Charlie’s 32nd Birthday

My name is Charlie Kirk.

I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.

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Here we go.

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All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

I'm Andrew Colvett, executive producer of this fine show, joined, as always, by producer Blake Neff.

And I'm honored to say we are also joined by Secretary Scott Bessant.

Thank you so much for joining us, Mr.

Secretary.

It is an honor to be with you, to have you join us in this this beautiful room that we are in, the cash room.

Yep, well, gentlemen, welcome to the U.S.

Treasury and welcome to the cash room.

Yeah, I mean, this is a beautiful, beautiful space that we're in.

It's historic.

Apparently, they used to hold the actual cash of the U.S.

government.

We did.

When we had it.

Yeah.

When we had more cash than debt.

Right.

But Blake was commenting that we are now $37 trillion in debt, so it's empty now.

But it's a beautiful room to do a show in, nevertheless.

Good.

and excited to have you here.

It's an honor, sir.

I just want to start at the basics.

You have not had a chance, at least on this show, to reflect on the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk.

This is, of course, would have been his 32nd birthday.

We are in D.C.

in order, because the president promised Erica that he was going to award Charlie the Presidential Medal of Freedom on his 32nd birthday.

He literally moved world events in in order to race back to D.C.

to make good on that promise to Erica.

So the floor is yours, Mr.

Secretary.

Just expound on what Charlie meant to you, your interactions with him, and what the last month has meant to you in this country.

Andrew,

I was actually walking out of the Vice President's office when news of what happened to Charlie hit, and

then

the news that he had passed came after that.

And what really hit me was: if someone wanted to

try to end the maggot movement, the America First, and the turning point USA ethos, obviously,

10 years out, Charlie was going to be carrying the torch.

And if you wanted to try to end the movement,

the way to do it was to assassinate Charlie.

And clearly,

this is what was on that person's mind.

We'll see if there was a larger network involved with this.

I have no reason to believe there was.

I have no reason to believe there wasn't.

And

to me, everyone knows Charlie was a family man.

He was a Christian.

He was a patriot.

But the Charlie I knew too was also an educator.

And what I admired on the show was the love that he had for all of his listeners, for everyone involved in Turning Point,

for his country.

But what he did on the show, and that's how I got to know him.

And one of the reasons I'm sitting here today is that Charlie was such an aggressive and forceful advocate for me to become Secretary of the Treasury

because of the time we'd spent together.

And his financial breadth and depth was incredible.

He was an autodidact.

He was self-taught

in finance, and he passed that knowledge on because

he saw, as I saw, that what had happened to

this generation, this

group of young people.

And it's been a tough time.

There was the financial crisis in 2008, there was COVID, but he was optimistic.

and always talked about the future.

How do we get ahead?

How do we stay ahead?

And

Charlie, like myself, believes in the system.

And if you believe the system works, which I do, which he did, you want to bring more people into the system.

And it's through education.

That's why I say he was such a great educator.

I think that's really well said.

If you boil down his mission, his mission was about his faith.

His mission was about his country and his family.

But his mission was, in a general sense, about bringing disaffected young people into the American dream.

He wanted them to buy into America, the idea of what this country is.

And you guys talked about that.

You actually had, I believe it was April, Alexandra, you could fact-check me on that, but it was

Financial Literacy Month.

And you honored him and the show, and we brought in a bunch of TPUSA chapters from around the country, and you talked about finance.

I mean, that, but so you have shown your commitment to the same things that Charlie was committed to, of bringing in the next generation and living the American dream as you have.

And maybe just speak about that and the importance of bringing this next generation

into the system, into believing they can make it in America, that they don't have to be disaffected young people anymore.

Well,

in a way, too, Charlie,

when I was younger, there was someone called Norman Vincent Peale.

And for those of you who don't know, President Trump went to Marble Collegiate Church in New York, and the minister was Norman Vincent Peale, and he wrote a famous book called The Power of Positive Thinking.

And in a a way, Charlie was the Norman Vincent Peale for your generation.

And it's easy to be cynical, it's easy to get down.

The world is a tough place, it's moving fast, but it always has.

And to look forward, what can you do to increase your resiliency?

What can you do to increase your literacy?

What can you do to make your odds better

of success?

And

that was the movement he was creating, as you you said, just to be part of the system, to get people

on board with believing in the country, because we are celebrating the 250th year of the country, and we got to get ready for the next 250.

And

it's going to be the same and it's going to be different,

but it's going to be driven

by young people.

And

we have to

energize our base to believe in the country because you know what what you see now and you know I'm just astounded it's almost like they're two Americas they're you know you look out and they're the people who you know are full of hate and venom and you know they're they're at these protests you know like just the protest yesterday yesterday I believe was the greatest day thus far this century

with the hostages coming home the beginning of the peace process, which no one said could be done, and President Trump did it.

But there were people out there with that venom and vile behavior.

And then every Saturday, you look, and there are these collegiate football games and military flyovers and people waving the flag.

And it's almost like we're in a contest for America.

And Charlie was determined that good was going to win, that we were going to see the light, and it was going to be through faith and education and belief and family and country.

And everything that got us here for the first 250 years is what's going to take us for the next 250 years.

I'm really glad you mentioned just the love Charlie had for ordinary Americans, that he really wanted to uplift them.

We're getting a lot of all the happy birthday wishes are just pouring in, and we're getting in, you know, everyone saying, Charlie, good afternoon.

I'm starting my lunch, and it's time for me to watch the show.

And already, tears are in my eyes.

We have happy birthday, Charlie.

Something about the show today has me crying again.

What a beautiful soul we lost, but heaven gained.

That's from Heather.

And just so many people had this close, even if they never met Charlie, they felt a personal connection to him.

And he felt a personal connection to them as well.

He loved this country.

He really wanted to

better this country, sustain this country.

Even, you know, as Erica said

the memorial, he cared so much about even trying to help people like the man who killed him, allegedly.

Yeah, and

this is a very true thing about Charlie, that he was reaching out to help the types of people that ended up ending his life.

And I really don't have the heart today to dwell on that too much because it's too

devastating to think about.

But you know, you said something, and Charlie and you shared a vision for main street in this country it's a vision the president shares it's a vision that is not you said wall street's going to do just fine they're going to do fine but we got to get main street back on track and they they have not had their turn for a while and i believe that really impacts the next generation specifically

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Charlie was a champion of the grassroots.

We never lost track of that at Turning Point.

We will never lose track of that at Turning Point or on this show.

You like to say the muscular class, the guys who shower before and after work.

Tell us about what this administration is doing to reach regular working Americans with the economic promise and prosperity that only America can offer.

Andrew, as you know, it's Main Street that got President Trump here.

Wall Street was never foreign until he won.

He always, whenever we have a lot of the business leaders in the office,

he'll poke at them a little, well, you're here now, but

you weren't with me

in 2022

during those dark days.

But the people were with President Trump.

That's what the first time I went to see the president about two years ago and told him I wanted to be part of the campaign.

Look, sir, you are like a superstock.

You go up on bad news because the people are with you.

And

going back to when we were talking about Charlie, that

the five hours of tribute to him a few weeks ago, I wasn't able to make it, but I watched it all on TV, and there were some incredible

points made, eulogies, feelings, passion.

