Where Is God When Evil Happens? Reacting to the Minneapolis Tragedy

Hey, everybody.

Charlie Kirk here, live from the Bitcoin.com studio.

Terrible news out of Minneapolis.

We learn live on air about what's happening in Minneapolis, what's happening in Minnesota, and we answer the question of evil.

Is evil a problem or is it the problem of evil?

Michael Knowles joins us.

Alex Marlow joins us in a star, all-star cast here live on the Charlie Kirk Show.

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Buckle up, everybody.

Here we go.

Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

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I want to thank Charlie.

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We have a great guest right now and a wonderful friend, Michael Knowles.

Michael Knowles is with us.

Michael, it is a very disturbing day here as we learn of what has happened in Minneapolis.

People are saying it's confirmed, and I think that's right, of the Catholic school shooter is transgender, which does matter, by the way, as we're talking about the broader policy implications of this.

Michael, you are Mr.

Catholic.

You are Catholic number one on our guest roster here.

What is your reaction?

This is a terrible day and obviously a demonic and spiritual attack against these now young martyrs of the church.

Well, obviously the the first thing we all do is pray, of course.

A strange coincidence here, I was on a conference call with a Catholic organization when this news broke.

I wasn't following the news.

I checked my email and I got an email through my personal website from a guy and he said, hey, I'm in Minneapolis.

I'm law enforcement, military.

There's been a shooting at this Catholic school during Mass and the shooter was trans and killed himself.

He said, can you please talk about this?

I did not run with that.

And I don't even mean to say that as though it's a confirmed fact now on your show, because I just said, I don't know, and this is before any of this was really being reported.

Now you're seeing this start to come out, possible identity of the shooter, possible video of the shooter, possible manifesto of the shooter.

I watched what is purportedly the video released by the shooter.

And the first reaction is it seems so clearly demonic, the kind of language that's being used, the way that it's being spoken.

I'm not one of these people who sees demons hiding under every rocks, but if you acknowledge that there's evil in the world, then you have to acknowledge there is a personality to evil, and there's more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophies.

So, you know, some of what has come out of this purported video is a

little firing line, you know, like a target with Christ's head on the top of it.

Some of it is blasphemous, terrible language.

And then, of course, the targeting of a church or a school, not only a school, but a school with mass, not only mass, but a mass full of little kids.

If this is not demonic, I don't know what is.

So what you're seeing up on screen is a picture of the mass shooter in his video with a very detailed

image of the church and a knife over it.

He intentionally targeted a Catholic church.

He intentionally targeted kids at Mass.

He intentionally targeted young kids that were Catholic and Christian.

Michael, I mean, this is an attack on Christianity.

The media likely will just kind of glaze over that and make it all about guns.

What is your take on this, this deliberate, yet another Christian hate crime?

And I don't like using that word.

We are in the midst of a spiritual war.

Yes.

A line that I don't really like using, but is apt is that it's always the ones you most expect.

It's always the ones you most expect.

So in this case, Christians are being targeted while they're at prayer, while they're the the most innocent people, while they're little kids who don't have personal sin.

That in itself is horrifying.

But you expect it in the sense that all sin is a turning away from God.

All crime,

all violations of the moral order are expressing a contempt for God and a self-deification.

Now, that's on the spiritual level.

Then we get down to the political level.

Once again, I don't want to get out ahead of ourselves too much.

We haven't had the facts that are being floated totally confirmed yet.

If it is the case that this shooter, as has often been the case, has some sexual disorders, has some identity disorders, is on psychiatric drugs.

If that is the case, then it's all the more distressing to say it's always the ones you most expect because we have been told as a society to turn a blind eye to obvious psychosis, to obvious problems that are psychological and spiritual, to pretend that they're normal, to affirm them,

not to intervene and to try to help people in this situation.

And it's no surprise that the vast majority of these mass killers are people who have family breakdown, sexual hang-ups, psychological hang-ups, you know, where there were a hundred warning signs.

And we think that the generous and charitable thing to do is ignore it.

Well, you know,

it's really a form of cruelty.

I mean, you know, talk about charity and generosity to the victims here, to the victims' families.

Bad things happen.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

But when these sorts of things are preventable, it fills one with an unyielding anger.

Let's play cut 410.

This is, I think, the mayor or some leadership saying, no more prayers.

By the way, this is what the left is saying.

I want you to respond to this.

They said, if prayers worked, these kids would not be dead.

This is the Democrat mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, or Free.

Play cut 410.

Don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now.

These kids were literally praying.

It was the first week of school.

They were in a church.

These are kids that should be learning with their friends.

They should be playing on the playground.

They should be able to go to school or church in peace without the fear or risk of violence, and their parents should have the same kind of assurance.

Don't just pray, they say.

And then, and I get that he's upset, but Brian Krassenstein, a leading Democrat influencer, says, quote, praying is the problem here, not the solution.

People use prayer instead of action.

If prayer worked, a house of prayer wouldn't have just experienced this tragedy.

That is the modern left.

I want you guys to read that.

Saying that prayer is the problem.

By the way, prayer leads you to action, but prayer is not...

a guarantee of a covering.

Prayer is first and foremost an act of worship and an act of contrition to an almighty God that is the author of life.

