Ask Charlie Anything 186: Secret Conservatives? Time for a Third Party? What's the Matter with Islam?

Hey everybody, Ask Me Anything episode. Blake joins us. Become a member today at members.charliekirk.com, members.charliekirk.com. We talk about what's the problem with Islam anyway. Should we start a third party? What do we have to say to people that I refuse to vote? There's a lot of them out there.

That and more. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Subscribe to our podcast and type in charliekirkshow to your podcast provider. Get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com. That is tpusa.com.

or college chapter today at tpusa.com. Buckle up everybody, here we go. countries destroyed lives and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here.

I'm going to take the first question then we'll get to this one. And it's very simple. It's from one of our members, members.charliekirk.com. Charlie, you a Broncos fan now. And Blake, you have big problems like cheering for players because I'm a big bonics guy. You know, if you want to like be supportive of him, but you know, when you get these things, it's like when I think Brady Quinn got drafted by the Browns and then his sister was married to AJ Hawk on the Packers and she got like a double. It's like, no, you have to cheer for one team.

None of this. You cheer for players. You cheer for one country. You cheer for one football team. I cheer for multiple teams and against several.

And then I just love certain players. Like my mom is the world's last remaining like diehard Carson Wentz fan because his, I think his parents went to her high school. Yeah, he was from North Dakota and even his parents went to her high school.

I think she was a couple of years apart from them. But not going good with the Carson Wentz fandom, but she'll eventually cheer for every team in the NFL. Is he still in the NFL?

I think he's a backup somewhere right now. He had one of the saddest stories. He was poised to win that Super Bowl and then he got hurt. And then Nick Foles won it.

It's too bad. It does feel dark, but it's like he was the reason they made that Super Bowl. If Nick Foles was their quarterback that whole season, they probably wouldn't have made the playoffs. Nick Foles got hot though at the right time. He got hot at the right time. But Carson was on an MVP track until he got hurt.

And then Foles had a magical run as well. But I feel it is sad. Like there's an element of tragedy to it, but he got a Super Bowl ring. They should be grateful for that. And a lot of money. And a ton of money.

He's worth like $100 million. Yeah. So it's really not a tragedy. And so someone, the second part of the question is, did you like the Bears draft? I thought they crushed it.

They got Caleb Williams and Roman Dunze. It's exactly what I would have done. Now we're outrunning my expertise. You're a Packer fan. I am, but I am an adamant, I adamantly refuse to go with Roger Goodell's plot to force me to care about the NFL all year. So I will look up who the Packers drafted when it is late August and the NFL season is about to start. And it makes sense for me to care.

My favorite text message I ever got from Blake with the football. I said, I said, hey, we should tweet. We all agree Roger Goodell sucks. And you said, what did he do?

I said, he walked on stage. That's it. Roger Goodell is the worst, would you agree he's the worst sports commissioner of any major sport? I mean, the guy, who's the guy who does baseball? I can't remember the name. He's pretty bad too. I know who it used to be. I don't know who. Baseball, they're totally messing up the sport.

Baseball, they added the extra runner and extra innings. And as a purist, that offends me very deeply. But Goodell's pretty bad too. Goodell's probably the most evil. I don't know if he's the most inept. Goodell does some really bad stuff. But clearly the NFL has been super successful.

I love the NFL draft. After like the fourth time he's walked up to the mic, he gets booed so much. He's like, guys, just stop it. Every time he walks up to the mic, boo!

Get off stage! Adam Silver is the NBA. He's like, yeah, give me the hate.

You have to just live it up a bit. You get paid $25 million a year. You get a million for every team, so you get $32 million a year.

He literally makes $32 million a year to get booed. Stop acting as if you're so upset. All right, so let's get into some real questions here. But yes, I have my Bo Nix jersey on the way.

I think he's going to be a sleeper. I really do. Okay, let's go to another question here.

Let's read it. Charlie, really appreciate all you do. You're a beacon of sanity in the ocean of complete chaos. I'm 55, listened to Rush since 1992 and greatly miss listened to him. But you and Stephen K. Bannon, a few others are following in his footsteps for the Lord's work.

Thank you. I've lost all hope in the Republican Party to be able to resurrect itself. I understand the split and the vote argument, but there are so many disenfranchised conservatives today. If there is ever time for a third party, this has to be it. What is your thoughts on that follow up question? I've never considered running ads on Clay and Buck's show.

You're much more of a warrior than them. Okay, I'm going to ignore that part, but let's talk about third party. Blake, do you understand the temptation to go third party and let's talk about why that's a bad idea?

