Hey everybody, it's in The Charlie Kirk Show. What's going on in Texas? Why does Texas elect their Speaker of the House with Democrats? If you are from Texas, or know a friend from Texas, text this episode to your friends right now. Listen carefully. This is how we could lose Texas for a generation, or how we've already lost it.
It's chilling stuff. And then we walk through a foreign policy discussion regarding Pete Hegseth, and are we inevitably going to go to war with China? A very informative and deep conversation with our guest, Will Tebow. 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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Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. Texas is one of the more conservative states in the country, and they have tried to pour, all the Democrats have tried to pour money and money and money and money and money into Texas. Remember, turn Texas blue. The Texas Blue Project.
And it failed miserably, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars, almost billions of dollars. And Texas delivered a triumphant victory for President Donald Trump, a 16, 14 point victory, unthinkable margins. But what good is a 14 point victory for President Trump in Texas, when you have Republicans that are going to work with Democrats to elect a Speaker of the House? Joining us now is Abraham George, Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. Abraham, welcome to the program. Abraham, please educate our audience on what is happening in the great state of Texas.
Thank you for having me here. Tomorrow is the Speaker's race here in the state of Texas, Texas House. And what we usually have for the last decade or so, a group of small group of Republicans going to Democrats, which is the minority party here. This time it is 62 members from the Democrat side, 88 from our side.
Some Republicans will partner with the Democrats to choose a moderate or a rhino Republican, for lack of a better term, to put as a speaker. Then they will go and kill all the conservative bills in Texas House. The Texas Senate is very conservative.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick will and the group will pass good legislation. One of the legislation that got killed last time is the Chinese Communist Party. And the Chinese government is buying land in Texas, especially around our military bases. And there was a bill to stop that. And the some of the Republicans, along with all of the Democrats, said it's a racist bill and we're going to kill it.
And they killed it. Now we have a national security issue in Texas. The last year we talked about border protection while Biden was in office. And Texas did what we can do.
But it could have been a lot better if we had a conservative speaker. This is the same group who went and impeached the Texas attorney general. So this year, the party said, if you're not going to support a real Republican speaker who will support reforms in Texas House by putting only Republicans in committee chairmanship. That's another thing they do.
They put Democrats in committee chairmanships and give a lot more power to Democrats than they deserve in Texas. So if we do that, we're going to not only come after you, we're going to censure you. We're going to put you in. We're going to educate your constituents and we're going to come after you, basically.
So this has been going on for the last couple of months. Governor Abbott is on board with the caucus nominee, which is David Cook. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is on board with it. All of our statewide elected officials are on board with it. Most of our county parties are on board with it. But a small group of Republicans joining the Democrats most likely going to elect a speaker.
At least they're going to try to do that tomorrow, which is what we're fighting at this point. Yeah. So to walk through this, there is David Cook's, the conservative choice, Dustin Burroughs, yourself, Cody Harris. So there's a lot of these different dynamics here. Can you just reinforce, though, that there's a group of Republicans that are willing to vote with a Democrat?
Democrats willing to vote with a Republican or vice versa? Just it's so hard for me to comprehend this. So, you know, in Minnesota, you heard this a couple of days ago. They have one seat majority and they decided we're going to elect a speaker by the Republican caucus, which is the normal thing to do, which is what everybody does in Texas. Group of Republicans will join the Democrats and elect a speaker who is backed majority by the Democrats. So that's unbelievable to me.
Yes, it's the craziest thing. And it started happening in 2008 when Barack Obama got elected. Our margins went down from 76 to 74. And, you know, we had to to to seat majority. So all these Republicans were kind of like very Democrat in their heart. They said, well, this is an opportunity for us to go work with the Democrats and get a speaker who we can control.
And that's what they've been doing ever since. Our margin now is 88. We actually had added two more seats to the to the Texas House this time around.
We were 86. We have 88 members and all we need is 76. But we can't get 76 Republicans to support the Republican nominee.
They're supporting a Democrat nominee or they're joining the Democrat Party to get your power of aid to the Democrats. This is craziest thing in Texas. I don't know if you heard this. Don Junior got involved in this and said, what are you all doing in Texas?
This is not the right way to do things. President Trump won by 12 points. We flipped to all out of the 14 South Texas counties.
One of the counties have never elected a Republican for the last hundred and thirty years. We got Donald Trump elected at 14 points. We have a clear mandate.
