22 Years Since 9/11 — What Have We Learned?

Hey, feeling unsure about your finances these days?

You're not alone. That's why Noble Gold Investments is here to help. Just hear it straight from the people who they've helped. The Noble crew walked me through everything with no stress.

With their help, I could finally sleep easy at night. And now this month, Noble Gold Investments is handing out a free 5-ounce silver America the Beautiful coin if you qualify for an IRA. Invest in gold and silver with Noble Gold Investments. Go to noblegoldinvestments.com right now. That is noblegoldinvestments.com right now. Hey, everybody.

It's the Charlie Kirk show. 22 years post 9-11. Are we freer? Are we happier? Are we a stronger country?

We're in a sad state of affairs right now as we walk through it. Get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com. That is tpusa.com. Start a high school or college chapter today at tpusa.com. Get involved with the most important student movement in the country at tpusa.com.

That is tpusa.com. As always, you can email us freedom at charliekirk.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. That's why we are here.

Brought to you by the loan experts I trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandtodd.com. I remember where I was. I was in second grade and they cancelled class. And all the parents came and they picked up us and it was heavy.

Very heavy. There was no laughing. There was no playing. It was the closest to a state of pensive shock that I could ever remember for my entire life.

Nothing has come even close to that. The country went to a place of fear, of alarm, of horror. In fact, they cancelled school for the rest of the week. We didn't know what we were living under. Remember, there was the diverted Flight 93, thankfully to the heroes, and we're going to talk about Flight 93 later in this program. There was the Pentagon plane. We felt as if the whole country was under attack. They cancelled NFL games.

Amusement parks closed. There was a numbness that sent in. Again, I was nine years old, eight or nine years old, but I remember it so vividly.

A classmate of mine runs into the classroom. I still know him to this day. He's actually a pilot and he says the World Trade Centers have been hit and America is under attack. There were no normal shows. Every TV network turned into full-time 9-11 coverage for a week, and who could blame them? We were struck with alarm and horror and panic, and being only in second grade, you don't really process all of it or the enormity of it. Producer Andrew was in high school. He remembers it very well.

Being in second grade, you just kind of see everyone else being afraid, and you're trying to configure yourself. But from that moment forward to today, it is not unfair to say that that was one of the most, if not the most, consequential moment post the Berlin Wall falling, certainly of the new millennium. It set a cause set in motion, 9-11, that has made America profoundly less free. It impacted our fiscal disciplines, impacted our civil liberties, our constitution.

We're going to walk through all of it. 9-11 was an unspeakable tragedy of our fellow Americans that were murdered, but what followed, we are still living through to this day. That horror, that alarm, our reaction was to create new government agencies, to suspend, almost indefinitely, our God-given rights and freedoms. And I think we all need to be honest with ourselves that we might have been some of those cheerleaders for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. We might have supported it because we said we don't want to have another 9-11.

If the enemies of America wanted to destroy and to damage our country, they did a pretty good job of it. And not because of what they did on that day, which we will remember solemnly, but instead of how we reacted. It wasn't even an overreaction.

It was the wrong reaction. We didn't even go after the root cause. The root cause was less of an intelligence failure.

It was partly that. And it was actually more of an immigration failure. Who are we letting into our country? Imagine if we would have reacted by saying we're going to close the southern border wall, deport illegals. We're not going to allow Saudi Arabian pilots to come and do flight training.

We're not going to allow them to do flight training. But we didn't react in that way. Instead, we created a new Leviathan.

We talked on this program last week. Remember the 110-year war? The fourth branch of government?

The unchecked? The unelected? Well, 9-11 was an accelerant. It put gasoline on the fire of the administrative state. 9-11 and our reaction to 9-11 created the modern big government, Big Brother. Because we were fearful. Because we were afraid. And I'm not even saying that was the wrong reaction. You see two icons, including the Pentagon, under attack?

And that's what was so powerful about that clip, and I asked the team that they did a great job finding it, is that in the broadcast they weren't sure if it was a plane that went off course, but as soon as the second plane hit, everything changed. Like, oh my goodness, we're under attack. We're under attack. We're under attack. They could attack our schools, our hospitals, and we got into a place of fear.