Exactly. It's always understandable because it's a natural byproduct of we have a two party system in America. We have two major parties. So in other countries, Israel, for example, they have proportional representation in the Knesset. So if you want to do your little thing, you make your own party and there's 20 parties represented. In America, every election is fundamentally first past the post.

Who gets the most votes gets that office. And there's all these factional splits within the parties. This makes it really easy to be disappointed because there's always Republicans who let us down a lot. We are all very used to this.

We complain about it on the show all the time. But it is also fundamentally true that, as we've highlighted in America, what's liberal in this country? The universities, a lot of big business, the bureaucracy, your local elementary school, the Boy Scouts of America, everything over and over. What is the strongest institution in America that it is plausible for conservatives to have any influence in? It is the Republican Party because they are the opposition party in the United States, period.

And there are a million things in the United States that cause that to be the case. Just organically, who are you going to vote for if you don't like the guy in charge? Makes the most sense to vote for the most powerful opposition party. And so, and I think it's very easy for conservatives to embrace a, like it's psychologically tempting to go doomer and say, there's no hope. They always fail us.

They always let us down. It's, it's cathartic to say that to sort of scream. But it's not true. Would you rather live in a red state or a blue state? We can point towards a million different laws that make that the case. If you're in this state, you won't be arrested for having a gun.

You won't be arrested if you defend yourself from a criminal. You can in Arizona right now, for example, you can get money to send your kid to a private school or to home school instead of being forced to send them to a crappy public school. There are real wins that you can get at the state level, and this can manifest at the federal level. And Florida is a much freer state than California.

So I think it would be better to say that. Don't vote for the Republican Party. Vote for the opposition party. And just call it the opposition party. And I hope everyone understands we're making huge gains. We we used to have like two or three good senators. Now we have like 15.

Yeah. And if you and the other thing is pretty good ones and like 10 excellent ones. If you try to take over the Republican Party and reform it and fail, you can always try again later. And you may at least mitigate what the Democrats want to do. But let's say you try to do your third party and it just it doesn't quite take. And we end up in an election and the Republicans get 25 percent and our new third party gets 25 percent. What happens? Well, the Democrats get, you know, 400 House seats.

Yes. And then what do they do with 400 House seats? They do whatever they want. And if you want an example where this has happened in Alberta, Canada, the most conservative province of Canada, they had a Calgary. They had a right wing insurgency.

I think they called it like the Wild Rose Party. And they had an insurgency because they thought their conservative party in the province wasn't conservative enough. So they split the vote and it caused a left wing government to get elected in Alberta.

And what did they do? They passed a bunch of left wing stuff. And not all of that left wing stuff has been undone, I believe. They eventually did get government back. But that's the nature of laws.

They don't all get changed. And now Alberta is a more liberal province than it was before. That's not good. The home of Edmonton and Calgary. Yes. It's huge natural resources there.

It's a really, really great. By the way, they're very right wing people there. A ton.

I mean, Tucker filled out a sports stadium in Alberta. Exactly. There's tons of conservatives. But you if you decide to intentionally split your coalition into smaller groups when you haven't beaten the big enemy, you dilute your influence.

Exactly. So why is it that Republicans, like minute remaining, are more likely to be upset with their leaders to the point of not voting? We'll talk about this in the next segment, but also third party than the Democrats. I don't want to say specifically that they are more likely because we do see there are insurgencies on the left. Hillary Clinton probably lost in 2016 because they had a lot of angry people.

And so this is a funny thing. If you really follow American politics, you see both sides saying the same thing. They'll say, like, our side is too obsessed with principle and the enemy. They just they only care about winning. And they'll say their side always delivers for them and our side never delivers for us. I don't want to say who it's more true for. I think it is probably true Democrats deliver a bit more consistently. I think that's probably because a lot of Democratic principles are things you can solve by just giving people money.

So they say we're going to run and we're going to expand these programs and everyone gets money. Whereas ours, it's stickier stuff that's more controversial. We're going to change the rule or abstract. It's more abstract. It's tougher to get people to, like, get the cojones to do it.

But it is false to say they never deliver anything. And you want to have a growth mindset about things. All right. Really quick question from Kimberly. Is Blake single?

If so, what type of woman is you looking for to go on? It's a real question from Kimberly. Not mentally ill.

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Use promo code Charlie for 10% off your order today. All right, let's get to this dialogue here. I said this to you, Blake, you want to respond to it.

Essentially, it's a guy that listens to The Charlie Kirk Show. He's a Trump fan, but he says, I'm sitting out 2024. I'm not voting because Republicans are so terrible.