I mean, I listen to your show and then you understand this more than anybody. There is a clear mandate for the Republican Party and for the elected officials. And what we have in Texas is, unfortunately, a lot of these Republicans who used the party's name to get elected is real Democrats. And they're going to go put Democrats in charge and parties working against them. So we spent a lot of money over the last two, two and a half months educating our our constituents, saying this is what's happening in Texas. And one of the legislators, Cody Harris, took that as a legislative bribery for the party to send mailers to his district, which will potentially affect his reelection and file the Texas ethics violation against me personally, saying the party chairman is bribing and threatening legislators, which is a crime punishable by a minimum of two years in prison. So this is how crazy they are. They are in in how far they are willing to go to go against the party and the grassroots in Texas.
This is this is extraordinary stuff, Abraham. And so we see this kind of Uniparty composition here. Is it time for widespread parties? And by the way, is there anything in the Constitution that prohibits a simple majority vote? Just so you guys understand, it would be like if we did a speaker of the House in this current House and we had to go get Nancy Pelosi and to go get Hakeem Jeffries to go support our speaker candidate, correct? Instead, no, it's OK. It's Mike Johnson supported by only Republicans. Is that right, Abraham?
And who came up with the stupid system? That is absolutely right. So if 10 or 15 Republicans go to Jeffries and say, hey, we will if you put one of us as a speaker, but we will give you all the committee chairmanships you need and we will pass all of your bills and we will do everything you guys want.
That's that's crazy. You don't you don't see that in the U.S. House. And thank God we don't see that. I mean, I like that bipartisan bipartisanship once in a while, but I don't want this. But that's what's happening in Texas. It's been going on for about 12 years, actually 14 years now. But ever since that tradition started, that's their excuse. Well, that's being a tradition in Texas.
It's not. It started at the same time when Barack Obama got elected because we did not have enough Republicans who had the balls to stand up and say, hey, we're going to still support a Republican nominee and we're going to have a conservative as a speaker. We're going to pass some conservative bills. But this is they're basically giving power away to Jeff.
I keep Jeffries. And that's exactly what they're doing in Texas. I was very interested in what's happening in Texas.
What is the action item? Well, if you go to Texas, you'll be not to work. You can see all the representatives who are Republicans who is supporting the Democrat nominee and their their phone numbers are there. The grassroots needs to get behind the Republican nominee and actually talk to their representatives and say, if you do this, we are going to primary you and we're going to get you out. That needs to come from the grassroots, from their district. That's the only thing that we can do at this point.
We've done everything else. The people, the constituents need to wake up and say, well, this this is not what we elected. While we may have won this election, the fight to restore our great nation is only beginning.
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Visit PatriotMobile.com slash Charlie or call 972-PATRIOT. Abraham, I know you're the state party chair, so you have to be careful the way you answer. However, what's going on with Mr. Cornyn potentially being primaried by Paxton or just kind of the grassroots? Just look at it from an analytical standpoint. Well, there is a lot of people who are excited to hear that Paxton is considering that.
Especially during your AmFest. I think that's when he literally, Paxton literally went out and said, hey, I am praying about it. I did have a conversation with him a few days ago when we were traveling across the state about the speaker's race. And I asked him, what are your thoughts?
And he said, well, Abraham, I'm praying about it. We're looking at numbers. So I don't know if he's going to do it. There is people who are very upset with John Cornyn on certain issues and there is a lot of people who just like him. So we don't know. Be honest with you.
We don't know what's going to happen. I know there's a lot of interest in Texas to primary the senator, but is it going to happen and is it going to be successful? It's a whole different conversation. And because it Texas is a huge state and it takes a lot of money to run for Senate here. Ted Cruz just spent, I think, about three hundred million dollars doing this. So it's not a it's not a small task.
So we don't know. Moving forward, what can we do to make the Republican Party more representative, representative of its voters? Well, one thing is we need conservatives running in twenty twenty six.
And that goes from all across the state for real Republicans for who actually gets America first agenda, who actually will stand for state of Texas to run in the Republican ballot. Not everyone's going to be successful, but we just replaced about twenty five, twenty six members who were against the school choice, who were out there impeaching Ken Paxton, one of our favorite attorney generals in the entire nation. So the party is doing the right thing. We are moving forward, but we need you and your your audience to wake up, talk to them and wake them up a little bit and get them to the polls and actually get them to engage with the candidate who is actually going to be a mega candidate.