But one thing that really

stuck with me was what Stephen Miller said.

They have made you immortal.

They have made you immortal.

So, you know, with the award today,

Charlie,

as I said,

President Trump is a movement.

Charlie was a younger version of the movement and would have carried it on.

But the movement now is going to be immortal.

And

I think that

this generation

should be inspired.

Whenever anyone asked me what they should do, I said, look, the President is setting the table for all kinds of opportunities.

We are bringing back precision manufacturing.

So there are going to be factory jobs.

We are reaching out to Main Street through small banks.

And small banks are the lenders to small business.

So young people want to start businesses.

I may not look like it in these clothes, but I'm also a very large farmer.

So small banks are the largest source of agricultural lending.

So for your listeners in rural areas,

we've seen people moving away from farms.

I think farming is great business.

I got into it about 10 years ago.

So there are opportunities and it's going to require both financial literacy and skills-based training.

We have an incredible shortage in the trades, in nursing, that

we probably overemphasize college degrees.

And I'm sure there's this whole generation who got out who who they've got a lot of student loan debt and degrees that don't work for them.

But I think through President Trump's initiative,

we are going to see

both a main street comeback, a working class comeback, and the opportunity to

accumulate the real assets over the long term.

Well, I certainly hope you're right.

And people don't realize this about Charlie, but he was an autodidact.

He was a self-taught

man when it came to economics.

And he was really into the Austrian school,

Milton Friedman.

I mean,

that was actually his start, was learning the macroeconomic basics and then advanced learnings as well.

But he was rooted in fundamental economic ideas.

I was in awe of his knowledge.

He was like, as Benjamin Franklin was to electricity, he taught himself he was to economics.

Yeah, Yeah, and he could he could talk it with the best of them.

And you saw that firsthand.

So we're here remembering our friend and brother, and you are as well in the audience.

Blake, you've got an email for us.

Yeah, we've been getting so many, just a wall of them during that break.

But we want to read this one we got earlier today from Jennifer.

She wrote, Happy birthday, Charlie.

Here is my gift.

Dear Charlie, my life has changed since yours was taken from you.

And now every day is bittersweet.

I have gone back to church after decades away and brought my children with me.

I'm praying for my husband.

I am sober over three weeks, thank God.

I now wear a cross around my neck proudly.

I found it amongst my old gold jewelry that I was going to have melted down into a cross as I'd never had one.

And I truly have no idea where it came from.

It's small, rose gold with a Celtic feel, like me.

And I think it was a divine gift, regardless of how that may sound to some.

I know countless others have changed their lives in similar ways, and I can't help but think that these are the best birthday gifts you could have ever hoped for.

I pray for your family, feels all your love today and every day going forward.

God bless Jen from Canada, your new sister in Christ.

Amen.

And we're getting so many, so many emails like this.

Just freedom at charliekirk.com.

Keep sending them.

If we don't read them on air, we're going to read them personally, and they mean a lot to us, the team, as well.

So please rest assured about that.

I want to play a clip here that's really important

because you're working on a very important piece of this.

I wish we had more time for this.

So let's just get right into it.

1.36.

And let me tell you something.

I'd not share with anybody, but the last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven

was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence.

That was the last message that he sent me before that assassin stole him from all of us.

So that is a powerful clip.

Stephen Milliers said something similar when JD hosted the show on the Monday after he was assassinated.

And Treasury, I come to find out, coming to D.C., that Treasury has taken an active role in an aspect of this dismantling of the financial networks that are supporting some of these radical left violent groups.

Share with what you can.

I know it's an ongoing process.

So it's an ongoing process, and I will tell you that after 9-11,

Treasury became the driving force behind tracking down the networks of terrorist organizations, how they were financed,

how could this have happened on U.S.

soil

with these international terrorist organizations?

Where did the money come from?

Who were the ultimate funders?

And that was on the international side.

And Andrew, I will tell you that Charlie's death is like a domestic 9-11.

That we are going to find,

it has alerted us to what Charlie knew, that these organizations are working within our borders.

And look, we believe people have a right to free speech.

They have a right to organize.

They have a right to protest, but they have to do it peacefully.

They cannot

embrace violence, and we have seen it.

We've seen it since the terrible day two years ago, the anti-Semitism and the bias that came out after October 7th, 2023.

And many of these organizations have been financed by non-profits.

And it's going to stop.

And we are going to, as they always say,

follow the money.

When you see

these groups where all the signs match, they have hundreds of the same umbrellas that they're using

after they close the mayhem.

They have the same lasers that they're using to blind our police force.

How are they constructed?

Because this takes a lot of money, it takes a lot of organization, and we are going to do that.

We have started to compile lists, put together networks, and

there's a long record here.

And we don't know how much of the support's coming in from overseas.

We don't know how much being supported by U.S.

nonprofits,

C3s that give money to C4s, but this is mission critical for us now.

Just as after 9-11 and Osama bin Laden, the ultimate culprit, was captured, we are operationalizing this here at Treasury, and we are going to track down who is responsible for this.

So Charlie's death has set this off, and we are determined.

We are determined not only to honor him, but to keep our country safe and to ensure freedom of speech on both sides.

We can't,

as conservatives, we can't be afraid to go out and speak.

You know, I know people are canceling speeches.

They're having to bring down the size of the rallies.

President Trump was millimeters away from death, and he was not deterred, and we're not going to be deterred.

God bless you for that.

I wish I had more time, but that was a powerful message.

Thank you.

Secretary Scott Besson, thank you so much.

Pleasure.

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So, Joe Lavorgna is the counselor to the Secretary of Treasury, Scott Besson.

So, you have been on this show before.

You were on with Charlie, and we were talking about it with

the Secretary that one of Charlie's passions was economics.

People don't, I don't think, always associate Charlie with economics, but he, the way he got into politics was studying the Austrian school, studying Milton Friedman.

He got really passionate about these macroeconomic trends.

He got really passionate about the debt and the currency valuations and things like this.

And so you are one of the guys that goes out into the media and talks about what the good work that Treasury is doing.

And we were talking in the break about

how this economy is doing.

Is it doing well?

Is it a a mixed bag?

I think it's doing mostly well.

I mean, the animal spirits are alive and well in this country.

So maybe just start there and tell us, give us that 30,000-foot view of how you see things going, how the Treasury is viewing things in this current moment.

Sure.

Thank you very much for having me.

The data are as good as they could be.

I mean, they are actually very good, thanks to President Trump.

So in the second quarter, his first full quarter in office, we grew 3.8 percent.

If you take the Federal side out, we actually grew 4.5 percent.

So, the real GDP, excluding the federal government, grew at 4.5 percent.

And in the third quarter,

the latest estimate from the Atlanta Fed, which a lot of people look at, is at 3.8 percent, with also a very similar profile of the growth being led by the private sector, consumers, and also capital spending, capex.

That's investment in things like AI and other technologies.

So, that's really what's driving the economy.

The labor market is not great.

We learned after the fact that the Biden job machine really didn't work very well, that we had about 2 million downward revisions over two years.

That's a huge number.

So the economy is doing well, thanks to President Trump.

We need to get the labor market turning higher.

Unfortunately, the shutdown is

hurting a lot, actually, and that's a factor that we're concerned about.

