Another Signal Chat...And Another Pope?

Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here live from the Bitcoin.com studio. Why are they going after Pete Hegseth so aggressively?

It's not because he's failing, it's actually because he's succeeding. We also have Michael Knowles to walk us through what does it mean to select a new Pope. For those of us that are not Catholic, it was a very informative discussion. And finally, I close this episode out with something about the Catholic Church that we evangelicals need to take seriously. We Protestants need to take seriously.

Listen carefully, text it to your friends. As I'll be honest, I just don't like going to a Sam's Club to worship. I think there is something to say about making our churches as beautiful as possible.

Agree or disagree? Email me freedom at CharlieKirk.com. We'd love your feedback. Get involved with Training Point USA at TPUSA.com.

That is TPUSA.com. Buckle up everybody, here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House folks. I want to thank Charlie, he's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

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Email us as always freedom at CharlieKirk.com. Of course the breaking news that happened over the evening, over the night I should say. Late last night and early morning in Rome, the news was announced that Pope Francis has died.

This is monumental news. I was reflecting, I have only lived through three popes. I have lived for 31 years and I've only lived through three popes. We have, of course, I was born and John Paul II was Pope and then Pope Benedict and now Pope Francis. He was Pope for 12 years. He was the first Pope from the Americas, intended to be a little bit questionable at times on some of his, let's just say, social justice perspectives, but I'm not Catholic.

We do have Michael Knowles that's going to join us in the program to discuss this and the significance of it. The College of Cardinals will assemble after, of course, the funeral of Pope Francis. Pope Francis certainly caused a lot of heartburn to Catholics in America and so we're going to talk about the geopolitical significance of this because remember John Paul II was incredibly effective at fighting communism.

I would love to see the next Pope, whomever that is, maybe a Pope from Africa or a Pope from Asia or a Pope from wherever, have the same sort of moral clarity that John Paul II had against totalitarian Marxism. We'll discuss that later in the hour. But first, breaking yesterday on Easter Sunday was another attack on American patriot Pete Hegseth. The New York Times launched a massive attack on the front page right here. Defense head said to send war plan to second group. Hegseth's family members and lawyer are linked to encrypted chat. There's a lot going on here, some of which I can talk about publicly, some of which I cannot talk about publicly.

Let's talk about the essence of it. They're criticizing Pete Hegseth for sending war plans and again in a signal group chat. Now he denies this. It looks like it's total and complete BS.

We know that there were not war plans being sent. They're trying to take out Pete Hegseth and that really goes down to what's going on here. They're not attacking Pete Hegseth because he's failing. They're attacking Pete Hegseth because he's succeeding. Here's what they won't talk about. You see, it's not that Pete Hegseth is a disaster of a secretary of defense.

Quite the opposite. He's already succeeding in the metrics that matter most from building a lethal fighting force. And we must ask the question throughout. We ask this question a lot.

Who benefits from attacking Pete Hegseth? You see, it's not that the military is falling apart like it was under Joe Biden. The numbers are remarkable. First, recruiting is up. After historic lows in 2022 and 2023, the Army and the Marine Corps recruiting have rebounded.

In fiscal year 2024, quarter one, the Army reported a 10% increase in new enlistments year over year. The Marine Corps hit 100% of its recruiting goals. So when Joe Biden was president and Lloyd Austin was running things, military recruitment was down. But interestingly, almost no one ever attacked them.

And just to be clear, Lloyd Austin did something infinitely more inexcusable than Pete Hegseth when he was hospitalized without telling anybody. And the chain of command of our military was largely broken because of Lloyd Austin's decision to go get I think it was like a prostate surgery or something without telling anybody. Morale is up. A recent RAND Corporation survey shows a 15 point jump in troop satisfaction compared to 2021, particularly among combat units. It's interesting how morale goes up when you say that we're going to have the same physical fitness standards for men and women. We're going to get rid of the woke stuff.

We're also not going to allow transgender people in the military. And all of a sudden, boom, morale goes up. Has the media mentioned any of this or is it just the swirling attacks? Here it says, here it says Pete Hegseth is under fire. Well, he might be under fire by all the right people in D.C.