Michael Knowles.

Both statements are absolutely vomit-inducing.

These people, if they weren't so profoundly ignorant, would merit even more of our anger.

But let's just follow their ideas to their conclusion.

What they're saying is, don't pray.

Prayer is stupid.

Let's make fun of these dead Christian kids and their families for praying.

What idiots they are.

They shouldn't pray.

What's the alternative?

Well, the alternative, I think quite clearly, is that we just need to elect progressive politicians and enact progressive policies because that's going to lead to progressive action to solve all of these problems and to prevent mass shootings.

He's a Democrat mayor.

They're in a Democrat state.

There's a Democrat governor.

They're full of Democrat legislators.

They have all of that.

How come they didn't fix it?

Huh?

You know,

if the point is that you're wasting all your time praying when instead you should be electing Democrats so that we can implement our wise policies, well, you know what?

You all were elected and you didn't figure it out either.

And this is one of the errors of liberalism.

You know, liberalism says no gods, no kings, only men.

We are going to, through our rationality, create a perfect society.

We're going to ignore original sin.

Original sin is not real.

We're going to live in this perfected utopia.

That hasn't worked out very well.

And the evidence is we live in a largely secular society, an extremely liberal society, a society where we're highly technocratic and we implement all sorts of wonky policies.

And guess what?

They still haven't extirpated original sin.

So what the Christians say is they recognize rightly, we can't save ourselves.

You know, that's an ancient heresy.

It's called Pelagianism and it's

reified in modernity in liberalism.

But it's not going to work.

You're not going to create a utopia here on earth because we're fallen and we have concupiscence and evil just exists.

Okay.

So in addition to doing what we can, taking appropriate and prudent political actions, we're going to pray to God because God made us.

God sustains us, God is being himself, God saves us if we are to be saved, and so we're going to rely on him.

The liberals and the moderns and the secularists have no such humility, so they become even angrier.

But it's an impotent kind of anger because none of their policies work either.

And let me just say that if I were to go, I would love to go praying.

Praying is one of the highest acts.

I mean, these kids should still be alive.

I'm not trivializing their death, unlike the Democrats that are spitting on their grave and humiliating their legacy.

But Jesus, Christ our Lord, prayed before he went to the cross.

He prayed to the Father.

And there is supernatural power in prayer.

It's a mystery as to how God dispenses his grace, or healings happen from prayer, clarity, wisdom, interventions.

We don't know when and how God does it because God is the sovereign being overall.

But prayer is a real thing.

It's not just a chatter to yourself.

It's a divine communique to the heavens.

And to kind of trivialize it and say, oh, you know, prayer is just you talking to yourself or prayer is the problem.

Well, that is

if you do not believe in a personal intercessory God.

How are you as a Catholic thinking about this sort of attack against a Catholic church?

And should we remember these young kids as martyrs?

Certainly, they're martyrs.

I mean,

to be a martyr is to die

because someone hates the faith, you know.

And so obviously this person,

whether or not the manifestos and the videos are true, it's clear enough from the action that this person was committing a crime against.

people specifically for believing in Christ.

So they certainly are martyrs, and the martyrs go all the way back.

You know, cardinals in the church wear red slippers because they're following in the footsteps of the martyrs.

And we believe that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, which is soft consolation in a moment like this of such immense and terrible grief.

But this is a consistent theme.

The devil knows his enemy, and evil people threaten all of history in all sorts of different political circumstances have attacked the church.

And the church remains.

The church not only remains standing, the church advances, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

It's no coincidence, I think.

It's no mere coincidence that this horrific attack occurs at the same time that we're seeing all these sorts of headlines about the advance of Christianity in America, specifically Catholicism, but other religious traditions as well.

A final turning away from the popular new atheism, the decline in religion.

Now you see a hockey stick in adult conversion specifically.

So, you know, all the right enemies are horrified by this.

And

to see the political order tolerate

such spiritual evil, but also

psychological disorder.

You know, this seems to be the culmination of a long period of us pretending that crazy things are normal and

that that can have disastrous results and predictably does.

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All right, everybody, newly announced on the 10th of September, Utah Valley State University, on the 18th of September, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, of a prove me wrong and evening event.

The 22nd, Mr.

Knowles will be joining me, you troublemaker.

We are going to Mogadishu.

On the 22nd, we will be in University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

And then the 24th of Virginia, it's actually all crazy on the news cycle today and all the terrible news associated with that.

And the 24th, I'm going to Blacksburg, Virginia.

I'll be at Virginia Tech University.

And the 30th, I'm going back to Utah, Utah State.

And so, Michael, you and I will be in Minnesota with the terrible tragic news today.

It's crazy.

We're going to Minnesota together with the terrible news.

So it's kind of

bizarre.

Yeah, the timing of that is really.

It also, Charlie, it did take me a moment when you said we're going to Mogadishu.

That's how I'm going to publicize it, I think.

Because you do think Minnesota, weirdly, is at the epicenter of a lot of our political mania.

That's so right.

I know.

Minnesota is.

I know.

Minnesota's like the new, what was it equivalent during Trump 1.0?

I think like

LA or Chicago.

I mean, there were always kind of these petri-dish places where there was always controversy.

