July 31, 2022 • 32 mins
In his new book, “The College Scam: How America’s Universities Are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America’s Youth,” Charlie Kirk puts the college industry on trial with a ten-count indictment of why academia has lost all credibility. Newt’s guest is Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country. He’s also a #1 New York Times best-selling author and host of “The Charlie Kirk Show.”
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of News World. For decades, it's been
an open secret that colleges and universities are filled with
far left professors who use their classrooms to force anti
American and progressive ideologies onto students. In his new book
The College Scam, How America's universities are bankrupting and brainwashing
(00:25):
away the future of America's youth, Charlie Kirk puts the
college industry on trial with a ten counter indictment of
why academia has lost all credibility. Here to talk about
his new book, I'm really pleased to welcome my friend
and my guest, Charlie Kirk. He is the founder and
president of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing
(00:47):
conservative youth activist organization in the country. He's also a
number one New York Times bestselling author and host of
The Charlie Kirk Show, which is both a podcast and
a radio show. Charlie, welcome and thank you for joining
(01:08):
me on the News Worlds. You speaker and honor to
be here. Thank you so much. Now I understand you
were coming off a huge weekend for Turning Point USA
with the annual Student Action Summit or SAS, and you
really had some amazing speakers there, including Senator Ted Cruz,
doctor Ben Carson, Senator Josh Holly, Laura Ingram, just to
name a few. It sounds like it was a great weekend.
(01:31):
It was. It was extraordinary. We had five thousand students
from all across the country, all fifty states represented, and
our sister organization, our Political Arm Turning Point Action, hosted
Ron De Santis and Donald Trump. Donald Trump spoke for
nearly two hours and a person did not move in
the entire room for two hours. Who was something to see?
(01:52):
And then we did a straw pole that was really
interesting and Donald Trump won seventy eight percent of the
vote when the question was asked, who is your preference
for twenty twenty four, But the next question was equally
as interesting. If Trump does not run, who is then
your choice? And Rhonda Santis won eighty three percent of
that vote, And so that really goes to show that
it is Donald Trump's party. But Rhonda Santis has a
(02:15):
major future and regardless of what he does. You know,
some people said, oh De Santis lost, No, Trump won
more than DeSantis losing because eighty three percent as a
second choice, that's unheard of. It's extraordinary. Well, I mean,
my view is that Trump and DeSantis dominate two twenty
four in a way that people don't understand yet that
(02:36):
whoever is number three, and then Mike Pence currently who
comes in you know, like a nine percent, and then
nobody else is above one or two percent, and they
don't get it yet. I mean in the news media house, Trump,
of course, is just a phenomenon who's now been around
long enough that he's an event in his own right.
But DeSantis has done such an amazing job both of
(02:57):
governing Florida and picking the right fights that it seems
to me he's really penetrating as a guy who may
well be for any reason, Trump did not run to Santis,
I think would be the prohibitive front runner. And I
think it says a lot about your organization that you
have that caliber of people showing up and eager to
(03:20):
talk with your folks. Well, thank you. It's been a
lot of work for about a decade. And you know,
I want to say this, this pulls a little different
than most because these are the workers. I mean, you
know how campaigns work. You need the people that are
going to show up at seven am on a Saturday
morning and be willing to knock on doors and put
together yard signs. That's the type of people that show
up at our events, and so it goes to show
(03:41):
the absolute grassroots of the party, not the passive listeners,
but the active participants. They're one hundred percent behind Trump
coming into twenty twenty four, not one hundred percent let
me say seventy eight point seven percent behind Trump. Let's
put it that way, which is still overwhelming, rather extraordinary. Yeah,
so take a minute for our audience and tell us
a turning point USA, which is astonishing achievement on your part. Yeah,
(04:05):
thank you. It's been about ten years of work started
when I was eighteen years old, didn't go to college
and did this actually instead, which actually kind of leads
into part of the thesis of the book. But our
whole premise is that we live in the greatest country
ever to exist in the history of the world, and
we believe we are making a series of decisions through
how we're educating our children or not educating them, I
(04:26):
should say, to go in the wrong direction. And our
mission is to try to restore the American constitutional Republic
through an engaged citizenry, primarily through student engagement and education.
We're on pace to however, one thousand high school chapters,
an extraordinary number. Just this last weekend at our student
Action summit, we had over three hundred new chapter signups
(04:47):
just there alone, and over six hundred and fifty college
campus sign ups, which is a pretty considerable number. So
it speaks for itself. To get five thousand students for
anything in the room is a big accomplishment, let alone
in Tampa, Florida in the summer when it's super expensive
to travel to get kids from all fifty states, that's
a big accomplishment. But the credit goes to our staff,
(05:08):
and God's been so good to us. We feel immensely blessed.
