An Unfiltered Conversation With Charlie Kirk | Fake News, Corruption, & Greed

Pressure is a beautiful thing. You want to have a debate, but you actually don't debate. Shut up or shut up, Charlie K. It is easy to interrupt and to scold and to insult. You know what's hard? I have to go to a college campus and defend ideas that are in the minority of a lot of these kids worldview. I mean, I don't like any elite. One of the things that I've been confused about is why financial literacy is never taught in schools. If you want to like have people remain super poor and dependent on the government, don't teach them financial literacy. It's it's inexcusable. Why do you think conservatives generally stay silent on wealth inequality? So the question shouldn't be like how many rich people are. The question is how easy is it to move up the socioeconomic ladder? That's the more important metric and that's actually becoming harder. So that's a really important conversation. Here's the key. Poverty is human norm. Wealth is the exception. How do you get wealthy is the most important economic issue in front of us. If you want like the secret to get rich there, it's actually like not super hard. Charlie Kirk, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour. Thank you guys. I'm I'm a big fan. I've seen a lot of your clips and so it's great to be sitting down. That means a lot. In 2012, when you were just 18 years old at the Republican National Convention, you approached billionaire Foster Freeze. Yes, I did. And you asked him to help you out with your idea, Turning Point USA. What was the conclusion of that conversation and what did that teach you about life and risk? Wow, it's a great question. Um, so I was just recently graduated from high school. Um, I wanted to go to West Point before that. Didn't get in. Uh, and it ended up being one of the greatest things that never happened to me. And so I went to the Republican National Convention. I studied like all the major donors. I had to kind of like sneak my way into the RNC grounds, if you will. And I at the fourth day, I was so demoralized. I was like, "Oh, this is not working. saying, "I have this idea for Turning Point USA," which basically the idea was to try to win over young people around conservative ideas. And I was in a stairwell, literally a stairwell, and so and then I saw Foster Freeze doing like a podcast interview with this major cowboy hat on and I gave him the stairwell pitch. You know, people talk about the elevator pitch. I gave him a stairwell pitch and he told a couple jokes. He was the sweetest, most godly, incredible person ever. He was actually took me seriously cuz here I was 18 years old, no money, no connections, no idea what I was doing. and no reason that he should be listening to me. And this guy, for the people that know, Foster Freeze started from nothing in uh rural I think it was like Rice Lake, Wisconsin, became like the top mutual fund manager for like 30 years. The Brandine Fund out of Delaware, like legendary stuff, right? So, he's someone that gets pitched all the time. His life is to listen to pitches. 10 times a day, top companies would come in and try to pitch Foster Freeze. Can you have your couple billion dollars assets under management to buy Coca-Cola or to buy United Airlines? constantly getting pitches. So, here I am pitching a guy, a legend, about, you know, this organization that I wanted to start, Turning Point USA, and he took me so seriously. Um, and he wrote me a $10,000 check. And that was like the seed funding. Uh, it wasn't shares. It wasn't like equity. It was just a donation cuz we were 501c3. And it might as well have been $100 million, right? It finally was enough for me to be able to start a website, to have gas in the car, and then Yeah. And then from there the the journey just started and he became a bigger and bigger donor. What do you think he saw in you? Well, he probably saw someone that was passionate enough and crazy enough and honestly he probably saw someone that was really like naive to a great extent that I still wanted to get into this like broken political space, but I didn't know any better. Um, and in Foster's own words, he said he saw someone with focus and determination and a Midwestern work ethic. So, he was from Wisconsin. and I was from Northern Illinois. So, we kind of had that in common. And look, I live in Arizona now and I love Arizona, but I have like a huge Midwestern bias. I think Midwestern work ethic is like the best on the planet. And nothing against other people in the country, but there is something very special about u how we're raised in the Midwest and kind of that idea that we're going to outwork everybody. And that's always been who I am. I'm going to do more events and more speaking and more podcasting, more radio interviews, and more donor meetings. And that's kind of been the ethos. So, yeah, I mean, I don't want to put words in his mouth. He passed away unfortunately a couple years ago. Um, and so but no, he was a great friend. And you asked the question, what did it teach me about risk? Is is that right? Risk in life. Yeah. Well, I honestly I had nothing to really risk because I had nothing to lose. And so that's like Well, that's I mean that's a nerve-wracking thing. A lot of people are presented with opportunities to talk with someone, get their foot in the door for some opportunity. So what are you losing though? Like your own like getting over the embarrassment of rejection. I know. But like it's not losing anything, right? I mean that's in life if you think about it like okay if you're actually if you're second mortgaging your house like some entrepreneurs are I don't have like one of those stories right I'm sure you guys talked to some of these people I was on the second mortgage my house and I couldn't feed my kids that's actually not my story that is something to lose this is like the only thing you have to lose is your own sense of comfort that's kind of weird when you think about it right oh I'm not going to ask that girl out why because I'm comfortable in my own corner comfort will not bring you success actually it won't bring you excellence like only in that place of uncomfort and discomfort do you actually get to the next level you know this so why do so many people believe the exact opposite of that that they feel like that's a big risk for them to go and do that like why don't more people think like you cuz I agree with you I think first of all like I mean it is risk in the sense that we as human beings do desire comfort and we want to kind of be in a place where we can have certainty above uncertainty and going and asking a question or go going and asking a top billionaire for money you have the probability failure and we are very failureverse as a species and honestly we should be like you think about 5,000 years ago you have you know two kids and you're living in like Mesopotamia and you're like well I hope there's food over that hill and if you're wrong your whole family could die so like that's embedded into our our species right God designed us in a way where there was not a lot of food all the all the place so now you kind of extrapolate that kind of genetic wiring where we used to be in in the wilderness to foster freeze and you think you're like wow foster tells me no my whole life's going to actually no you're going to be fine like you could go and still eat food and you're not going to die and so I think we have to overcome our genetic hardwiring where so many people think that it's like a life ordeath situation I can't ask this girl out I can't go ask for a raise I can't go to my boss I can't assert myself and you have to overcome that because it's actually not that much risk now what is risk is like if there's a material material or a reputational thing you're putting on the line. Like for example, if like you're working for a company and they're like, you know, you're not allowed to express your conservative views and you're like all of a sudden wearing a MAGA hat, that's a risk. Like I totally get that. But if you're 18 years old and you have no money, no connections, no idea what you're doing, I had nothing to lose. And that's actually one of my main arguments for like why we have so few entrepreneurs nowadays or we have less and less entrepreneurial rate entrepreneurship rates are going down is we're sending all these kids to college and they're telling you to be riskaverse. Like the whole incentive structure in college is to not pursue big broad ideas is actually to stay rather cloistered in place. Speaking of that, that's where I first uh found your content was you on the college campuses debating. When did that start? And what was the most surprising aspect of that? Yeah. So I've been doing that for 13 years. I haven't been doing that on camera for 13 years. And so look, the Lord has been so amazing to to us and has blessed us in amazing ways. And so I never would have imagined like honestly ever since like I met Foster Freeze that we'd be somewhat of kind of like a household name. I don't want to overextend it, but I mean it there's some serious verality and some real punch behind what we're doing. So I started doing that without even filming it. And so like that's what people are like you have and that was before like mass social media 13 years ago. It was still there. Honestly, I should have filmed it. It would have went like the trajectory probably would have been even faster 2012, right? Yes. I mean like that was like raw internet and like it would have been really interesting. But that's how you know I actually believe this stuff is I used to go to bait kids when there was no incentive structure for verality. I just did it cuz I loved it and I love the battle of ideas and I did it to try to start like a turning point group on campus. And so I've been doing it for 13 years. We started filming it around 2017. We started perfecting the model really around 2021. And then 2023 is when all of a sudden it kind of became a somewhat of a cultural phenomenon. And then of course the last year seems like I can't get out of people's algorithm. So you mentioned that you like the battle of ideas. But one thing that I tend to notice is that whoever has stronger rhetoric, persuasion skills, you know, quick on their feet, quick on their toes, that's going to be the person to win the argument, the debate. Do you feel like these debates have turned into a battle of ideas or just who has stronger rhetoric? That's a good point. I actually have to think I I think about that a lot. So I try to do a couple things and I I fail. But if you notice, I've in the viral videos, I try to put my microphone down literally physically on the table when the person is asking their question because I want to try to give them uninterrupted time to be able to make their argument. Number two, there is an advantage that the person coming up to the mic has that they're allowed to ask any topic and I don't know what that topic is going to be and they could prepare profusely on it. But you're right, of course it's advantage to the guy that does it for a living, right? But understand like I have to go to a college campus and defend ideas that are in the minority of a lot of these kids worldview. I have to go to a college campus and argue against abortion. Most kids are not against abortion, right? Have you have you ever had your mind changed from one of these college camp? Oh yeah. I mean so mine changed as in over a period of time probably. Yes. I would say that I definitely have grown respect for like the thoughtfulness of a lot of international students when it has come to the Russian Ukraine war like definitely like I'm very against US involvement but like talking to and they're they're all public you can watch them like very thoughtful German students and like very thoughtful students from Eastern Europe like for them it's a very existential crisis what's happening and so like to hear that was something that was very let's just say different than what you would hear just on like the usual American political landscape. But yeah, look, I'd say over I would say that I learn a lot too and that's what's important. I do a 100 hours of this a semester. 100 hours in addition to two hours of podcasting radio, right? 250 speeches a year. I got to raise $130 million a year and I got a thousand employees. I got a lot going on, right? I still do 100 hours of content a year. So 200 hours of campus content. And I'm not just like I I try and I fail. Everyone would fail at this, but I try not to just be ready to say what I want to say next. I try to really learn and listen and then I try to listen back to the footage. And so this is one of the reasons why it's a little bit unfair when I go to these campuses because I've been doing it for literally a thousand hours and these kids are like a college, you know, freshman. So I try to have at least somewhat of a teacher role to them and try to be a little bit softer. Unless if they're coming after me and they're like insulting me and you you've seen it, right? Like they're just being like totally like blitz creek. It's nice because I feel like you do tend to do that where they might have a hard time articulating a certain philosophical argument, but then you take it for that strongest, you know, derivative or representation of that strongest phil And like it's like the ninth time they're asking me about Israel and I love Israel, but I'm tired of answering questions on Israel. Okay. Like I love it. It's fine. Like it's just but this is not the debate Charlie Kirk on Israel hour. And I'm like can we ask can we have another topic here? And I might get a little bit miffed. Who wouldn't, right? I mean that's just human. But I will say like I try to meet you at the frequency you're at. So if they're coming after me and they're like insulting my appearance or whatever, like I'm gonna I'm not gonna let myself get run over. But if a liberal student comes and they're like, "Hey, I really seek to understand this or help me know or I I try to I try not to like pummel them, if that makes sense, because I at least I think that's effective." Right now, if they come with like a uniquely grotesque idea, then I'm going to try to expose it to the audience and to the, you know, online community. But, um, yeah. No, look, I learn a lot and it try and I hope the audience does too. I mean the physical crowds are now 3 4 th 4,000 people almost every time we do this. Now in those cases when have you found that college is really worth it for someone? Yeah, it's a great question. So I'm a big proponent of Hillsdale College. So Hillsdale I think is America's greatest college because it's what college should be. Uh which is it's the development of the soul and character. So character is one of the most important things that you can invest in when you're 18, 19, 20, 20 years old. And I guarantee you if you go to most colleges, they're about preparing you for your career, but they're not about preparing your character. And