And I just want to say, Blake, we do get a fair amount of these emails. We do. And I try to tell Republican leaders this, that there are people that will watch our show, that will donate to us, that will subscribe to us, that will not vote. And then when we lose, they will say only fraud could explain that we lost the election. I don't want to defend them, but I'm going to explain and then I'll let you because I do not like this attitude. They think the greatest way they can get people to get to notice them is by not voting. It is the it is by absence they will be noticed, which I think is insane. I think it's also kind of evil.

It's insane, I think. And I don't think it's fully pragmatic, truthfully. I think when you think about how politics are, politics is not it's not just a I want to achieve this outcome thing for a lot of people. There's a very spiritual element.

It's a way you give your life meaning by being engaged with it. And it's a form it's like a form of personal expression, actually. And so what I think you get is people who don't vote. A lot of it is if they vote for someone and that person loses, they feel like they've been defeated and it was all a waste. Whereas if they don't vote, it's like they're asserting sovereignty over themselves, that they are indifferent to the outcome.

They they convince themselves that they don't care this way when in fact they do care deeply. And I think an important thing is is what you do is you have to emphasize that we do politics not to show that we are conservative. We do politics because we are trying to work for outcomes. And we know that we will not always get those outcomes. We may very rarely get those outcomes.

We may never get those outcomes. We fight for them because it is the right thing to do, as you say. And you have to pursue the out the path that is most likely to bring that outcome. And in a system like ours, where the person who gets the most pieces of paper in the box, you have a duty to make sure your piece of paper goes in that box.

And. You know, will your vote make a difference on an average? No, most of most elections are not decided by one vote.

Well, but in Arizona, Attorney General races are by 280 votes. Yes, exactly. So it's depressing to think that there's probably. Well, I just want to point out. So we do this event.

You've been here before Freedom Night in America. We have like two thousand people show up. So if ever all two thousand people had that attitude in that one event, then you would not win the attorney. Exactly. I mean, just like let's forget, like, oh, it's because it's easy to get like, oh, millions of votes, things get lost. That's a very isolated example. And so but what's the downside?

Filling out a piece of paper and sending it in? That's what I mean. The downside is essentially that when they vote and it doesn't go well, it's like they take it too personally, almost like, how dare you make me care about this candidate? And then that candidate lost. And frankly, you got to toughen up. It's like, oh, our guy lost next time.

Yeah. One of our listeners says, I encourage you to think about the risk reward calculation. Voting is asymmetric, meaning the cost of your time to vote equals just a few minutes of your time versus huge potential reward if we win. And it's also just I think you have a moral obligation to vote regardless. You have a moral obligation.

And, you know, people died for this system to come into place. Hi, Charlie, I'm a member and a question for you. Members dot Charlie Kirk dot com. I'm a chief H.R. manager, officer and conservative.

No typos. Both are real and have been a fan of your podcast since 2020. My profession gets a really bad rap and I'm sad to say it's well deserved. I've been in this role at three different companies over 15 years and have to address this topic you talk about regularly on your show.

Woke ism, the decline of meritocracy, covid, et cetera. For example, the CEO and others at the company I worked for during covid were very supportive of vaccine mandates and terminating people if they did not comply. I was able to prevent both. Thankfully, praise God, it had to have been divine intervention at a different company.

I eliminated the department upon my arrival so the company could invest in more business impactful initiatives. I do this very quietly under the radar. If I was outspoken, I don't think I could do these things. So the question is, what do you think about the group of silent influencers out there? You touched briefly on this during an episode this week and how those of us that are silent influencers get to know each other. So don't feel alone. I'd love to talk to other conservatives in H.R.

that are facing the same things about me and we're challenging. Please do not use my name if you read this on here. Thank you.

First of all, whoever you are, male or female, it's written like a female. I mean that positively. You're a hero. You're talking about you listen to the show. You're like getting rid of D.I.

departments. You do not want your name mentioned like we need more patriots like this. Would love to connect you with more silent influencers. And I just can be honest, it gives me comfort that all the work we're doing on the show, like there's like this like sleeper cell H.R.

person that's like smashing woke ism wherever it exists. What a hero. That's kind of awesome. National hero. Isn't that awesome?

It is great. So what is your reaction to that, Blake? And also how if you get by the way, we talk about political power. But if you have corporate power, you should use that power for good.

You should. And I think there is a type of concern. I don't want to say you don't go around thuggishly saying, look, everyone in this company must vote for Trump or whatever because it won't work for one. But what you should look out for is we run into a lot of people who are like, what can I do for the movement? And are like young people who want to do stuff in politics.

And it's very common to think, well, what I could do is start a podcast or I could write op-eds or I could do stuff, you know, do like public political stuff. But for a lot of people, the single best thing you can do for the movement is be a successful person, be a pillar of your community. And then importantly, pull up people behind you. So make sure that they're you know, this nation has a lot of systematic discrimination against people based on politics or frankly, based on race.