And what did big government do? Big government came and said, we're going to keep you safe. We're going to hire 170,000 new bureaucrats under the Department of Homeland Security. We're going to put in airport security to make sure you can't put water bottles on a United Airlines flight. We're going to take our freedoms and liberties away.

And they even went as far to say, we're going to monitor your communications. We were fearful 22 years ago. And now we're fearful for other reasons. That the beast that we created out of fear is now going to come after us. And it is coming after us.

A monster of our own creation. Strong Cell is amazing. I got to tell you, the combination of NADH, CoQ10, and College in is really something. You know, people ask me, they say, Charlie, how do you keep your energy up? How do you just keep on pushing? Look, part of it is diet, nutrition. But I'll be honest, I take supplements really seriously. Fact check me on this.

You can say, I'll try. I'm going to fact check you. Type this into your search engine.

N-A-D-H. Just type it in. What does it tell you? It might tell you that it is the secret to living long, anti-aging properties, more energy. All of that is being proven in more and more clinical trials. N-A-D-H is a precursor so that your mitochondria can remain healthy and vibrant. The elites, a lot of billionaires, people with a lot of money, they spend a ton of money on NAD.

It's a fact. NAD just might be your secret weapon for more energy. I take NAD every single day.

I could tell you that NADH compared with CoQ10, the trials show very, very good things. I don't take my word for it. I mean, honestly, my word should be good for something. But fact check me.

Look at it. And if you do it over 30 days, you'll see an increase in energy. I wake up better than ever before. NAD can help you potentially, again, fact check me on this, with depression, anxiety, other issues that you might be dealing with.

It is nature's gift to you so you might have extra energy and mental clarity. You guys can use promo code Charlie for 20% off. It's strongcell.com slash Charlie. N-A-D might be nature's secret weapon for you.

I love it. I take it every single day. Try to try it for at least 30 days to see the maximum benefit.

And let me know, has NAD helped your life? Strongcell.com slash Charlie. Check it out. Strongcell.com slash Charlie.

Now we're getting a lot of emails, freedom at charliekirk.com. Charlie, what about Building 7 and all this stuff? I'm not getting into any of that, okay? There's other shows or places that address that. I will say I don't trust the government. I don't trust mainstream narratives. I'm not really into that, though. So you guys can email me your thoughts on that stuff, freedom at charliekirk.com.

I'll entertain any of it. I'm open-minded. But it's a fact the towers hit and how we reacted is our focus, our reaction to it. What really matters today is are we living in a freer country 22 years later? That's really where I want to take us today because I think that is the most important takeaway. And I'm open-minded about this stuff.

And you can email us and stuff to look at and read, freedom at charliekirk.com. They seized on our panic. They seized on our alarm. I want to reiterate, this was not as much an intelligence failure. It was partly an intelligence failure, no doubt. But it was largely an immigration failure. Instead of addressing the root cause, we've opened our borders wide open to foreigners we know nothing about. Do you know that in 2023, this last fiscal year, 149 people on the FBI's terror watch list have been arrested at ports of entry, a new record? How many gotaways on the terror watch list are coming into America? You know that zero people on the terror watch list were apprehended in 2020 because there were just none? They didn't dare to come into the country when President Trump was president.

They didn't even dare to step foot. So instead of getting serious about our immigration policies post-9-11, we've kept our borders wide we've kept our borders completely and totally wide open. In the months that followed 9-11, America was looking for answers.

And instead of saying we need to have closed borders and deport illegals and not allow flight students from adversarial countries, we decided to go all in on two failed projects, invade the world and spy on American citizens. Very bad actors that have wanted to go after the Constitution for decades saw 9-11 as an opportunity. This is why I really hesitate to say that, you know, some people tell me, Charlie, it's the Democrat Party that has destroyed America the last 20 or 30 years.

Lately that is awfully the case, that is true. But I have to be honest, the Republican Party did just as much, if not more, damage in the early 2000s as the Democrat Party. In fact, it was Democratic Party that in fact it was Democrats, to their credit, honest Democrats like Dennis Kucinich, who were fighting against the Patriot Act in the early 2000s. You had a uni-party, insider oligarchy of moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats like Hillary Rodham Clinton and George W. Bush that found agreement that this constitutional order must be destroyed. Said differently, 9-11 presented an opportunity to create a permanent oligarchy, an oligarchy we are still living under today.