Instead, they should be doing a puff piece. The New York Times should be on how recruiting is up. Morale is up. And yes, standards are up.

The Army Combat Fitness Test, as mentioned, the ACFT once watered down, has been reformed to restore challenge and purpose. And yes, even efficiency is up. Did you know that the Department of Defense's inspector general just last month did an audit and they noted a 12 percent increase in procurement efficiency and project delivery timelines? Our influence also is up. Did you know in the Philippines and Taiwan joint exercises are up 30 percent year over year? And of course, most importantly, our lethality is up. The U.S. military is again training for warfighting, not workshops. In fiscal year 2024, combat readiness scores from CENTCOM and INDOPACOM showed a 20 percent increase in unit preparedness over fiscal year 2022.

These are real numbers. Morale, lethality, preparedness, efficiency. So by all objective measurements, Pete Hegseth in his short window of time has been a roaring success, probably the most effective secretary of defense since the new millennium. When you have a military that was bogged down by bureaucracy, wokeism and low morale, and all of a sudden you see that turned around, you have to wonder, but what is down exactly? What's down in the secretary of defense's office? What is down in the Pentagon? The influence of neocons and the failed perpetual war architects. The bureaucracy of combat forces, that is down. And the weaponization of the uniform to serve ideological causes over national security. Do you know what is gone now? Pete Hegseth has removed this from the U.S. military, and that makes him a major enemy of the entrenched permanent bureaucracy in the Pentagon. When he removes the gay poems from our battleships, it turns out that you can have a 30 percent increase in war games. Turns out that you could be 12 percent more efficient.

Play cut 134. The coolest thing I did on board was to be able to participate in a LGBTQ spoken word night. And I was able to read a poem that I wrote to the whole ship. And that was probably the culmination of the whole deployment. This whole thing is done. That whole operation is done.

You know, I'm going to go read a LGBT gay poem on top of a battleship. And it turns out when you remove that efficiency, lethality, morale, recruitment all goes up. This is also gone.

Here's another one. While in uniform, we see the PSA on how to use pronouns. Our own military was a major college campus with Tomahawk missiles. Our military was becoming Harvard with drones.

That's what it was under Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley. Speaking of which, you know what else is down? The BMI of the secretary of defense way down. Warrior culture is ascendant, which is exactly why the knives are out for Pete Hegseth. About this rubbish story. Oh, he's putting stuff in signal chats. Look at the core essence of what's happening here. Steve Bannon would say, look at the signal, not the noise. He has removed this cancer rather quickly. Look at this.

Play cut 132. Hi, my name is Johnny and I use he him pronouns. Using the right pronouns is a really simple way to affirm someone's identity. It is a signal of acceptance and respect. If it's a signal of acceptance and respect, how do we go about creating a safe space for everybody? That's a good question. A really good way to do that is to use inclusive language.

Instead of saying something like, Hey, guys, you can say, Hey, everyone, another way that we could show that we're allies and that we accept everybody is to maybe include our pronouns in our emails or like we just did, introduce ourselves using our pronouns. This was an official military broadcast under Joe Biden and not a single criticism from the media, not a single criticism from the regime. Now, instead, we have the alpha man ascendant, the warrior ethos back into the Pentagon, and that is what gets their attention. But there, of course, is another thing, despite the fact that we're more lethal and morale is up and recruiting is up and efficiency is up and that we have a real warrior leading things. No, no, no, no. There's another thing at play here and we're going to go a level deeper because Pete Hegseth stands in the way of the drums of war.

Do you hear that? The bum, the bum, the bum, the bum, the bum, the bum, the bum. Oh, the neocons. They want to strike Iran more than anything else. They want a ground war with Iran. And Pete Hegseth stands atop the Pentagon to say, not today, neocon. We ran on America first, not on colonizing Iran.

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That is Patriot Mobile dot com slash Charlie. Pete Hegseth is succeeding. He's making us the finest fighting force on the planet. Here's breaking news. President Trump backing Pete Hegseth live from the Easter egg roll. Great job team getting that clip.

