Chicago's Latest Bloodbath and a Baseball Salary Cap

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

Are human beings naturally good or evil?

I tell you why the answer to that question can explain the Democrats' fascination with crime.

What is the telos, the ends, the aims of our civilization?

Well, we have Julio Rosas to join us in this action-packed mega episode.

Also, should we have a salary cap in baseball?

A little fun ending to this conversation.

I want to hear from you your reaction.

Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

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Buckle up, everybody.

Here we go.

Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

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He's an incredible guy.

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Much to cover this weekend.

I hope you guys had a wonderful Labor Day weekend.

You can email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com, and subscribe to our podcast.

You know, I'm sure you were all enjoying college football, relaxing, maybe getting one last

grilling session in with hopefully goodranchers.com, promo code Kirk, with your family.

But, you know, Chicago, they celebrate Labor Day differently.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and the way that the teenagers and the youths celebrate Labor Day a little bit differently.

You see, in Chicago, unlike in most pockets of America where it's all just about family and tradition, you see, in downtown Chicago, they want to break records.

Now, they didn't quite break a record, but they got close.

Prepare cut 288.

This last weekend, 52 people were shot.

in the city of Chicago, seven of them killed.

Now, based on the shot to death ratio, I can tell you there's not a bunch of white supremacists doing this.

Play cut 288.

52 people, I should say, were shot in Chicago, 30 different shootings over the holiday weekend, seven people killed.

Aren't numbers like that still a problem that your city needs to address?

What more can be done to address that?

Trump is a dictator.

I think we've got to be very clear.

He's trying to normalize violence.

He's trying to normalize military deployment in American cities.

What we have not seen is really a systemic investment that will actually address the core issues.

I had shootings in my ward.

One of them was a tragic shooting of an unhoused neighbor.

So the Trump administration is saying that they're going to address the issue of unhoused residents by putting them in jails, in concentration camps.

Are they going to address the issue of violence by withholding $800 million that have gone to the cities like Chicago for violence prevention programs?

Okay, so his first little statement was, hey, isn't violence a problem in Chicago?

He can't even acknowledge that it is.

He says, well, Trump is a dictator.

He wants to normalize violence.

No, you have been normalizing violence in Chicago.

We have been putting up with violence in America's greatest cities, our once great cities, our biggest cities, in Chicago, in New York, in San Francisco, in Los Angeles.

And President Donald Trump

is now willing to bring in federal troops, to bring in the National Guard, the FBI, and put the DC model into Chicago.

And to see how hard the Chicago

political class is fighting a decrease in crime, this is an eye-opening experience, I hope, for a lot of Americans right now.

The Democrat Party is the party of crime.

Write that down.

If you have a Democrat in your life, what is the argument that they're giving you?

against bringing in federal troops.

You know what?

The Democrats have normalized the idea that our cities are dangerous dumps and nothing can be done about it.

Democrats, they like criminals because they feel sorry for them.

You see, their entire worldview, their entire philosophical view is one that you are nothing more than a product of your environment.

It's a very Marxist, materialistic,

secular humanist way of thinking.

It's that you do not have agency.

You don't have the ability to rise above your circumstances.

But you see, the guy that's shooting, you know, he's putting his gun sideways and he's shooting up a bunch of youths at 2 a.m., he's really a victim.

He's a victim of white supremacy, of capitalism.

He's a victim of the patriarchy.

He's a victim of all the different structures around him, and we should feel sorry for the criminal.

Of course, the left has no such empathy for victims, no such empathy for civilization, because at its core, the left is a de-civilizational movement.

And no better way to de-civilize the United States of America than have widespread crime.

Widespread crime is the easiest way to turn a first world nation into a third world nation.

The entire Democrat Party project is how quickly can we turn America into a third world hellhole?

They tried to do it by keeping our entire border open of 10,000 people a day when Joe Biden was president.

They've tried to do it with the crime in our streets.

And you see this on full display.

And this is why my advice to the president, both privately and publicly, my advice to the White House, both privately and publicly, as I'm talking to them, go all in on Chicago.

This is a perfect step to.

And to their credit, they proved it in step one.

Here are the numbers.

This is cut 281.

I can't wait till I get back on campus because they're going to be so mad about this.

Oh, really?

In D.C.,

robberies are down 71%.

71%?

Play cut 281.

Crime, here's why Democrat cities are plagued by violence should consider getting on board.

If you look here at Washington, D.C., at a two-week period this year compared to last year, property crime is down 20%.

But the biggest thing are all of the violent crimes, often including robbery, which is down 60%.

Homicides are down 71%

from last year over this exact same period of time.

Assaults with a dangerous weapon, down 10%.

Yet if you listen to Democrats, they don't care about those statistics.

No, no, no,

it's my great friend, Charlie Hurt, who I was able to host Fox and Friends Weekend over the summer with him, and I'm going to do it again this fall.

The only thing I would add, Charlie Hurt, is no, they do care.

They're actually pro-criminal.

It's a much different thing.

The idea of law abiding bothers them because the law itself bothers them.

The Democrat Party thinks the law are extensions of a white supremacist construct.

They think they're an extension of a failed Western civilizational ambition.

They look at this through the lens of de-civilization.

Law is a threat to their philosophical core.

And that is why this is such a good topic.

This is such a good fight for President Trump.

You prove it in D.C., and then you go one city at a time and prove that urban crime is a choice.

If you live in a major city and you worry about crime, it's because your leaders want there to be crime.

Period.

End of story.

That's it.

Crime is not some sort of intractable problem, intractable problem.

Crime is not some sort of riddle.

Crime is not the human genome.

Crime is not us trying to figure out to break through the fourth law of physics or try to come up with something new.

No, crime is actually super simple.

Lock people up for a long period of time and have a lot of police and don't tolerate it.

Lock people up for the small crimes and they won't do the big crimes.

It is working in DC.

Play cut 286.

They say more than 1,300 arrests made so far.

That includes a dozen known gang members.

One, part of Trender Agua, who's the subject of a murder for hire probe.

Another's a minor taken into custody for intent to deal fentanyl.