character is really, really important, right? Character literally comes from the Greek word tattoo or to etch into you. Character will define every decision, right? From what you eat to what you drink, how you communicate to people to the decisions you make. Way more important than whether you have a skill. Having a skill is important. I'm not diminishing that. But wouldn't I mean, if you guys are building a business, wouldn't you rather have people of high character, high skill? Of course, you want people of high character. Skills can come. Character is the hard thing. And so, I think that we as the college world has done a really bad job of developing character. They don't even prioritize it. instead. Why why do you think it's failed so many people? Well, that's those are two separate questions. So, why do they not teach character? Well, first of all, they they don't think that's their reason for existing. Most of them, it depends. Like the super leftwing colleges, which is most of them, they're all like, "We're here to create global citizens for an everchanging world, like some sort of pabum, or they're like, "We want to have you very specific, you know, skill, like we want you to be able to like turn a widget, which by the way, if AI replaces that job, what do you have?" That's a cool thing about developing character. Like if AI replaces jobs, you still have the most important of all things, which is you know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, beauty and ugly, right? You know the difference between the the most the high things and the low things. Like that's what we should strive for in higher education. That's why I think Hillsdale does a great job. But yeah, most I mean if you want to become a doctor or lawyer, of course you have to go to college, right? But you still have to go through this ridiculous environment of left-wing social indoctrination. But I I will say though that the and I I've debated all around the world though I debated at Cambridge and Oxford all across the country. The other problem is that they're not in the pursuit of wisdom. And this is one of the more important things like if you ask a regular college kid what is the difference between knowledge and wisdom. They like they'll just trip over themselves. And it's not a semantic thing but semantic means meaning. But it's not a semantic thing. It's actually important. Knowledge is just facts. Like okay I know the capital of you know California, Sacramento, whatever. Wisdom is the knowledge of things that never change. It's the understanding of things that never change. It's like what is human nature? What does it mean to be a good person? What is beauty? What is goodness? What is the best way of living? What is a society in its fullest form? Is it good to have children? Wisdom is is understanding that is even playing with the idea like is there a god? Like who are we? How did we get here? I think that's what college should be all about is the cultivation of wisdom. As a Christian, we believe wisdom starts with the fear of the Lord. But yeah, I mean I don't mean to talk uninterrupted for 10 minutes straight, but yeah. Um, I I think that college has has completely derailed its purpose. In terms of college as an application for the average person, uh, I think it's really interesting. Ben Shapiro claims to be wealthy in America, you need to do three things. Graduate high school, get a full-time job, and get married before you have children. All Yeah, that and he's right. And that's the Brookings Institution. He's right on all three. And do you think he's missing anything? First of all, I like Ben a lot. We disagree on some big things, but Ben's great, and he's been a good friend for a while. Um, yeah. Yeah, I would say like become a person of high character. Again, I'm going to kind of go back to a main thing. Do you think that that is essential to be wealthy in America? That's a good question. I don't think being wealthy is that important. Like, do you want to be wealthy of the soul or just have like a bunch of money? Like, well, that's that would be a different question, but I I I guess like the question is fine. Do you want to be rich? I can tell you how to get rich. Like, that's actually not that hard. I mean, you have to get rich like work relentlessly and solve a problem for people and like dedicate your entire life to it and like become an insane person. Basically, do you think it's possible to still do all of those things though and then not become rich? Of course. But like if you if your whole reason for living is to become rich, you will become rich. Most people that think like most people I meet that want to be rich, they actually don't want to be rich. They want to have the lifestyle of being rich. They don't actually want to be rich. They're like, you have to sacrifice everything to want to become actually rich unless you're born into it. Like no nights, few weekends. I traveled 3,000 days over a decade. I'm a million mileer American, Delta, United. I'm in all 50 states multiple times. Like it's thankless, gritty work. Like Shapiro hosted two radio shows plus like Breitbart.com and Truth Revol. Like not easy. So if you actually want to be rich, then there is a path for you. You have to like sacrifice in like immensely. I don't drink alcohol. Like Tucker Carlson doesn't drink alcohol. Donald Trump doesn't drink alcohol. That doesn't mean that like you can't be rich if you don't drink alcohol, but you must sacrifice stuff. Now it might be that you create a good widget or like you might a good social media app or you might get good venture funding but even those guys will tell you you have to fail a lot, you have to sacrifice a lot, you have to be really gritty. I I just challenge the premise of like what is the most important like I think if getting material wealth is the most important thing. I think there actually is a playbook for that absent of like committing crimes like being a really crappy person being sociopathic. It depends also what you define as rich. Like there is a way forward for if it's your number one reason for living to, you know, earn $500,000 a year. Like that's very conceivable in America. But if you're like, hey, actually most important thing is to have kids, which I think actually think having children is more important than having material success and I have both and I can tell you kids are way better than having money. Like honestly, not being poor is awesome. That's like the best thing I could tell you. like being super rich and I'm not super rich but I'm I would consider to be successful under you know American terms is great but up to a place it's kind of like you know you're you're blessed you're wealthy it's fine not being poor is the true blessing not worrying about like medical bills or being in debt is like really bad but yeah it depends on what you want if you want to be rich like actually like have your bank account big then America of course you can do that how much of people being poor is their fault versus just the circumstances of their life. It's both. It dep It's very case dependent. Um, a lot of it is agency. I put So, we as conservatives tend to blame free will, agency, and the person a lot more than circumstances. But of course, circumstance play a role. Of course, it does. Now, in business, they say that you could have better, cheaper, or faster, but you only get to pick two. 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So, use the link in the description to try Helium Mobilebile today and enter the code coffee to get $10 in cloud points, which can be redeemed for gift cards to your favorite brands after 90 days. Thank you so much to Helium Mobilebile for sponsoring this episode. Why do you think conservatives generally stay silent on wealth inequality? Well, I don't know if we're silent on it. I mean, I think that we're finally starting to talk about it. I'd say that we would say that just don't throw rocks at the top of the building, fix the elevator. So, the question shouldn't be like how many rich people are. The question is how easy is it to move up the socioeconomic ladder? That's the more important metric and that's actually becoming harder. So that's a really important conversation. But I could probably agree with a liberal that it's not good to have like an entrenched permanent oligarchy that's running the country and that people have to go into debt and go into credit to pay for their groceries. Like I actually don't want to live in that country. So I can agree that we should talk about it more. Um but is there anything like inherently wrong with a billionaire? No. Like most billionaires actually have solved big problems for us. Like, you know, people love hating on Elon Musk. I like Elon a lot. He was He's become a friend. Um, I know there's been like a lot of social media talk about it, but I refuse to say anything negative about Elon. Like, okay, you tell me the next time you're able to launch a rocket and land it. Like, actually, that's pretty cool. Like, okay, you're able to revolutionize the electric car industry. Like, you deserve a lot of money if you do that. One of the things that I've been confused about is why financial literacy is never taught in schools. Like, you think that this would be something taught throughout middle school, high school, college. Why is that? I mean, if you want like an actual conspiracy theory, that's the best evidence of a conspiracy. If you want to like have people remain super poor and dependent on the government, don't teach them financial literacy. It's like it's inexcusable. And who do you think is in charge of that? No, I'm not I'm not like I'm just saying like I don't know who's like the designer of that conspiracy, but the incentives are aligned. I'm saying like if you want a generation to like have to go to the payday lending people and if you want to have them like filling out credit cards at 25% interest, don't teach financial literacy. I don't know who. I mean, it's convenient. I'm a big school choice advocate. I think that we need school choice. I think the public sector teacher unions and the public sector cartel have done a huge damage to this country, but yeah, I mean, look, there's how many young kids right now that are 17 can tell you the difference between credit and debit? They can't. So, one of the things I like about Trump's upcoming big beautiful bill is that every new baby board in America will get a $1,000 loan from the federal government in I don't know if you guys know about this, but in a investment account that they can't touch their 18 invested in the Dow Jones Industrial Average that they'll be able to monitor throughout the 18 years. It be it can be grown by philanthropists, family members, grandparents. So, they'll be actually be able to see their wealth increase. They're stakeholders. So if we have two kids, if we have another kid, that kid will immediately have a investment account that's only a one-way dropbox. You can't access this money until you're 18. So it actually creates ownership units for the next generation. I think it's a phenomenal. I wish they did that with social security. Oh, of course they should. We were told it was a lock box and it wasn't. Of course. But no, I mean looks there's so then if you want like the secret to get rich there, it's actually like not super hard. It's like live below your means, save your money, invest in good companies, and then find good ideas and read a lot. Like read a lot. If you just read a lot and you like all of a sudden you'll see trends and you'll be well informed. Again, I don't want to make it seem like it's super easy, but it's it depends what you define by rich. But I will say one final thing. People are so bad with money. Like again, if you if your top priority is getting drunk, okay, then go do that. Like I know a lot of people they're like, "I want to be rich. I spent $700 going out this weekend." Like, "Oh, yes, you don't want to be rich, okay? You want to feel good and you want to have a bunch of, you know, toxins go through your liver, but you actually don't want to live a life of happiness and contentment. And if you want to if you I'm not a moralist, if you want to drink, go ahead. It's a free society. Go do that. But then don't all of a sudden complain to me that you're not materially wealthy." It just seems like it's such low lift to to make a huge change in terms of wealth inequality if there was just one course taught in high school about financial literacy. And so like let's just say hypothetically I'm just a casual viewer of I mean I've been watching you for a very long time and I'm I'm how difficult would it be for you to just you know reach out to Trump or reach out to someone and be like what do we got to do to put some incentives into the school system to teach financial you know what it might hurt a lot of businesses if people were smart with their money. Oh it would totally the credit card companies would freak out. They would freak out. Could you imagine like Visa and Mastercard people are asking questions about 25% interest? I mean so how difficult would that be? Is there just way too much interest at play? No, no, no. It would just be difficult. It's very hard for the federal government to control curriculum but to apply incentives. Yeah, the states should do it. Like there have been some ideas to do this. I know that there's big companies that have tried to do this because they're like, "Oh yeah, we're giving money towards financial literacy. I'm sorry. Like it's not working. Whatever you guys are doing is not working. Okay? Whatever program you think that's going on financial literacy, you guys are all a failure. You should all be shut down because it's just not working. Because I I deal with the next generation. They know kaput about financial literacy. Like very little to nothing. And this is one of the things that I just want to caution everybody about, which is like I'm very very pro crypto, but I know a lot of people that have lost money on crypto. I'm sure you guys I'm very very pro crypto. I think there's a huge opportunity. I think it's incredible technology more than anything else. that like the best way to build wealth is over long periods of time saving money and doing boring stuff. It's not get rich quick. It's not big meme coins, right? It's not big spikes. It's just going to work, saving money, and living below your means. I know that's not the sexy answer everyone wants, but that's what Warren Buffett did. Warren Buffett's one of the world's wealthiest men. He started with like very little money 70 years ago. And the eighth wonder of the world, you know what the eighth wonder of the world is? Compound interest. Compound interest. And no one wants to hear that, right? They want to hear about like what's the next Nvidia. Okay. I I don't know. But I can tell you that in 40 years, if you put a hundred bucks a week into a moderately managed, you know, wealth account, you're going to be great. 