But the long-term outlook under President Trump is excellent.

That's great.

So Charlie was very, one of the things he would talk about about repeatedly over the last few months, he talked about the future of young people in America, because there's a lot of extremism among young people.

We've seen polls even after Charlie's death that show a shockingly high share of, especially those on the left among those under 40, support overt political violence.

And he would talk about this choice between MAGA and Mangionism.

Luigi Mangioni, the guy who shot the healthcare CEO.

And he would basically say, you need to give young people a stake in the economy, a sense that they have ownership of things, or they'll become really politically radical.

One of his big passions was you need to have young people be owning homes.

We've seen, I think in the 1980s, the average first-time homebuyer was about 29 years old.

That's grown to 38.

It's gone up almost four or five years just since COVID, I believe.

And he was very concerned with that, that what can we do to make it so young people are buying into the system rather than feeling hopeless and atomized?

And I was wondering if you have any thoughts on what the Trump administration can do along that dimension to especially uplift the youngest Americans who are otherwise at risk of getting really radicalized.

Charlie is exactly right.

And the Treasury Secretary recently highlighted the fact that we have a housing affordability crisis.

To Charlie's points that he was making so eloquently, one of the things you can do certainly is get inflation down, because under the prior administration, inflation ran at a near 5 percent annual rate.

That's the highest since the inflationary 70s.

When you have high inflation, you have high interest rates.

Under President Trump, he has been able to get the inflation rate down substantially.

That's allowed blue-collar wages to expand and to grow quite significantly, and also allowed interest rates to decline.

So, you look right now at U.S.

interest rates, the 10-year yield, the benchmark borrowing rate for mortgages and for corporate borrowers is around 4%.

So, that's very positive, and that will eventually pull mortgage rates down because inflation is declining, and all the investment that I talked about that President Trump is getting going in the economy will increase the economy's ability to produce goods and services, which will further lower inflation.

So, mortgage rates can't come down further.

The administration is also working on things to try to expedite the permitting process, trying to lower some of the costs.

Things like that will help, no question, because, as you said, young people need to have a skin in the game, need to have a stake in the outcome, and feel like they're not disillusioned.

So, Charlie was exactly right about that.

It will take time to undo the policies we had under the prior administration, but we are optimistic that as the cost of living goes down and as worker wages rise, you'll get more young people being able to go into the home, you know, the home market and be able to buy, get affordability higher, and things will turn.

It'll take some time, but things will turn.

Another important part will be another thing Charlie talked about a lot: the college scam, sort of deflating the scam elements of higher education.

Did you see this yesterday with the, the,

I believe it was Santa Clara School of Law?

No.

So this is something that's unfolding right now.

One of the things the Trump administration recently did is it capped the annual amount of student loans you could take in the plus loans to $50,000 a year.

This is the super student loan.

A lot of people getting graduate degrees get it.

And they capped it at $50,000 a year.

So Santa Clara School of Law, last year their tuition was $62,000.

This year they announced a scholarship that every single person who goes to the school will get, such that their tuition is now $50,000.

That's a practical example.

A practical example.

That's it with the government.

I mean, Alice Rivlin, probably not well known

among many folk, old person like me knows who she is.

She was head of the Congressional Budget Office under, I believe, under Clinton, and was a vice chair of the Fed.

She's certainly not a rightist in any way, shape, form, but you talked about how government with education causes all sorts of big problems and how they basically create artificial demand.

To your point, about what the Trump administration is doing, trying to get the government out of the market.

So that's very important, and lowering costs.

So things like this are very important.

Let the private sector do its job and let the government get out of the way so that costs can fall to make education cheaper for everyone.

This also comes back to your point on housing, trying to get the government out of the way, senseless regulation that doesn't allow building and

things to go forward in a more productive way so that costs

can be lower.

How concerned are we about

artificial intelligence?

You talked about this dichotomy between you had 4.5% real growth in the private sector, but

there are struggles in the labor market.

Obviously, that's what I think of first when I think about young people getting skin in the game, getting on that first rung of the ladder to start building wealth and building a career.

Is AI something that you are looking at actively?

How concerned are you about it eroding, especially those entry-level jobs?

You think financial markets, right, financial analysts on Wall Street, that's the first jobs that are getting cut.

So, how worried are we about that first rung on the ladder of career building as the first jobs that are going to get cut?

Because we're seeing some negative trends with Gen Z employment.

Look, all new technologies are very disruptive, but the history, the U.S.

economic history is such that they ultimately get the economy growing and expanding and thriving in a much better place.

So I'm not worried about AI necessarily replacing jobs, although there might be some areas where there is

some effect.

We need a lot of jobs in a lot of high-tech areas, certainly in a lot of high-skilled areas, trades.

tradesmen, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, all those things to build.

We need a lot of that labor we're still short of.

The fact that the administration has secured the border and gotten rid of significant amounts of illegal workers, which are artificially depressing worker wages, is also very important.

But like when you want to build and the president wants to reindustrialize the manufacturing base, create

high-value added, high-paying jobs, those aren't AI jobs.

Those are jobs that you're building, you're operating a factory, you're getting capital coming in.

That's where the U.S.

economy will thrive.

And President Trump, as a builder, knows how to create things.

The Secretary has been excellent in helping articulate and seeing that vision through.

And you're going to, we've got all these new industries.

Look at the equity market.

Look at the boom we're seeing across these hyperscalers.

I mean, there are so many wonderful opportunities.

I have to think that the outlook and the ability to do business and to transact in a meaningful way and not be impeded by government regulation and high taxes, those are all things that are going to create jobs for all sorts of people, all sorts of Americans.

So it makes me really optimistic.

It's not to say there weren't certain areas there will be some dislocations, but President Trump knows how to create jobs and we'll get it done.

You know, know, we

had the opportunity to speak with the Vice President yesterday, just briefly, and it struck me that he is extraordinarily bullish, glass half full, you could say, on AI and its ultimate impact.

We've seen this with the railroad, we've seen this with the automobile, we've seen this with the dot-com boom.

So these new technologies come in, they are disruptive, but ultimately they lead to greater productivity, which leads to additional job opportunities.

And hopefully we are able to backfill some of that with trade schools that are in higher trades.

You think of trade schools, you think of

Carpenter, HVAC, that kind of thing.

But there's trade schools for these high-tech, maybe it's going to be trade schools for programming or robotics or automation.

That's right.

My father, he's retired mostly, but he ran the largest trade school, vocational trade school in Connecticut.

So, yeah, there's tremendous amounts of opportunities that are there.

And look, in the bill that was just passed, One Big Beautiful Bill, there's full expensing for CapEx.

There's going to be full expensing for factories.

So all the things you talk about in terms of building that the President wants to create, those tax incentives are there, which makes the forward really, really bullish.

I'm glad you brought that up because Charlie would talk about that a lot.

He really wanted that.

He became a big, big believer in the One Big Beautiful bill because he saw that the CapEx, that was going to drive a ton of investment in the short term.

Because private business owners, he was thinking about it from a personal standpoint, going like, Well, if we can write all this off right now, let's do it.

Let's do it.

And that's still to come.

Yeah, and we haven't seen the impact of that, right?

Not even, nope, not yet.

We will see it next year.

It will really be a wonderful boom.