Thank you for that in real time. Play cut one forty four. I mean, I hear they're doing that whole thing thing again. Here we go again. Just a waste of time. He is doing he is doing a great job because he's doing a great job.

Thank you. Ask. Ask the hoodies how he's doing.

Ask the hoodies how much dysfunction they've done. He's doing a great job. Everybody's happy with it.

We have the highest recruitment numbers I think they've had in 28 years. No, he's doing a great job. It's just fake news. They just bring up stories. I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. You know, he was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people. And that's what he's doing.

So you don't always have friends when you do that. One more piece here about the woke ism. Then I do want to focus on Iran, which, again, we on this program, we have a very clear moral standard. Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon. But you also you've got to keep Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton away because they right there and their staff there, but they're beating the war drums. There is an undercurrent to try to take out everyone around Pete Hegseth and eventually do an encirclement around the Pentagon so that they can have a clear shot at bombing Iran. And then, look, once you bomb Iran, that's a declaration of war. What do you get next? We don't know. You might get troops, you might get movements.

You can't play games with this stuff. A war with Iran would break the back of this administration. One more on what I just want to remind you what our military was becoming. Morale was down, recruitment was down. We were a sad fighting force under Joe Biden. And very quickly, President Trump entrusting Pete Hegseth has brought it back.

Play cut 136. Not a day goes by that I'm not grateful to be serving at this period of time. Being able to undergo a full gender transition beyond hormones, laser hair removal, Botox, lip injections, hair lowering, like literally cannot be more thankful to be alive now. This is a member of the military talking about the lip injections and the gender transition and how thankful that military member is to be alive whenever rubbish that is, hair removal. That's what our military was, that Pete Hegseth inherited.

All funded by taxpayers. The military is no longer a safe space for this radical woke ideology. We're back to not hair removal, but terrorist removal.

Not gender transition, but enemy elimination, lethality at all costs. But Pete Hegseth is a prudent man. You see, of course, it is inevitably, not inevitably, but it is President Trump's final decision whether or not we go to war with Iran. He doesn't want to do that.

But understand all of the machinery around President Trump can be very persuasive and can be incredibly powerful in how military decisions are made. Let's play cut 112 here. I think it's around Iran. No, I'm sorry, that's something else. That's Pete Hegseth defending himself at the egg roll.

I do want to play that. Let me just say this very, very quickly. The people around the president matter. Back in the first term, it was Mad Dog Mattis and Mike Pence that were literally launching a collusive conspiracy to try and get President Trump to support keeping troops in Afghanistan.

Let's play cut 112. You know, what a big surprise that a bunch of a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hopes. Won't give back their Pulitzers. They got Pulitzers for a bunch of lies. See, this is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputation.

And Pete Hegseth is right there. He is pushing back against the media attacks because people that he fired for leaking to the media are now attacking him. OK, great. But that's that's not really what's going on here.

It's a level deeper. He knows it. It's about the warmongers that never wanted him. Remember, Pete Hegseth was at a 50-50 vote. Do you remember what we had to do on this program?

You remember the effort, the energy, the intensity, the vigor, the spunk, the spirit, the mobilization. It was supposed to be the era of good feelings. It was December. We just won the election.

I was in Palm Beach. You guys were nicely supporting our program. And we felt as if the fights were over. But no, we mobilized the cavalry.

We mobilized the infantry, metaphorically. And we said Pete was a red line. And we said, oh, Joni Ernst, I don't think you want to do this. And boy, did she make a 180 very quickly. She did not realize.

She touched the stove and realized it was scolding hot. They did not want Pete Hegseth all along because they knew that he was not one of them. That Pete Hegseth is actually a grassroots warrior, number one.

Number two, he's a fighter's fighter. And he doesn't want a war with Iran. That's why they try to take him out then and now. And we have his back. The world is waking up to the power of gold. National banks are so excited about the power of gold. National banks are scrambling to secure it. According to the World Gold Council, central banks added 1000 tons of gold in 2024, the third straight year of net gold buying.