100 bucks a week, man. I can't afford that. Okay. Well, let's talk about how much money do you make? Oh, I make $91,000. You can afford 100 bucks a week. Stop getting your Frappuccino. Stop going out to drink with your friends. Right. I've been saying this. You sound exactly like I don't I mean the reason why we're called the iced coffee hour is because he had a joke on his channel called the 20 cent iced coffee and you could save $3 a day which is3 $100 a month. And if you just invest that into Yeah. A Roth IRA, you know, assuming 10% interest, you have some inflation, but when you're, you know, 60 or whatever, you'll be a millionaire. And that all came from a guy who was spending $500 a month at Starbucks. No, I'm probably that guy. You're that guy? Well, now I am. But like No, I know. It's terrible. It's It's not good. But you have amazing coffee makers upstairs. Aren't they incredible? Yeah, I know. Um I also drink a lot of tea and Starbucks like so when you travel a lot, the one thing about Starbucks is consistency, right? So it's just like I don't know what mom and pop, you know, place there is in Laram, Wyoming. I don't coin flip if it's good or not. Exactly. So the only the only argument for like mass proliferation of Starbucks when you travel is You do the rewards though, right? Yeah. Mikey does. It's funny. I I actually have coffee socks on, believe it or not. Good for Well, I like coffee is really good. I'm very pro coffee. So, I think coffee gets a bad rap. It's very very good for you, actually. Let's talk about the average American. Do you think it's possible to build wealth when you're making $40,000 a year? That's a great question, boy. Um, first of all, if you're earning $40,000 a year, you're in a tough spot. And I don't envy that. And you might be there because your own choices. You're an agency. That's really That's a really hard question. Depends where you live, depends your age, and also depends on your circumstances. And so if you have kids and $40,000 a year, it's very hard to build wealth. And that's a real problem that we have to tackle. But if you're 18 years old earning $40,000 a year and you're you have four roommates, yeah, you can build wealth for sure, actually. Like if you have four roommates and you're living in downtown Phoenix and your rent's a,000 bucks a month because you're splitting it four ways, you absolutely can build wealth. I mean, so it's a very case dependent answer, but if you have $40,000 a year with two kids, I don't know how you'd support two kids or 4,000. You have to go to government assistance, right? Um, which by the way, we as conservatives, we bash government assistants a lot. So, I'm a huge Oregon Ducks fan. Like massive Oregon Ducks fan. My dad went to University of Oregon, my uncle did, my aunt did. Like I I know every player. So Dan Lanning, the coach of I don't know if you care about college football or not, but the coach of or University of Oregon, like there was a moment in his life where he was like a what they call like an not an assistant coach. What do they say? Like you're kind of like a coach's assistant basically. He was on food stamps as a coach. He's like and it was like I was I was ashamed by it. I felt guilty. But he's like, "We needed it." And now he's earning like 11 million bucks a year being the University of Oregon football coach. And so I think that's like a great case case story of like, okay, we want this to be a safety net, not a hammock. And like here's a guy who really needed it. He had two kids. And so I if you're earning 40,000 bucks a year, um, you know, that's a tough that's a tough spot. So I always think about this study, this data where the US military during World War II and Vietnam War conducted aptitude and psychological evaluations showing that 10 to 20% of new recruits were only ever positively counterproductive in any sort of work. And then this is also backed by corporate research as well showing that 10 to 20% of individuals will only ever be toxic and contribute to less efficiency in the work environment than them just being gone in the first place. As someone that runs a massive company, how do you find these people and then seed them out? It's a great question. Um, they kind of reveal themselves. So, it's a really it's a really important question. So, we have highly intensive events, the best in the movement. I would say they are they are objectively the biggest 15,000 people 20,000 people. Last year we hosted uh the Bobby Kennedy Donald Trump event where Bobby Kennedy endorsed Donald Trump. We hosted President Trump six times. Last year we had our student action summit, our young women's leadership summit, Amfest, tons of campus stuff. So pressure is a beautiful thing. Pressure will reveal those 20% very quickly. They cannot hide in high pressure situations. What do you look for specifically? You're like, complaining, asymmetrical behavior, suppressive personality, uh, anti antisocial personality behavior for sure, gossiping, leaking, being late, trying to divide, um, things of that nature, disobeying orders, cutting corners. When do you know how to cut and maybe give them a chance of maybe they just had a bad day, they didn't sleep, um, so if there's a pattern, for sure. I mean, it it goes to like levels of defiance, right? if somebody is directly defying orders or if somebody has a really bad attitude. And again, events are a great way to flush this out. I always say when I have our all staff meeting, I said, "Some of you guys are going to move up in the company in the next 4 days and some of you guys might not be here in 4 days." And like there's a lot of silence in the room, but you know, when you have 700 people in a room, it's just the odds, right? And so, you know, we have very strict policies at Turning Point USA of certain things that we expect and certain things that drive success. And it's a great way to kind of see what people are made of. Now, when you say disobeying orders, how can you tell if they're truly just being defiant for the sake of being defiant or if they're an entrepreneur at heart and doing what they feel is the best move for the company even though it's not popular. So, let me give you an example. If there is a if there is a rule which is like uh during these three days, you are not to drink alcohol because you have to be on call and that we're hosting high schoolers. Totally appropriate. And we find out that you're at a bar drinking alcohol. That's that's disobedience, right? Defiance. Um whereas if they're trying to find a more creative solution, yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, like we kind of run our stuff like the military in the sense like the four days, we appreciate your creativity. We want you to kind of within bounds, but for example, if I'm hosting President Trump and I need like back bike racks up and all of a sudden, you know, you show up with cones, like I didn't need your creativity there, okay? I needed you to follow the orders, okay? Right? Like so or if you know if I'm hosting the biggest speakers in the movement and I need an intro video done and all of a sudden I see Dolly Parton like no no no I I need I need an intro video. I don't need Jolene. Okay. So like I appreciate the creativity but um you got to be creative within you know by the way we also have there's there's there's times to be maximally creative right but understand our events what our events team is the greatest in the in the country in the movement. They deserve so much credit. You guys should come by the way. You'll love it. It's it's unbelievable. It's lifechanging. And just from the audio visual to the music to the attendees to the experience to the exhibitors to the sponsors, it's unbel What we put on is second to none. It's just one of the many things we do. And like there's a long leadup, but it's like it's literally a military operation. It's a 24-hour operation, right? From the security to the students. We have 5,000 students that we have to look after, right? High school kids from AC come across the country. So, yeah. I will say I'm extremely impressed. I mean, we've filmed with a lot of different businesses, corporations, etc. I mean, you do run a tight ship. We do run a tight ship. That is a good way to put it. But for those people that aren't able to be a deck hand of a tight ship, those people that 10 to 20% of people that will only ever be positively counterproductive, what do we do with them as a society or you can't just let them job hop for their entire life, right? If they're like if they're never going to make it out of poverty, poverty is just not good for anybody. Some of them end up in prison. I mean, that's an honest answer. Unfortunately, I mean, there there is a um antisocial component to going to prison. I I don't know the answer to that, honestly. Some of them end up getting married and they don't reenter the workforce. So, that's an answer. But, um, look, this is not a this is not a problem unique to America. It seems as if it's built into the species, right? Mhm. I I don't know. Now, you've started making quite a lot of money going from the beginning to where you are now. How very blessed. How have you handled your own personal finances? um very carefully. I mean I I'm a big investor. Uh I have a great team that does it. So I mean for just to be clear, I didn't I didn't take a salary from turning point you say the first 5 years. So and I I didn't want it. I mean all the money went back into the company. And so I my test of a founder is always like what do you pay yourself the first couple years? And unless you have kids at home or else you have like a family to support like you know a mom that's sick, you should not be taking money out of the company. like it all should be going back in because I mean it's just it's so precious at that point in that period of time. And so I I would say that probably over 75 75 80% of all the money I make is invested. What do you invest in? I mean it's very diversified from private equity, which is great. So once you're able to make enough money, you're able to kind of get access to private equity deals, which is great. I'm super boring with some stuff, too. I'm just like, "Hey, you know, buy this mutual fund, buy, you know, buy the Dow, buy this index, and just kind of put it aside." Um, I I went all in and bought the dip during the the tariff stuff and CO. Fantastic. During CO, I bought triple leverage, triple Q. No, you did. Yeah. What do you mean? Of course you did. I mean, like, what are you doing? You should become a financial adviser, man. You got to start having fun. Okay. Why was that so obvious to you to go triple leverage? It was the easiest bet I've ever made in my life. Why? You're in a bet against America. By the way, I think the argument was that it could get a lot worse and we know that there's going to be$2 trillion dollars printed into first and I was against that. But I mean, my whole premise at the time was this is so self-inflicted. We decided to shut down the country. A meteor didn't strike. It's not an alien invasion. We could reverse this immediately. And so I said, and by the way, I'm investing for the next 30 years. You're trying to tell me the Dow's going to remain about 17,000 points for the next 30 years. So basically, I was like, I'm buying triple Q, triple lever. I mean it was like kind of ballsy when you think about it back. I guess what you don't know is that how far can it go before businesses start flat out to be clear I did I started I started to buy when I started to see a little bit of signs of hope right like I tried to see the bottom and if I remember correctly it went down to like 17 18,000 like um and then yeah just kind of plowed a bunch of money into it. By the way I was like fine. I wasn't even married at the time. I had no kids. Do you manage your own money or do you have No, I I I I have a great guy that does, but I I call a lot of shots. Like I'll I will I make macro decisions, not micro decisions. That's the way I say. I'm not a good micro investor. Buy this company, buy that company. The only thing I'll say is like when Elon's company went on Tesla, I want to buy Tesla just as kind of a symbolic philosophical thing because I thought he was being treated so terribly. But like macro stuff I'll get involved in. So, for example, if there's like, hey, I want to invest in, you know, more artificial intelligence or, you know, I think that, you know, oil is undervalued, you know, we'll have a conversation. The guy that does it is a guy named Doug Degroot. He's phenomenal. Um, and so he's just a great family office, really sweet guy. And what about Bitcoin? Oh, yeah. No, so I don't buy individual Bitcoin, but I I like I bit I'm an investor in a thing called anagram, uh, which is the, uh, fundamental technology below crypto. So, it's kind of like buying the plumbing of the crypto industry, if you will. And so, like Salana and all these companies, anytime they wanted an ICO, you have to basically have the fundamental technology beneath it. I don't even understand it that well, other than um you're kind of buying a philosophy, if you will. And then, look, I'm in a very unique, blessed place where there is a lot of deal flow that comes my way where a lot of people want to, you know, have me invest in stuff and I say no more than I say yes. Um, and then I'll do a little bit of real estate here or there, but no, I mean, look, in terms of rental properties or what? No. Um, like flipping homes and stuff like that. Um, do you have like guys that you work partner with to flip homes or Yeah, I mean I do. I have a couple guys and they've actually been very successful. Um, did a couple in Chicago, trying to do a couple here in Arizona. Where do you have the time for that? Look, I mean that's the thing is like it seems to like it just takes away from everything. It does. But like I it's I mean if you time is a very interesting thing and if you meticulously plan out your day, there's so much waste in people's schedule, right? How much time do things actually take? Do you really need two hours for a meeting? Do you really need an hour and a half for that? And so I'm I'm like a time efficiency maximalist. And I still get 9 to 10 hours of sleep at night, amazingly. So now really quick, when it comes to personal finance, I've noticed that most people think they know where their money is going every month until they look at their statement and it becomes a wakeup call. That is where our sponsor, Rocket Money, is there to help. Rocket Money is the best personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money shows all of your expenses in one place, including the subscriptions you forgot about. 