It's going to be a big one.

That's going to be like restaurants and small businesses, factories, manufacturing, warehouses, right?

We had the small business sentiment data today, and the numbers still look really solid thanks to President Trump.

That's great.

Okay, well, it's good news.

Good news.

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The Culture and Christianity podcast is informative and encouraging.

You could find it on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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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.

So, Blake, the floor is yours.

It's obviously

his 32nd birthday, and a lot of you are sending in your birthday wishes.

Yeah, you know, it's just so many.

We've got Nicole here.

Good morning.

What a glorious day we've been blessed with.

Joby, I am remembering Charlie today on what would have been his 32nd birthday.

We attended a vigil for Charlie last night in central New York.

350 people came to praise Jesus, give testimonies, and speak about how Charlie impacted their lives.

He is a beloved young man who has done immeasurable work for this country.

Thank you, Joby or Joanna.

Harry's both there.

Harry's is nice.

Harry's.

Let's see.

Do you want to read that one?

I'm so very sad, but today Charlie Kirk receives the highest honor any American can receive, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He truly earned it and deserves it.

I still wish he was here with us all.

Charlie was a warrior for the kingdom of God.

He is a martyr.

He is in heaven.

I pray for him and his entire family every night.

God bless you all at Turning Point USA.

Sincerely, Harry.

Just one after the other.

I mean, and some of these are longer.

Tim says, I'm still angry.

I knew Charlie was special.

I believe that the celebrities who are moving out of America may have been funding Antifa and other socialists.

Justice for Charlie.

We're going to find out.

That's what's so great about what Treasury is doing

as well.

So I'm going to play a clip for you here, Joe.

And

I have to confess, our audience is probably like, I was barely aware of the shutdown.

I mean, obviously, I followed the news, I knew it was happening, but outside of the D.C.

area, it wasn't.

But when I came here, all of a sudden it was like, oh, I can feel the shutdown, right?

You really feel it when you're in D.C.

Let's go ahead and play a cut that's going viral right now of Speaker Mike Johnson listing some of the crazy things that they want to pass in order to reopen the government, the Democrats.

149.

In their legislation, their counterproposal on the CR to keep the lights open, this is what they want to do.

They want to spend $24.6 million of your hard-earned dollars as a taxpayer for climate resilience in Honduras.

They want to spend $13.4 million for civic engagement in Zimbabwe.

They want to send $3.9 million for LGBTQI plus democracy grants in the Western Balkans.

They want to spend $2.9 million of your dollars for desert locust risk reduction in the Horn of Africa.

And $2 million for, quote, organizing for feminist democratic principles in Africa.

So, Joe,

you're the counselor to the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant.

You know this stuff better than anybody.

You're also like a famed economist.

I want people to understand that you're not just the spokesman.

You are yourself a really renowned economist.

Our people don't care about the shutdown.

They care about Charlie's birthday.

But the question is, should they?

Here's why it matters.

CEA, Council Economic Advisors, estimated that we could be losing $15 billion per week of lost output because of this shutdown.

That's a lot of money.

It adds up, obviously, cumulatively over time.

It's significant.

But

because we're not getting any economic data, the Federal Reserve, which the President has accurately said rates are too high, the Fed has begun cutting interest rates.

If we had data that I think might be weaker, because as I said earlier, the Biden jobs market was not very good and we got handed in a market that was losing a lot of downward momentum, Maybe the Fed should cut rates more.

So, not having the data because of the shutdown is a problem because you may be not making the best policy decisions because we don't have any information.

And, of course, there is an economic hit, and there's also a human toll.

This doesn't have to happen.

As I'm sure you know, there were 13 clean budget

clean continuing resolutions the Democrats passed over the past four years.

And if you go back and look historically, I counted no less than 15 the Republicans passed when they were the minority party in power without there being a shutdown.

So

in this same speech, by the way, Speaker Mike Johnson said that they went and counted all of the CRs that Chuck Schumer supported, and it was 29 out of 30 over his tenure.

And the one he hasn't is this one.

So,

you know, Blake, I don't know if you have any final thoughts.

We're coming up against a break on the hour, but maybe we just leave it with.

Go ahead.

Honestly, I'd like to leave it with,

I don't know if we have it ready to throw up, but someone ordered

Charlie's Starbucks order, the Mint Majesty tea with two honey packets, and the barista took that order and then wrote on the cup, don't lose your voice.

There it is.

And it's also barista's in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I am from.

So I'm going to shout out my hometown for having good baristas.

That's amazing.

Well, Joe, thank you so much, Joe Levorgna,

counselor to the Treasury Secretary.

Please carry on the mission.

Keep thinking about Gen Z as you're doing this.

And Charlie, of course.

Thank you so much, gentlemen.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Balance of Nature would like to take a moment to honor the life and legacy of our friend Charlie Kirk.

Charlie dedicated his life to inspiring each of us to live with a greater purpose.

He wholeheartedly believed in meaningful conversations and the power of building stronger communities together.

He taught us to be engaged and responsible citizens, leaving us with values that will continue to echo through generations.

Charlie was not only a leader, he was a friend to everyone at Balance of Nature.

In his memory, Balance of Nature is committing to a culture that chooses compassion to live with purpose and to ensure that dignity as the final word.

Hear about it from Charlie in his own words.

Every single ingredient is a fruit or veggie plucked from the soil.

No binders, no additives, or artificial colors, no fillers.

Just whole fruits and veggies, gluten-free and vegan-friendly.

These harvested ingredients are freeze-dried into a fine powder using an advanced vacuum-cold process to better preserve nutritional value.

Go to balanceinnature.com, use discount code Charlie.

To order online at balanceinnature.com, use discount code Charlie.

You have 35% off plus a free bottle of fiber and spice.

Honored to be having another cabinet-level

guest on the Charlie Kirk show while we're here, Administrator of the EPA, Lee Zeldon.

Welcome to the gentleman.

It's good to be with you both.

Yeah, well, it's honored.

We're honored to have you.

You

probably, and I, you know, I don't want to offend anybody else, but Charlie maybe said more nice things about you, Lee, than

just as far as your ability to be an effective administrator of the EPA, but like an effective operator, just solid.

He's so behind you.

It's just from top to bottom.

I never, ever heard him say anything but just wonderful things about you.

So it really is fitting that you're here on his, what would have been his 32nd birthday.

That feeling couldn't possibly be more mutual, the respect, the admiration that I and so many others have had for him.

And I shared a thought with both of you when we were together last night about what's happened over the course of the last month, coming across these parents who had no idea how much their sons and daughters were greatly looking up to Charlie and paying attention, tuning into this podcast every day, listening to all of those videos over TikTok, and learning so much from him and getting inspired by Charlie.

And what's happened over the last month, not not only have these parents had this epiphany as to what was going on with their sons and daughters, but now those parents have been watching all these videos.

I'm like, wow.

And I gotta say, as somebody who was in touch with Charlie a ton, I appreciated him.

But

like when you saw the response following his death, not just from across this country, but around the world,

I didn't spend any time thinking about this, you know, a possibility that we might lose Charlie so soon and that you'd have that kind of

a turnout

on his passing.

And I remember driving into the stadium and seeing so many people who were walking the other way because the stadium was full, the overflow was full, and I mean, it was a hot day inside of Phoenix.