Plus, five missing children rescued, all that since August 7th.

And murders are down significantly.

You see, the Democrat Party, this is why this issue, my advice to President Trump is go all in on this for the rest of your presidency.

Because this issue exposes the unpatriotic, decivilizational,

lawless core of what the Democrat Party is.

It exposes the Democrat Party being

a

anti-Western American parasitic contagion.

Because the Democrats have to oppose everything Donald Trump does.

We've made fun of that.

We've done plenty of humor.

You know, Donald Trump says, I cure cancer, they'll be pro-cancer.

We've talked about that.

So Donald Trump says, I'm now bringing down crime, and they have to find some sort of way to verbally contort, to do some sort of strange rhetorical calisthenics

to try to convince you that this is bad.

That, no, actually, crime going down is white supremacy or it's the nationalization of our cities.

Well, the nationalization of our cities is better than what we've been living through.

What we've been living through is a third world racial jungle, and we don't want to live through that, where it's unrecognizable and it is,

quite honestly, lawless.

And Rudy Giuliani proved this in New York City.

But how easily we forget.

Rudy was injured in a car accident this last weekend.

He stopped to help a woman who was apparently a victim of domestic violence.

As he was pulling back out, he got hit at high speed from behind,

broken vertebrae and everything.

Now Trump says he's receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

These cities have become unlivable.

Everybody knows it.

You're afraid to say it.

And the response by the Democrat elite is so telling

because they don't actually care about their constituents.

They pander to a small subset of gangbangers,

teenagers, youths.

And

for them, they would much rather have a dangerous, crime-infested city where they are, quote-unquote, elected and in charge than President Trump being able to bring in additional resources

and bring down crime.

Brandon Johnson might be the most unimpressive mayor in America.

He's doing a terrible job.

He is

not well liked by the people of Chicago.

He's not smart.

He's not bright.

He shouldn't be the mayor of Chicago.

Chicago deserves so much better than Brandon Johnson.

His approval rating is below 20%.

He's a Marxist.

President Trump got like 30% of the vote in Chicago.

So just so we are clear, President Donald Trump has more approval in Chicago than Brandon Johnson.

And in order to be mayor of Chicago, you run in kind of a jungle primary,

what it's called.

And so you have like eight or nine different people that run.

So if you get like 28, 29% of the vote, you become mayor.

Now, there is a runoff system, I think, and you end up winning the runoff thanks to the teachers' unions, which run the entire state of Illinois.

This is Brandon Johnson, who is overseeing 52 people shot and seven people killed.

Let's just kind of look at the totals here, which, by the way, they are down this year remarkably, but still, 245 people shot and killed, 1,121 people shot and wounded, 1,366 people shot, Mr.

Johnson, with 293 homicides.

In just the month of August, 39 people were shot and killed, 1208 people were shot and wounded, 247 people were total shot with 43 homicides.

The vast majority majority of this were black people shooting black people, just so we are clear.

It's not white people that are shooting black people.

The predominant driver of urban crime is black on black crime or just black crime in general, especially in the city of Chicago.

But no one is able to say that Brandon Johnson wants to try to make it that, you know, I'm fighting white supremacy, even though he will not address black crime in his own city.

And just because we've been desensitized and used to this doesn't make mean it's okay.

Just because I grew up my entire life getting used to, you know, three to five hundred people getting shot a summer in Chicago does not make it okay.

This is Brandon Johnson, PlayCut 307.

Are you prepared to defend this land?

This land that was built by slaves, a land that was built by indigenous people, a land that is built by workers.

Are you prepared to defend this land?

The people united will always prevail.

I need you all to stand firm, to stand strong, if this president decides to continue to break this constitution.

Okay, let's go through a couple things.

First of all, are you encouraging people to fight federal troops, Mr.

Mayor?

Is that what you're saying?

Sounds like an insurrection language.

If a Republican governor were to say something like that, woof, under Joe Biden.

Also, how is that any different

than how the left got really mad and angry

at Mr.

Wallace, George Wallace?

Remember, I'm going to fight federal troops against segregation.

Well, you're going to fight federal.

See, the Democrats, they have

some parallels throughout their history.

In fact, I think Wallace was a Democrat, if I'm not mistaken.

If we go a level deeper here, though,

which I think is very important, just a side note, before I go a level deeper,

Native Americans did not build Chicago.

Okay, the Pottawami Indians did not build Chicago.

The Illinois tribes did not build Chicago.

They occupied Chicago.

They didn't build anything.

Okay?

Very sweet, nice people.

They didn't build anything.

Chicago really started as a military base in 1803, Fort Dearborn.

It was built largely, by the way, by the Irish and the Poles and the Czechs and the Bohemians and the Italians.

And it was not built by slaves.

I mean, there was a big influx of black migration that came to Chicago.

And actually, before we decided to addict a bunch of our populations on government benefits, those parts of Chicago were flourishing, were safer.

Chicago was largely built up after the Civil War, Mr.

Mayor, but he just has to say it because it's kind of part of the modern incantation of the Democrat Party.

I think President Trump should call his bluff.

I think we should flood the zone.

It's already working in Washington, D.C.

Chicago is a next perfect test case.

As I said in D.C., and people laughed at me, you bring in the tanks, you fly the drones, you send in the Marines.

It worked in D.C., it will work in Chicago.

People were laughing.

Oh my goodness, why are there tanks in D.C.?

Well, it worked because the show of force is all that these good-for-nothing lowlifes, these lowlifes that are shooting people at 1 or 2 a.m., that's all they understand.

These good-for-nothing lowlifes.

that are spraying and praying and sometimes a six-year-old girl gets struck on her way to school.

That right there is completely unacceptable.

We're not going to put up with that.

In the United States of America, we're not going to put up with urban crime anymore.

We're going to go city by city, block by block.

And the Democrats really don't like it.

The left, they don't know how to answer it because they're like, oh, our cities are so safe.

So stay away so we can keep them unsafe.

Really?

You guys have been complaining about how dangerous these cities are for a while.

Give us more money because our cities are so unsafe.

It's time for a federal takeover of Chicago.