And boy is this a lesson for those of us. How do we react when tragedy strikes? And honestly, during COVID, we failed the test again. Fear, panic, alarm, horror. We were against the lockdowns from the beginning. We were against spending $7 trillion, but they did the same sort of media manipulation platform. And by the way, 9-11 was not even about manipulation. It should strike you in fear. But when you are afraid, how do you act? Boy is that a lesson that we need to internalize.

Get ready with Cut 15. After 9-11, we created a vast and sweeping surveillance state that has been turned against regular Americans. So we gave all of this power to the federal government to go after terrorists. Who are the terrorists today? The terrorists are not jihadists. It's conservatives.

Play Cut 15. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 takes the next critical steps in defending our country. The continuing threat of terrorism, the threat of mass murder on our own soil, will be met with a unified, effective response. America will be better able to respond to any future attacks. The Department of Homeland Security will have nearly 170,000 employees who will wake up each morning with the overriding duty of protecting their fellow citizens. 170,000 shock troops, not to go after cartel members coming into America, not to go after jihadists.

Now it's 260,000, by the way. That Republican George W. Bush started to go after people that go to Latin Mass, to go after moms and dads, to go at school boards. We create this Leviathan undergoing after terrorists. But it's just imagine, who are the terrorists? You are. If you're a Christian, they consider you a terrorist. If you're a gun owner, they consider you a terrorist.

22 years ago, it all started. I want to talk about ReliefFactor.com. I want you guys to check out ReliefFactor.com. 100% drug-free, knee pain, back pain, joint pain, elbow pain. Check out Relief Factor Energy.

Help makes your body make nutrients readily available. Relief Factor Sleep. I know a lot of you are probably having trouble sleeping.

Relief Factor Sleep could be the best solution for you. Everybody goes to bed, not everybody sleeps. We're all about helping people live lives that are filled with connection, exploration, passion, and emotion. That is what his life is all about. Make sure you guys are sleeping well. It's a major part of life. Check it out right now.

ReliefFactor.com, ReliefFactor.com. So Joe Biden's in Alaska for 9-11. Apparently he's coming back from Vietnam. I'm going to be pretty hard on Joe Biden here, honestly.

I think he's a traitor to the United States. They say, oh, he's, you know, logistical issues. Figure it out. You got Air Force One. Leave early. You're the President of the United States. You got to be in New York on 9-11, period. It's completely unacceptable for Joe Biden to be in Alaska.

He spent two days in New Delhi, India for the G-20 in Vietnam and then traveled to Hanoi. You got to figure it out. You got Air Force One.

You can fly quick. Joe Biden will not be at the 9-11 remembrance ceremony. Instead we have the cackling Kamala Harris.

It's a disgrace. So we were in a state of fear. Tyrants love fear. They love a crisis. Autocrats seize on fear. And it's a perfect segue to the story we're going to connect in just a moment, the governor of New Mexico, because it's the same thing. We're going to suspend, take away your freedoms and liberties because of something you're afraid of.

It's the exact same playbook. But autocrats, or oligarchs more specifically, they've been doing this for years. It's the tool of every single tyrant in history. I'm going to keep you safe.

Give me power and I'm going to keep you safe. The good news is many of you have now woken up to this. But if we're honest, but if we're honest, probably many of us in the audience, I was only in second grade so I wasn't really able to vote, were enthusiastic George W. Bush supporters. George W. Bush as a Republican did more damage to the constitutional order than Bill Clinton probably did.

And Bill Clinton was a terrible president. George W. Bush gave us DHS, TSA, gave us 170,000 person standing army, gave us the FISA courts because of our reaction to 9-11. They spied on Donald Trump's campaign. All they had to do was label somebody a terrorist and they'd be able to do whatever they want. So you create this now 260,000 person standing army and they can spy on your communications. They turned the intelligence apparatus domestically on you. Here's George W. Bush, Republican George W. Bush announcing the Patriot Act.

This is in 2001. This Patriot Act is still being used to this day 22 years later to spy on political groups. It was used in the dragnet post January 6th. The Patriot Act used against moms and dads showing up to school board meetings, people going to Latin mass. Our reaction to 9-11 is we allowed the Constitution to be shredded because we are in a place of fear.