You don't have to counter that with your own. But literally find talented people who might actually be worth your time and mentor them directly. Cultivate those people.

Make it so you are undermining all of the sinister stuff that is happening in America. By creating new stuff. And I just say, become a creator.

We're made in the image of our creator. So create a family, create a business, create an initiative, create a community. Right. Create something.

And it doesn't have to be Google or it doesn't have to be Goldman Sachs. It can be like, yeah, I get 10 neighbors together. Instead of we help each other instead of donating one hundred thousand dollars to your alma mater, which they will then use to like spray paint the local intersection to say, like, have a rainbow flag and say Black Lives Matter. Donate one hundred thousand dollars and have it be a scholarship that is one hundred percent merit based or for someone who has worked a blue collar job like during high school, something like that.

And instead of, you know, whatever else that they give out scholarships for these days, there's things you can do. Be a be a pillar of your community. Do not be a person who is fuming on the Internet. I totally agree. Email us freedom at Charlie Kirk dot com members dot Charlie Kirk dot com and thank you whoever you are for being a quiet H.R.

manager for good. Zach says, hey, Charlie, big fan of the show here. I'm sure to watch your show every day with all the Hamas protests going on in college campuses. I can't help but ask, what could this be a distraction from? If indeed it is a distraction, which we're all accustomed to this point.

Thanks and God bless. I don't know if it's a distraction, right? This is this is a thing you'll hear a lot from conservatives that this could be a distraction. Sometimes it's true. I just I don't think it is.

OK, some you have to admit sometimes if Joe Biden were to like sign a very controversial executive order and he might be like having a family crisis. Sometimes there is something done by maybe like Bill Clinton supposedly bombed Iraq to distract from. I believe that.

I believe that maybe it didn't work. So I think honestly, I dislike it because it's a pattern on the right to sort of like prove I'm so smart. I see through the enemy's lies on the media. So I see that this is a distraction. And like the real distraction is you from it is distracting you from living your life and not being obsessed with what I think they might mean, though, is not that there are some sort of grand maestro, is that the media might be covering this more than another story that might be bigger. For sure.

So that's that's a legit. OK. Then if you want to know what they're distracting from, the border is still wide open. Now we're agreeing, you know, like that way. It was covered a lot in December and January and then they stopped. The border did not fix itself. It's still a disaster. They're still sending the migrants everywhere. Biden is still really old.

He's still he's he's not getting any younger. But you would agree that the media will select certain stories to distract from other stories. So, for example, they're not spending then.

I don't think I think they just get bored with things. The media wants to cover new stuff. Cult of the new. So, Blake, what what what do you think is like the biggest story in the world right now?

Probably the stupid protests on campus. OK, well, not Venice. Venice? Really? They've got a photo of Venice on the New York Times page? Welcome to Venice.

That'll be five euros, please. I mean, that's an example of like looky here. Yeah. OK. And then they got and then they got the Trump collusion or not immunity. I agree with you generally. I'm just saying that the Times they'll throw smokescreen grenades.

Yeah. The Times sometimes will announce that they're like the biggest thing with media bias is actually it's my mission. They don't. Yeah, it's by omission or by narrative setting or by framing. And as I've said before, the New York Times, almost everything they report is literally true in some way. It is not that they print fabricated stuff.

It's their power of what they choose to emphasize. So it was like after after Russiagate was a bust. One of the top editors at the New York Times.

I can't remember if it was the editor in chief or who it was, but he literally did a statement to all the reporters where he says, yeah, well, since Russiagate was a bust, we're going to have our focus now be on racism in America. And he says this in 2019. And then it's right.

Well, it was already spiking, but it keeps spiking up through, of course, George Floyd. And we have our national reckoning, as they called it, race, race, racial reckoning. And they wrecked a lot of things, that's for sure. And you can say, was that a distraction? No, that was the New York Times has enough power.

It can force a narrative. And the George Floyd riots were definitely not a distraction. That was a very big story that was ginned up by the media because of what they choose to report on. They say, oh, they're murdering all of these innocent people. The police are out of control.

There's thousands, you know, they create what people choose to care about. It's like a poll, a poll 15 years ago, most black Americans did not really say that the police were racist against them. And then 15 years later, they say they are when every objective evidence is that they were being shot less. They were being arrested less than they had been 15 years before. Yeah, you're talking about frequency of which they mention all this nonsense. And it just goes up like, you know, exponentially. Right.

Especially in during the, quote unquote, racial reckoning. Elon Musk just highlighted that. He created rough greens, not dog food. It's a natural supplement to your dog's existing food, full of essential vitamins and minerals and made right here in America. You don't have to change your dog's food. Just adding rough greens to their existing diet will be the best decision you ever made to improve their life.