We've been calling for this for quite some time.

I think we're getting closer.

I think you're going to see the president pull the trigger sometime soon.

What is Mayor Johnson going to do?

Resist?

Hi, America.

It's Charlie Kirk here.

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Okay,

let's play another piece of tape here.

This is

from this last weekend, Play Cut 302.

No federal troops in the city of Chicago.

No militarized force in the city of Chicago.

We're going to defend our democracy in the city of Chicago.

We're going to protect the humanity of every single person in the city of Chicago.

Says the guy that is literally less popular than Donald Trump in Chicago.

Now, look, we have to not keep our eye off D.C.

We have to keep on making sure that crime is going down and down and down in D.C.

This is J.B.

Pritzker right here, cut 298.

J.B.

Pritzker is saying President Trump is planning to do immigration raid in Chicago to keep illegals from voting in the 2026 election.

Wait, let me repeat that.

J.B.

Pritzker is worried that illegals being deported might impact their chances in the 2026 election.

Play cut 298.

This is a part of his plan to do something really nefarious, which is to interfere with elections in 2026.

He wants to have troops on the ground to stop people from voting, to intimidate people from going to the voting booth.

So take note.

That is what this is all about.

I challenged J.B.

Pritzker just to walk the west side of Chicago.

I could pick the neighborhood without your security.

Why don't you wear a GoPro camera

and let's see what happens?

President Donald Trump is going to do a major immigration raid.

By the way, we have to go block by block.

We need to up those deportation numbers.

They're actually pretty good.

I think we can actually get to 2 million this year.

Let's play cut 292.

The Trump administration is planning to conduct a major immigration enforcement operation right here in Chicago.

Sources confirmed to CBS News that that could include armored trucks, federal troops, and ICE agents flooding the city.

What is so amazing is how we have been desensitized to grotesque aspects of

the lower bowels of humanity, these low lives.

If you visit other countries countries around the world, you realize you don't have to live like this.

You don't have to have 300 murders a summer.

You don't.

And Democrats have been so propagandized by their leaders, and that's why this is so good.

If people can feel a material increase and a material improvement in the quality of life,

that shifts the Overton window in a dramatic way.

You see, the Democrats, a lot of, some of this is rooted in progressive idealism.

Democrats often operate with assumptions that human beings are fundamentally good.

This is a very important thing.

The teaching from the scriptures that man is originally flawed and that we have original sin is one of the reasons why

we believe

that you need laws and you need restraints.

But Democrats, liberals, they have a Rousseauian view.

That's Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

A Rousseauian view of human nature.

They think

human beings are naturally good and that it's all of the environment that contaminates us.

I encourage you to apply this methodology to any liberal that you talk to in your life.

They generally think that human beings are born naturally good.

The Rousseauian view,

they will privilege the infant over the adult.

They think the infant is actually a better person because you are born good and you grow to be bad because of what is around you.

The Rassoian will value, this is important, the primitive over the civilized.

Why do you think that Brandon Johnson needs to mention the indigenous people?

Because they value the primitive over the civilized.

To them, civilization is a toxin.

We look at civilization as a blessing.

The Rousseauian view of human nature is that a human being,

as they grow, will be influenced by the structures around them to such a great degree that there's no such

hardwiring of nature.

Now, we as natural law believers, and of course as Christians, we don't even have to be a Christian to believe this.

You just have to believe in the natural law.

The natural law explains all of this.

We,

as those who understand that normativity is woven into nature, we say, wait a second.

At the very least, you might have a Lockean view of human nature, that there's a blank slate, but I have a much more of a biblical Hobbesian view of nature, that God created us good, but there is a fall, and that sin is inherent in our nature, and that we need redemption.

If human beings are naturally good, why do you have to teach kids manners?

I find that most people who think human beings are naturally good have not spent a lot of time as parents.

They really haven't.

Civilization is order, but the left looks at civilization as an authoritarian takeover project.

They complain that America itself is authoritarian, so why wouldn't they also think that President Trump's takeover of Chicago is authoritarian?

But you have to know what you are aiming at.

This is why classical philosophy is so important in all this.

What are we aiming towards?

The left, what is their end?

You see, you can find the essence of a thing if you know the end of the thing.

What is their goal?

What is their accomplishment?

For the left, part of it is progressive idealism, but honestly, and this is where you guys should get the quote from the dark knight, they just want to rule over the ashes.

It's that simple.

They will dress themselves in the progressive idealism.

But Brandon Johnson to formerly Laurie Lightfoot to J.B.

Pritzker,

they just want to be in charge because they have deeply disturbed personal lives.

They've never been able to create any value in the marketplace.

Do you notice the vast majority of these people have never actually created any value in their life?

They've only consumed value, as you can see exhibited right there.

And the fact that

they've actually never had to create any value to take risks in the marketplace,

that they fill this void with power.

They have an existential spiritual problem.

And that is why you find the churchless, the people without spirituality, the people without children or close connections, the children, they're predominantly on the left because they fill that God-sized hole in their heart with politics.

And that is a bad counterfeit replacement.

And so what President Donald Trump is doing with this National Guard is he's exposing the wretched, dark philosophy that has infected not just the Democrat Party, but our elementary schools, because they look at the criminals that are gangbanging and they say, oh, they were born good, but

they were really harmed by white supremacy.

Let me tell you right now:

the 53 people that were shot over this last weekend, it's not because of white supremacy.

It's because of other things.

Bad decisions, bad influences.

How about not having a father around?

And this is widespread all the way throughout the academic of the left.

And now, today's a new ruling out of San Francisco.

In an effort to stave off further violations of the Posse Cama Thomas Act in California, Judge Breyer, who is the brother of Stephen Breyer, blocked Trump and Hegseth from using troops there for arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols.

The judge paused that part of his ruling until next Friday to give the administration time to appeal it.

Now, this will obviously be overturned, without a doubt.

I'm sorry, it's 56 shots, not 53.

30 separate shooting incidents.

Now, this ruling that I'm talking about is clearly political, meant to stifle

the president's commitment to stopping crime in other big cities, since Judge Breyer himself brought it up in his own ruling.