Play cut 16. The changes effective today will help counter a threat like no other our nation has ever faced. As of today, we're changing the laws governing information sharing. And as importantly, we're changing the culture of our various agencies that countering and investigating terrorist activity is the number one priority for both law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Surveillance of communications is another essential tool to pursue and stop terrorists. This new law that I signed today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including emails, the Internet and cell phones.

Investigations are often slowed by a limit on the reach of federal search warrants. This bill was carefully drafted and considered. This bill was carefully drafted and considered. And then we did 20 years in Afghanistan. What did we get out of that? Trillions of dollars spent. And now the Taliban are back in charge and they were in charge before thousands of lost lives and not diminishing the sacrifice of these lost lives.

But it's all intentional. Here's Kamala Harris back in 2022, comparing January 6th to 9-11. Play cut 19 on our calendars, but a place in our collective memory. December 7th, 1941. September 11th, 2001. And January 6th, 2021. See, you build the Leviathan, you build the deep state.

Republicans have done nothing to check and balance it. And then you have January 6th and they seize. 22 years later, if you walk the halls of the FBI and you walk the halls of the DHS and you say, what does a terrorist look like? If you would've asked that question 15 years ago, they'd said, well, a terrorist would be a Middle Eastern, jihadist, theocratic, Islamic extremist.

Oh, okay. Now you walk the halls of the FBI, you say, what does a terrorist look like? Oh, a white Christian who owns guns, who doesn't trust the government. The FBI says that the don't tread on me symbol is a hate symbol.

The same one that Jaden wasn't allowed to bring to the school in Colorado, FBI whistleblower says that that is considered to be a symbol of white supremacy and domestic violent extremism. Part of the narrative now is to take away our rights. We have to look honestly back at 9-11 and the years of reaction, the quagmire and the no-win war in Iraq. Do you feel safer because of what happened in Iraq? Because what we did, we displaced Saddam Hussein and then ISIS rose up?

Do you feel safer because we got nothing, no accomplishment because of our time in Afghanistan? But at the baseline of all this is that we were a high trust society back in 2001. It was hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that the government was lying to you.

The government was making money off of you. It was hard for people to wrap their head around the fact that George W. Bush might have had another agenda, that he wasn't telling the truth, that Dick Cheney wanted perpetual war. If 9-11 happened again today, I think the country would actually be very divided, not united.

They might have been like a couple hours of unification. And you know, somebody sent us an email, they said, Charlie, the best part of 9-11 is how united the country came together. They took advantage of that. They took advantage of that.

That wasn't the best part. Because we were so united, they got whatever they wanted passed. We threw that country away. We squandered that country. Our largely Republican leaders threw it all away. They had a mandate from the country to be united and we said, ah, we're gonna get rid of the Bill of Rights, basically.

We're gonna keep our borders wide open and we're gonna go start no-win wars in theaters thousands of miles away that do not impact United States national security. We're gonna tell them that the Taliban attacked us. The Taliban didn't attack us. They didn't. Saddam Hussein didn't attack us.

Didn't happen. Instead, we could have got really strict with our immigration and then the other part of this is we decided to create a prerequisite. We turned on the guzzle of deficit spending.

This is a huge component of this that doesn't get covered. But because of 9-11, you needed to finance all these foreign wars. You need to finance the Leviathan, the deep state, the unelected, the insiders. So we got used to a $300 billion deficit, $800 billion deficit, trillion dollar deficit, $2 trillion deficit. The hyperinflation that you are feeling right now at the grocery store is because we reacted cowardly post-9-11. We betrayed all of our principles. We don't need balanced budgets.

We don't need sound spending. And 22 years later, while we handed over all of our freedoms and liberties to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton, who are the terrorists? Well, Joe Biden tells you who the terrorists are.

Play cut 22. To stand up against the poison of white supremacy as I did in my inaugural address to single out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy. And I'm not saying this because I'm at a black HBCU.

I say wherever I go. That's a declaration of war on white Christian America. There's a supply and demand problem with terrorism in America. There's just not enough terrorism to justify all these agencies.

So they have to make it up. And just so happens that the Republican Party now has more support from white Christian America. So turn them into terrorists. Call your political opponents the very same thing that did 9-11.