And that's what what we've been doing. And it's it's very controversial when the party does it because, you know, you're going against one Republican who is sometimes in office. We actually been against Tony Gonzalez as a congressman. We've been against Dave Phelan as the House rep and a former speaker. So there was a lot of unhappy people when the party does it. But when the grassroots do it, that's a whole different angle.
And party can be somewhat neutral unless there's really horrible Republicans who does some really horrible things against the party platform and its principles. And one thing that changed in the last convention, which is we have one of the largest conventions, about 10000 people come together every two years with our platform and our priorities. We'd love to have you as a speaker on the next one in twenty six. Yeah, sounds great. Yeah.
Yeah. And they came together and they said the party's name belongs to the people, not to the electorate, the elected officials. So they basically said, if you're not going to play by the rules set by these grassroots members, they they're going to hold the hold you off from the ballot. They're going to say you cannot run as a Republican.
You can run as a Democrat or independent, but the Republican Party's name belongs to the grassroots members, not to the elected officials. So there is a lot of that going on conversation, which is one of the reasons why Cody Harris thinks he can actually file a felony charge against me if I were to remove him from the ballot. But it's not up to the chairman. It's up to the to the members of the party who makes that decision. And it comes with a lot of censoring, things like that.
And he has to violate multiple rules and all of those things. But at the same time, that gives the party a lot of power over elected officials and they hate that. But I think the people are waking up and your audience can help a lot by making that phone call, talking to the elected officials and also showing up to the Capitol starting tomorrow. The session starts for one hundred and forty days.
We only meet one hundred and forty days every other year. So they need to show up and say this is a bill that I like. I want you to actually work on this and support this. Get behind this. Thank you, Abraham. Thank you.
Great work. Talk to you soon. Would love to come to your convention.
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There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's charlieforhillsdale.com. The register, charlieforhillsdale.com. Joining us now is Will Tebow, Army veteran and director of the American Military Project at the Claremont Institute. Will, welcome to the program. Thank you for taking the time. Will, what is your take on Pete Hegseth's nomination and the importance for the Department of Defense?
Yeah, thanks, Charlie. There are two critical things about Pete Hegseth. The first is he understands that the military is frankly broken and that business as usual is not going to be enough to preserve the integrity of our armed forces in a way that allows them to defend our nation. DEI has corrupted defense policy and there's a sclerotic, you know, being to everything that the military does that affects personnel to technology policy. But the second thing about him is his incentive structure is completely separate from the military industrial complex, from the senior ranks of military brass. And that means he's going to be accountable to President Trump and the American people who sent President Trump back to DC in order to fix the military.
That's why it's so important that he gets confirmed. Will, is it fair to say that the United States military is in a place of crisis right now? Is it fair to say that the military is in freefall? I think by any measure, Charlie, I mean, you know, I was part of the two wars that we spent 20 years fighting and neither one yielded a legitimate military victory. You can't tell what the blood, sweat and tears we spent in the Middle East has produced for the American people, for American interests.
And the results are questionable at best. But what we see now is a military with dwindling end strength because people don't want to join and because the military doesn't want to hire the kinds of men who have served in uniform throughout our history. And, you know, the only way that we're kind of hiding the story here is because the military has changed recruitment goals. The military has changed the imperative to seem as if they are doing OK or keeping the ship afloat. But it's it's not like you said, it's a disaster.
It is in freefall. And the only question is, are we going to wait until it's too late to fix it? We shouldn't wait until the crisis is so undeniable for everyone to see. We've got to get ahead of it. That's hopefully what Secretary Hegseth is going to do. And that's what President Trump needs to do.
And the fact that he's nominated Pete Hegseth means he knows it. So let's let's now take a step back. Your association with the Claremont Institute, I imagine you are not a John Bolton neoconservative because I love the Claremont Institute and everyone there is very rational. But of course, you believe in American strength and American dominance militarily. What does the Pete Hegseth nomination and the selection of people like Michael Anton in the State Department and the selection of Mr. Caldwell that is helping out in DOD, can you explain the philosophical divergence away from traditional neoliberal neoconservative dogma and where the Trump Department of Defense is going to differ for the better for the American people? Yeah, Charlie, I think we'll be in large agreement here, but it reflects the understanding that America is a nation in that what benefits America is not an ideology attached to a real life game of risk with soldiers displacing other soldiers around the world. The American nation is what must benefit from defense policy, from foreign policy, from, you know, Department of Interior policy. And that means it's about affecting the kitchen table.