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Rough greens dot com slash Kirk. OK, let's get to another question here. What Charlie member, Kelly, what are your thoughts on all the college campus protesters wearing face coverings or some sort of masks? If you were so proud to defend Hamas, why not show your face? COVID set the stage, enabled the rise in crime overall as criminals wearing a mask and have no fear of being identified.

I think that's actually really smart. Back in my day, if you walked anywhere wearing a mask, guns would be drawn on you. The immediate response was defensive because it became clear to rob and destroy because the COVID masks are allowed and encouraged. The enemy is brazen now. I personally was convicted immediately when mass mandates came out and it was indeed evil and the work of the enemy also clear. Clearly, these are extreme protesting movements organized and working to trace back the money.

I think many of these young people are getting paid. So I actually do agree that the mask mandate, I'm not saying it was intentional, but a unintentional byproduct is that it's given criminals an ability to be anonymous. One hundred percent. You agree with that.

One hundred percent it enabled crime because you just have you would have mass guys go in stores and you still do looting. Yeah, they still do it. And but now it's like socially acceptable to walk around with a mask. Yeah, exactly. And I think if you're wearing like a, you know, a balaclava, like the ski mask thing, people are still so shady, suspicious about it. Wearing masks thing. It's interesting to me because I think we'd agree it's important to be able to be anonymous on the Internet.

Absolutely. And frankly, it's probably important to be able to cover your face. I can imagine a lot of valid reasons someone on the right would want to do that because you have freaking face tracking software and, you know, they can. Oh, yeah, we found out who this guy is.

We sent it to his employer, all these things. I think the ability to speak and protest anonymously is an important right in America. I think we need to be consistent because, I mean, the Federalist Papers are written anonymously. Yeah, I do think that there is a I think it's a little cowardly to go out into the streets and do it. I know what they what they do. That's my instinct. What they do is if they use it and then go violent, OK, sending cops, hold them on the ground, take the mask off, identify them, charge them.

We totally agree. Yes. But I think I think what Blake is saying is true is that anonymous speech is protected American speech. The Federalist Papers are written anonymously for a reason.

I keep on going back to that. And Soros is funding some of these protests. Oh, for sure. Well, it's Soros has given money to these groups that are then organizing protests. I dislike paid protests because it implies this is not a real cause.

And it very much. Well, I want to it is a real cause, but I think that there's there's more of a synthetic nature than I think people realize that there are outside agitators that go into these things with the signs and the tents and they organize the ninety nine percent. So a bunch of petulant children are building tent encampments on college campuses with copycat protesters, protests spreading around the country.

Total organic? Well, no Soros backed as JP organized protests at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Ohio State, Emory and Georgia. And they're popping up across the country. So, Blake, it's a real cause, but there's certainly let's say lieutenants that come and organize this thing.

Oh, yeah. There's a long left wing tradition of that. I mean, I was I was actually just reading a book written in 1870. And it's about a guy who shows up in a town in Russia to set up revolutionary cells, says, hey, I'm here to organize the revolution.

Who wants to join my terrorists? What year is this? Eighteen seventy. Eighteen seventy. Eighteen seventy for communism, anarchism at the time, nihilism. But it was the forerunners of Russian communism.

Awfully unsuccessful. And that is the cell based organization of agitation that is popular on the left to the left has a long tradition of I am the professional revolutionary who is here to tell you how to do things. They publish guides on how to do this. That's what rules for radicals is. Yes. And so to say that it doesn't necessarily mean it's astroturfed. It really is. I have some expertise or let's copy what these guys are doing. It's very distributed. It can it can be a little bottom up, like, oh, these guys in this school came up with this way of doing it. And then everyone starts copying them like in 2015. I can't remember what school I think it started at University of Missouri. They started having those protests.

Hands up, don't shoot. And it was because of something dumb. The university president, like, had an awkward moment on camera. And so they demanded he resign.

It was insane. And then they start publishing demand lists. And then soon 100 different campuses had demand lists that were related to like racism on their campus, allegedly.

And I think you're seeing this again now. Cornell just had a list of demands. I think they're all publishing these demand lists and they're often very similar to each other. So that's just it's the way the left works is you'll have your national body. It will have all their little distributed groups. They'll bring in outside people who are really, really good at protesting all of the time. And they have that whole dynamic that I think maybe as James Lindsay talked about this, where they'll talk, you know, peaceful protest, peaceful protest, knowing that some of the people aren't peaceful. And there's like selected agitators who go further.

Yes. At either Columbia or some other school, they literally started giving people wristbands where take the wristband that's red. If you don't want to be arrested and yellow, if you don't want to be, you know, you have hierarchies of people. These are the ones who are the biggest radicals.