Quote, President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have stated their intention to call National Guard troops into service into other cities across the country.

They're trying to preempt President Trump from making Chicago safer.

They're trying to prevent the federal government from doing what they were elected to do.

But we're not going to lay off on this.

Honestly, at this point, if you make the 2026 midterms at least partially about urban crime, we're going to win on that topic.

Trust me, we are going to win on that topic.

Exhibit A, Play Cut 325.

Sure,

they can complain about it.

They can point out the weaknesses in it and the dangers of it.

But as we learned in 2024, a large portion of the American population, in fact, nearly a majority, doesn't particularly care about the democracy argument or fear of authoritarianism.

Their fear of crime, even if the statistics don't support their fear of crime, their fear of crime is greater than the fear of authoritarianism.

Let me tell you, there's some real power in what Mr.

I think it's Castellanos, right?

I've actually met him before.

He's a nice guy.

He's kind of a lib.

Oh, I'm sorry.

That's Larry Sabateau.

Larry Sabate.

I met him before.

Nice guy, but he's been wrong about a lot.

Let me tell you why this is so impactful.

This ties to a thesis we've had before.

What does authoritarianism, democracy, and dictator all have in common?

These are abstractions.

You're kind of appealing towards an academic,

esoteric,

erudite

phrase.

Instead, we're trying to improve the lived quality of life and experiences of real Chicagoans.

I guarantee right now, if Chicagoans can roll down their window at cross streets, they otherwise couldn't, they'll say, I don't care about authoritarianism.

My life is better.

I'm going to explain this more, which is that the left is so college-educated.

They are so insulated amongst academic debates.

They don't realize most of the country deals in quality of life issues.

Am I able to stop at a stoplight and put down my window and enjoy it or not?

Can I walk to the Sox game or not?

Right now, you should not walk to the Sox game.

Do not do that.

Do not walk to Kamiski Park.

Do not do that.

You might die.

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So you can understand the left better through classical philosophy.

There is this word in ancient Greek called telos, T-E-L-O-S.

It's where we get the word telescope from, which means far out in the distance.

There's the teleological argument for the existence of God, but essentially, telos is aims, end,

the destination, purpose, ultimate goal.

So what is the ultimate goal of the American right?

Honestly, I just told you, we want, when it comes to Chicago, we want the old Chicago back.

We want the good Chicago, the one where you could walk from Wrigley Field down to the Mag Mile, the one where you could walk from Kamiski Park to UIC, where you don't have to worry and look over your shoulder.

We want Chicago to be as safe as Tokyo.

Now, why do we want that?

It's because that is embedded in the good life.

We want the American good life for all people.

We want the American way of life to come back to every square inch, to every zip code.

We want the American way of life to come back to every neighborhood, to every home.

That is the mandate that we were elected on, we ran on, and that we're going to fulfill in our lifetime.

We want that American way of life back that you don't have to look over your shoulder, whether you're in Memphis, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles.

It is part of an American renaissance.

But what is the telos of a Democrat, T-E-L-O-S, which is the end point, which is the purpose or the ultimate goal?

But since they believe, since liberals and Democrats believe man is basically good, but corrupted by unjust systems, the purpose of politics is to dismantle those systems.

Most importantly, this, and write this down and remember it, capitalism, patriarchy, tradition, and religious morality.

They look at the state as a savior.

They look at the state.

This is where you get Mr.

Hegel and the phenomenology of spirit.

They look at the state as being the salvific figure.

And they want to decolonize and de-civilize because they think all the evil that's happening in America is not because that people naturally are fallen.

But they believe it's because the system itself must be torn down.

Now does it

start to make sense?

This is why Islam is best friends with liberalism.

For different reasons.

You see, the end of Islam is different than the end of liberalism, but they have an intermediary endpoint goal.

The end of Islam is the institution of the Ummah, the Sharia.

This is the red-green alliance, where the Marxists they want to deconstruct, bring us back to a primitive state of nature, that we will then be able to rise up without any of the racism, the patriarchy, and we'll all be able to live freely and run through the hills without clothes listening to John Lennon's songs, and we're all going to be fine.

And love is love while we do LSD.

And some sort of weird

creation of their mind, that is what liberals want to bring.

But really, it ends up being hell on earth, not heaven on earth.

It ends up being closer to Seattle than Seoul, South Korea.

But secondly, this is where the Islamists work in perfect harmony with the liberals because they have an intermediary telos, not an ultimate destination, but they have an intermediary endpoint.

The intermediary endpoint for the Islamists is, well, we have to unwind this entire Western project.

We have to decouple all of this.

And you see this all throughout Europe, by the way.

Women in France now have to wear extra clothing on the subway to protect themselves by being groped by illegal aliens.

We should play that video.

Life does not have to be this way.

All throughout...

France, women have to wear extra clothes because third worlders are groping them.

It's called the subway shirt.

That is brought to you by the European elites.

And by the way, I have a great document here.

This is accelerating at a rapid pace in Europe right now, just so we are clear.

The right-wing populist movement is growing very quickly in Europe.

It's not slowing down.

It's accelerating.

There is this agreement amongst those in the European leadership elite, like, yeah, this immigration thing was way too much.

We did way, way too much.

And it's true.

It's only older European boomers who prop up old liberalism in Europe.

And basically they're like, hey, keep it going until I die.

Keep the checks going.

That's European boomers.

Muslim-age school children in European capitals is up 43% in Amsterdam, 52% in Brussels, 41% in Vienna, 37% in London.

But why do this?

Well, liberals imported a bunch of Muslims for a lot of different reasons, but the obvious one is that they hated Europe.

Get rid of Europe.

The idea of a European identity is something that they fundamentally can't stand.

And they held white guilt without the Christian practices to be able to deal with guilt.

Here is a combination.

You should write this down and remember it.

Guilt without Christianity equals

really, really bad liberal ideas because you have to assuage your guilt over a period of time by doing something.

We stand for civilization and they are a de-civilizational movement.

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Now, I just got to give you a little bit of heads up here.

You're going to have a great man, a good friend of mine, but two Chicagoans really bringing the heat here.