Berkeley, remember that was like a big one?

Now

Minneapolis is like the centerpiece of so much political energy.

And so we'll be going to Mogadishu together.

Minnesota just used to be a boring, normal place, and now

it's turned into

something different.

22nd of September, Michael and I are going.

Michael, why are people going back to church?

People are going back to church because the atheism ran out of steam.

That's the first reason.

There are like a hundred different reasons.

But the first reason is, especially for some of your young, hip cool Zoomer viewers, you don't remember the dog days of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennis, Sam Harris.

There was this time in the 2000s when

because of a publishing phenomenon, everyone thought that the atheists were the smart people and the religious people were the dumb people.

Never mind that statistically every single intelligent person who's ever lived has believed in God.

Never mind that, you know, some random journalist is not actually smarter than Thomas Aquinas, for instance.

That's just what it felt like at the time.

And the atheism ran its course and now it's over.

And it's over because people got really depressed.

You know, as all of this secularism and atheism was advancing, what did you also see?

You saw declining happiness for both men and women, especially for women.

You saw the skyrocketing rates of antidepressant drugs, also mostly for women, but for men as well.

You saw increased depression, including among teenagers.

You saw family breakdown.

You saw all manner of social disorder.

And you said, you know, if this is progress, show me regress.

You know, if this is enlightenment, give me some darkness.

I don't know,

because this isn't real.

And so people finally faced with the eternal questions again, are saying, all right, well, what have other people thought about this?

You know, and I think now we're seeing

all the smart people are returning to religion because of at least one basic fact, which is we can know that God exists.

And smart people going all the way back to Aristotle and Plato have known for a fact that God exists.

And God has a character and God reveals himself to us.

And if you're curious at all, if you're humble at all, you got to learn more.

And

younger people lived through one of the cruelest social experiments in the history of the world, which was COVID and lockdowns.

But let's ask specifically about Catholicism.

Young people are going to the Catholic Church.

More Americans are joining the Catholic Church than leaving for the first time in decades.

Why is this happening, Michael Knowles?

Well, again, I mean, I was kind of making the point about the new atheism, that things had gotten so low that the only way you could go was up.

That's a little bit true with Catholicism.

Obviously, Catholicism is the biggest religion in the world, a billion Catholics.

But still, Catholicism, especially in America, had been kind of weakened.

And now you're seeing a return to that.

This was predicted not only by the modern mackerel snappers like me, this was actually predicted by Alexei de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, probably the most famous and most incisive analysis of what America looks like.

And he predicted that even though America seems like a totally Protestant nation, he said over time, and this is in the 19th century, that Americans were going to trend one of two ways.

They were either going to give up religion entirely or they were going to become Catholic.

And his reasoning is kind of interesting.

He said it's because America is really democratic, lowercase D.

And in democratic nations, people have this inclination to throw off all authority and do whatever they want for themselves and believe, vox papa li vox day, the voice of the people is the voice of God.

So those guys are going to trend toward atheism.

But the ones who don't give up authority, they're going to trend toward a religion that is universal, that is uniform, that makes the same claims of all members everywhere, where there aren't stratas and hierarchies,

where it makes a claim that there is a universal church.

And he said, weird as it sounds, because I know as this country is full of Protestants, he said, I think Americans are going to trend toward Catholicism over time.

And he might be right.

Michael Knowles, I'll see you in Mogadishu.

Somalia.

I don't know how to respond in their native language, but how?

See you up there.

See you later.

God bless you guys.

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So we do have some confirmed news about the shooter in Minneapolis that is worth mentioning.

Evidence is emerging of the suspected shooter in Minneapolis appears to be a psychotic and manic, 22-year-old man, possibly trans, who left an 11-minute manifesto video video on YouTube hours before the shooting happened.

The video has been taken down.

The suspect wrote notes on the weapons he used, including Kill Trump Now.

Let's put these up on screen, by the way.

McVeigh, Where is Your God?

Burn Israel.

6 million was not enough.

He had a human-sharp-shaped target with Jesus' face attached to it.

This was an explicitly anti-Christian hate crime.

I hate that word hate crime.

But let's put up up some of these images.

We have them in the chat here.

And again, this guy is completely manic.

He should have been in a mental institution.

And let me just take a pause.

We need to bring back mental hospitals, and a lot more people need to be in mental hospitals.

It would solve a lot of our homeless problem.

And this guy obviously should not have been in the free society.

He is deranged.

He was manic.

He should have been in an insane asylum.

When we opened up the insane asylums, it was a bad decision for the country.

We need to bring back insane asylums.

He writes here, McVay, kill Trump now.

He says $6 million was not enough.

I'm not going to say his name on air.

We don't do that around here as to try to not memorialize the dark and the demonic activity.

Hatred destroys the soul.

And he targeted Christians for a reason.

He targeted young Catholic kids for a reason.

Joining us now is Alex Marlowe author of Breaking the Law,

host of the Alex Marlowe show, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News.

Alex, I know we have a lot other topics to cover, but your reaction here to the

growing evidence of this manic,

insane person in Minneapolis.

Charlie, you're after a great start and a very tough topic.

I think that reopening mental institutions is essential.

I live in Los Angeles.