Right. It is about the ability of a mom and dad to raise their family with the confidence that their children will be growing up in the land of prosperity and freedom and values, and that they could perhaps send their sons to join the military without fear that their lives would be wasted in far flung adventures overseas with a nebulous tie to what matters to the American people and to their lives at home. It's not an ideology.
It's not a game. We want to do the things that benefit Americans as a people and a nation. And I think that's what these appointments that you mentioned reflect. It's it's why I'm excited about the Trump presidency.
And I, you know, I know I know you're probably in the same boat. Without a doubt. So let me just get this straight. The the traditional neoconservatives are very upset.
Let's go theater by theater. The one that is harder to articulate is the rise of China. I am a China.
I don't want to say hawk, but I'm certainly I think they're a great enemy of ours. But am I correct in viewing that some people that have been largely silent on China for the last 20 years suddenly now want us to get closer and closer with a Connecticut hot war? Help me understand how we should think about the rising threat of the Chinese Communist Party.
Well, I think you touched on it there, Charlie. You know, there's there's a lot of reasons to be, I don't think necessarily afraid even, but really wary of China and their growing prominence in the in the Pacific and in the world and even what they do at home. But we the question is if you think war is inevitable or not. And I think any reasonable American and certainly those who are going to be in charge of our military, our intelligence community and in our foreign policy establishment should seek to make war not inevitable to avoid it while preserving American interests. And, you know, if we move into the space of the Pacific, kind of with a fait accompli that certain actions by the Chinese would produce a military response by America, that'll frankly limit our creativity and our ability to respond to China, because we'll think that it's only about, you know, killing and destroying Chinese tanks, boats and soldiers. We should understand that war doesn't have to happen, that there's a way that America can still leverage her economic muscle and her military deterrence in order to make any future Chinese military incursions unacceptable to them and to make them make it clear to them that the cost will be too high to bear. So let's let's unpack this because so there's something called the Thucydides trap, which, you know, which is a belief that when you have a rising power that threatens the displaced and existing dominant power, that it will almost necessarily lead to conflict or war. And I'm starting to listen to some of these people in D.C. and I'm friends with them and there's not even a discussion.
I'm at lunch and dinner with them. They say, oh, we're going to war with China. It's going to happen. It's a certainty. And I just kind of reject the premise.
I hope that's not the case. But can you explain that, because it's now being built into the kind of non-negotiable aspect of even challenging the premise that in the next 10 years, we're going to be in a hot war with China? Yeah, we shouldn't forget that one of the more recent purveyors of the notion of the Thucydides trap is none other than Mark Milley. And we should make sure that that's a lesson for many of our friends, Charlie, who want to pick up the mantle of this supposedly inevitable war. I think it helps to kind of read the neoconservative line of thinking in their research behind this, though. The Center for Strategic International Studies produced a really, frankly, excellent war game about what a war over Taiwan would look like. Their conservative estimate of a war in Taiwan where the U.S. is militarily involved is the loss of over 5,000 U.S. Marines, soldiers and sailors in the span of less than 96 hours. Half of our losses in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan combined in just a few days, a long weekend, right?
You know, the CSIS, frankly, they pass off those war game results like it's some mere academic exercise. But that's what we're talking about when we discuss the possibility of war and of defeating the Chinese Communist Party often. You know, we should, again, tie our aims in the Pacific to those results that benefit the American people. This doesn't mean we let China eat our lunch economically or militarily. It means we punish them in many ways and it means we preserve our economic interests, but it's not a license to act with reckless abandon.
Well, and so here's the other component of this. So there's one analysis where you say, OK, war is inevitable with China. And I reject the Thucydides trap. However, the Mark Milley perspective is like, OK, war is inevitable, but what if we decide not to fight? What if we just acknowledge that they're the dominant power and that we just kind of have this fusionism?
We don't want that either. Right. So that is a that is a unnecessarily dovish approach to the Thucydides trap premise. So you could have two really bad applications to this, I think, false premise that we're kind of involved in this inevitable conflict.
Can you unpack that to about a minute and a half remaining? Well, that's precisely right. You know, it's a problem of creativity. The a big problem with the foreign policy establishment is not necessarily that they're neoconservative or dovish.