You know, I first met Julio Rojas, who's really Rosas,

who's really become a fire pistol.

I got to tell you, this guy, he's been doing great.

And Julio...

I think we met at Lyle, Lamont, Illinois.

Is that right, Mr.

Julio?

Thanks to our good friend friend Bill Montgomery?

Yeah, it was around that time.

Yeah, 2014.

I still remember it very well.

I remember you were like one of our first turning point USA leaders.

And that was like 11 years.

I'm so proud of what you're doing.

And you got courage, which is really hard to find.

You have courage.

So, Julio, you spent time in our home city this last weekend.

What did you learn?

Yeah, so I'm still in Chicago right now.

And of course, the reason why is because

with the high rate of crime that's here in the city, a lot of the residents and a lot of, you know, the far left residents, I would say, they protested yesterday on Labor Day.

And of course, Labor Day is historically a very left-wing holiday.

There's always marches, there's always rallies, but they kind of had a pivot because President Trump wants to send in the National Guard, extra federal agents to the city to address crime, to increase the number of arrests for illegal aliens.

So that's what they pivoted to.

And as you see with the video, there's a lot of Mexican flags, there's a lot of anti-Trump, anti-ICE sentiment being espoused at this thing.

Mayor Brandon Johnson was at the rally and he was talking about how,

you know, we have to defend this city, we have to defend this part that was built by slaves, built by Indigenous people.

You know, very, very, you know, common

left-wing talking points when it comes to this nation's history.

And so

I would say that it remains to be seen what will actually happen if the deployment does take place, which could be this week, it could be next week.

But

all this was happening when there was multiple mass shootings over this holiday weekend.

I mean, one of them took place right down the street from Chicago police headquarters.

So this weekend, if they wanted to prove that they didn't need any help from the federal government with Chicago, that didn't happen because we had over 50 people shot just within the span of about three days.

Yeah, and so, but help the non-Chicagoans in this audience understand.

When we grew up in Chicago, we grew so desensitized to the violence, we didn't even think about it.

And what President Trump is doing is he's short-circuiting that desensitization and saying, you don't have to live this way.

You don't have to live with 300 murders so far in Chicago, 293.

And so, Julio, walk our audience through how normalized this level of carnage and blood and suffering has become in Chicago.

Well, you're absolutely right.

I mean, just growing up and and watching the news, the shootings was always usually the first thing that the state, the local stations would lead in with.

And

what we've seen in D.C., right, with Trump having the surge there,

there's only been one murder so far in that takeover.

And so that's pretty great.

Chicago's a little bit different.

But of course, every city has a bad area.

So here in Chicago, it's like the west side, the south side.

And the common thinking is that, well, if you stay in the loop, you stay on the north side, you should be fine.

You know, you're not going to really see any of that.

But the problem is, in the years since the BLM movement, in the years since the Defund the Police movement, and with increasingly more incompetent mayors, with Brandon Johnson being the most recent one, we've seen that crime that would be centralized in kind of those two locations, it would be spread out.

So we'd see murders in the loop.

We'd see murders and carjackings in neighborhoods that would be considered the nice parts of town.

And that's what's been kind of shocking to see for some of the residents.

But the problem is, is because the solution to this is to actually crack down on criminals and crack down on repeat offenders, the progressive sensibilities and the progressive beliefs won't allow them to agree with President Trump to say, okay, fine, yes, let's send in extra people so that we can kind of clamp down on the element, right?

Because obviously it's not every single person in Chicago.

It is concentrated in certain areas, but since they know that they can get away with so much because Chicago police are handcuffed, the judiciary system is pro-criminal, they know they can get away with a lot of stuff.

And that's a story similar in other parts of the country.

And Chicago is just the latest example of that.

So

it is very much

a problem.

Why is it, though, again, Mayor Johnson has just signed an executive order that Chicago Police Department will not cooperate with federal authorities?

How do you explain that, Julio Rosas?

You know,

I really wish I knew.

Of course, we can just say, well, that's just what he believes.

And I think he does.

I think he really believes what he espouses.

But it's because they, it's just,

I know it's cliche to say, but it is a little bit of Trump during syndrome, right?

I mean, you would think that anybody, you know, any leader that does have a high rate of crime

would want to have any help that they can get, like actual help.

But instead, all he's asking for is, well, if you want to help us, President Trump, just send us money.

And as you and I both know, if you send money to Chicago in large large sums,

it can get into other places that it shouldn't be, or you spent in ways that it shouldn't be.

Um, so that's why, again, President Trump is saying, No, we're not going to just give you money just to throw money at and waste at it, we're going to actually put people on the streets, we're going to put in the National Guard, we're going to put in federal agents to help.

Um, so I

don't know what goes into the thinking to say, No, we're not going to do that.

Um, I, it, it, it is, it shows that all this is by choice, right?

The same thing in DC,

The crime,

crime is going to happen, right?

But you can take steps.

You can take concrete steps to mitigate that and not let repeat offenders back onto the streets.

But in the wake of 2020 and all that craziness, it is just blatantly pro-criminal.

It is anti-you know,

victims of crime with not just letting criminals run free, but letting them off the hook on certain very egregious crimes.

So

I don't know why, outside of just they have really bought into the propaganda that they have been espousing about how racist and horrible this country is.

Let's play cut 327.

There are also other solutions where the city mayor,

the governor of Illinois, the president could work together, like on universal background checks and also making sure that they continue to fund intervention programs for young people to dissuade them from engaging in crime.

And there's been absolutely no discussion about any sort of bipartisan collaboration.

Yeah, yeah, that's what we need, bipartisan collaboration.

Well, how about this?

Let's put dads back in the home and let's put cops back on the streets.

Julio, your reaction.

Right.

And look, it doesn't, you know,

there can be other solutions to this, right?

I mean, it is multifaceted, right?

But they're not doing the number one thing that has been proven to reduce crime.

Mayor Giuliani did that famous crime crackdown back when he was mayor and it was successful.

And it was so successful that people wanted, forgot about how horrible things were.

And then they worked over the years to undo that.