It would greatly improve my city through mental institutions that were available to people.

Yes.

I think that clearly this is a hate crime.

And I just in breaking the law, which you've been incredible about promoting, I do note how infrequent it is that people who persecute Christians are charged with hate crimes.

It almost never happens.

It is, it's a rounding error.

It is essentially never, I'm not saying never literally, but it is a rounding error that it ever happens.

Hate crimes tend to be, go against every other political group, pretty much,

sexual orientation, religion, disability, ethnicities, but never Christians, even though Christians are frequently targeted frequently.

And I give, I think, about 100 examples in the book of when they are, and yet they're, there, it

never comes up.

Um, so that's a very important thing.

Um, one other thing that we're seeing, some images that will, uh,

of the apparently male with very feminine ponytails, another with a LGBTQ plus IA three spear, four spear flag.

Um, if those do get confirmed to be associated with this person, then uh, that will add, I think, to the commentary and the analysis around it.

But the craziness is the main factor, that's true.

And the deep hatred that is permeating through certain parts of our society.

But I want to say one other thing that's important.

I don't like naming these people as well.

I don't on my shows.

And you won't on the front page of Breitbart.

It just says terms of basic news information.

You can find it if you dig, but we don't make it easy for people.

And that's very important that whenever this is, this gets enough

media attention, these things do become more frequent.

And that is a sad sad fact of life.

That's exactly right.

And look, this is just, this guy's all over the place, right?

Just a lover of transgressive things.

And

this guy had a shooting target of the face of Jesus.

Yes.

And

just the darkness.

And of course, the Democrats, their immediate reaction is to blame Trump, is to blame Republicans.

Yeah.

And allegedly, this guy tried to change his name.

Again, we're going to look more into that, what exactly the details are surrounding it.

I have a sneaking suspicion, Alex, the media is not going to cover this one for much longer.

I don't know.

Maybe it's just a gut reaction.

Doesn't really fit their narrative.

And mind you, our perspective on the show, we did not talk about anything politically.

We just said this is a terrible human thing.

We actually had a whole first hour on the problem of evil, wrestling at it from a spiritual and theological perspective.

I want to play Amy Klobuchar.

The first thing she does she wrongly says it was an automatic rifle, which it was not, and she blames Republicans.

She can't help herself.

Play Cut 394.

It, of course, makes me think about guns and all the work we've done to ban these automatic rifles and to do something when it comes to

the background checks and everything.

And we keep getting thwarted.

We were able to pass a limited measure on a bipartisan basis, but not enough to stop something like this.

And it just makes you think about that as well without knowing the details about how he got that gun, if the gun was legal, what kind of gun it was.

But it was clearly one of these automatic rifles to be able to shoot that many kids so fast.

Earlier this year, of course, I think about the attacker who shot two Minnesota state lawmakers in their homes near Minneapolis.

Alex, that is a disgusting statement by a United States senator.

She immediately goes to score political points.

She immediately goes to attack Republicans and lies about it.

Something tells me she's not going to talk much about this shooter because it doesn't really fit their desired narrative.

Yeah, Charlie, I can usually dissociate 100% from what's going on in the news from so that I can characterize it.

appropriately at Breitbart.

I can compartmentalize the emotional stuff.

But as a Catholic and with young children, it's very hard to watch something like this take place where innocent children are getting gunned down by a maniac who clearly is,

if there is a coherent ideology, it's certainly against everything that I stand for and you stand for, Charlie.

And to watch this take place, it's targeted hate crime against Christian children who are innocent, shooting through windows in the middle of a mass, specifically during mass.

We know they're congregating in a place for peace and unity.

And for her to go and talk about firearms, that is you the right way.

It's disgusting.

That's truly disgusting, and it's beneath any American, period, much less an elected politician who thinks you should be president.

Just as a side note, Alex, going back to the insane asylums, the reason I say that is the more I read about this guy, he's completely incoherent.

Yes, there's contradictions.

I mean, and it seems as if that is a

pattern, honestly.

It is a pattern that we see amongst these types.

It's just you can't really make much of it.

We saw this with the Nashville shooter.

We saw this with lots of shooters.

Why is it that we got rid of

mental insane asylums?

We did a de-institutionalization.

It began in the 1960s, and we shut down large insane asylums.

What is preventing us, at least states, from bringing back major insane asylums and putting these guys in there?

What is stopping us?

Why did we get rid of it?

Because guys like this cannot be out in free society.

It just shouldn't happen.

Yeah, it was a complicated thing.

I boned up on this a while ago, and I think that there was, it was a combo of there was a few instances where there were abuses that took place at the asylum, uh,

system

the asylums, and I think that got a lot of negative attention.

There also became this huge industry of mental health that I think people advertise as we can actually replace this.

They don't need institutionalization.

And we've seen how big the mental health industry is now.

It's got to be one of the biggest

industries in the country, period.

I mean, just everyone seems to be a part of it, and there's this rush to get kids into it as soon as humanly possible.

And then I think that just from a civil rights perspective, I think it's tough to detain people who are not necessarily criminal against their will, even though if it's good for them and it's good for society.

And then I do think there have been a lot of advances in the medicine so that some people have been able to function with things that used to probably necessitate being internalized.