These are older people, but you could have filled up another stadium.

We could have filled up,

I think,

three, maybe four, actually,

with all the people that were there.

It was funny because our tech partners, apparently, this is very standard at a stadium like this where they monitor how many devices are in and around the stadium.

It's not some like conspiracy or whatever, but they, the, you know, the State Farm Arena, or stadium rather, it you know, it's host Super Bowls and things like that.

They're very,

they have a great team actually, and they confirmed with us it was 277,000 devices.

So, I mean, you figure you got 70,000 people in that stadium.

I mean, you could have filled that up three, maybe more times.

And so it was an amazing, amazing outpouring of support.

And as you said, you know, you, I mean, we were up close to it.

And I kept telling Charlie every six months, I'd be like, I have to recalibrate just how famous you've become.

I couldn't, because I was so close to it.

And then I would see him and I would take him out.

And these moments would happen.

I'd be like, you're getting mobbed like you're a beetle.

Yeah, I remember shortly after I came into Congress, and Charlie was doing an event in D.C., and we're talking about almost a decade ago.

And I walked into this venue in D.C.,

and there were thousands

of young men and women with so much energy.

And it was just so genuine.

It was so pure.

For people who are talking about Charlie as if this was

some explosion over the course of the last few months or the last couple of years.

You could go back a decade earlier.

This guy who

32nd birthday today, I'm talking about early to mid-20s, he was pulling thousands of people out at an event.

Talk about this, because a lot of people that have known him a little bit longer, like yourself, saw the evolution of Charlie.

You know, he was a little bit more rough around the edges at the beginning, still the same passion and like warmth and vibrancy.

That was always a constant.

But, you know, what, I mean, he got more mature.

He got softer with younger people.

He became a big brother figure.

What did you see from your vantage point?

Well, there was, he was a very good learner.

A lot of people might not realize just how much he was always trying to grow himself and become smarter, to become wiser, to study.

When he was having this event

at a school where he was challenging people to come up to talk about topics where they disagree,

he wasn't just trying to bring out the best of that person who was stepping up to the mic.

He was hoping that that person stepping up to the mic was to bring out the best

of him, of Charlie.

And he would learn from that and he would get better and stronger for it.

So if you had to point to one thing that would have happened over the course of that decade that we were just talking about, is that he was absorbing so much knowledge.

He was just becoming so much wiser.

And so many of us in life,

we just get through the day.

And we have a job, we have a family, we have a routine,

and we don't really take a moment to just take it in,

to reflect.

to be able to pray,

to grow.

And Charlie was doing that in his entire day, all day, every day.

He was absorbing everything.

And that's such a great trait.

And what will happen is by the time you're in your early 30s,

you're going to be wiser than most people who are senior citizens who have just kind of dragged themselves through life,

never becoming smarter and absorbing everything you come in contact with.

I so agree with that.

And

we are on October 14th.

Obviously, Charlie's going to get the Medal of Freedom from President Trump today.

It has been moved, Blake.

It's been moved to the.

It's been moved outdoors to the Rose Garden, which I guess with the weather.

The crowd, I believe.

Yeah, President Trump said there's so many people that want to be a part of it that we are going to now do it outside, which is great.

And since it's his 32nd birthday, a lot of people are sending in earthquakes.

And so many of them, they're writing them to Charlie.

And of course, Charlie can still read them.

I liked this one: Barbara.

Dear Charlie, thank you for never giving up on our country and on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I remember watching you on Fox and Friends for your very first interview there.

I have been following you since.

I have always been a Christian, but I didn't realize that I was faithful, but not walking in my faith until you were taken from us.

Wow.

Because of you, I went back to church and took our children.

Because of you, I am a better wife, a better mother, a better person.

Your words made me realize that the only way for me was through Jesus.

Thank you for helping me to realize that my job was never to get my children into Harvard, it was to get them into heaven.

Whoa.

that was a great one barbara that is a good line um and by the way it's not too often that somebody's first cable news interview is memorable is inspiring like the first time you do an interview you might be somewhat intimidated by the setting you're trying not to to mess up i you know i remember the first time i was on fox and friends and i probably am the only one who remembers the first time that i was on fox and friends and meanwhile you have so many mother and your wife no actually i'm probably the only one who remembers that hit.

But there are so many people out there who remember the first time that Charlie was on Fox and Friends.

Like,

that never happens.

Yeah.

Well, and he got to host, ultimately, he got to host Fox and Friends weekend

with Rachel Campos Duffy, Sean Duffy's wife and Fox News host, and Charlie Hurt.

And that is actually one of the clips that has gone viral where his daughter, Gigi, was running up to go see him.

There's just so many we've been getting.

We're reading a small handful of them, but I'd say we've probably had maybe 200s or so since the start of

the start of the show.

All sorts of stuff.

Most of them, it's just, you know, the standard.

Happy birthday, Charlie.

You will always live on in our hearts.

Keep up the good work, TPUSA.

My thoughts to Erica and her children.

That's from James.

We have just so many.

I have to click open to them and all of that.

But

I took the day off today, and I'm sporting my best Charlie ever t-shirt with glowing pride.

I just left a Catholic Mass where I lit a prayer candle for Charlie and his family.

That's from Lisa.

Thank you, Lisa.

I just love the outpouring of support for Charlie.

I mean,

he knew that you loved him.

I can tell you that.

He knew.

He did know, and he loved this audience, and he had a direct connection with you guys.

And part of the way that that happened was through these emails.

But even I think he would be blown away at all of this.

And so, God bless you guys, and thanks for honoring Charlie on his 32nd birthday.

You are the 17th administrator of the EPA.

That's right.

Is that right?

I saw that in your X, I guess, bio.

Tell us about the EPA, because

Charlie was not a huge fan of the EPA.

Was it the elimination of productivity agency, or what it was like something like job elimination, you know, that sort of vibe with Charlie?

But you have taken it, and Charlie really loved what you were doing with the EPA because yours is, you have this growth mindset.

Yeah, we want clean water, we want clean air, we want the cleanest water and the cleanest air.

But there's a way that you can use this agency and leverage the tools at your disposal to really be pro-growth.

And so tell us about how you're approaching that.

So one of the biggest differences between conservatives and liberals is that we believe it's not a binary choice between protecting the environment and growing the economy.

We choose both at the Trump EPA, and that's a difference.

And we come in, we inherited so many bad decisions that were made during the Biden administration.

We have basically half of the president's deregulation agenda.

And we're talking about trillions of dollars of deregulation.

In one year, we will do more deregulation at the Trump EPA than entire federal governments have done across all federal agencies, across entire presidencies.

Just one of the proposed deregulations alone, the proposed rescission of the 2009 Obama endangerment finding, if finalized, is the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States.

But while we're doing that, I'll tell you the best announcements that we put out on the 100th day of President Trump's term in office, our top 100 environmental accomplishments from those first 100 days.

On the 200th day of President Trump's term in office, our next top 100 environmental accomplishments from those next 100 days.

And we're getting people back in the office.

We're right-sizing the agency.

We're going through reorganization.

When I came in, there was a little over 16,000 employees.

We're going down to just over 12,000.

And that reduction, we will actually get more done.

Of course, you will.