And that's why New York is in the state that it's currently in.

So that's kind of the problem.

People develop this kind of amnesia because things are so good

that they then try to look for problems that aren't necessarily there.

So

I think President Trump's plan is a step in the right direction for Chicago.

Look, we need more prisoners in this country, period.

Hard stop.

We've said that, and people freak out.

But let me prove it to you.

Do you know that there were 59 people shot, nine homicides, three mass shootings, and then only two suspects detained?

Julio, talk about this one minute remaining.

The clearance rate in Chicago, they say, is 50%.

I think that's total BS.

I think it's probably closer to 15% to 20%, which means that 80% of criminals just walk free.

Let me say this again.

We do not have enough people in jail based just on the statistics that we know of.

Julio, 40 seconds, please.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, again, if you look at the crime rate and the recidivism,

if you actually lock up half of the criminal element that is habitually being arrested in almost any city, this is like not just with Chicago, the crime rate falls dramatically, right?

Because they're the ones that are constantly doing it and being enabled to go back out because either

the cops have to let them go.

I mean, Illinois has some pretty bad bail laws now regarding that.

It's been in place for about a year or two, or it's the judiciary.

So

this is going to be a long-standing problem.

And that's while that I think that President Trump's plan is good,

there's other problems that he can't necessarily just snap his fingers and solve.

So

kind of like with immigration, right?

And the immigration problem, yeah, he's making great strides in addressing, you know, fixing the border crisis, but there are other things that are hamstring, he's being hamstringed along the way.

And when it comes to public safety, it's the same thing.

Julio, tell people where they can find your work and how they can follow your important coverage here.

So they can find most of my stuff at BlazeMedia at theblaze.com.

For social at Julio Rosas, Julio underscore Rosas 11 on X, and there's also my sub stack, mostly peaceful.media.

What other stories are you focused on or covering currently, Julia?

Well, I gotta say it's just been the far left insurrection that's been happening across the country, namely dealing with

immigration and the immigration crackdown.

I would say that I also covered the surge of National Guardsmen into D.C.

And I lived in that area for some time.

And I can tell you that, especially after 2020, like a lot of other places, D.C.

was going downhill.

And again, a lot of it was purposeful by design, by policy.

And it was noticeably safer.

It was noticeably

better after that surge.

So

that's why with Chicago right now, I think President Trump can replicate some of that success here.

The problems that we are facing in America are easily solved with political will.

Immigration, crime, drug trafficking.

But we have an anti-civilizational about, I don't even think it's a third, I think it's probably a fourth of the country

that simply refuses to do the obvious because their foundational ideology is that our civilization is inherently bad.

They look at a civilization as an oppressive force.

Do you see that kind of energy in your on-the-street reporting, Julia?

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, again, that's the whole reason why

they believe that their tactics are necessary

to make this change in their eyes, to

remake the United States as it is right now, because it's so evil in its current form that we can't vote our way out of it.

We can't do the normal political changes with laws and stuff.

We have to take more radical steps just because we have this quote-unquote history of just pure evil.

And of course, that's not true at all, but you have to buy into that in order to justify some of these more radical things.

And then of course, unfortunately, like with the trans shooter in Minneapolis just recently,

they view that in terms of preventing men in women's sports, preventing men in women's bathrooms.

They view that as a genocide.

So that's why we've seen, unfortunately, these attacks on the most vulnerable in our society because, well, we just need to do that so that they finally listen and cave to our demands.

Well, and Julio, I want to just zero in on this.

We did not cover this very much.

Do you know that, and I sent this story earlier to our team, the media is apologizing for misgendering the shooter.

NBC issues a correction for misgendering the Minnesota trans Catholic school shooter.

So they're worried about the feelings and the sensitivity of a mass murdering maniac.

That's where their priorities are.

Quote, a previous version of this article used the wrong pronoun for the shooter.

She used female pronouns.

So understand the sickness that you must have in your life to now police the pronouns of a mass murderer who killed kids at Catholic Mass.

And that goes to show the moral darkness that has infected the, not just the American left, but the American media.

We should intentionally use the correct pronouns, but even so, you should intentionally do everything you can to not remember the memory of a mass shooting maniac in any sort of glorified or deified way.

You should not try to sanctify or show respect to a mass murdering transgender individual.

Julio, are you worried about the rise in transgender terrorism in this country?

Yeah, absolutely.

And I know people want to use a statistic where, well, look at all these other mass shooters through history where they're straight white males.

But outside of the fact that this is now a more recent trend, because obviously this problem has been growing within the past 10 years.

And so that's why the data is a little bit off when it comes to that.

But also, there's been multiple other transgender would-be shooters that thankfully were stopped before they were able to carry out their attacks.

There was a case, I believe it was last year in the Midwest, where it was a very similar thing, a similar case where this transgender individual wanted to carry out attacks on a school and churches.

That was on their

target list.

So

it builds into, again, this is what I'm saying, where because the United States is finally headed in the right direction on a number of issues,

the activists and the people that believe all this, they feel like their backs are against the wall.

And that makes people very, very dangerous.

I mean, that's just true of any ideology, true of any movement.

So, you know, hopefully we learned the correct lessons from this where we actually viewed this issue,

you know, in it how it's actually meant to be, where it's like, no, you're not a gender that you're not actually, you know, that you actually are, right?

You know, this is, you are, you know, boys or boys, you know, girls or girls.

I just, I just want to,

yeah.

We got to go.

But every time you see NBC, I want you to remember, everybody in the audience, NBC apologized

that they used the wrong gender of a mass murdering maniac.

Julio, great work.

Julio Rosas.

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We need to ask ourselves the question, is it making our country better or worse?

You see, the left likes to overcomplicate.

They like to dodge.

They like to shift.

We need to ask ourselves the question, is it making our our nation better or worse?

Now, mind you,

embedded in that question, you must have an agreed upon good.

This is just very basic logic.

How can you know if something is better or worse if you don't know what you're aiming towards?

Remember, we talked about the telos.

If you don't know what you're aiming towards or you're pointing towards, how can something be better or good?