But I bet you there is this sort of civil rights movement, if you want to be charitable, but wokeness, if you want to be not charitable, element to it, where it's just, we're just not going to, we're just not going to lock people away because sometimes we are not thinking about what's the best for the greater city

as a whole.

We need a national agreement to bring back insane asylums.

I mean it.

And

this guy should have been in an insane asylum.

I mean, just you look at what he wrote on his gun.

I mean, none of it makes any sense.

It's all contradiction.

He's all over the place.

Exactly.

He's talking about the $6 million in the Holocaust wasn't enough.

Killed Trump now.

McVay.

you look at this, say, okay, this guy should just be, you know, institutionalized.

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I was just watching this guy's video, and that is one of the darkest things I've had to watch in some time.

That is very dark.

For 11 minutes, he's going on, filming himself in his room, talking about the intent to kill the kids, talking about where is your God.

I mean, it's as dark as it gets.

It's really...

demonic, satanic, chilling.

And you got to wonder his family and friends all around him, of which he said he had family.

What were they thinking through all this?

That his family should have institutionalized him and his teacher, anyone in his surrounding circle.

You saw, and he wrote a note to his parents.

His parents are out there.

They're going to have obviously

a tough road to hoe here.

And you shouldn't be blamed for somebody else's sins.

But he wrote a note to your parents: you were all that was keeping me going.

So you have to wonder really what happened here.

And anyway, so it's a lot of speculation.

But

anyway, Alex Marlow continues with, Alex, I want to get your thoughts.

Let's let's move beyond this Minnesota story.

Can I say one more thing, Charlie, though, before we move on?

A couple of things.

I do want to hear from the parents, and I admire your position.

I think it's very moral, but I want to hear from them.

How do you lose track of this?

I've seen the 11-minute video also, which people should not hunt down, in my opinion, but if you must.

Because I want to see how this person lost track of this.

This was so clearly premeditated for such a long time.

And

did no one have any interaction with this individual and be able to see any red flags and be able to stop it?

And I want to know why not.

And I think that that's a question that these families that are, will never be the same, will never be whole again after today.

The trauma that this person caused this community that they'll never fully heal from, I think they're entitled to that answer.

Who are the people around this guy who missed everything?

But I want to make one other point that there's a stark contrast here with the shooting of a mass at a Catholic church, a Christian church, is that this person is clearly extremely online.

All of their, these slogans that are written on these.

That's such a good point.

All of these slogans on these weapons, it's every dark, weird meme you've ever seen in the deep recesses of the internet to the point where I don't think he missed one of them.

I think they're all there.

And I think that a lot of Americans have replaced God with the smartphone and with the apps.

And I think that that is a dark thing that we've been kind of talking around for a long time.

Charlie, maybe it's time to start talking about it literally in those terms, that we've taken God out of our lives the same time we've gotten this blatant addiction to these phones and these devices.

And

it's hard not to draw that contrast when you stare at these images long enough.

I mean,

it ruins your day.

You watch these videos.

And again, I don't want the parents to be indicted for the sins of a son.

However, if the parent, the parents obviously knew he had firearms and he had these, I mean, you look at this video.

He is just displaying displaying all of his weapons on a bed with tons of ammunition.

You got to wonder, what are they doing here?

Like, oh, yeah, you know, little, you know, you know, little Johnny over there.

It's fine.

This guy's completely deranged, totally insane.

President Donald Trump has said the following, quote, I have been fully briefed on the tragic shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The FBI quickly responded, and they are on the scene.

The White House will continue to monitor this terrible situation.

Alex, we know what's next.

They're going to do a push for gun control.

I think that's going to fall on deaf ears given that we all know this is not a gun issue.

This is an insane asylum issue.

Alex Marlow, author of Breaking the Law, what can we anticipate as their next move?

Yeah, hopefully at this point in time where the conservative voices are controlling the culture more, we can talk more about the hate crimes against Christians.

We could talk about some of this extremely online culture.

I saw one of the images.

Apparently, he had a booklet with a lot of Luigi stickers on it.

You guys can do the math on that, where the media encouraged.

obviously, there was going to be more murders after the way the media reacted to the Luigi Mangioni assassinating of a healthcare CEO.

So maybe we can actually have some productive conversations this time, but the media will try their best to just make it about firearms.

And I feel like most Americans roll their eyes at that.

Thank God.

So

somebody on social media has said, quote, I know this is developing, but if it's true that he was trans, which it looks as if this individual very well might be, just like the Nashville shooter, which also targeted a Christian school, just so we are clear,

that there's a take that the Trump NIH could take measures to coerce the APA, the American Pediatric Association, into classifying transgenderism as a mental disorder again in the DSM.

And the Department of Justice then could use 4473 NICS to deny firearm sales to them, basically saying that if you have gender dysphoria, you should not be able to own firearms.

I tend to agree with that.

I think that you are so mentally disturbed that if you, again, if you're schizophrenic, you shouldn't be able to own firearms.

Final thoughts, Alex Marlowe.

I know this was an unusual day.

Thanks for

very unusual.

No, thank you for including me in the breaking news segments.

I know these are very strenuous, but essential segments for radio, podcasts, et cetera.