These are the ones who are not. It's just a whole ecosystem that we don't fully understand. It's a professional protesting industry. Yeah. With tactics and planning and like a lot of funding to. Yeah. And well, but the funding is not the most important thing. Like, yes, a Soros group like because the way it'll go is a Soros group gives money to this group and then this group does stuff. But the amount of money is not enough to pay for what they're doing and nor is this stuff actually that expensive to do in the first place. It's a tent.

You can buy a tent for twenty five dollars at Wal-Mart. Yes. But there is a here.

Let me ask you a question. If it wasn't for the sophisticated approach, do you think that this would be this would spread the way it has? Truthfully, I think it would. I think there's a strong it's always a strong impulse on both sides of politics to believe that the other side is sort of faking it, that they are bought off or that they're they're only doing this for some sort of or whatever. For like some greed based reason. When the truth is, most people who care enough to be involved in politics care about politics. And so, you know, the Israel Palestine issue, as an example, has been around for decades. It has been a big cause on the left for decades. And because of an unpredictable event last fall, it has become a huge issue this year. And I think that is largely organic. And I think you can make it a bigger deal, like when you have press outlets that are pushing it and saying this is a big deal over and over again and they influence people.

But I don't think it's a big deal because someone paid money to make it a big deal, like in some sort of short site, like in some sort of just, you know, very short order thing of, oh, I paid twenty thousand dollars and now Palestine's a big issue on this campus. All right, everybody, email us freedom at Charlie Kirk dot com and become a member members dot Charlie Kirk dot com. Let's go to this one here.

Karen says, hi, Charlie. I listen to pretty much all of your podcasts on the phone. I've heard many times you say that you are going to primary someone if they don't vote the way of a true conservative. I don't remember names. Maybe I'm not familiar with them in other states. California.

I'm in California. My question is, how many and who of those states that have been primary actually lost? Curious about your success rates. I know you're very influential. Keep broadcasting.

I'll keep listening. We haven't engaged in that many primaries. We did help get rid of Liz Cheney, but we weren't primarily involved in that. What I was talking about, though, is the senators. And to be honest, we're not as successful as we want to be because it's really hard to beat incumbents. It's really hard. Now, the primaries that we're most interested in is red states is if you are in a very deep red state and you are voting as if you are a Massachusetts liberal, then that disconnect must be addressed.

There must be exploited. We're very successful with J.D. Vance, by the way. We were like one of the first endorsements of J.D. Vance.

I went out there. I campaigned for him. And now everyone loves J.D. Vance.

J.D. Vance is super well supported. States where a Republican is the 90 plus percent favorite to win should elect very conservative Republicans. Or you are wasting your time because we'll get plenty of moderates hopefully running in states that are purple. Like Maryland.

Yeah, like Maryland. Which is blue, not just purple. We're getting emails where people say they don't want to support Larry Hogan for Senate because he's not MAGA, he's not a Trump supporter. Which he isn't. Which he's not. But we will be blunt. The chances of electing a MAGA conservative in Maryland is not low.

It is zero. It just is not happening. And this is a somewhat new thing.

So if you're if you're older and you've been around, it's a little different. You could elect a random Republican in Illinois even in 2010. Yeah.

Will never happen again. Kirk won the U.S. Senate race in 2010 at the 2010 against Dan Seals. Yeah.

And it was great. You know, he was he the one of the most liberal Republicans. Yes. Did he still vote?

I worked on that race. Did he vote in our direction on things that we care about? Yes. Yes, he did.

Did he hold up things that Democrats would have done otherwise? Yes. Yes, he did. And will Hogan do that? I think so. Will Hogan vote to confirm judicial nominees by Donald Trump? I bet he probably will. Will Hogan vote to confirm cabinet appointees of Donald Trump? I bet he probably will. Will he vote in favor of some things we want to do? Yes. Yes. And you know who won't? The Democrat. They're going to elect otherwise. No, that's right. And so the question is, do we want political power or not?

Yeah. And why do we want political power? It is not as like it is not merely as an expression of our principles. We're like only someone who's 100 percent with us is worth electing.

You have to have an achievement mindset. We are doing this because we want to do something. We want to actually pass laws.

We want to make America better. And the halfway ally of me is better than a full time enemy. Politics is actually a thing where it is sometimes OK to be lukewarm if the alternative is a full time enemy. You shouldn't be lukewarm yourself.

You shouldn't be weak yourself. But there is a whole spectrum of people. Politics is a spectrum.

Unlike sex. Yes, exactly. Politics is a spectrum. And the people who are closer to you on the spectrum are better than the people who are farther away. And that's especially the case in a place like Maryland.