With just over 12,000 than the Biden EPA did with just over 16,000.

It's about priorities.

Well, it's also you get rid of the whiners.

You get rid of the people that are holding you back and that are actually on agenda and

want to contribute to what you're doing.

And you call it the Great

American Comeback Initiative.

So what is that to you?

Is that

so?

President Trump often talks about pillar one, clean air, land, and water for all Americans.

It's a five-pillar agenda.

Number two is unleashing energy dominance.

Three is advancing cooperative federalism and permitting reform.

Pillar four is about making America the AI capital of the world.

And pillar five is protecting, bring back American auto jobs.

These are all part of the Trump mandate.

President Trump campaigned on delivering on all of these promises, and that's what powering a great American is.

It becomes so important.

People don't understand the EPA enough, but you can either cause a lot of damage

or you can be a good friend to productive people.

Because we don't have that

thought in our minds instantly when we think about the EPA.

Charlie certainly didn't, but he trusted you to do it.

And he knew that you were the right man for the job.

Did Charlie and you interact at all during the transition?

And was he encouraging you to do this?

Oh, yeah.

No doubt.

He was engaged during the transition process, and he had a lot of ideas.

We were very much in contact over the campaign and the different ways to be able to make sure that President Trump was elected and he had a Republican Congress to work with him to implement that agenda.

But when the election came and went, Charlie didn't just disengage.

He became more engaged to make sure that the right people were coming into government, that they were focused on the priorities of this president.

They weren't going to, what we don't want to do is repeat any mistake of the past where the wrong people come in, they're trying to sabotage the president.

Charlie, 72 hours after the election, flew to Florida.

That was Charlie's dedication.

This is the Charlie Kirk Show.

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On Charlie Kirk's 32nd birthday, we are at the cash room, the historic cash room at the Treasury Department.

We are

reading your emails.

You're sending in hundreds and hundreds of happy birthday emails to Charlie.

We're trying to read some of them on the air.

And so please send them freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

We are joined by EPA Administrator the 17th, which is, you know, that's noteworthy, of the Lee Zeldon.

I'm going to ask you a different question, actually.

There's a lot of news about

you know, what's happening with the Virginia gubernatorial race and the New Jersey gubernatorial race.

You ran in a blue state.

What is that like?

I hope maybe with the Charlie effect and some of the things that you guys are doing in the Trump administration, they're going to have some wind at their back.

I mean, what are you seeing in these?

Do they have a chance?

What is your advice to them down the stretch?

So I'll have to be careful about how I answer this now there.

Understanding our setting and the

theory, if there was a...

I think it's so important for conservatives to get out of our comfort zone and not just speak to the people who agree with us all the time, but to go to places where maybe

no one in that community

has voted for us in the past or agrees with us and engage with them directly.

And

something that obviously Charlie confronted head-on, especially when he was on these college campuses,

and I've been experiencing this at the EPA, is that there are terms, words used in the environmental space that the left has used for organizing that get particular definitions that might sound good on paper, but in reality is not what you think you're getting.

The terms like environmental justice, climate justice,

climate change, they get a definition and you might think that you are supportive of the concept, but actually the congressional Democrats who are pushing those terms aren't doing exactly what that definition says.

Environmental justice, they'll say, hey, there's a community that's been left behind and need help.

Okay?

Like,

we all agree, if there's a community that's been left behind and needs help, let's all help.

But actually, what they're using the term environmental justice for is to get tens of billions of dollars appropriated for their left-wing activist NGO friends, their well-connected former Biden and Obama officials, and Democratic donors, so that they can just eat at the taxpayer till and

just waste away money with reduced agency oversight.

In the name of climate justice, the Biden EPA gives $50 million to a group called Climate Justice Alliance.

They say the climate justice runs through a free Palestine.

There are a lot of Americans who would say that we shouldn't be spending $50 million

on an activist NGO like that, American tax dollars.

Or in climate change, you have people who they'll build support with their definition, but then they'll try to get these policies across to have more control over the lives of more of the citizenry.

They will try to bankrupt people who can least afford it.

And I just think it's really important that we as conservatives are reminded to take advantage of all these opportunities to get out of our comfort zone, talk to people who maybe haven't supported us or understood us in the past, maybe meet them where they are and talk to them about these important issues because they're getting fed what I would say are lies that are deceptive on purpose, and it results in abuse of power and people getting taken for granted.

I think that's really well said.

Confront them where they're at.

People have not heard these ideas.

Do not always assume people have heard your POV.

Because a lot of times you'll discover that they haven't.

I don't know, Blake, if you've got anything top of mind or any emails we want to share.

Someone's holding a pool party during the Metal of Third.

Oh, well, that's cool.

That's great.

Well, that's very

enjoyable watching it.

They were in Sunset.

Yeah, yes.

Okay.

Just so many things.

You know, we have Donna.

Thank you, Charlie, for always speaking truth and being a light in the world.

Your absence is just as strong as your presence.

We love you and miss you, but we know God is pleased that you are with him now.

Thank you, Donna.

That's what's amazing.

So many like these.

I'm thinking of this visual of Charlie in 2020.

It was on the south lawn of the White House where the RNC was getting hosted.

And

he was right in front of me for the president's acceptance, this smile.

And you all have seen this smile so often.

I mean, you saw it firsthand in 2024 when they call Pennsylvania, you know, this epic footage, this hard work paying off.

Man, that smile.

It was someone who is just showing you so much joy and passion for the cause, for this country, for the future, and hope.

Man, we can never forget or lose sight of that smile on his face.

Well, and that's our sacred duty here at the Charlie Kirk Show turning point.

It's why we're here today, why we're honored to have you.

I know that you and Charlie were close friends, and you guys confided a lot in each other.

And so your loss is our loss.

And I know we'll see you this afternoon.

Yes, sir.

We'll be there.

Thank you for making the time.

It's great to be with you guys.

Awesome.

We're doing a little guest swap.

I see Senator Mike Lee is just getting into the room.

You know, everybody's furloughed in the Imperial Capitol, so getting people in and out has actually been somewhat entertaining today.

But

let's go ahead and see if there's any more emails here.

Blake, as he gets.

154 because he's about to get here.

Let's throw up 155.

We have a Charlie tweet from all the way back in 2013.

I love Mike Lee.

155.

Throw that up.

And he said in 2016 that Mike Lee was his favorite senator.

154.

Throw up 154.

Mike Lee Lee is my favorite senator, sent on March 10th, 2016.

So I hope you didn't do anything in between those times to ruin your status atop the senator list.

But welcome to the show, Senator.

Thank you.

I'm elated.

I hadn't seen those particular tweets.

I'm so honored by them.

Isn't that great?

Love Charlie.

What a good man.

I didn't even know that he tweeted those exasperated.

Charlie Tweet for everything.

Yes, there is a Charlie Tweet for everything.

I knew I was his favorite, to be sure, but I didn't realize he had told the rest of the world that.

Well, so let's just start there.

Senator, you know, you were a regular, and you hopefully will continue to be a regular on this show.

But, you know, you and Charlie had a close relationship.

You stayed in constant communication.

You know, Charlie was based in Arizona.

You're just in Utah, one stayed away.

Explain what this whole last month and change has meant to you.

It's his 32nd birthday today.