I think your takes are right.

I think Charlie, it'd be nice if you could guide some of these discussions because I feel like those are very productive.

But I don't think that people who have gender dysphoria should have firearms.

I think that's fine.

I think we can work that out in the courts.

That's for lawyers to decide.

People can hear arguments, but that's a gut.

And that's not like a hardcore position I've thought about for a long time.

But

it doesn't add up to me.

Doesn't add up.

We need insane asylums, and we need gender dysphoric individuals not to be able to own guns.

Alex, thank you so much.

We're honored to be partnering with the Allen Jackson Ministries, and today I want to point you to their podcast.

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We're honored to be partnering with the Alan Jackson Ministries.

Alan Jackson Ministries is working hard to bring biblical truth back into our culture.

You can find out more about Pastor Allen and the ministry at alanjackson.com forward slash Charlie.

Joining us now is a friend of ours, Robbie Starbuck.

He's doing a great work.

Robbie, I want to get to the Cracker Barrel story right out of the gate here.

Obviously, we're here in the shadow of the terrible situation in Minneapolis.

So your thoughts on Minneapolis, and then let's transition to the very important Cracker Barrel story and give us the update, Robbie Starbuck.

Yeah, you know, this shooting is just awful.

It's, I think we're all looking at what's going on and especially for parents out there.

You know, I've got four kids.

It's just, it's the worst thing.

Nobody can imagine that happening with their kids.

And

it's a reminder that there's just tremendous evil in the world.

And that I think, you know, especially us as men, like we need to stand up to that evil on a regular basis.

And we've got to protect our kids.

I mean, it's still insane to me that politicians in D.C.

are more protected than our kids are in their schools, you know, and I think it's very simple.

You know, we can solve this,

but we've got to get smart about it and make sure that kids are not unprotected at schools.

If they have guns in D.C.

to protect politicians, then we can have guns in schools to protect kids.

I agree with you.

So, Robbie, now shifting gears, and thank you for the time.

What is the latest on Cracker Barrel?

And talk more about the woke elements that have infected this company that a lot of people like.

Yeah, you know, obviously getting them to revert back on the logo back to the old one is a win.

And, you know, I'm happy about that and everything.

But there's, you know, an ideological side to what we do.

And it's that, you know, everything when we do one of these campaigns, it's to create, you know, sort of a pressure cooker, if you will, where, you know, little by little, you start to make the target crack.

And, you know, in this case, Cracker Barrel is definitely cracking.

And this is a signal that, okay, they had to have seen sales slow down.

This is a crisis for them.

And all those admissions mean that this is a ripe situation for us to get everything we want.

And in reality, the real problem is not the logo.

It never was.

The real problem is that this company has been taken over by people who are activists on the left.

And they have forced the LGBTQ stuff into the business and they have forced DEI into the business.

And so what does that look like?

They have funded all-ages pride events that include drag shows and everything else where children were present at these events.

And they're doing that with your money if you go to Cracker Barrel.

They still have not pulled back on that part.

Okay.

So if you go to their website right now, and I have a link posted on my X page where you can go verify this yourself, they still have a page.

just totally religiously dedicated to the LGBTQ plus cause, right?

And talking about how their focus this year was actually on pride.

You know, you'd think in a a food service business, it would be on like good food, good service.

No, they say on their website their focus was on pride and really enmeshing themselves into that.

And so their DEI stuff is still there.

Their push for this LGBTQ stuff is still there.

And my contention is if you're a Christian, if you're just a good person with like a, you know, sort of moral backbone of any kind, you can't go give them your money.

you know and i think it's very important that we have these examples it can almost seem silly right where you're like okay you're you're going after this company like Cracker Barrel.

They're much smaller than the companies I typically target, but it's not silly at all.

These are cultural touchstones.

And the real value in them isn't even that you get this company to fix this.

It's that you create an environment where every other company is afraid and aware that the right at any given time is so culturally dominant that if we turn the switch, we can get your company to fold.

And so it makes it less likely that these companies misbehave, right?

And it also encourages them to self-correct before we ever get to them.

And I can't even tell you the number of companies that have done that or where quietly behind the scenes I have given advice to CEOs and helped them take down this ideology within their organization so that they don't become a story.

Yeah.

So help me understand.

I mean, for example, the NFL, they're doing go-go dancers.

I mean, there are some of these institutions, the NFL is a great example, Cracker Barrel as well, where their audience are conservatives, men.

What is the business business argument when they're sitting around the table at Cracker Barrel to openly declare war on their most loyal customers?

There should be a shareholder lawsuit.

I mean, the Cracker Barrel, you're right, they have the Cracker Barrel LGBTQ Plus Alliance.

That's part of the Cracker Barrel relationship.

I mean, when I think of someone that goes for Cracker Barrel, I don't think it's someone that's marching in a gay pride parade.

I think it's someone that's coming home from church in Birmingham, Alabama, and they want to get, you know, chicken fried steak or something like that.

That's exactly right.

They depend on us to survive.

You know, and so, you know, you name two different things there, and they are really two different issues, Cracker Barrel and the NFL.

There exists a very small group of companies that have such brand loyalty because of their monopoly on the product that they get away with pushing the most insane stuff.