But on the flip side, to emphasize, in a state like Utah, in a state like Idaho, in a state like Nebraska, we should be getting maximally conservative stuff because that's where we can get it. Whatever the cost and covers the facts behind this scandal, Flynn told the truth. He was the most dangerous person for Donald Trump to hire. I find out the worst enemy that I'm going to face in my life is right here in America. They took my assessment and they wanted me to change it. I was like, I'm not changing it. They had to get rid of Flint with in-depth interviews, archival footage and never before seen personal records of the man behind the headlines.

I just felt like I was drowning. Flynn, deliver the truth, whatever the cost. Available now. Watch it today. Go to SalemNow.com. SalemNow.com. This is a great question for you, Blake.

Charlie, or Team, again, it's a member from Charles. People today are condemning Christianity. I'm wondering why no one speaks out about condemning Islam. There's a series of verses here from the Surah, O true believers, when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads. Surah 2191. If I'm taking these out of context, let me know.

Slay the pagans wherever you find them. This is from, is the Surah the Quran? Is that a separate text? Surah, I think is a separate, let me see. Is that like the Talmud?

I'm trying to remember my vocab. No, it's a chapter of the Quran. No, it is. Yeah, that's right. So I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. Smite ye above their neck and smite all fingertips off them. It is not ye who slew them.

This is part of the question, literally, he wrote these. Finally, fight those who do not believe in God in the last day and fight people of the book, Christian and Jews, who do not accept the religion of truth, Islam, until they pay tribute by hand, being inferior. Blake, are these, is this taking Islam out of context? Why are people afraid of talking about Shia supremacism, Sharia supremacism?

Why are they afraid? Well, one, I guess, you know, a new thing came on TV, so to speak. Like we had the war on terror for a lot of, for a long time, and then you did see it. But now, I mean, when was the last terrorist attack in the U.S.?

Probably like San Bernardino? Yeah, it's, you know, it's sort of like, you know, ISIS actually was defeated. We got out of Iraq.

We got out of Afghanistan. Our, you know, everything focused towards this emphasis on like racism as the all-consuming obsession of American life. And besides, beyond that, no, it's a safe target. It's safe to beat up on Christianity. It is like, you know, Islam is an oppressed group because they're poor and they're unsuccessful because Islam is crappy.

Why is that the case? Like, oh, you want to get into that? Be factual. Don't, don't, don't get into the higher thresholds of...

Okay, all right, I'll go back. What I will say is, in ancient times, you know, where was the Bible written? Where was it? Where does it take place? It's in the Middle East. It takes place in the Middle East.

Judea and Samaria. Why does it take place in the Middle East? Because the Middle East was actually the summit of civilization 3,000 years ago. Egypt, big important country, big rich country. Modern-day Iraq is where civilization started. Sumer and Ur and Babylon. Even more specifically, the Tigris and the Euphrates are in the Garden of Eden story.

Yes, that is where civilization emerges. The first great empire is Iran. Iran is this enormously important civilizational power. Okay, before we get into this, I just want to say, there's plenty of amazing Muslims that I know.

Dr. Zoodi Jasser being one of them. However, Blake has a take that the ideology itself has a lot of problems that go unaddressed. Well, so, I want to start with, first, it's interesting that you say, and others say, Islam needs a reformation. Which, I know you're Protestant, of course, so pro-reformation. I'm very pro-reformation. There's a misunderstanding, like, do you think the reformation was about making Christianity, like, chill out and be moderate?

No, no. It wasn't. It was back to the roots. It was a fundamentalist movement.

It was a claim. The claim of the Protestant reformation was, all this stuff Catholicism did is a fake edifice that they built on top of real Christianity. Let's go back to how the apostles did it. Islam had that reformation. It's called Al-Qaeda. It's called Salafism.

Salafism is a fundamentalist Islamic movement that says, we need to go back to the roots of Islam as it was practiced by the prophet and his companions. Now, here's an important thing. What does Jesus do in the Bible? A lot. Yeah, but, so, what does he not do? Does he become a warlord? Does he ride out against the Romans? Does he sack villages? Does he take women as, you know, what his right hand possesses and make them his slaves that he can have sex with? No, Jesus doesn't do those things.

But you know who does do it? The prophet. And this is the root of a lot of what makes Islam different. It actually, as it's Genesis, it is a religion of a warrior desert tribe. Bedouins. Bedouins, yeah.