The floor is yours, Senator.

First of all, happy birthday, Charlie, and thanks to all of you who are keeping his legacy moving forward.

Look, the last month has been tough.

Not only did they take away a dear friend of mine, a dear friend of the American people, but they took away a leader, a husband, a father,

somebody who had immense potential and destiny.

I'm absolutely convinced he would have been President of the United States probably within a decade or so, which at Charlie's age still would have made him an exceptionally young president.

But this happened almost in my backyard.

I mean, UVU is just a couple of miles from where I live.

And

it's not the kind of place where that's supposed to happen.

I remember just a few weeks earlier, Charlie called me one day right after he had scheduled that particular visit and said, Mike, I want you there.

Be with me.

Come to the event with me.

And I was really excited about it.

I said, tell me the date.

pulled up my calendar and realized the Senate would be in session.

I said, I will be there if I possibly can.

There is a chance, though, that there will be votes that have to be cast that day that I can't miss.

That turned out to be the case.

And a few hours before the event, the night before, I texted him and said, there's no chance I'm going to be able to get back for this.

He texted me that day just as he was about to get to the event, telling me how excited he was for it.

So, look, a huge loss.

But it's up to the rest of us, those of us who knew him and had such admiration for him, to keep his message moving forward, to make sure that his words echo throughout the ages.

This is Lane Schoenberger, Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner of YReFi.

It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us.

His endorsement means the world to us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come.

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But today we're kind of honoring what President Trump raced back from the Middle East to do, which is to honor Charlie with the highest civilian honor that our country can bestow on somebody, the Medal of Freedom and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

And, you know, you see

what Charlie meant to the president.

And, you know, we got a chance to spend a little time last night

and so many friends.

I mean, Charlie, we talked about this earlier.

Charlie was a man of the people.

He was always about the grassroots, always about the muscular class, sort of reviled the elite in a sense.

You know, he was kind of a populist in that way.

But

you go around this town right now, and it's like the who's who, and they all loved Charlie.

And his friendships and his network extended to so many.

of the most powerful people in the world right now.

And you're seeing that on full display with the president of the United States after brokering a peace deal in Israel and Gaza, flying back, racing back for this.

I guess just reflect on the enormity of that and

what that says about the impact Charlie's had.

Well, it's a huge thing, and it's one of countless data points that we can identify since September 10th

of where the entire world has reacted.

You've got foreign heads of state recording tributes to him.

You've got the President of the United States flying to Arizona the following week for that beautiful memorial service where the President himself and many members of his senior team also spoke.

He's brought together all kinds of people, and I think that's one of the reasons why I'm optimistic that his legacy will be a lasting one, in part because he's got such a great team of people who knew him really, really well.

And

you know because you remember, because you were there for a lot of these speeches, and you're going to be able to recall with an accurate degree of detail which Charlie Kirk message fits the moment.

Yeah, I think we all have this

Charlie GPT running in our head.

People want us to make a literal Charlie GPT.

Yeah, we're getting contacted by all these AI groups, and we're like,

there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.

I hope you'll consider it, though.

You consider the amount of words that Charlie uttered as part of the public record over the last decade or so.

That's a very large volume.

I think what we do genuinely want is we want the ability to see everything he did say in the past, you know, with all those hundreds, thousands of hours.

I think people would be a little creeped out if we started having a robot

what Charlie would say.

No, no hologram.

Oh, I wasn't even thinking of the hologram yet, but that would be a lot of fun.

You'd probably want to watermark it to make clear.

I'd like to take a little longer before

I'm not there yet, but I do appreciate your glass half full on the AI, robotics kind of stuff.

In the meantime, Blake's got it in his head.

He can

tell me.

I'll do what I can.

So I want to play, or I want to show this image, Center Lee.

You and me kind of teamed up to make this story go pretty viral in your home state.

So this was published.

Go ahead and throw up image 99.

We mentioned it yesterday on the show, but I just find this shocking.

This is Bagley cartoon.

The whole in the head gang wanted for failure to honor their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution from dictatorial whims of a malignant clown.

And it has you, Burgess Owens.

I mean, the Republican

electeds from Utah.

The thing to really emphasize there is the way he's put the red bandanas around them, so it's like they all have this burst of red coming out of them.

Right around the neck.

Obviously, Charlie was assassinated with a gunshot to his neck area.

And I saw this, and I could not believe my eyes.

And then I found out that this Pat Bagley character is a far-left lunatic, and they celebrate him at the Salt Lake Tribunal as one of the longest-running employed cartoonists left in America, or something like that.

But he's not even in America.

He moved to Portugal.

So, anyways,

I've tweeted about this, sent it to you, and I don't know if you'd seen it already or whatever.

I think maybe you had seen the edited version because they took down the hole in the head gang.

That's right.

So, I mean, how did this strike you?

What are you thinking?

What's the status of this?

Like, can we fire this guy?

Can we, I mean, there's, it's just one of those things, like, on a human level, I want accountability.

I'm I'm not saying you can't have free speech, but this is like October 7th.

It's not even a month out after Charlie's murder.

Right.

Look, we ourselves, of course, can't do anything about it in terms of what his future looks like there.

That's not up to us, not up to any government.

Their speech is protected by the First Amendment, and I'll fight to the death to make sure that they've got that.

That doesn't mean that it's a good idea.

Just because you can legally and because you're protected doesn't mean that certain things are a good idea.

And publishing something like this,

which I regard as just the next iteration in a long series of inflammatory statements and inflammatory images like this one, they don't contribute to a good environment.

Calling people fascists,

Nazis,

this kind of imagery, something that they've been doing for a long time.

In fact, they did that just a couple days before Charlie Kirk spoke at UVU.

They referred to me and Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs basically as Nazis saying that we were bringing about the Vichy regime of the United States or words to that effect.

A couple days later, a member of their editorial board was asked about it and he said, oh, those guys are totally fascists.

And, you know, look, they're constitutionally protected and they're right to say that, but it does create a certain atmosphere.

Now, this, a few weeks after that assassination occurs, with the red bandanas around the neck, with the hole in the head comment, that's really, really pushing it but don't listen but so we want to have we have a clip we want to play this is from when you came on our show last March

this March

last March and this one of these topics came up let's play clip 156 senator what do you make of this rise of left-wing terrorism targeted at Tesla and Elon Musk my fear senator And I hope I'm wrong, and let's stay in prayer that I'm wrong, that someone is going to get shot the same way that Steve Scalise got shot and, God forbid, killed.

This is what domestic terrorism does.

This is what domestic terrorism looks like.

And they very much want people to be in fear.

That's why they do it.

They understand that people understand that there is a risk of bodily harm or even death in these kinds of circumstances.

And that's designed to induce fear.

One of the worst

things

about

what happened to Charlie is just how prophetic he was about

raising the alarm about the rise of left-wing terrorism and Maggioneism.

I mean, I find this chilling to even hear him say those words.

Senator Lee,

how does that strike you,

given what's happened?

First of all, I remember that interview now,

the play the clip.

And I remember just finding his words chilling.

when he made that comment, realizing he's probably right.

This is the sort of thing that happens.

So I'm glad you played that for us.

But one of the most troubling things that has happened since Charlie's death

has been the extent to which there are people all over America, people in responsible positions,

leftists, who openly celebrated, openly applauded what happened.

wishing on death for more conservatives.