And we'll get to that in a second.

But in the case of Cracker Barrel, it's a couple of things.

First of all,

there is a belief system within the left that your ideology trumps everything else, right?

It trumps business, it trumps growth, it trumps capitalism.

You know, it doesn't really matter.

So if you're put in a position of power, your goal is not to increase profits.

Your goal is not to run a successful business.

Your goal is to use that business as a conduit to almost evangelize, right?

Because this is a religion for them.

And I think that's something we have to recognize.

This is a religious system for them because they have a hole where most people would put God.

And so, for them, they put leftism there.

And so, they do everything they can within that business to use it as an agent of change within culture.

And, you know, the sooner we recognize that, the better.

So, a company like Cracker Barrel, though, they do not have that monopoly within

brand loyalty and that customer base to get away with this.

The NFL does, or at least has for a period of time, because the NFL, rightly for about the last decade,

decided their fans are too cowardly to tune out.

And so, what they decided is that we can get away with pushing these incredibly unpopular social issues on them.

And in reality,

it's something I actually explained in our movie, The War on Children, which is the mirror exposure effect.

There's a great understanding in Hollywood and has been for a long time that the more you expose somebody to something, the law of the mere exposure effect is that they will become more likely to either support it or at the very least accept it as as normal.

And so, you know, I think for the NFL, that's what they're doing when they push these incredibly unpopular things because they have a captive audience that they believe is too cowardly to change the channel.

And so that's where the work you're doing and I'm doing is incredibly important because I think the undercurrent of what we're doing is teaching young men to have a backbone again and that we're not going to be like this other generation that was afraid to change a channel or afraid to use their money to stand up for their values.

Like we are powerful.

And that's that's really the message of everything I've been doing for the last year, taking down these woke policies at companies, is that we have a power that has been untapped.

We've allowed the left to bear pressure upon corporate America for so long and to use it for their

activism without really providing any pressure and pushback on our own.

And so

times are a changing, you know, and I think that's that's something that corporate America is becoming very aware of.

And even for brands like the NFL, they are going to have to contend with because there's a crop of young men, and you know this probably better than anybody, that are a different breed.

They're not afraid to stand up.

They have courage again.

You know, I think this is one of those cases where you're going to see good men create good times, right?

It's really incredible to see because I see it in my oldest daughter's generation.

She's a senior in high school.

And I see the young men in that age group.

They are the most openly, unabashedly conservative of any generation I've ever seen.

And if you had said 10 years ago that was going to happen, people would have said we were crazy.

And it has happened.

Those men, I think, are going to be the generation that steps up and makes it untenable for organizations like the NFL to continue down this path.

Because at the end of the day, we need our country.

We need our values.

We need our faith more than we need football, right?

Like football can be fun.

It can be engaging.

It can be a way to get your mind off things.

We need those other things much more than we need football.

And I think that generation of young men gets it.

I hope you're right.

I will say, though, that football has grown in popularity.

Are you saying, and let's put the go-go dancers up there, the male go-go dancers.

By the way, the Carolina Panthers, they have a trans dancer.

The whole thing is just so

outrageous and repulsive in more ways than one.

Men should not be go-go dancers at NFL football games, period.

So, but...

Are you saying that the NFL takes their customers for granted and they just think that no one's going to rebel.

We can do what we want to keep the corporate wokies happy.

Yeah, it's worse than taking their customers for granted.

The NFL thinks that their customers are either stupid or cowardly.

And so they believe that they can use their company as a vehicle for social change, you know.

And so far, they have been able to get away with it, right?

Because men have not changed the channel.

And as you said, popularity has grown.

And so you have to, you know, sort of figure out how you fix that within men to be able to truly fix the problem.

Because I will say this, what should give us hope is that like a brand like Bud Light lives and dies based on the behavior of male consumers.

And male consumers were the first ones to stand up and say, you know what, we're not going to buy it.

And that's a good sign, right?

And we've continued that over the course of this last year.

So.

You know, the more you strengthen this movement of consumers using their money and refusing to give their money to people that hate them and their values, the closer you get to the ability to take down the real behemoths like the NFL, because it's going to take a very concerted effort, probably by everybody on the right, to be able to affect change with a brand like that, where they have built in.

such a loyalty that people are afraid to change the channel because they have a monopoly.

It's not like there's another professional football league.

I mean, outside of college football, which isn't really professional,

you know, in the same thing.

There's no competition.

There's your trans dancer up on screen.

Robbie, how do people support you and find out more about your work?

Go to robbystarbuck.com slash DEI or follow me on social media.

You know, you can support our work there if you want to be a part of it, but also you can be a whistleblower.

You know, at that page, Robbiestarbuck.com slash DEI, you can blow the whistle if your company is engaging in these sorts of crazy policies or supporting all-ages pride events or drag shows for kids, whatever it might be.

And we will help and keep you anonymous to bring that news to the world so the consumers are able to get the information they need to decide where they want to spend their money.

Robbie, thank you so much.

God bless you.

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Somebody emailed us, freedom at charliekirk.com.

C Charlie, this is why I can't believe in God.

How could you believe in God after this?

It's a very important question.

I don't want to be immediately dismissive.