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Shouldn't you be looking into doing that, too? Joining us now is a great friend and very serious Catholic, a devout Catholic. On this Easter Monday, this news broke. It is Michael Knowles from The Michael Knowles Show. When I want guidance and wisdom on all things Catholicism, I go to Michael Knowles. Michael, great to see you. Charlie, it's great to be with you. I'm sorry that I can't be on camera. The timing of this is really odd. I was walking down this morning to the Easter egg hunt at the White House, and I got my whole family with me at six o'clock in the morning, and I see that the Holy Father has died.

And I thought, of all the mornings to take off work, this is probably one of the worst ones I could have taken off. But alas, I'm glad that I could at least phone in, because I think people are having a lot of trouble processing the news. You and I have talked about the pope for years at this point, and I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Plenty of conservatives and conservative Catholics have had a lot of questions with Pope Francis and problems with some of the things he's done.

So there's no sugarcoating. But I think when we consider his legacy, the most notable aspect of it to me is that left-right political analysis doesn't totally map onto ancient institutions. That's kind of my biggest takeaway with Pope Francis, because whenever we think we can pin him down, we say, all right, he's Argentinian. He comes from this kind of left-wing economic background. Then he'll come out and say something like, gay marriage is a machination of the father of lies to deceive and abuse the children of God. Every time we think he's going soft on some social issue, he'll say abortion is an assassination. Abortionists are hired assassins. And so you can't really pin him down. And I think part of the reason for that is just the weight of the Catholic Church. It's just been around for so long. Our modern notions of politics, they take you as far as they take you.

But it would be a disservice to the man, really, to try to just minimize him in that way. So his passing was today. We've only lived through three popes. I don't know how I get... I'm guessing... I don't know your age exactly, Michael, but yeah, three popes. Yeah, I'm not 60. I was going to say.

That's right. And just think about that. I mean, rather monumental how few popes there are.

And so let's get technical for a second, Michael. As you know, I'm not Catholic. I'm an evangelical. A lot of respect for Catholics, and a lot of people that I care about are Catholic.

And we know a lot of good local Catholics here, including local Father. What is the College of Cardinals? What is about to happen? So everyone meets in Rome, Sistine Chapel. Who's involved in it?

It's kind of a good old boys' network is what I'm told. Did Pope Francis put a lot of his allies in there? Just walk us through the technical details of what we can expect for the selection of a new pope, because it gets a little rusty here, because we've only seen it a couple times in our lifetime.

Yeah, that's true. And this, what we're doing right now, has been happening for about 2,000 years, which is immediately when the seat is vacant, they call it Sedipacante, when a pope dies, immediately everyone starts talking about who's the next one going to be? How does it happen? So the Cardinal Camarlengo comes out. This is his position in the Vatican. He's announced the pope's death.

And there will be a period of about 15 to no more than 20 days of mourning. And then the College of Cardinals is going to assemble. The Cardinals are bishops who are picked by the pope and as sort of advisors and have positions within the Vatican. Bishops under the age of 80, sorry, Cardinals under the age of 80, can vote for a pope in the College of Cardinals. So they're not only within the College of Cardinals, but they're cardinal electors. They're all going to meet.

There are about, I think, about 180 of them right now who are eligible to vote. They're going to go into the Sistine Chapel, and then you're not going to hear anything else. The way that you're going to know that they picked a pope is through smoke coming out of the Vatican.

So classically, you're looking for the white smoke or the black smoke. And then when the white smoke comes up, then they're going to say, abemus papam. So who's it going to be? Because again, not to sugar coat some of the questions that have come up under the Francis Pontificate. A lot of people are saying, is the next pope going to be really liberal? Is he going to be, is he going to, I don't know, try to undermine the Catholic tradition or something like that? And again, it's really hard to predict these things, but just because Pope Francis has appointed now so many cardinals does not necessarily mean that the cardinals are politically liberal or side with Pope Francis on this issue or that issue. A lot of these popes are in the developing world.

A lot of them are socially very, very conservative. And so the ones who are up for it right now, one who's been talked about is Cardinal Pizabala. He's the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. That would be quite interesting given what a touch point Jerusalem has been in the Israel Gaza conflict.