I did not expect to see this.

Look, you think back other times when other prominent national figures, whether office holders or otherwise, have been assassinated, Martin Luther King, John F.

Kennedy, Robert F.

Kennedy, the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, just to name a few.

You did have, sure,

a couple of crazies here or there would say something stupid, but they were immediately dismissed.

as not being responsible members of society.

This time around, people were openly celebrating it.

And they were not rejected by their own.

And that harkens back to this poll, the NPR PBS Marist poll that came out about two weeks ago, I believe it was August 1st, saying that 55% of leftists in America believe that it's morally acceptable to murder the current President of the United States, Donald J.

Trump.

That is just chilling.

It's chilling.

And by the way, there was a

economist YouGov poll conducted a few days after the assassination that found 30% of 18 to 39-year-old self-described progressives or liberals said that political violence was justified to achieve political ends.

Blake, do we have any emails you want to throw?

There's just so many, and so many of them are short, but they're all appreciated.

I just have this one from Jolene here.

Charlie was a gift on loan from God, a prophet in his time, God-fearing, intelligent, kind.

He impacted so, so many, he will be missed.

That was the line about Rush, right?

A gift on loan from God.

Yeah, unloan from God.

And Charlie loved, loved Rush, got to hang out with Rush, become really close with Rush.

People don't realize this.

I've said it on the show before, but if you missed it, Rush ended up becoming a seven-figure donor to Turning Point.

And

the one rule was that Charlie was not able to ever say anything about it.

And then after

Rush passed, his widow Catherine allowed Charlie, and I think he maybe said it once or whatever.

He didn't make much out of it just to honor Rush's wishes.

But Charlie and Rush were very close, and

Rush believed in Charlie and actually mentioned on his radio broadcast after meeting Charlie, and I believe it was in like 2017 or originally when he met Charlie or maybe 16.

He said he related the interaction to how people would talk about President Bill Clinton and how you could just even, even back in his college days, you could see that this guy could be president.

And Rush said that on air about Charlie.

Those two have a lot in common.

Those two had prescience, particularly as to political and civic matters, that very few can match.

And it's impossible for me to think about the rise of Charlie's career and his rise to prominence generally.

without thinking that in so many ways he was a protege of Rush.

I'm quite certain,

in fact, I think I recall Charlie saying that he was an avid Rush listener long before Charlie Kirk's name became prominent.

And I'm also confident that those voices around Charlie, even before he started listening to Rush, were themselves influenced by Rush Limbaugh.

So it's good to have Charlie carrying on that legacy and others carrying that forward even after Charlie's gone.

A lot of people have been saying that they thought he was going to be president one day.

And I guess what we can say is he's something greater than a president, actually, which is he's a martyr.

Wow.

Yeah, I mean, in his legacy, you know, it's funny because

on my first interview that I did

after Charlie's assassination, it was actually with Laura Ingram.

It was about an hour before Erica gave her first address.

And I said that line.

I said, you know, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

And I actually had never heard Charlie say that.

It's just one of those things I had never heard him say.

But then Erica, you know,

Charlie was an avid journal maker-taker.

So he left a ton of journal entries, and she never looked at them.

It was obviously that would have been weird.

But when he died, she looked at some of those journals.

And she found a page, and she showed it to me.

She took a picture of it, sent me a picture of it, and it said, in Charlie's chicken scratch, Charlie did not have great penmanship.

That was one thing.

But it said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

And my heart about

dropped out of my chest because,

you know, just, again, the little, Charlie was incredibly in tune, I think, with the Holy Spirit.

He was in tune with God.

And,

you know, he just, he could,

he had a sense for where things were going and where things,

you know, and I think there's these little, these little Easter eggs, these godwinks all over his life when you have eyes to see it.

All right, so Senator Mike Lee, I was telling this to Joe Lavorgna in the first hour, that we are in a government shutdown, and yet you're still here.

There's some other employees here, but it is funny because a lot of the employees that we would normally interact with to get into buildings or get at security checks or whatever, they're furloughed.

So where are we at?

Should we care?

You know, this was the kind of story, inside the beltway story, that Charlie would usually not care that much about.

But Joe's point was that you will start feeling this in wider and wider concentric circles outside of the Imperial Capitol.

What's the status?

Are we going to turn the lights back on anytime soon?

Look, they'll come back on, undoubtedly, at some point.

Nobody knows exactly when.

We're in uncharted territory here because the Democrats

controlling not one of the three political levers.

There are two political branches of government, the executive and legislative.

The legislative has two pieces, the Senate and the House.

Between those three pieces, the Democrats don't control the House or the Senate or the White House.

For them to issue the kinds of demands that they issued in connection with leading up to culminating in this shutdown is absurd.

They're not in control of any of the three branches, and yet they are not even willing to accept Biden-era spending levels.

Now, look, that was high.

I bristled in response to how generous an offer that was on our part.

I understand why we did it, but it was probably an overly generous offer.

They still wouldn't accept that.

They're so accustomed to getting their wave, the mainstream news media, covering for them, and Republicans getting attacked every time something like this happens, regardless of who did what, that they think that they're immune from the laws of physics and mathematics.

But it's not going to end well for them.

Not this time, not with this president.

He's not messing around.

And so, look, when we look at shutdowns, we ought to think of how many things have gone wrong along the way.

A lot of people will point to the fact we're supposed to pass 12 separate spending bills, each in a different category of government, so you can't get to an all-or-nothing moment like this and the whole thing shuts down.

That's true.

Even long before we get to that, something else has broken down by the time we can get into this posture.

Where the federal government gets so big, so expensive, with such a long arm reaching into so many aspects of your lives, that the mere threat of not having the whole thing funded all at once can cause widespread panic.

A government that can do that to you is a government that's gotten too big, too expensive.

Well, I love that.

I feel like that's the best place where we can leave this conversation because Charlie's first big popular slogan that ever went viral was, big gov sucks, and it still sucks.

And Charlie wanted a limited government that was strong enough to affect the people's

will that they voted for, but that was small enough that it didn't impede our freedoms.

And so I mean, I think Charlie would say, hold the line, Senator, and

fight for us.

Don't give in.

And I think that's the fighting spirit in some ways that has

fully saturated, it seems, the highest levers of power, at least within the admin.

We've got some legislators that need some work.

You are not one of them.

But this offense, offense, fight, fight, fight, this pushing forward a muscular Republican Party and conservative movement that Charlie so desperately wanted, you're seeing that on display here.

Yeah, it just, it's amazing to see the

flood of love, the flood of support today.

Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday, happy heavenly birthday is a very common one that a lot of them say.

And, you know,

Charlie adored all of you, and it's great to see that they all adored Charlie.

And I just, I guess I encourage everyone to tune in at four.

We'll have the Medal of Freedom.

We are going to have a birthday celebration for Charlie Kirk, unlike he would have ever imagined.

It's bittersweet.

It's going to be emotional.

I hope all of you will join us.

It's now going to be in the Rose Garden.

President Trump has moved it, so we will see you there at 4 o'clock, along with Senator Mike Lee and so many other of our friends and Charlie's dear friends.

Thank you for joining us on Charlie's 32nd birthday.

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