So let's first go to what we as Christians or Jews, but what ethical monotheists, we have the problem of evil.

Atheists have evil, no problem.

You see, on the atheist side, they can't say that evil actually exists because without God, if God does not exist, then we are nothing more than just a clump of cells and there is no such thing as evil.

You only know something is evil if you have good to compare it to.

You only know something is right

because you have a standard of right.

For example, if I have a piece of paper,

And I draw a crooked line.

So let's just see here.

I wish I had a sharpie here.

Maybe I do.

Yeah, I do.

And I have a crooked line.

Okay, here's my crooked line.

How great is that?

Put it in the loop.

How do you know this line is crooked?

How do you know?

It was just a line, right?

But you immediately look at it, you say that's a crooked, squiggly line.

Only because,

only because, in your mind, you know

what a straight line is.

So because...

There you see a crooked line.

You're immediately comparing it to the contrast of a perfect straight line.

The same happens in morality and ethics.

We only know that something is evil and wrong because we have a transcendent standard to compare it to.

If you do not believe in God, it is not right and wrong.

It's nothing more than preferences.

Now, in my theology, I believe that you're able to choose.

Other Christians do not have the belief as much in free will.

They sort of do.

It's hotly debated.

I do believe that we have agency.

We have the ability to choose.

we have free will.

And that individual woke up with the free will and used that free will to murder two kids.

That's evil.

And we know it's evil because

we are appealing towards a transcendent truth standard.

And this is a principle also shared by Jews and Christians alike.

But also understand this.

And I got this from Dennis Prager.

We as Christians or Jews,

we have to explain the problem of evil.

We also have to explain natural disasters.

That's a toughie.

Atheists,

they have to explain everything else.

If you are out there and you look at this and you are angry and you are mad and you are upset at this horrific act of evil, I would just say, how do you know it's evil?

By what standard do you know is it evil?

And you know know it because you're appealing to Christian ethics or Jewish ethics or Judeo-Christian ethics in that regard.

Secondly,

the atheist has to explain everything else around us.

They have to explain life.

They have to explain the longest sentence ever recorded, which is DNA.

They have to explain the fine-tuning of the universe.

They have to explain why the Earth exists.

They have to explain physics.

They have to explain the laws of reason.

They have to explain the law of thermodynamics, they have to explain it all, and they have to say, oh, it's all just an act of randomness.

But if it's all just an act of randomness, then morality is just random.

And isn't it interesting

that this shooter, we know nothing about the shooter except early 20s, and I'm sure this guy is as, or gal, but likely a gal, as sick, twisted, awful, demonic as possible.

It's a guy, got it.

This guy who is now dead, who who could have killed a lot more,

was only expressing an existential emptiness.

Why was this guy drawn to a church to murder young people at mass?

And so while that email is well received, Charlie, how could you believe in God after this?

The question that I would respond is,

well, how can you not believe?

in a God that created the heavens and the earth.

The problem of evil has well outdated every single person.

It's predated almost every single commentator.

But if you don't believe in God, then you say evil's no problem.

But if you are upset with it, you actually are implying that you believe in God.

You might be angry at God.

You might be wrestling with God.

You might be mad at God.

You might think that God is unjust.

That's a completely different thing

than not believing in God.

In fact, we're called to wrestle with God.

It's very normal in the Old Testament for people to cry out to God in disgust or anger.

It's not always justified, but it's very normal.

That's different than saying that there is no God.

I want to just put a point though, because we've got a lot of emails, freedom at charliekirk.com.

Charlie, I can't, you know, help me with the problem of evil.

And again, the problem of evil is one that we can only wrestle with because

of God and our belief in God.

And remember, Christianity is the answer to the problem of evil.

There would be no need for Jesus to sacrifice himself for us if we had never sinned, if we had not contaminated this earth.

Christ's work will ultimately fix all of the wrongs.

God created a good world in the beginning.

Bereshit, he says, God created the heavens and the earth.

Evil was not part of God's original design, but entered through human rebellion, as it says in Genesis 3.

The source of evil is human rebellion.

In Romans 5, 12, very clearly, Paul writes this in what is known as the believer's constitution, quote, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Now God does have sovereignty over evil.

Evil exists, but it's not outside of God's control.

He can overrule and redeem it.

At times, he allows it to happen.

For example, in Genesis 50, 20, one of my favorite verses, what the enemy went for evil, God will use it for good.

The book of Job, which is actually the oldest book of the Bible, the first book ever written.

It was a book written actually before Genesis.

We know that Satan is active, yet God sets the boundaries.

This shows that while evil is very real, God bends it towards his perfect purposes.

The cross is God's answer to evil, and this is why Christianity matters.

The cross is the answer to evil.

Atheists have no answer to evil.

We have an answer to evil.

And I don't want to discount the

pain, the mystery, and the confusion that you might have around evil.

But understand it's because you know what is good, you're only even able to articulate what is evil.

The atheist dilemma is that if we're nothing more than just a bunch of particles and chemicals that have accidentally evolved over millions of years, what is your morality?

It must come through revelation above reason.

The problem should be reframed.

The question is,

what should should not be?

Why does evil exist?

Instead, it should be, what has God done about it?

And the cross is the answer to that.

Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

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