Another one who's up for it would be Peter Urdo. He's in Hungary, also considered moderate to conservative. There are a few who seem to be a little bit more liberal. That would be Cardinal Zuppi, Matteo Zuppi, or Cardinal Parolin.

But again, we don't really know. In some ways it's kind of like the Supreme Court justices. Republicans pick these Supreme Court justices and then half of the time they go on and disappoint us. They rule in ways that are totally different than we expected. And that could happen as well with popes. Just use the example of John Paul II, whom everyone loves. Don't forget, John Paul II was a child of Vatican II, of this major ecumenical council which resulted in all sorts of reforms. Some of the reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council, some of us think had some problems with them, especially those of us who love the traditional Latin mass, the traditional liturgy. And yet Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict for that matter, considered perhaps even more conservative. Both of these guys come out of the Vatican Council, and yet they become some of the most stalwart, conservative-seeming figures of our lifetime.

So I guess getting back to the top, that's what I mean when I say you can't totally map this stuff on to left-right politics. And also, you might think you've got to slam dunk with whichever cardinal is going to be the next pope. It doesn't have to be a cardinal. Technically, I suppose it could be me, but no one's picked up the phone yet to call me. So, you know, you think you might know what the next pontificate's going to look like.

Really, at this point, we have no idea. What do you want to see in the next pope? I mean, obviously it would help if he's Catholic, but what would you like to see as far as the advocacy internationally? You mentioned John Paul II. As I was raised, my grandmother, incredibly devout Catholic, wonderful person, we grew up talking about John Paul II, about his moral clarity, about his uncompromising views on the protective life, and honestly, how he believed the West was the best. He was an articulate and effective critic of the Soviet Union, being the Polish pope. He was vehemently anti-communist.

He made no mystery or no mistake with that. What would you like to see in the next pope? And let's talk less regionally or less biographically, but from a positional... Let's just say, from the position of the pope, what would you like to see?

Right, what's he going to do? You know, not that anyone's called to ask me, however, but you have called to ask me, so I'm happy to answer and maybe people in the Curia could listen. I think what would be really helpful to the church in the next pope is to have a pope who is not hostile to tradition, to the traditional liturgy, what we call the mass of the ages, the traditional Latin mass. A lot of people think the traditional Latin mass is just the new mass that we have, but in Latin, that's not true. They're really different masses. The new mass has removed a lot of prayers. The new mass actually could be said in Latin, but it usually is not.

The reason I mention this is not just because I'm a fuddy-duddy and I have bow ties or something. It's because there is so much beauty in this mass that endured substantially unchanged for about 1400 years. There's so much beauty that it's attracting a lot of people back to the church.

That is true. You saw this in France just on Easter Sunday. You had a record number of baptisms. In the UK now, you've got this massive resurgence in the Catholic church. In England, for goodness sakes, this is the birthplace, this is the land of Henry VIII, and yet now Catholics are outnumbering Anglicans.

I mean, it's this unthinkable, I don't know what you want to call it, springtime for the church. A lot of the people who are converting are converting not because of innovations or electric guitars or something, but because of the old smells and bells. Yeah, listen, I play electric guitar.

I'm not totally opposed to electric guitar. I'm kidding. You're onto something. You're onto something.

You're not wrong. Well, I mean, I think you could say this, Charlie, even from the evangelical perspective. Where people are returning, it's where they find orthodoxy.

It's not where they want more of the world, right? They want something a little higher than the world, at least for Sunday morning. That would be what I would hope for in a pope. Especially young men, they see a world consumed by evil and falling apart, and they want one thing that hasn't changed in 2,000 years.

And they say, hey, this place has lasted, and I know it's going to last another 2,000 years because it hasn't changed, so that's what I want. Michael, in closing here, what is the timeline? When can we expect a new pope, would you say? And I'm sure there'll be a lot of coverage and drama out of Rome in the coming days and weeks. Well, officially, there's no campaigning. There's no jockeying. And of course, the reality might differ from the official way it's supposed to go.

Yeah, I don't know about that. I bet we could have a pope within three weeks or maybe just after three weeks. I don't think it's going to take very long. I think that people have been expecting this now ever since Pope Francis's most recent illness. So I think things are going to move rather quickly. I think the number of cardinals who are really papabile is pretty small.