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And everyone who joins gets free credits just for participating. All you have to do is go to opus.pro/clipip-enthe future right now to learn more and enter the contest. Again, that is opus.pro/clipip-enthe future or click the link down below in the description. Seriously guys, I could not recommend it more. Thank you so much to OpusClip for sponsoring this episode and I still get 9 to 10 hours of sleep at night amazingly. So yeah, I mean we were talking with your team and they were saying you work crazy hours and I was like why does he work so hard? And their answer was he's just extremely mission focused. Yes. Correct. I'm very driven. Yeah. Does it does it exhaust you ever to the point of regretting it? Oh, no. No. I mean, so I I'm writing I'm actually finishing a book. So I actually don't week I work one week day out of the week. So that's I take a Sabbath every Saturday. Turn my phone off. No work, just kids, just family. It's an amazing blessing. So I every Saturday totally off. It's amazing how much work you can get done in six days though. And so I wake up early, you know, I wake up around 600 6:30. Um, you know, again, I usually feel really good in the morning. Um, I don't have any hangover or any of that stuff, right? And I just get straight to work and I do my show from 9:00 to 11:00 local time in Arizona. Uh, once I'm done, um, I try to just kind of, you know, uh, just eat a little bit, maybe take a 10 minute, 15 minute nap, maybe. Um, I try not to do more than that. It's amazing like the power of like a 12 to 15 minute nap. and then I'll just work all day and then I'll try to train a little bit, go for a walk. Uh, but again, I'm in a very blessed position where things really come to me where I used to have to go to things. Have you always been this way? Like you've had laser laser sharp focus. You you've never felt like you dealt with poor motivation? No. You've always just been that way. You don't do anything to try to cultivate this motivation and laser focus. No, I that's a really good question. Um, no. I've always been very driven. like very very dri um so that's a really interesting point I thought when I first started this everyone wanted to be equally success like everyone had equal drive so I thought that was like an equal equally distributed ingredient amongst the population and that was that was my nay I didn't realize that like motivation and like drive and grit and hustle was actually like an exceptional quality and so then quickly I realized like whoa I'm just going to outwork everybody like I'm not the most charismatic person. You know, I can speak. I got a good thing going, but I'm not the most. I'm not the smartest person. I go to Harvard Law, right? Um, I don't have the highest IQ, but I I can compete with the best of them. But I am going to outwork you. Like, I'll put in more hours. I'll read more books. I'll listen to more podcasts. Like, I will do more meetings. I'll travel to more cities. Like, that I can do. Have you done an IQ test? I did when I was young. Yeah. And what did it come back at? It was It was well above average. Um, I don't want to misspeak on the spec on the but I think it was like I don't want I don't I don't want to say a number because it's gonna get cut up and all that, but it was 300. No, that wasn't that high. No, it wasn't that high. No, but it it was it was not like quite ment. But it was high. Like I mean I have a good memory, but like I'm not like I'm not like an international chess champion, right? I'm not like a perfect SAT guy. I had good ACT scores, right? We took the ACT where I was from, you know, 31 32 was respectable. Wasn't like a 36, but so I'm not dumb. I mean that's not but I I I'm I'm a unique combination now that I'm I can see it which is you know I'm like a heat-seeking missile towards what I want to achieve and that and that alone can be an incredible differentiator in this space. So what are some of the sacrifices or compromises that you make because of that heat-seeking missile nature that people may not recognize? My life's configured now in a way where the biggest sacrifice I have to make is not being home with my kids. And that like that's that sucks. I don't have to do that as much. I get to say no to a lot of stuff. And by the way, thank you guys for coming to Phoenix. It's one of the main reasons why this was like Thank you for doing this. Absolutely. By the way, I'm going to do this more with more shows. I'm like, you want to interview me? Come to Phoenix. Yeah. Because my kids are my most important thing in my world. My wife, my kids, my relationship with God. Top three things, right? God, wife, kids in that order. And so that's a sacrifice that I just am not willing to make. So, I'm just saying no to a lot more stuff. And so, but in the early days, it's so interesting like people think like, oh, you know, you had a bunch of donors that wanted to give you money. Like, yeah, that's that's not the story actually. Um, the story was I was going to find a lot of donors and tried to had to scrap and hustle and get like elementary funding because we could barely make payroll for the first five to six years, right? We could barely pay the bills. This building that we're sitting in right now was not even open till our sixth year. Okay? We barely had an office the first couple of years. And so, yeah, I mean, like, you want to be successful? You think it's easy? Okay, I'll show you my flight logs. 200 redeye flights. You want to go do that? 200 redeye flights where you have to go sit and perform and give a speech and be on and go all day and be interesting. 1,200 cable news interviews. Fox News at 3:00 in the morning. Fox News at 3:30 in the morning. get up, get on a flight, conference calls, remember the donor's name, write a thank you note, show up, report for the donor. They have questions, they're critical, they're skeptical. Like, fine, okay, it sounds easy, right? And I'm not here to like brag on it, but like there's a lot you have to sacrifice for all this. And it's really easy to look at Turning Point USA cuz people think they can like recreate it. Like, oh yeah, I can recreate. It's fine. I mean, look, it's the Lord's blessing and providence of all this, but like I'm telling you, man, like there's a hustle behind the scenes. And not just me, it's our team, too. our team works their tail off cuz now what's so cool is like my like maniacally driven purpose is now shedding off on people and like not everyone can sustain it. They're like this is too much for me. I'm I'm going to go work for an insurance company. I'm like that's fine. Like cuz the pace here is first class. That's why we get more done. That's why we have more chapters. We have more donors. That's why our budget is bigger. It's because we're just going to keep on growing. We're going to keep on expanding. Um because we do not settle for med we do not settle for mediocrity here. Excellence is the only thing that will settle. What do you do now to save as much time as possible? So, I'm a huge scheduler, big time, and and so I schedule out days in advance. Um, and so, and I will block out like this is when I'm going to have conference call time. This is when I'm going to have this is when I'm going to train. This is where I'm going to eat lunch. Like I I go down to like the 15 interval, 15-inute interval. Um, and you know, this is the time that I'm going to go try and, you know, go see this friend. This is the time where I'm going to go just turn my phone off and go for a walk. So I'm very very precise with time. And then the biggest hack and you guys know this nothing new. It's called layering. You know this. So anything you're doing try to fit two or three things on top of it. So if I'm traveling to go speak, listen to an audio book, right? I mean obviously. So then all of a sudden I'm getting two things done at once. If I'm if I'm training or working out, okay, I'm also going to be trying to listen to a podcast that I need in preparation. I take all my calls on the treadmill. 100%. It's amazing, right? Or like so I I try to, you know, do a I'm a big walker. I think there's a couple health hacks out here that are right in front of us that nobody ever wants to talk about, right? I'm a huge big I'm a huge believer in sleep. Like massive believer. I think it's totally undervalued. I'm a major believer in walking. I think we don't talk about walking enough. Just walking. Not running, not deadlifting, not cold plunging, just walking. Okay. I'm a big believer in fasting. I think fasting is like untapped power. And then I just think like not eating terribly is, you know, not those four things, you're actually going to be pretty relatively healthy. Yeah. We used to come up with our best ideas taking walks. Oh, walking is a one two mile walk. There are studies I think that show if you have forward movement like if you're walking your brain actually functions at a higher capacity than if you're sitting sedentary. My best ideas are when I'm walking. My best ideas are when I'm moving. And I go for walks with my kids. So that's another layering, right? So I mean you want to talk about like a triple layering. When my my daughter was six months old, she can't yet communicate, but she'd want to go for a walk and she'd fall asleep. So, I'd listen to a podcast while getting a walk, while spending time with my kid. Like, that's that's the trifecta, right? Um, and so I'm really I'm really big on that. And and so, as far as time, you just also have to be able to say no. There's so much wasted time. And look, I'm also in a very blessed position. I'm incredibly blessed. Most people don't have this, but a lot of entrepreneurs do. I don't have to sit around at a desk and do just like wait for stuff to come to me. I constantly can set the terms of my own schedule. Now, it comes at great cost and great consequence, right? Because with, you know, great freedom comes phenomenal responsibility and enormous responsibility in terms of your own material success. Where is the money coming from in terms of like percentages? Because I know you have like a store, you have a for-profit merchandise company, you have your nonprofit, you have, you know, your YouTube channel, all of these things. Where where is the money coming from? very small percentage is my salary at Turning Point USA. So Turning Point USA is 120 Turnpoint USA turning point Action$120 $130 million budget. My salary there is about $300,000 a year and I donate $350,000 back to Turning Point USA. So it's basically a wash, right? So it literally is a wash. And you might say, "Well, why do you donate it back?" Well, my wife and I, we're, you know, we try to be charitable. We try to give 10% of our income a year. What better place than to give it back to Turning Point USA, right? Why even take a salary? Honestly, there's that's a really good question. Number one, um it's very important from just an IRS standpoint. If the CEO is unpaid, it just kind of looks very weird on the form, but also I do believe in like different buckets for different things. I still think I should earn a salary for my work here and then if I want to give it back, then so be it. It's a psychological thing more than anything else. Like it comes in and then if I want to give it back, I can give it back. I know that might sound like strange to people, but I get it. I'm thinking just wasted payroll tax. No, it's fine. It's true. I mean, all the FICA tax money going out the window, right? It's better to go back into the company than not. No, the the revenue streams uh is the show. The show is a for-profit entity. Charlie Kirk show podcast. As of the recording right now, we're either number two or number three in all of Apple News. Incredibly blessed. Uh we stream on Rumble every day, on X every day. We're on 250 radio stations. um on over 400 affiliates. Um we are on Real America's voice every single day which is a great uh fast channel which is also on Pluto and Roku. It easily estimates two to three million people a day tune into some part of the Charlie Kirk show. We cut it up. We socialize it. Uh and then of course we have a beast of a YouTube channel. Uh we do very very well on TikTok. Um and so you kind of compile that all together. And then of course I do speaking. I try to write a book a year. uh which you know I'm able to make personal money on. Has life gotten a lot better since becoming wealthy? Yes. I mean look the my life has gotten a lot better since I got married and I had kids. I will tell you the best thing about being wealthy is not being poor and not having to worry about money. Like just like not get to a place where you don't have to worry about money. It's funny when you get to a place where you have like billions of dollars, you're actually worrying about money all the time cuz you have like lawsuits and it's like your identity. It's I'm not joking. like they it's kind of like a weird like horseshoe which is like you have no money, you worry about money all the time and you have a ton of money, you worry about money all the time. It's best to be like somewhere in the middle where you have like a lot of cash flow. The best thing is this. I have purpose in what I'm doing and the money is a nice reward. Like it's not money is not the number one driver for me. It's not like I mean that like I have the skill set where if I quit all of this right now, I could probably go start a company right now and after 10 years I could probably sell it for like a couple hundred million bucks. That's not I mean that's not like an crazy thing for me to say. The fact that we've started Turning Point USA in action. We have $130 million years in revenue, right? I have the Charlie Kirk show. If it was all about getting rich, I could go start some app and probably go be successful. What makes me so happy is I get to impact people's lives. I get to speak truth. I have purpose. I get to help save the civilization. And then I also get to make some money while doing it. And and that quite honestly is the most enormous blessing. I have the greatest job in the world. I'm the happiest person in the world. I mean that. Now, in terms of disclosures like this and being so open about your your finances, AOC recently disclosed that she has no individual stock holdings. Tim Waltz famously said he doesn't have any investments. Do you think this is just financial irresponsibility or do you think it's a good thing that they don't have a financial interest in maybe some of the measures that they're putting forward? So, I mean, I'll talk about the Tim Wilson AOC thing. I don't know enough about it. She's young and but like Tim Wallace, it's very interesting. It's like so on one hand you're like wow he can't be bought. The other hand is like wow you're like really bad with money like like you're kind of old and like you don't have any stocks. Well he has a pension. Okay fine. But I mean like okay I get it that he was a football coach or whatever but I mean is that a good example? I guess I mean I just kind of the idea which is you're of that age you haven't played into compound interest. you haven't like really tried to I mean by the way you could have you could have blinded trusts and you know different ways of building wealth. I don't think you should go as far as Nancy Pelosi and basically like trade stocks after committee hearings. I think that's probably a little ambitious, right? But