wants them to be these figureheads, that they're not qualified to be, and it actually has destructive consequences on our society.

Give us a sense of how bad the scope of that is where you've been operating in Britain, because we know it's bad in the U.S., but how bad is it in Britain, the scope of that rot? Well, I should say that Arde suffered a very severe punishment, public humiliation, ultimately paying the ultimate price, right? And he's not, it would be wrong to portray him as like some monster, right? There are thousands, thousands of people who are far worse than Jason Ardei. He was a man who was responding to incentives created by the DEI system, where people who occupy a certain position in the woke hierarchy do,

to identity characteristics like skin color are simply not held to standards that other people are and they can just make up anything and no one will challenge them or if they are challenged, they can just call the person a racist and then they'll shut up.

So he took advantage of that and is morally responsible for that. But it's not, he was not the worst criminal. You know, it's, in my view, the, the responsibility, responsibility lies far more with the architects of the system and the people who know better and who allow it to continue. By the way, which is also the media, because the media was very happy to fawn upon this man

and to shower him with accolades and laud him as this great prestigious intellectual until the truth came out. And then they turned out. So they created the system. And they supplement it. They message behind it, and they like a good story. The Brits love a good, you know, clickbait headline. We know this about British media.

So anyways, the point is there is a lot of blame to go around, but in my opinion, sir, you deserve none of it. Because actually, we need people to be calling out the fraud in the system. Take a step back, and this is probably a good place to end this. why is it important to call out plagiarists within the academy? Look, there's plagiarism. Plagiarism is very common in academia, stealing ideas. Now, that's wrong for many reasons. By plagiarizing someone else's work, you bolster your own career,

and resources are diverted to you on the assumption that you're productive scholar and they're diverted away from other people, including the people you steal from, who would actually be able to advance scholarship. It's just a matter also of stealing someone's intellectual property. And they have a right to get credit for that, for whatever their motivation may be. People have a right to know where ideas come from. It's a terrible thing. But for me, this story wasn't about RDA and it wasn't really about plagiarism either. It's about D-E-I. And the fact that there were no standards applied to R-Day at all, so he could plagiarize shamelessly, blatantly, and nobody would hold him to account. He could make up lies about his life,

which were obviously lies, and nobody would say anything. He could shut people down by calling them racist. People who were actually qualified were rejected for the jobs that he got, for the positions that he held, not only within universities, but at many 46 other institutions. Or I'm here. Nathan, you've done great work. Check out his substack. Check out his ex. Thank you for coming on and reject the DEI regime. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust. Go to charliekirk.com. come.