I think you could basically count them on one hand. So I don't think it's going to be long now. I mean, just as young people are returning to the church because they want stability, they want order, they want orthodoxy, I think the Vatican wants some stability too. And so I think it's going to happen fast. Michael Knowles, excellent work as always. Check out the Michael Knowles show and we will be praying for you guys. Hope a good decision is made and someone that leads people back to our Lord.

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May not be available in all 50 states. Y-R-E-F-Y.com. Kind of piggybacking on what we were talking about with Michael Knowles, as an evangelical Christian, I want to talk about this story here from the New York Post. I think it's very interesting and instructive in a variety of ways. Young people are converting to Catholicism en masse, driven by pandemic internet and lax alternatives. First of all, I see this happening on the ground. In fact, I'm in a group chat with some amazing Protestant evangelical pastors. I said, guys, this is a trend that's happening.

Are you seeing it? They all agreed that young men in particular are joining the Catholic Church, even more so than the evangelical type churches in the local area. Some pastors had some theories, including my friend Pastor James Cadice, which I think he was spot on with saying that young people like the liturgy and that they're very disappointed in the wokeism and the liberalism of a lot of the evangelical churches.

But let me go a little a step further and build this out. There is so little tradition today that people seek it out. Our society is increasingly ugly. Go to a shopping mall. Do any of those buildings elevate you?

Go to the local McDonald's. We used to be a country that even the local convenience store was built with the intent that it wanted to lift up the people that would shop there. The town hall or the town center, for example, get you know, get a picture of Prescott, Arizona's town center, the city hall, just an example. Just get an example of any one of these old Western towns, what they used to build.

And again, Blake would know these examples better than I would. There's hundreds of them. Now when we build a city council, if you guys could get Arlington Heights City Hall, Illinois, and contrast that with the Prescott, Arizona City Hall. Yes, get Prescott, Arizona. This is the Yavapai Courthouse. That's a beautiful building built with Roman columns.

It's there. So it's a courthouse. So it's supposed to resemble structure order so that it's built with a lot of rigidity, but it still lifts you up with the highest thing being the flag. Now contrast that with the Arlington Heights City Hall, which might as well just be the Department of Ag. Actually, that's more beautiful than I remember, but not as inspiring. At least they have a clock tower to their defense.

Good pull though, guys. That's a much more that's a much more appealing picture than actually it's actually a huge parking garage. It's hard not to feel like evangelicalism is very shallow in the comparison to an ancient liturgy. And to be honest, the trend that we are seeing is a very positive one. People are seeking tradition.

And what I hear from young people in particular is they say everything is changing. I don't need a worship song with electric guitar and smoke. I want to feel holy. And to be perfectly honest, it's a learning lesson for a lot of pastors I talk to.

If you are not creating an environment where the people that come to your church can find holiness and meaning and can be elevated, you're not doing your job. There was a time in the 90s where people were hungry for a personal encounter with God. And evangelicalism, I think, offers that better than some Catholicism circles. Maybe.

That's to be debated. But times change and needs and needs and appetites change. And I could tell you, on Saturday evening, I wanted to honor our Lord the night before the resurrection. So I knew the local Catholic Church was doing an Easter vigil. Mind you, this goes from 8 p.m. to midnight. An Easter vigil is a very long-standing tradition in the Catholic Church where they read basically almost the entire Bible.

They read for most of the whole Bible. I go there and I couldn't find a seat at 10 p.m. at night on a Saturday night. And almost half the people there were people my age. It was like a selfie line just trying to get in there.

Everyone knew they followed the show. I said, is this a turning point rally or is this an Easter vigil the night before our Lord? Again, I'm not Catholic, but I went there because when I walk into that specific Catholic Church, I point up. It's not a Costco with a rock band and a TED Talk and good coffee. To be honest, I've had enough of that. I don't want to go to Sam's Club to go to church or a school gym. I kind of enjoy the holiness, the beauty, the pageantry, the structure, the tradition, and the reverence.

So I totally get it. God bless those churches for elevating our soul. Thanks so much for listening everybody. Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.