I actually prefer my politicians to be successful. I know that's a weird statement, but people that own nothing like own nothing. It might be like really appealing on the surface, but then I wonder, do they know how wealth is created? Indicative of something deeper that could be I think so. Again, I there's plenty of good Republicans, I'm sure, that own nothing and they run for office and that's great, but generally I do want someone that knows the here's the key. Poverty is human norm. Go to any country around the world, most people are in poverty. Wealth is the exception. How do you get wealthy is the most important like economic issue in front of us. It's actually a really hard issue to solve. We know how to solve it. Markets is how you get wealthy. That's it. Okay. Private property, trade, rule of law, can't steal people's stuff. We're going to enforce those laws. It works. Decent, virtuous society. Okay. So, we know how to go po be poor. Not hard. I actually want people in office that know how to create wealth. I think that's a really important question. And then the opposite of that though with you know tickers like Nc that track the trade you should totally follow Nancy Pelosy's trade that is grotesque. That's a totally different thing. So how do we crack down on that and to what degree we should make it illegal? Josh Holly's act is is very good. I think it's called the stock act or something. See here's what I think. I made this in a video years ago when the whole Nancy Pelosi tracker came up. I thought it would be a great idea for just anyone in Congress to signal their trades publicly in real time 24 hours before they plan to make them and that's it. And they could trade whatever they want to. But they just have to signal 24 hours in advance. That's it. I have no issue with that. I think it's great. I would go a step further. I don't think any member of Congress should be trading stock period whatsoever. Individual stocks, but they could buy ETFs. They should be sure. I think it Yes. Fine. I think it should be complete moratorium on individual stocks. I I I they they know way they know way more than they're telling you. I think that would be impossible to enforce because they would claim that well I don't trade. I have a financial adviser who's trading on my behalf in an irrevocable trust that I don't own and they just happen to buy all these defense stocks before you know Iran started bombing is not that was coincidence. I bought all the pharmaceutical stocks before co Right. Exactly. I don't know the enforcement. I just I spent a lot of time in DC. It's a disgusting city. It's repulsive. There's a lot more information that these people know than they're ever letting on and they're getting wealthier while most Americans don't have access to information. I think your idea is great. The the kind of public, you know, beacon, if you will. We have insider trading laws for a reason. And what these congressmen do is like the definition of insider trades, but the penalty is so small. Like if they if they don't report their trades, they have 30 days to report them. And if they don't do that, the fee, I think, is either 200 bucks or it's $1,000. Like, it's it's nothing. It's it's a it's pennies basically. It it needs to be severe criminal penalties in my opinion. I I'm very populist on this question because look, most people in this audience, they would love to know what's going on in a skiff. They would which is a secure compartmentalized information facility where there's no phones. There's a bunch of generals giving you classified information about, I don't know, a new Wuhan leak or a new war. or they would love to know whether or not an electric vehicle mandate is going to be attached to the reconciliation bill or not and then they're able to make trades on that information. So, I don't know. I'm very populist on this thing. I think we should just put an end to all of it. What do you think about things like Trump's memecoin? Do you think something like that was an overall smart or not? Very smart. I don't know. I know Eric really well. He's the one that's pushing it. I mean, look, I I know the Trump family, so I'm not going to speak against them. They're all friends of mine. I don't know enough about it. I get a lot of questions about it on college campuses. I know people that have made money on it. Like I don't know. Like I'll say this when it comes to like crypto in general. I'm very supportive of it. I know it's largely like a Trump family endeavor. Technically he did promote it before he became president. I know a lot of people kind of rolled their eyes at it. Here's my statement and people can laugh at it. He got shot so he's allowed to launch a memecoin. That's my That's my statement. So anybody who gets shot No, I'm half it's it's it's it's sarcasm. Look, I'm not going to I'm not going to get into the details of defining it. That's a question for Eric or Don. What are your thoughts on Bitcoin? I'm a big fan of Bitcoin. Should the US do a Bitcoin reserve? Absolutely. Yes. Yes. The the United States should should have a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And who should pay for the Bitcoin reserve? That's a good question. Um hope some of the tariff money could potentially do that. The reason why I think we should have a strategic Bitcoin reserve. I know you guys had Michael Sailor on your show and I I think he's on to something. There is something called like the mass adoption theory which is over a period of time like the English language US dollar things just catch on and they're just kind of valitional and there's no stopping it. I think Bitcoin is that. You got to watch out though. Quantum computing could potentially crack cryptography. But if they do that then they're also cracking bank accounts right and stock trading. Yeah. So quant quantum is the only asterct on all this. But I think Sailor's on to something very profound, which is that because Bitcoin is a scarce, legitimately scarce resource that it's probably going to go nowhere but up. So Sailor makes a very provocative argument that Bitcoin could go up 10x over the next 10 years or something like that, which therefore if we start a Bitcoin strategic reserve, it could like pay for the national debt and like basically cover our losses on the deficit. But I think that we should I think the United States government should be invested in crypto without a doubt. I tend to agree with Michael Sailor that it's more likely to go to a million than zero. Yes, I think that's right. And by by the way, so you have a problem of the world's richest people. They don't know where to put their money. So there's only so many pen houses in London and Paris that they could buy. There's only so many ranches in Wyoming that they could buy. And so they we have this problem. So you create all this money, the money goes upwards to wealth inequality point to your earlier point. The question is then, well, what do rich people do with money? There's only so many equities they can buy. There's only so many shares in Nvidia and Apple and Microsoft they could justify well money needs to find a home and it's found a home in Bitcoin and so once it has mass adoption and the literally the wealthiest families on the planet are starting to park serious monies in Bitcoin and because it's scarce it's easy to transfer and it's just a winner sometimes there's a mass adoption and it just rises to the surface and I think I think Bitcoin is that speaking of the national debt at what point do you think it's going to become a major problem I think it already is I think it already is. Do you see any solvable way that we could address this? Cuz it seems as though if Trump's big, beautiful bill passes, it's just going to get two trillion higher. Yeah. So that's over 10 years. So I do find issue with some of those estimates. I don't want to get too deep into that. That's kind of a wonky. We'll lose the audience on CBO estimates, um, Congressional Budget Office estimates, right? I think we need to cut a lot more spending. I wish more Republicans wanted to agree. I know Donald Trump agrees. He's just very frustrated with some of the Republicans on Capitol Hill that don't want to cut it. So, here's the worst thing we could do, though. The worst thing we could do out of all this the options is not grow. So, the worst of all the options is not grow. So, when you have a big debt, that's bad. Not growing with a big debt is catastrophic. Growing with a big debt is somewhat manageable. Growing with cutting your debt is awesome. That that would be the best possible scenario. So the calculus is okay, we have a big debt. Let's at least try to have the debt outpace two things. The rate of the increase of the debt to GDP ratio and the rate of inflation. If GDP can grow faster than inflation and grow faster than the rate of the the debt to GDP ratio, then we're in a manageable place. So that's what the premise of a lot of these tax cuts of the bill is, right? No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, right? the depreciation, the extension of the Trump tax cuts, all of which I support because you need a progrowth agenda because when you're a deter nation and you have no growth, then you're going to be in a really bad spot. What happened to Doge? It just seemed like I think it's done. I think but first of all, I think Elon did a lot of good work. I really did. First of all, I think Elon's greatest contribution was a philosophical one. I think Elon made us all realize how much waste there is and how much we really need to kind of get into the details of how much the government is inefficient from a technological standpoint, from a efficiency standpoint. So, I don't think it's over by any means. I think Doge is a cultural mindset that is going to be in hopefully around the Republican party for years to come. It just seemed like Congress didn't really have that big of an incentive to do anything about it. What was most surprising, Elon said that he just wanted people to code and write in a description of where the money went because right now you could basically just leave it blank, send money, and not write what the purpose of the money is for. And he just said just put something in there. And he said he was up against just a wall that they didn't even mandate that. It's a very complicated. So yeah, that that's right. And so there is just common sense to just type type what it's for. There is so much waste in the federal government and my hope is that we can start to rein it in in the next, you know, couple of months and couple of years. It's a beast though, guys. I mean, this is a it is a wild monster that is hard to re in. And I know that sounds like cope and an excuse, but you have an entrenched permanent bureaucracy of millions of people. And then you have judges that are preventing literally the Trump administration from doing some of this stuff. You have federal judges that are coming in and preventing, you know, President Donald Trump from being like, "Nope, I want to lay off these workers. Nope, I want to cut this aid. Nope, I want to cut this, which of course is unconstitutional. So yes, I mean like it would be nice. Here is the goal. The goal would be we need to blockchain the entire federal government. Put the entire federal government on blockchain. Then number two, every dime of federal spending online in real time. We should know what everybody is spending in real time. No different than a transparent federal database. Could that be a national security risk in any way? There are certain things you could blackbox for sure, but like I think that people deserve to know on a day-by-day, month-by-month basis. Like what is the Department of Interior spending? Like are they going what is the Department of the Veterans Affairs spending money on? We should know. Like are they buying $50 hammers? Like are they buying $200 bandages? Like is I think we It's our money. We This is the whole problem I have with this whole thing. This is our money. It is you watching money. We are the ones that earn the money. It is not the government's money. They We are the sovereign. We create the government. We earn the money and then the government extracts from us with our consent. Right? Because we vote, we have elections, whatever. So, we have a right to know where that money goes. It doesn't magically become the government's money. I guess part of the the problem is that there's no penalty for overspending. It's like a credit card. The limit just keeps getting higher and higher and higher. So, why is that? No, it's it's actually even worse than that. There's there's an incentive to keep spending more. In fact, the incentive in Washington DC is that you have one wing that wants to spend money on more war, which is the Republican party wararmongering caucus, which I'm at war with. And then you have a whole another thing, which is the welfare caucus. So you have the warfare welfare caucuses. So the warfare guys want to go invade the world. The welfare caucus wants to go put the entire world on welfare. What can they both agree on? We'll authorize your warfare if you authorize our war welfare. We all spend more money and we get our pet projects done. And then we're going to go invade the world. And they're like, "Oh." So the war the welfare people say, "Don't invade the world, but if you invade the world, can we invite the world?" So they say, "It's okay if you go invade the country, but then we can have a couple million more people into the country." And then the warfare people are like, "Ah, we don't like that. We'll do that for the welfare people, but then we got to put them on welfare. And literally, this is the uni party bipartisan agreement last 30 years. Every major public policy budgetary debate comes down to an agreement between the warfare and the welfare wing of the two parties. No, there's no there's no way to first of all, I would not no I I that's Yes, that's very The way you described it, I agree with you completely, but that the reason I say no no is that I am not a cynic. I'm like a super optimist. I've never been more optimistic on the country. Let me tell you why. I saw insane dumerism like a year ago. They're never going to let Trump win. They're going to try to take him out. And like I saw doomerism die. And so I think what Trump's one of his greatest contributions is he's really pushed the art of the possible. Like actually no, you can do dramatic things. You can change stuff. But yes, to your answer, it's going to be very big. It it is climbing a major mountain. Massive. Do you worry about the US dollar? Of course. Absolutely. And what do you think is the most likely outcome? Because I I would like to think positively, but at the same time, I think realistically, it's just going to be one of my friends and heroes, Tony Robbins, would say, I don't tell you to go to your garden and say there's no weeds, there's no weeds, there's no weeds. I tell you to spot the weeds and pull them out. So, I'm not like delusional. I'm