It's a warrior desert tribe. Maybe Islam made them better over the paganism that they practiced before. But I'd argue it basically made every other civilization it touched worse. Iran, massive civilization, hugely important, immensely rich literary culture, scientific culture. They were an equal of the Roman Empire. And then they got conquered by Islam. And they stick around for a while because they were a great civilization and they have a lot of inertia from that. But the most flowering parts of Persian civilization were the parts that were Zoroastrian, Jewish, Persian. You'd have all these cases where a guy is an important scientist and you go back and, oh, actually his father converted to Islam one generation before.

Stuff like that. Egypt, hugely important civilization. There are a thousand important Christian writers who were in Alexandria.

St. Augustine of Hippo too. He was in Tunisia, but similar place. It was a North African place. And Egypt, tons of important writers, tons of important philosophers, Platonic philosophy. When has Egypt mattered ever since? It has been a plaything that gets tossed back and forth between different conquerors. It's an incredibly poor country too.

Yes. And it's just a much more troubled country. And the best facets of Egypt are the Christian communities in Egypt. And the best facets in Palestine are the Christian communities in Palestine, in Lebanon.

You can measure this. It's actually remarkable. So I want to ask the question, but is there something inherent in the ideology that causes this? What I think by reformation some people mean is that it will westernize.

I agree it would be better if it westernized. In the sense that it does not have to be interlinked with government power. So this is an important difference. So Christianity has always, if you go to the Bible, the intersection between New Testament Christianity and the government is very thin. And you have to sort of figure out what he means. He says the render unto Caesar thing. But there's no rules like what should a Christian polity look like?

How should Christian politics be organized? We try to reach conclusions about that based on the Old Testament and what early Christians did. But it's not obvious. It's not intertwined explicitly. Islam is not like that. Islam says extremely explicitly, how should a Muslim society work? It should have these rules.

It is political from the very beginning. When they start it, they have the Ummah, the community of believers, and they are led by Muhammad. He dies. They are then led by Abu Bakr, I believe his father-in-law.

And then he dies. And then they have Umar, the next caliph. So they have these early caliphs. And all of their examples of how you're supposed to live in an Islamic society are premised on what did these guys do. So the Quran is kind of written in a weird way. It's like this flowery Arab poetry. It was supposedly revealed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel.

We obviously don't believe that was the case. There's funny parts of it. For example, where Muhammad speaking, saying, this is what Gabriel told me to tell you. And he says, the angel wants you to know that Muhammad's wives are being kind of annoying and are nagging him too much. But Muhammad is too good a person to tell them this. But the angel wanted Muhammad to tell you this. And that if you aren't better, he can get rid of you and replace you with better wives. That is the thing that happens. So what they have to do is, it's not as long as the Bible, and it's not as clear on certain things.

So what you're supposed to do as a Muslim is heavily based on the Hadiths. Are you familiar with these? Is that the commentary? It's not even commentary. I think it means sayings in Arabic, or deeds, something like that. What it is, is it's a collection. It's massive. And there's several different volumes of it. It's like the Talmud.

They're a collection. Not even that, because the Talmud is rabbis arguing about stuff. So it'll be, Rabbi Hezekiah said this, and then Rabbi Solomon said this. What the Hadiths are, is it'll say, Aisha, the wife of the prophet. That's the nine-year-old that he married. Muhammad married a girl.

Yes, he married a nine-year-old. And you cannot criticize him, because Muhammad is above criticism. And it says in the Hadiths that anyone who criticizes Muhammad should be killed. And so what the Hadiths are, is they're testimony from early Muslims, and then supposedly passed down. So it'll be Aisha told Omar this, who told Abu Bakr this. It's an oral tradition. It's an oral tradition that was then written down about 100, 150 years later. And they'll just be accounts of what the prophet did.

And some of them will just be absolutely surreal. Because I'm a crazy person, I have bookmarks of funny stuff. Apologies in advance for this one. This is from the Bukhari Hadiths, which are the most canonical one. And it says, Hudayfa added, Allah's messenger, Muhammad, would go to the dumps of some people and urinate while standing.

So it's okay to urinate while standing, because the prophet did that. They have testimony about this. They would say, like, I think there's a Hadith where he says, if people are gathered for a dinner, they should sit in a circle. And they're like, okay, well, the prophet said to do that. And some of it's more serious. Some of it will be, like, the reason they have the death penalty for adultery in Islam is they have Hadiths where someone commits adultery and the prophet orders them to be stoned. And this is what you're supposed to look to as your guide for how to do things. So in closing, it is an ideology that is incompatible with a lot of Western values.

I think so. And it would be good if it westernized, but I think you have to recognize there are obstacles to this. That early Muslims are warlords who spread the religion by conquest. In Islam, in early Islam, it is unambiguously clear that it is good to fight for Islam, to wage war for Allah.

And the people who point this out are being, by most standards, good Muslims. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.