Because definitionally, those things are

markers upon a spectrum

you see the left they look at this and they say this is good we look at this and say this is bad because we have different markers and different aims and that is the kicker what divides the left and the right is not simply values and morals we want different things

we have different goals we have different end points nearly 90 percent of women in france who use public transportation claim to have been harassed by migrants brought into France by people like Macron.

Play Cut 330.

Transport encompasses 13%

of women's avoided victims of Arcelon.

Don't forget your subway shirt.

The subway shirt in French cheese du Metro.

The principal portion of

the

Estival.

Franche becomes up in the Metro.

Don

Okay, well, five people understood that.

So let me tell you what that was.

The essence of this is they said, hey, 90% of women on public transport claim to have been harassed, so you have to wear your subway shirt when you go on the subway because your summer outfit is too alluring to a third world migrant population and they so badly want to grope you and they have no impulse control.

Very, very, the third world has low impulse control.

And they see a French woman in the summer and they have to grope you and they have to grab you.

Is that making France better or worse?

Well, the left, they'll say it's better.

It's closer towards their aim because remember, allowing people to do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it, is a left-wing goal.

It is an aim.

You're You're free of your inhibitions.

Be able to grope the woman, urinate on the bus.

You should be able to walk around naked.

Seattle is a little bit of a precursor to this.

No clothes, no rules, drugs on the side of the streets.

Total sexual anarchy, total depraved anarchy.

You know, people made fun of me when I said sexual anarchy a couple of years ago.

I think that thing air, I think, aged like a fine French wine, wouldn't you say, Mr.

Macron?

What do you want?

And then from there, you could judge whether things make

better or worse.

And right now, you look at Europe.

The Islamist invasion brought to you by the secular humanist European technocratic elites is making Europe worse.

It's making Europe dirtier.

It's making Europe less safe.

It has no cultural identity.

It's decaying and collapsing as a nation.

There's no European identity left whatsoever.

And the worst part of it is that it's invited.

Islamism has a tendency to take over and metastasize like a cancer.

Immigration without assimilation is invasion, and Islam does not assimilate.

Islam conquers.

Islam takes over.

Islam

devours.

Islam is an imperialistic, parasitic ideology.

Islam views itself as a conquering faith.

You have to pray five times a day, pointing towards a separate nation, pledging pledging fealty to another nation.

Islam's own self-story is that we will take you over.

It's totalitarianism, masked as a religion.

Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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Yesterday, the Chicago Cubs walked off against the Atlanta Braves in extra innings.

By the way, I don't like these new extra inning rules.

I'm sorry.

I don't like this hole.

You get a runner on second base.

The whole thing feels just like,

I don't know.

We could debate that another time.

I'm not a fan.

Anyway, we're not here to discuss that.

We're here to discuss the

hopefully the push for a salary cap and a floor.

And joining us now is Paul Zees.

I think I pronounced that correctly.

Apologies if I didn't.

Paul sports columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Paul, great to see you.

Paul, you had a really impactful piece here about how Tony Clark and the MLBPA are steering their members down the wrong path.

I think that we need, I think it's time for a salary cap in baseball.

What do you say, sir?

Welcome to the program.

Well, thank you for having me.

Number one.

Number two,

I think that

what's going to happen is guys like you and I are going to continue to wishfully think there's going to be a salary cap in baseball.

But as long as the super agents run the league, which they do, I mean, I don't care what anybody says.

The super agents, you know, the Scott Borises of the world, they run the league and they run the Major League Players Association.

And so, therefore, it's going to be really, really difficult

for anybody to actually make any progress on a salary cap.

And we can get into a lot of other reasons why,

including the fact that the owners really don't want it for different reasons.

Yeah, well, let's start with the fan experience.

Why would this be better from a holistic, improving baseball reason?

Why would a salary cap improve

the experience?

I have my own opinions.

I'm tired of seeing the same four, five, six teams obviously generate generate the higher output because of how much they spend.

The Dodgers, the Astros, the Yankees, and not even the Cubs are not even spending like they did in 2016.

Let's put the super agents aside because I do want to get into that.

Why would a salary cap be good for baseball?

Well, I mean, I think you can just point to other sports, right?

We just saw the NBA Finals included the Indianapolis

or the Indiana Pacers, and I think that's maybe the smallest or the second smallest market in the league.

You know, Oklahoma City is not a very large market and they were there.

San Antonio's won what four or five titles over the course of time.

You look at football, Kansas City, heck, right here, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

If there wasn't a salary cap in football, the Pittsburgh Steelers would probably be the Pittsburgh Pirates, you know, a team that just struggles to survive.

So,

you know, in general, I'm a very libertarian person and, you know, I believe in the free market, but I think in sports, you know, the leagues are one entity unto themselves.

And for competitive reasons and for, you know, reasons of actually being marketable and selling the sport,

you know, you want to have the ability, if you're in a small market, to know that your team is going to have a chance to maybe compete if they do it right.

Now, the thing we have here in Pittsburgh is we have the double whammy.

I mean, in Pittsburgh, we've got a small market and we've got an incompetent owner.

So it makes up for itself.

And, you know, the fact is, you know,

and the owner has made up for it by hiring an even more incompetent general manager.

But if you're a team like, you know, Tampa or Milwaukee or some of these teams that have sort of figured it out a little bit, it's so important.

You've got to hit lightning in a bottle with your draft choices and how you develop just to have a chance.

And then, you know, you get to a point where you build your team and then, you know, the Dodgers go out and sign, you know, somebody or the Yankees go out and sign somebody.

And now all of a sudden you're back sort of to square one.

So to me, I think when it comes to the fan experience, I mean, someone like me, you know, and listen, the other league, we, you know, it would be the Kansas City Penguins or somebody.

You know, Kansas City would be the ones that would be enjoying Sidney Crosby if there wasn't a salary cap in the NHL.

I mean,

that's not an opinion.

That's a fact.

So as somebody that's from a smaller market, I see it from this side.

And I see that basically other sports have figured it out and their small market teams aren't really small market because their revenue sharing and

their salary cap give them a chance.

Yeah, and so you look at football.