an optimist. I try to find the best case story of how things can be told, then have us have human agency and action to actually do it. So with the US dollar, look, the US dollar as the world reserve currency has gone down dramatically in the last 20 years. President Donald Trump is focused on breaking up bricks. So bricks is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. South Africa is the DEI pick. Why South Africa is considered to be some sort of world that's a that's a joke for the record. Some sort of like world currency power. It's like a freaking joke. Okay. All right. India. Easy to peel away. We already have great relations India. JD Vance did a state visit to India that was very not very reported. Donald Trump, by the way, he stopped the IndiaPakistan war. He deserves huge credit for that. That thing was like simmering up and was going to be incredible and big. And so then Brazil, Brazil's a disaster. Lula is a complete Marxist and communist. Bolsinaro should still be prime minister. So then you have Russia and China. That's a So Brazil, Russia, China. The best case telling is we can end this Russian Ukrainian war and hopefully try to create a little bit of separation and daylight between the ever growing marriage of Russia and China which is bad for America. It's bad for the West. It's bad for the world. And so we should want the US dollar to remain the world reserves currency status. It is imperative. Our I think reckless involvement in the United States with the Russian Ukrainian war has only led to ddollarization. We took Russia out of the swift banking system. Basically, we took their dollars out of their bank accounts. We confiscated their dollars. What does that do to every other nation that uses dollars as the world world reserve currency status? We're no longer a safe haven. We never should have done that, guys. Regardless of how bad Putin is for invading Ukraine and all that stuff, basically we deincentivize people to trust the dollar as a safe haven. Basically, we said, "Oh, if you misbehave, we might take away your dollars." which then has led to an incentive structure away from the US dollar which is very destructive. It seems like we're always facing several cataclysmic level issues at the exact same time. Welcome to modernity. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know there's one word that comes up quite a bit and that would be capitalism. Whether we're talking to entrepreneurs, investors, or other content creators, in part a lot of their success is due to the opportunities that capitalism is presented. 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So the question is cataclysmic actual like like what you would say are the biggest issues facing America right now and if you could provide three answers. Yeah. So uh number one is the fertility crisis. Oh interesting. Yeah. We're having less children than ever before. We're mating less. It's a major problem. We're we're on the verge of a population collapse. It's a huge issue. No one wants to talk about it. Everyone's like, "Oh, I'm single with and 32 without kids." Like no, you have a moral obligation to get married and have kids actually. And if you don't, that's fine. If you don't want to, you have to make the case that what you're doing is more important. And there is a case for that. Like if you're a Catholic father, like a priest, I'm not Catholic. Okay, you're actually helping society. You're doing something. But I I come from a worldview that you have a moral obligation to help society and to help people through something that you do. It's not just all about yourself and pursuing your own self-interest. I the death the death of modernity. I think part of it is getting married and having children. I'm a very traditionalist in that way. So that's number one. Um other cataclysmic things. Um, we are incredibly sick in this country. And this is why I love Bobby Kennedy. Like, I'm a huge Bobby Kennedy fan. We're a fat country. We're a sick country. We're an obese country. We're a depressed country. We're a poisoned country. We are not physically fit to fight a war, let alone be able to stand up and even go for a walk for two two miles. We are a fat country and it's a major problem. And so I actually think that physiology is directly related with how you act and how you feel. I got that again from Tony Robbins. Um and so if all of a sudden you're kind of this like oate obese sad country, of course you're going to kind of just fall apart and you're going to collapse. The last one is the most provocative of the three. Uh is that we have a major issue of this country that we become a nation of foreigners and we're we're strangers in our own country. Um, we have not assimilated the third world well into our country. We have 20 million illegals that I believe invaded the country under Joe Biden. Um, and so you kind of I I could go to 456 if you want me to, but we're we are increasingly not a nation or a country. We look more like a colony where no one talks to their neighbor and we have to lock our doors at night. We're like a high our cities are all super high crime. So people say, "Charlie, what does success look like?" I get asked all the time. Very easy. I want fertility rates to go up. I want church attendance to go up. I want people to be less fat. And I want to be able to not have to lock my doors at night. I want to be able to talk to my neighbors and really have a connective bond with them. My final one, I want to feel safe that my daughter can walk the streets of LA unaccompanied at night. That's it. Can you walk LA at night? She can walk Tokyo at night. Why can't you walk New York at night or LA or San Francisco or Denver? We are a failed country. What did Newsome say to that? I loved your debate with him. Thank you. Yeah, it was something. Why did he agree to do that? It's It seems so like weird. It was maximally entertaining. Yeah. Uh it did very very well. It got millions and millions of views. And so I don't really know what his incentive was to be honest. I think he wants to be president obviously, but he just So to the left he looked weak and to the right he looked fraudulent. And so who did he win over exactly? Cuz the right's not going to believe him. We I can't stand him for obvious reasons. And to the left, they're like, "Look at this weak guy who's trying to find common ground with, you know, Charlie Kirk, who they think I'm terrible." So, but to his credit, I mean, there were no gotchas. But, I mean, look, I I'll kind of go back to the point I say like, it's a failure of governance if you cannot walk your greatest cities at night. That's my politics. I know that sounds like I don't care if it's Republican or Democrat. I want to be able to walk America's greatest cities at night. The five greatest cities in America are New York, Chicago, San Francisco, LA, and what's you maybe Miami. Okay, it's fine. Whatever. Um, and people in Dallas are going to like email us. Sorry, Dallas is not one of America's Dallas is fine, but it's not one of America's greatest cities, right? Um, and no, Seattle's not. But Seattle used to be one of America's like most interesting cities, but you should be able to walk your major cities at night. This is insane. You go to Soul, South Korea. Amazing. You can eat off the streets. You go to Tokyo. Go to Singapore. This is a choice. We are deciding to have our cities dangerous and we shouldn't put up with it. I think it's really just being tough on crime and people know they could get away with it and they know we're choosing to be soft on crime though. We're choosing that it's a choice. Yeah. What was the biggest takeaway from Newsome? His backpedaling on the transports issue was fascinating to me. I did not expect that where all of a sudden he kind of agreed with me and then you know went super viral where he was saying that of course it's deeply unfair for men to compete in female sports. Like what kind of insane stuff is this? Right. Yeah. I think I would say that was probably one of the biggest takeaways. Yeah. Have you kept in touch with him since then? I've texted him a couple times. Does he get back to you? He does. Yeah. Uh my biggest text with him was being like, "Hey, you said that it was no big, you know, you were is unfair for trans athletes to win state championships. Why are you not doing anything about it?" Because a man just won the girls championship in the state of California. So, you were still poking the bear. Poking the bear. But I was just calling him out. And by the way, I wasn't even publicizing it. Now it's I'm finally having to publicize it. I was like, "Why are you not doing like And by the way, during this whole Trump Newsome feud, I've just, you know, I was like, "Fine. And this is the guy's a total he's a catastrophic fail. Does he ever reach out to you for help? No. And I wouldn't I would I wouldn't give him help. You wouldn't? No. Why? He's a Democrat. But what if he wanted your insights in terms of policy and you could somehow eek him a little policy? Yes. No. No. For sure. Yes. That's right. If he's asking like how to better govern and help people without a doubt, yes. If he's asking me like how to get political power, I will not help. What's your advice to him in terms of turning around the state of California? He would argue the state's doing fantastic. They're doing great revenue. Great. We left California in 2020. Unfortunately, the issues just got so bad with homeless crime. The taxes were out of this world. They just raised the sales tax in the city of Santa Monica. Which is a tax on guys like you. It's really It was really bad. It got to a point where Vegas was so welcoming. I I made a video announcing that I was moving to Las Vegas and someone from like the business administration within the city of Vegas found my email and sent me like, "Hey, we're really happy to have you. if there's anything we could do. Like they were happy to get the business. We love it there. So since Gavin Newsome has like no core beliefs, he's just like a slippery politician that wants to be in power. He's literally somebody that could pass a lie detector test easily. Like he this guy has no guiding principles at all. Just leave the Democrat party. That's my advice to him. If you really want to like be an elected office that bad, just leave the Democrat party and just go run as like a moderate Republican and just have some sort of like conversion story like, "Oh yeah, I'm some sort of progressive." Like you just want political power. You you you have no guiding beliefs at all whatsoever. You'll say whatever it takes whenever you want. You're captured by your left flank. But he won't do that. But and finally, like I don't know. I mean, I would say that more practically. Don't be afraid, Gavin, to like go lock up a bunch of criminals and make your state better. I just The whole premise of California is so sad. Every time I love California, I love California. Every time I land in California, I say the same thing to my team. It is a shame that they messed up heaven on earth. It is without the most It's the most beautiful place in the world, right? I mean, Orange County, can you think of a better microclimate than that? The the the the mornings are just like gifts from God. You do have pockets. Orange County has gotten gorgeous. It's it's like Santa Barbara, too. You have certain cities 61 degrees in the morning. It's just like you just can like anything is possible. This kind of got this miss. But I think they're sending all the the people to LA. It seems like LA is kind of like the stomping grounds for a lot of the issues and then other cities are actually getting better. Yeah, I hope so. I think Orange County has some real um some bright spots, but generally look, LA is the beast of California, right? And LA is just a dump. It is just disgusting. And it's too bad I say that never used to be that way. LA used to be a really interesting city 30 to 40 years ago. Yes, it had crime, but a better example of a city that has fallen apart is the city that he was the mayor of, San Francisco. When I was a kid, I could walk the streets of San Francisco. It was gorgeous. It was fun. It was unique. It was interesting. It was artistic. was boundary pushing, but it was safe. You would, again, Gavin Newsome, if you're listening to this, would you let your son walk the streets of San Francisco unaccompanied at 1:00 a.m.? No, you wouldn't. Of course not. You're a failure. If you if your own kids can't walk your city at night, then what have you done? I don't want to hear about like how you oversaw gay weddings or whatever stupid thing that you're talking about. Or, oh yeah, we're taking you to Wreckit Revenues. Sorry, your son can't walk the streets of the city that you were in charge of. You're a disgrace. Like don't don't lecture me about like how you're some sort of progressive beacon. How much of that do you think is Gavin Newsome's fault versus other people's fault? He was the mayor of the city. I put a lot of fault on mayors. I think mayors have a lot of power and I know this because of New York. Look at Bloomberg and Giuliani and how well they did in New York versus Delasio. New York crime went up. It got dirtier. Homelessness went up. Like mayors are actually some of the most powerful people in the country that we don't spend enough time or attention on. The police are responsive to the mayor. The building codes responsible to the mayor. The homeless like mayors are very very powerful. So he was mayor of San Francisco. Then he ran for lieutenant governor and then he ran for governor. And he was mayor of San Francisco like during the collapse of San Francisco while it started to go down when all this progressive woke stuff started to pop up. Now you get a lot of people just on the street and you have a good pulse of what's really going on with younger people. What's something that you've noticed that mainstream media either gets wrong or it's just out of touch on? I would say that something that mainstream media really misses with young men especially is they desire to be more religious than I think they give them credit for. There is a return to religion. You're seeing a little bit of these news reports, but there is definitely a curiosity for God and for going back to the church in a very serious and significant way. What's causing that? Well, modernity is a failure. I mean, modernity has given us a lot of great stuff, right? I mean, praise God that we have modern medicine and surgery and that we have antibiotics. Like, these are all amazing things, right? No one debates that. But modernity has like the core of modernity is what you are in charge of your own life and you could do whatever you want to do and you're the center of the universe. Sounds good. leads to highest depression ever, highest rates, highest anxiety, and hopelessness. In Victor Frankle's amazing book, Man's Search for Meaning, he said that outside of food and water, the greatest need for man is meaning. And so, we see modernity constantly changing