It's the fact that you think there are only two choices to be a neocon or a dove. Let's think about ways that we can enable allies to have a credible military deterrent themselves. Let's think about how we can punish China economically and lay those punishments in place now. So they know, you know, military incursions would be too costly for them to bear because they are susceptible and they are they are wary of those risks. You know, that's why the people who who lead in the Trump administration need to be ready to never take the first answer.
The first policy proposal. I totally agree. There's so much there. Well, and this is a I love how you say a failure.
Creativity. I totally agree with that. I try to make my time with bureaucrats limited and it's really bad for you because I think they're contagious. I think they they shed just really bad energy.
And when I'm around some of these bureaucrats lately, not to, you know, share any private information there. There's no depth of thought of analyzing a premise that could result in the worst possible thing. I mean, the Russian Ukraine one is the is the greatest example.
We'll talk about this after the break. Is that they build all of their second and third movements, their sequential movements. Well, Putin's going to march through Europe just the way Hitler did. So if you start with that base premise, then you can get to a really, really bad outcome.
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Rough greens dot com slash Charlie. So let's talk about the failure of imagination. Why is it that the bureaucrats that have infested our institutions have such a failure of imagination? That's a big question. But, you know, I think we we still live in the Cold War.
Right. The enemy versus friend is absolute. And there are enemies and there are friends.
You fight the enemies whenever you can and you protect your friends no matter what's going on. And again, foreign policy. America is not in a game of risk. And we should understand that Russia and Ukraine is another example.
You know, the choice is we fight them or we let them march all across Europe. And so we send a lot of money to Ukraine. We send a lot of weapons to Ukraine. But why isn't the government and our military studying how warfare is changing in Ukraine?
Because, frankly, I think it's changing in ways we don't appreciate. And that's going to an understanding that is going to be what keeps us out of war in the future. And so we can be articulate and reasonable about this in a way that burnishes our military power without falling into this false choice. That is really, again, a lack of creativity and a sign of how sporadic our bureaucracy has become.
If you had your druthers and you could list five things that Pete Hegseth slash President Trump could do in the first week, if not the first day, what would they be? The first thing is to end race quotas at the Pentagon. Why does every institution from West Point to an army rifle squad have to be a racially proportional representation of America? The military should be something different. The second thing, let's enable our allies in the Pacific to have as the military resources they need to build their own defense capability. From drones to submarines to cruise missiles, let's give it to them and let's get it in place fast so China knows that the costs of war are high. When it comes to Russia and Ukraine, we need to move to peace. We need to show the Ukrainians that the gravy train is not infinite. But we also need to show the Russians that we're still in charge. And I think there's a way that we can do that through diplomacy and economic power. But let's couple that with an effort to get Russia out of China's pocketbook.
Let's remove a huge partner of the Chinese in Europe and Asia and let's tie the Ukrainian negotiation to those ends. The fourth thing is, frankly, we need to fire a lot of generals. It's not just a problem of political appointees. Uniformed senior officers have been a part of, obviously, military defeat, but also the encroachment of leftism in the military. There's a great catalog that Claremont's produced of over 600 generals in their effort to make DEI military policy.
That has to end. And finally, though, we need to think really creatively, again, about reforming key institutions in America and in the military specifically. Why does West Point produce the cadets who receive a degree in diversity and inclusion studies? Why does the joint staff, a body that should only provide advice and consent to the president, why do they have influence over military operational decision making? Let's make the joint staff a lot smaller so the next Mark Milley can't have influence over Chinese nuclear policy. And let's move them right next to the White House, close to the flagpole, as we would say, in the army, so they're under close supervision and they can just provide that advice to the president that they're statutory obligated to do so.
Those are, I think, five things that will get us a long way. Very good. Will Tebow, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Come back soon. You're terrific.
Thanks. Email us freedom at Charlie Kirk dot com and subscribe to our podcast. And don't forget Panama and Greenland. Don't don't forget those two very important hedges against the ascendant Chinese Communist Party. We can beat the Chinese Communist Party in nonmilitary ways. There is something called low intensity conflict, cyber warfare, tariffs, economic prowess. China's entering entering a near depression right now. The Chinese has only they've only been in capital markets last twenty, twenty five years.
They are not nearly as strong as you think. We can break the back of the Chinese Communist Party. But D.C. wants to do it with missiles. I think we can do it with markets.
We can do it with our economic supremacy. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always. Freedom at Charlie Kirk dot com. Thanks so much for listening. And God bless.
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