Football has a hard cap, like very, very hard cap.

And the penalty for even playing around with it is the New Orleans Saints.

I mean, the New Orleans Saints will be lucky to win two or three games this year.

So the penalty for even playing games with deferments and stuff is aggressive.

To your very astute point, there is a reason why a mid-market team like the Kansas City Chiefs are competitive because they have the same salary cap as the New York Giants or as the Los Angeles Rams.

And so they draft Mahomes, they get a good coach, they develop a team, and now they have a dynasty.

The same can be said for the Buffalo Bills with Josh Allen.

There's complete parity.

And so, in fact, I think that baseball would get bigger with a salary cap.

I think it would be more exciting that actually

the value of these teams, these owners should want a salary cap.

Who's fighting against it?

Well, again, you know, there's a couple of groups that are fighting against it.

One is obviously

the super agents.

Obviously, they don't want it because they want to be able to get, you know, Otani a 700 million dollar deal or

Juan Soto, what did he get?

Another 650 or 700 or whatever he got.

They want obviously to get to those big, big deals for the superstars.

But here's the other thing, okay?

The small market teams don't want it because then they would be forced to spend more money

because there would be a salary floor.

But the other part of it is one of the trade-offs that would happen for a salary cap, I guarantee, is that, you know what, the Major League Baseball Players Association, assuming they're competent, which that's probably a big assumption, but they would fight for, okay, well, listen, we'll give you a salary cap, but all of that cheap labor you get for four, five, six years at the beginning of these guys' careers,

we're not doing that anymore.

So a guy like Paul Skeens, who, you know, is probably the best pitcher in baseball, probably if he wasn't on the worst team or one of the worst teams would win the cyon.

He might win it anyway uh but he's pitching for 850 000 this year um and that's the part of the problem when it comes to the front end of it and it's a negotiating piece but the small market owners you know here in pittsburgh well they love the pre-arbitration and arbitration so they're willing to sit back and say well we don't have to spend any amount of money really because there's no salary floor the large market teams obviously don't want a salary cap because they want to be able to spend whatever they want to spend because their argument is hey this is a star driven town here and and this is a star driven team you know we have to have stars so it's kind of one of those things where um there's three sides that all claim they would like to make a salary cap work but really deep down they don't they don't want it to work and i think it's very short-sighted for a lot of the reasons we talked about and charlie let me just say this i went through it

The highest paid players in sports are not baseball players.

That's right.

And the other part of it is, the other part part of it is, I mean, that's per year, and it's even total contracts.

The way the NBA does their salary cap is you have an exception.

You can go above the salary cap for your own free agents.

And also, there's some veteran exceptions.

The bottom line is, veteran guys don't get the host job.

You know, the mid-level veteran guys are the ones in baseball who, if you notice, Charlie, every year, like at the end of March, there's about 20 or 30 of these guys that are still out there.

And you're like, why hasn't anyone signed them?

Well, because they know, you know what, we're going to wait till they're desperate for a job job and

we'll give them a contract they have to take.

So there's, first of all, it's a phenomenal analysis.

I agree with all of it.

And what we have right now is a spending spree.

Of course, the same five or six teams, whether it be the Yankees or the Mets.

And you have these super agents, Scott Boris being one of them, who is able to represent some of these big players and obviously is heavily incentivized with the current model.

And some people say, well, it's the only sport with a true market where talent can be valued without outside restrictions.

But again, to your point, the NFL is able to make this work.

But let's also add, why does a floor also matter as much as a cap?

Well, I think, you know, a couple things.

Number one, because, you know, you won't have teams like, well, the Pirates the last few years with a $40 or $50 million payroll.

That would actually help the MLBA Players Association, mid-level veterans, if teams like the Pirates actually had to spend, say, $100 million.

Then all of a sudden, those mid-level veterans would be able to get paid and get a little bit of money.

And I think the other part of it is it ensures that teams are trying to be competitive.

I mean, that doesn't mean in the NFL or, you know, in the NBA, you don't have teams that are really bad, but a lot of times it's cyclical or it's just a matter of incompetent.

ownership, you know, like the Jets or one of these teams that always seems to lose.

It's not because they can't compete.

And I don't even think it's because they're not trying to compete.

I just think they have no idea what they're doing.

And I think that when you look at a salary floor, now everybody has at least their everybody's sort of in the same ball game.

I mean, it's insane to me that in baseball, what is it?

I think it's the Mets maybe this year might even have the highest payroll.

The Dodgers, one of them's got like a $300 million payroll, and you got teams with $30 or $40 million payrolls.

You're not even playing in the same sport at that point.

Such a good point.

It's just silly.

Okay, so then what would the path forward need to be?

I mean, to get something like this done.

I mean, getting Congress involved is next to nothing, but

what would a path forward potentially be to get a salary cap into place?

Well, I mean, Charlie, you understand unions are

theoretically run by players.

And what it would take,

is

it would take basically all of those mid-level veterans and even a lot of the pre-arbitration and arbitration players in the next collective bargaining agreement to say listen this is what we want you need to help us out you're not helping us you're only helping you know the one sodos

and here's the other thing charlie the idea that oh well you know with no salary cap there's a free market every you know what i mean there really isn't because there's only about five or six teams that can actually afford to sign these guys and they can't sign them all So the bottom line is there's a lot of guys that are probably going to have to take lesser than market because, you know what, there's not that many teams that can show out five or six hundred million dollars but it's going to take all the the mid-level veterans and it's going to you know the the the guys that are arbitration and even pre-arbitration guys at the next collective bargaining agreement basically to sit down and say listen we're not we're not doing anything unless you are going to put something in this to help us paul please uh tell people how they can follow you uh listen uh read what you write please uh opportunity to plug your work Paul's East.

Yeah, but you can find me on Twitter or X or whatever we call it these days, just at Paul's Ice.

And of course, in the Post-Gazette, I write every single day and I do a little podcast every night.

So follow me and have a good time.

Paul, thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

And go Cubs.

Thank you.

No, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, not cubs.

But yes, anyway, thank you.

We almost got it.

Thank you very much.

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.