around us at all times. Things are changing. People are changing their genders. There's constant change. And I think young people want to go to a church environment that isn't changing. They want to go to a place that is stable, that is consistent, that is beautiful, that is ancient, that is everlasting, and that is eternal. What would you say is the biggest non-issue that people make out to be a massive issue? You already spoke about the issue that that you think is extremely important that people don't really talk about, which is the birth rates. What about the I mean, by the way, the birth rate's so big. I mean, the fact that no one wants to talk about it, it's just not really discussed. Yeah. So, okay, great. So I would say this is not it's not a surprise what I would say racism. It's like the most ridiculous. I mean we are the least racist country ever to exist in the history of the world. I don't like racist. You don't like racist. I don't like running into them. I have no tolerance for it. I would put it as like issue number 22,800 on a issues of like what's pressing facing America. How about the fact that our public schools can't educate our kids and we can't find a single kid that can read at grade level in Maryland or Chicago? probably a bigger deal than racism. How about the fact that in this country that we have an average family cannot afford to go buy groceries in major cities. They have to go into debt. Like these are much major problems. Young people can't buy homes. Like the dollar is being deteriorated. We have 110,000 drug overdoses every year. That's a much bigger problem than racism. Like woo. And like we have like entire social and cultural institutions that are trying to propagandize us that racism is like the biggest problem. I'm sorry it's not. In fact, I would argue that not only is it not a problem, it's a massive psychological operation against us to not actually talk about the major economic and cultural and political forces that should be addressed in this country. And what do you think makes someone conservative or liberal in the first place? Do you think it's nature or nurture? It's both obviously. Again, I actually the older I get, I do give a little bit more I give a little bit more weight to community than I did probably 10 years ago, just because I see how much my daughter and my son absorb around me and my my wife. So, I get kind of how you're a product of your environment, but it's not you're not solely a product of your environment. You're not. You have agency. You have decision. You have free will. You could break break free of your environment. You're not only your environment. That's very important. You're not only your upbringing. So, concern, it's just a worldview difference. So left-wingers generally look at things through a prism of what they look at a prism of oppressor oppressed. Whereas we look at prisms of things versus just and unjust, right and wrong, um and good and evil and moral and immoral. where they look at things as more as like who's in power and who is not in power, which group wants sympathy, deserves sympathy, and what other group deserves sympathy. But look, we know that people that tend to be liberal tend to have temperament that is far more on kind of the o openness and acceptance of, you know, how people are and how they act. We're conservatives, we tend to be much more order and discipline and um let's just say um structure driven. A great example of this is crime. So we as conservatives see someone that commits a crime and we don't think they're necessarily a product of their environment. We say you shouldn't have committed that crime. You're being an idiot. You're going to jail. Whereas liberals like well we must have sympathy for them because the schools are broken and of course there is some truth to that. You still decided to commit the crime. It's an insult to every other person that's not committing a crime that comes out of that environment to act as if that that person should be given an exception. As someone who works very closely with young voters, do you think that we should change the rights for who can vote? Should we increase the age? Should we apply a civics test to it? I mean, probably not. I'll say this, like we won the youth vote this last cycle, and it's funny like we in certain states, not across the country. And it's just an amazing thing that you can actually win the youth vote and you could do it with mass verality and mass popularity and reaching out in ways that people would never have imagined. And so, no, I probably wouldn't put money any more restrictions on it. You mentioned earlier in this podcast that one of the biggest sacrifices that you have to make is running this massive business at the same time as trying to be the leader in a family. Yes. I'm curious. What do you think is the biggest issue with modern dating? As a single guy, I would love some advice. You know, Graham, he got married a year or so ago. Congratulations. So, he's looking to start a family. Have as many kids as you can afford. Have two have have more than you can afford. That's what I should say. I'll stick with What is What is wrong with modern dating? Yeah. The biggest problem with modern dating is very interesting. We had a women's summit. The young ladies all raised their hands. They're like, "How many of you are unhappy with the dating pool?" Every woman raises their hand. I'm like, funny, all the young men I talked to unhappy with you, too. So, who's wrong? Those seem like kind of select groups of people, though, you know, like if you're asking women that are attending a woman's summit, they might be in a very specific situation. Yeah. I mean, like I would say generally I hear more complaints about the dating pool than, you know, like, wow, there's so many options. Maybe you're right. I don't know. Maybe. I think it's a it's more of an options issue is that you could go online and just if you if if you don't like someone instead of working through it, it's just you you go back and you start swiping again. So there's so let me what's the problem with women and then I'll go to the problem with men. The problem with women is that many of them a have unrealistic expectations of the man that they want. A lot of them and I deal with this all the time. I want a guy that's earning a million dollars a year and he's 6'4 and I want him to have a, you know, a perfect jaw and I'm like, "Yeah, that's never going to happen." How about, by the way, nowhere on your list is like, "I want someone who will be a good father or someone with good character." So, that's like really disgusting actually that you just want someone that's like super rich and looks good. Like, why don't you want someone that's going to be loyal to you, not cheat on you? Like, oh yeah, I want that too. Oh, okay. Got it. So basically you want like Ken Barbie doll and then you'll have like all the good virtues. Notice they don't they don't lead with the virtue and a lot of things lead to that. But number two is women need to be very clear that we need to tell women more clearly that if you do not have children before the age of 30, there's only a 50% chance that you will have children. That's a fact. It's a fact. You can fact check me on that. Yeah. Isn't that though that women are becoming very intentional about whether or not they want to have kids and just it's it's more socially acceptable. We should say miserable because of it though. I mean it's not just mind you go fact check me put the numbers up. The most depressed people in America are women without children. They're the most likely to be on anti-depressants. They're the most likely to be anxious. Again people that experience severe depression are people people that say they are very unhappy are people young single women in their early 30s without children. Who are the happiest women in America? married women with children. I think there's a and by the way, of course they have the agency to do that. I'm not trying to like make a law like you must get married and have kids, but I think that we've gone wrong here that women should prioritize family and children way above career, that they should try to find their husband before they're 25, that they should try to get married way younger. This problem, but then that also goes back to just finances of you can't quite have a husband going out making a salary to have a stay at home. I completely agree with that. That's the best argument. It's not a winner argument, but it's the best argument because at some point you go to like subsaharan Africa, they have like eight kids and they live in like a dirt hut. You can figure it out. Having children, I believe, is a blessing of the Lord. It's the most amazing thing. We should try, you should try to have as many children as you can. Much more important than traveling to Thailand or having a big apartment or a bunch of cats. Okay? Having children are a gift from the Lord. So, but as far as like the dating pool problem, so young ladies, they need to be very clear about what they're expecting in a man and date with the intent to marry and not just date to, you know, have a good time. And quite honestly, both need to do this, but young women need to do a much better job of saving themselves for marriage. They need to be they they need to prioritize purity again. Young men need to, too. But if young women do it, then young men will. So, if that's what the women need to do in order to make themselves worthy of dating, what do you think is the main thing men need to do to make themselves worthy? The most attractive quality in a young man that young women can't ever articulate is self-control. So, how does this look in application? A woman needs to be able to know that you can control your impulses when things get really crazy. They can't articulate it, but that's what they want. So, for example, they want to be able when you go on a date, can you control your mouth? Can you control your tongue? Can you control your eye? Are you going to cheat on her? Are you going to have a wandering eye? Are you going to get drunk every night? Are you going to kind of go into like a drug, you know, abyss? Women can't always put that into words. But that differentiates a boy from a man. A boy is someone that has no self control. I would argue it's confidence and ambition. And if you have those qualities, I think everything else falls into place because you have to have self-control if you're going to be ambitious. Sure. To have a north star. I totally agree. Confidence is true. Look, again, it's just if you look at it though, you can be very confident, ambitious, but you could also then cheat on your wife like 10 years later, right? So, you have to be able to control your flesh. We have we as men have very different problems than women, right? Different temptations. As men, we have problems controlling our flesh. That's why adultery is literally in the ten commandments. You had to command an entire people not to cheat on their wives. It was easy. God would not have to command us not to do it. And so when women are when men are dating, if you want to make yourself more attractive to a woman, first of all, like demonstrate self-control. And also, women want to be able they want to be taken care of. I know this is like super provocative, but like deep down, they want a man to be able to provide for them financially. Should a man pay on the first date? 100%. Like what kind of a whoo beta male is splitting the check? But like, who are you? Do you agree with me with Listen, with Macy, I paid for the check on the first. Yeah, on the first It's like I'm just sorry. It's so I would go debt and like pay like scrub dishes before a woman paid for it wasn't Yeah. Let's see. Let's see. What is this? So, didn't you go on a date like years ago, like a decade ago, with this woman whose mom gave you $20 to take her to the movie theater? Yes. Yeah. I made money on that date, actually. Oh, so there's a good financial Explain how you made money on a date. That sounds different, though. That's not what we're talking about, though. Yeah. Yeah. Her mom gave her And by the way, this was in high school. Okay. So, this is this is that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about like 24 years old, like serious dating, right? I split the check quite a lot. So, I I'm sorry. I I don't mean to offend you. You guys are great. I That's incomprehensible to me. I think that's to me. I thought it was a great financial decision. I'm just saying. Okay. So, from your prism, I totally get that. And like you have really good financial discipline. I'm sorry. Like I I I would be so humiliated if I I mean I find that to be like the greatest beta male like humiliation to save money to no to like the idea that a woman that you're trying to court now if it's like a friend as a first date you don't even know if she quality does not matter. I'm sorry. I see. By the way that money you save is not worth the honor that you compromise. It is such a big deal. It's a it's a massive deal. I'm not trying to get into I don't know. But here's the thing. No, in in fairness for your point with Macy, I paid for the whole first date. Why did you do that one though? I think I was at that point I was at a level where like that felt like the right choice to make. But throughout my early 20s, was it because you felt more serious with her or I was also in a point where I was ready to be able to like financially? Yes, legit. I get that. Early 20s like saving five bucks here and there. I would do it. I would. So you're you're manic with saving money. Oh yeah, we have Blake on my team is like you. I Yeah. No, he he goes and he'll eat uh like the the the snacks for lunch to save money here at funny. I brought food from home. No, no, that's by the way. And coffee from home. Frugality is a virtue. I But so we we as Christians believe that there is an order of virtues and above frugality is honor. And so we as men must lead. We must provide. Under no circumstance ever should a man ever let a woman pay for a date or you should ever no circumstance even on the third, fourth, fifth. What if it's just not for anything? Okay. Well, let me period. Well, let me Okay, so what world are we living in? Well, hold on a second. I agree with you. If I'm dating a girl, I would pay for everything. Everything? Yeah. Everything. However, I could see for other people that might be in a different financial position. You know, you pay for 10 dates and then she's like, "You know what? I want to treat you." Well, that's that's totally different. No, no, what we're the what we're talking about is like, oh, we're going to alternate. Like, well, let's serious and she wants to take you out to something for a nice dinner. And you might, by the way, if you have the intent to marry, you're already like kind of blending finances. Like, I get that psychologically, but like if you're like, oh, we'll take turns like, oh, we, you know, you pay this time, I pay this time. What's your advice to a girl who's who