There are a lot of lessons here. The first lesson is we should not trust our government at all. Your government is actively lying to you. Your government hates you. Staff of bureaucrats that don't share your worldview, that want to see you in prison or with less freedom, less liberty.

They have a completely different worldview and they have contempt for your values. The second of which is how do you react when there's panic? We have failed that test and we failed it again with the lockdowns.

Oh, there's an invisible virus that doesn't kill that many people but it could potentially kill some people. Let's lock down the schools. It created the most suicidal, alcohol-addicted, drug-addicted generation in history. When there's alarm, when there's fear, when there's panic, when there's horror, how do we react? The old reflex is government come save me. And we're going to then now tie this all together to something happening right now in New Mexico.

And we have a big action item there. When there is a crisis, they can take away your freedoms and liberties. Who are you when you are supposed to panic? Cooler heads don't ultimately always prevail.

Usually a sense of panic makes you want somebody to come in and solve the problem for you. The United States Constitution does not stop being the law of the land just when there is alarm, just when a leader decides to get rid of it. Now some of you might say, oh that was, you know, 9-11.

We've moved long past that. Well just this last weekend, the governor of New Mexico is telling you your free speech rights and your ability to own a firearm does not exist because of an emergency. They pushed you at 9-11. They pushed you during the lockdowns and we let them. We said, yes, keep me safe.

Give me free money. As long as I can keep buying weed and liquor, I'm going to be fine. The governor of New Mexico is saying that your constitutional rights are gone. This was just the last couple of days. She sounds like George W. Bush.

Play cut 20. But your point is valid. You took an oath to the Constitution. Isn't it unconstitutional to say you cannot exercise your carry license?

With one exception and that is if there's an emergency and I've declared an emergency for a temporary amount of time, I can invoke additional powers. No constitutional right, in my view, including my oath, is intended to be absolute. There are restrictions on free speech. There are restrictions on my freedoms.

In this emergency, this 11-year-old and all these parents who have lost all these children, they deserve my attention to have the debate about whether or not in an emergency we can create a safer environment. She can just suspend constitutional rights because she wants to. Her name is Michelle Lujan Grisham and we need to have a massive sign show of civil disobedience. Every single person in New Mexico should defy the governor's order. She says clearly that you are no longer allowed to conceal carry because I feel like it.

An indefinite period of time. She's a very bad person, by the way. She's a witch. She's like a pagan witch. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

We need massive amounts of not just contacting her but pressure. And guess what? Even liberals are turning on her. Ted Lieu has come out against the governor of New Mexico.

That's right. Ted Lieu, congressman, Democrat congressman, has come out and he says I support gun safety but there's no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S. Constitution. The Democrat mayor has come out against it. Ted Lieu actually said this.

I was reading from David Hogg actually. I support gun safety laws. However, this order from the governor of New Mexico violates the U.S. Constitution. No state in the union can suspend the federal constitution. There is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S. Constitution. The DA of the county appointed by the mayor also opposes this. The police chief says he won't enforce it. Elon Musk has come out and has said how soon can we get rid of this governor?

But it's telling that she even attempted it. For the autocratic left, the state of emergency is an increasingly catch-all excuse for the left to try and do whatever it wants. Whenever they want. They're going to do this with climate emergency and many of them. So it's 9-11.

Boy, we only have a minute to do this. I do want to remember though the other tragedy that happened at 9-11. Benghazi, which is a lesson to show how inept Republicans were at holding the Democrats accountable for what happened at Benghazi.

That's just a separate issue. I don't want to forget Benghazi. But as we look back 22 years later, now in 2023, our government treats us like al-Qaeda.

Our government thinks this program, The Charlie Kirk Show, is an informational broadcasting time for the moral equivalent of Osama bin Laden. We were a nation in fear. We were a nation under attack. A nation that was felt as if they could come after our children, our cities. And we handed over our hard-fought, cherished, God-given rights and liberties and freedoms. And the governor of New Mexico is just continuing that line.

They did it during the lockdowns of COVID. And at 9-11, when those towers fell, we reacted in a way that has created the monster that we now fight on a daily basis. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us your thoughts, as always, freedom at charleykirk.com. Thank you so much for listening, and God bless.

And more. Salem News Channel is unfiltered and unapologetic. Watch any time on any screen at snc.tv and Local Now Channel 525.