the guy she's currently seeing, he says that, oh, do not marry that man. But here's the thing. I feel like they should always break it off. Offer crazy. But they should offer. They should pull out the credit card. The woman, of course not. Just just to offer. No, it's a it's a nice gesture. No. By the way, no. No. This is this is this is feminism. Feminism is that you have to be this like self-independent. This is not a nice gesture. It's you trying to be like egalitarian. No. You as woman should want to be provided for. In fact, you should have an expectation that you as a woman are so important and so critical and so necessary and beautiful that it shouldn't even be a question that if you're in a date now, if it's a business lunch or like friend-zone stuff, 50/50. We're not talking about that, right? Like it's all of a sudden you're like, "Hey, I want to buy insurance or like you know, you're going to, you know, I want to go do business." It's totally different. I still think the man should pay, but that's that. But see, to me, when I was dating, it would be a huge turnoff if the check comes and she just looks at it and then looks at me and looks at the check. I totally disagree. I at least I at least want to see like I'm reaching for something and I'm like, I want I want a woman that wants to be led by a man. I don't want a woman that's all of a sudden going to be competing financially in a marriage. I don't want a woman that's going to be like, oh, you know, questioning financial decisions or a woman that's going to be like all of a sudden Jeff. No, the man is the leader of the household. The man is the leader of all the financial decisions. The man is the is the primary should be the primary provider. Again, there's exception to this. That's, "Oh, Charlie, you're so sexist. Sorry. It worked for 2,000 years for 5,000 years and it should work again." And by the way, what we're doing right now is not working. Let me just repeat again. This is not working. And I'm not trying to like bash you. Like, this is fun. It's in really good. I love the banter. No, it's great. But like this idea if if a woman on a date were to pull out a credit card to go pay for something like I would be I would be like, "Oh, so you're like one of those boss babes." No, that's that's not what that's saying. That is No, that is completely catastrophic. I I think No, I think if if if I'm on a date and she reaches for it, like I just think, oh, that's really nice. You're trying to be kind here. You're trying to alleviate what you perceive to be a financial burden on me and generous interpretation. And so so but obviously something to the table women are not bringing money to the table that they're bringing something else. It's a nice gesture. I I agree with Graham. I think it's a nice gesture. However, I agree with you. I think the guy should pay. I I think I think the woman going into that should have an expectation that the man takes care of. But should should she be grateful if the guy takes 100%. Oh, okay. Cuz it should be immense gratitude. No, no, no. The woman should be You know what she should say? She's like, "Thank you so much for doing that and not having to put this unnecessary pressure on me because you have just you've just freed me. That's what women want, by the way. Freed me to run for like like what number two. Do you know how many women are secretly miserable that they have to be as financially successful as men? A lot. Like a lot. It drives them insane. Deep down. A lot of women want to be mothers. They want to be wives. I I tend to agree with that. Yeah. Not every woman, by the way. If you want to if you But if you want to go be a boss, babe, go do that. Like it's a free society. There's a lot of great people that do that. But generally, we have overcorrected. Okay? We have a lot of women that deep down want to go be moms and they would love to have their man come in and just grab the check, be like, "No, I got it." And by the way, you know what they see of that as a signal? It's going to be okay. When the bullets start firing and there's chaos and things start falling apart, this man is going to protect the family. Boom. Throw it on the table. Wallet on the No, even better than paying 26% interest on that. It's got to be even more alpha. You go to the You go to the waiter before the meal and you just give them the credit card. It's not even a conversation. It's paid for. It's done. Like you don't even allow it to be a thing that is introduced there. I would agree with that. I I actually I agree with that. Alpha is like you go straight up where you are like smooth move and the the girl is so stunned and she'll be like, "Oh, don't we have to be like, "No, I got it. It's done." Boom. Are you kid? From a woman's perspective, they'll be like, "That's the most attractive thing ever." I would love to hear some women's perspective in the comments. I think they're going to be agreeing with you for the most part. By the way, if they if they disagree, it's fine, but like you'll end up with, by the way, some women want to marry weak men because they are the boss. What other tips do you have like that? Like that was a good suggestion. Oh, I have a lot of tips. Um, so for marriage or for dating, I have both. Let's start with dating and then move our way to marriage. So, in dating, look, I I don't I do not think you should have sex before marriage. I know I know that's a provocative take. I think sex is holy. I don't And by the way, it's not just a religious take. I actually think that if you introduce sex into dating, then all of a sudden there's kind of like a dilution of what exactly will be the ultimate physical crescendo of marriage. You can actually make a rational, reasonable, non-religious argument for that. Anyway, that's like a whole other topic that we could discuss another time, but I will defend that. I actually think bring back purity, bring back saving yourself for marriage. Okay. But other top other things is this. You should go on a road trip with the person you're dating. It's very important. So, you should find uncomfortable, high pressure travel situations. That's not just like flying first class to Aruba. And you should try to be in places of discomfort intentionally with who you are dating. And you'll find out a lot with that person. Number three, this is going to sound incredibly sexist. I don't care. If it is a woman that you want to get married to and she says that she wants to be a traditional wife, see if she's actually up to it. Have say, "Okay, uh, treat me. But cook me a meal. I'm not kidding. No, I think that's No, no, no. Honestly, like she says she wants to be a traditional wife. Like, and by the way, be like, "Does she enjoy it?" This is important though. Like, and then ask her. No, I'm not even just, "Is she a good cook?" Be like, "Did you enjoy doing that?" Like, "Was" and she like, "Oh, I loved it. I loved getting the ingredients. I loved looking at the cookbook. I love the recipe. I love thinking about you when I was cooking the food." You're like, "Okay, this is going to be awesome." Right? Or otherwise, she's like, "It was a disaster. Was this like, okay, well then we might have a little bit, you know?" And by the way, I'm not saying that every wife has to cook every meal for her husband, but honestly, a lot of women out there want to do that. A lot of women want to provide for their man in that way. They want to run the house. They want to shepherd the kids. Um, going into marriage though, um, I'm a big believer in premarital counseling. I think that there are several questions that are not answered when most people go into marriage that should be answered. And I might freak you out with this cuz I don't know if you No, we we did this. I looked at every divorce statistic and we did everything we could to lessen the chances of a divorce. So, yeah, money is number one, right? Who's going to handle the finances? Here's one that you might not have done that you should do while you're still in the honeymoon phase. Um, are you going to have an open or closed house? I don't even know what that means. See, it's big. So, were you raised in a house where a lot of friends came over all the time, or were you raised in a house where almost no friends came over? A normal amount. It wasn't yet, you know, open or closed. It was, you know, maybe like once a week we'd have like a something like that. Do you know what what kind of house your wife was raised in? Probably about the same. Okay. It's an important question cuz I was raised in a very closed house, right? I know people that are raised in open houses and it's destroyed their marriages. You know the type where they're always having people over. Yeah, that was my family. Yeah. Okay. So, you get that. Yeah. Imagine if you were to marry a closed house person and all of a sudden you were like, "Hey, we're going to constantly have a stream of people and you don't talk about that before marriage." All of a sudden you're like, it's total chaos for a closed house person because they're raised in a place where not evenings are very quiet. Make sure, this is another important um make sure that you get along with each other, that you really like each other, not just love each other, that you like spending time with that person. One of my favorite words in the English language is like. It's very unique. Only the English language actually has that. Do you like spending time or do you just love that person? That's because liking is like, hey, do you can you talk to that person seven hours uninterrupted on a park bench if you needed to or is it just kind of like an annoyance and is it just purely physical? Um, other questions and other pieces of advice I think are really important. In-laws matter. They really do. Uh, I'm not they shouldn't always necessarily be deal breakers, but boy, you should know the in-laws because you know your wife will take the form of the mother more times than not. So, you should at least get along with your in-law. Kind of know the in-law. Children, how many children? When are you going to have children? Is it a priority? Will it be early? Will it be late? Religious questions. Are we going to raise them religiously? Are we going to raise them secular? Other questions that I think are really important that actually don't always get flushed out. How many vacations are we going to take? What type of vacations? Are we an RV family? Are we a go to a private, you know, island family? Are we a are we going to splurge on one vacation a year? Are we going to do like three or four? This is important before you get married. All of a sudden, you're kind of in the marriage thing and you're like, "Hey, I just booked us a vacation." Like, "What? I didn't want to." That's not because it's different philosophies of time off. Last one, which is the biggest you want the biggest of all. What are acceptable and unacceptable vices for our marriage? For example, is it acceptable for you know uh the husband to smoke a cigar? Has she smelled cigar before you get married? And does she know what that is? Will marijuana be allowed in the marriage? I would say no, of course. Is it okay for alcohol to be around? If yes, how often? Will you drink on week nights? Are more than one drink acceptable? Will we drink socially? Will you drink once you have kids? Will you drink around the kids? Here's another question. Will you watch TV at night? Will you be okay if you know there's R-rated kind of sexual nudity that your partner is watching? Is completely off limits for your relationship? I think it absolutely should be. You should talk about that cuz some couples are like perfectly okay with it. I think it's kind of weird to be honest, right? These are questions that honestly all the time that people do not always flush out before marriage. In the course of dating though, um I could go on for like infinite. No, I really enjoy this. Yeah. Yeah. Um, again, we have an amazing marriage, my wife and I. Obviously, it's not perfect. No marriage is perfect, but we actually like each other. We prioritize date night. We're actually doing it right after this tonight. Uh, which is awesome. Um, but I find so often that people in dating don't date with the intent to marry. And when they end up do wanting to marry, they don't even ask the tough questions before they get married. Could we do a couple rapid fire questions real quick? Okay. What's your biggest insecurity? Forgetting something I should know. Will you run for president? Not running for president. What's more dangerous, ignorance or apathy in voters? Oh, apathy for sure. Should there be a maximum age to be president? No. What is a worst policy idea, univers universal basic income or open borders? Open borders. One government agency you'd shut down right away. That's a great one. Department of Education. Would you rather have dinner with AOC or Bernie? AOC. Is it a sin to fly Spirit Airlines? A sin? No. But whoever whoever whoever started Spirit Airlines is in great defiance to God. What's worse for society? Weed or Do you think you could win in a fist fight against Gavin Newsome? Probably not if I'm being honest. Like I don't think so. Do you believe in aliens? Maybe. Debate or a podcast? I like this. I like podcast. It's way better. It's more human. Censorship or chaos? What's more destructive? Censorship without a doubt. Absolutely. Do you have a random pet peeve? I have a lot of pet peeves actually. Um, one of my pet peeves that I can't I literally cannot stand and I'm I'm actually a violator of it is when I'm trying to talk to somebody and then they check their phone. I'm really bad with that with my team. So I I I I'm sure you guys it bothers you, but yeah, I I got to be I got to be a lot better about that. And finally, oh, sorry. No, no. I know when people say at the end of the day, they don't even know what they're saying when they say it. It's just at the end of the day, it's just it's just literally a linguistic crutch is all that it is. Linguistic crutches are very annoying in fairness. Yes. And that is one that drives me nuts. If everything completely goes away, how do you want to be remembered? If I die, everything just goes away. How would you If you could be associated with one thing, how would you want to be remembered? I want to be I want to be remembered for for courage for my faith. That that would be the most important thing. Most important thing is my faith in my life. Charlie Kirk, thank you so much. You guys do a great job. I wish it could be longer. This has been amazing. So, we would love to do this again. We only hit half we Oh my gosh. We'll have to do a part two sometime soon. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And and shout out to your crew. Like seriously, they're they're incredible. Incredible. Hospitality was incredible. By the way, come to the Student Action Summit. You guys would get so many guests. Yeah, we have everyone there. Yeah, it be phenomenal. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for watching. Till next time.