So as you've been building this, you also have a
very close relationship with Praiger University. Explain that, Yeah, I'm
very close with Praiger you and I'm even closer to
Dennis Prager. I have to say, Dennis Prager is a
mentor of mine and is just fabulous. He has taught
me so much. I love his books, and I'll tell
(05:30):
you you know, actually Dennis Prager was the first person
to say what I argue in the book as forcefully
as he did. I always believed it, but someone who
is as educated as Dennis Prager really kind of gave
me the confidence to articulate that. But Prager use a
great partner for us. They do phenomenal work online, some
of the best videos, educational video content, and we're great
(05:52):
partners in this fight for liberty. So when you use
their videos, man, how does that work out? We help
distribute them. So we have millions and millions of followers
on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and so we do
partnerships to help distribute their videos and content. And I
could tell you that some of the top talent at
Prager University comes and speaks at our university campus events
(06:14):
and some of the things we do. And I kind
of make the analogy that Prager University is the Air
Force and we're the Marines. So they're the ones that
kind of come in with the chokunaw and we're the
ones that are kind of going foxhole to foxhole. Both
are necessary to kind of win this culture war. And
so we're honored and touched by that. And the contribution
Dennis Prager is made to my life is enormous. So
(06:34):
one of the things you've done at turning point USA,
is you've developed this Professor watch list where students can
expose the bias on their campsus walk us through that. Yeah,
this used to be a pretty controversial project. I say
used to be because even some people on the right
gave me some criticism when I launched this project back
in twenty sixteen, where effectively we name the names of
(06:57):
some of the most radical faculty members of academia in
the country. And mister speaker, this was best on display
when you saw Senator Holly's back and forth with Professor
Kiera Bridges from UC Berkeley just a couple weeks ago,
where she was basically berating him as the expert witness
that he's transphobic because he does not believe that men
(07:17):
can become pregnant. There's examples of that happening all across
the country. We use factual, third party documentation, local school
student newspapers, video evidence, and look the criterias. This is
we believe if you're a forcefully anti American academic that
is going out of the way to indoctrinate your class,
not educate your class, then you win a place on
our Professor watch list. Some of them consider it to
(07:39):
be a badge of honor. Others find it to be
a little bit less than they love it. But the
idea of the Professor watch List has always been about
information to give students, parents, board members, and donors the
information they need to make informed decisions about what's happening
on university campuses. So is it you experienced it? For example,
students will actually look at the list in terms of
(08:01):
who to avoid, yes and no. It's actually had the
bigger impact with donors to universities, and so we have
a side project of the Professor Watch List called DIVESTU,
which tries to encourage conservative donors to stop giving money
to their alma mater, especially some of these bigger liberal schools.
And so we've actually tracked over one hundred and twenty
six million dollars that we've helped divest from some of
(08:22):
these universities thanks to the Professor watch List. For example,
you know, if a professor will come out to say,
I don't know at a school to Lane that you
might be familiar with, of course joking around and they
come out and they say something radically anti American, you know,
a T Lane downer might say maybe I shouldn't give
that million dollars to the university. Maybe I should direct
it in another place. That's really where we've seen the
(08:43):
biggest success and students. Also, it's helped with some of
their let's say, faculty choices as well. So, as I
understand it, you have seen firsthand college campuses trying to
censor opposing viewpoints, namely you. I mean, I've been told
that in the follow two thousand nineteen, faculty members and
staff at the University of Nevada Reno actually circulated a
(09:04):
petition against Turning Point USA titled quote concerning White Nationalism
on the University of Nevada Reno Campus. What was that
all about? This happens all the time. Thankfully that's a
public school, so they didn't have any sort of legal
ability to shut us down. But this goes to show
the kind of petulance that has infected the American academy.
(09:27):
Higher education should be and used to be a place
of a marketplace of ideas. Let the best ideas win.
But imagine being a college professor and you have a doctorate,
and the best use of your time, you believe, is
circulating a petition saying that we don't want a guest
speaker to come give a ninety minute optional lecture in
a building that really is hard to find on campus
(09:48):
by the way, that you have to wait in line
to go into. But it was amazing about that event
and so many of our events is we can't find
rooms big enough to fit all the students that want
to actually attend our lectures. You know, whether it be
Boulder or UC Berkeley. I speak all across the country
and we do see this pattern. The pattern is there
are a lot of students that want to attend our speeches.
(10:08):
It's just hard to be able to find the physical
rooms to fit them all in there. And so look,
the professors, in some ways they're a little bit of
a distraction. I mean, they obviously have a lot of power,
but we pushed through it. Unfortunately universities such as Cornell
University in Ithaca, New York, they were successful in canceling
our appearance there a couple of years ago. But thankfully
we've kind of found a way to navigate that. But
(10:29):
it doesn't come as a great shock to us, so
as I understand though. Back at the Univation of o
Arino Petition, Kamala Harris was as a presidential can actually
signed the petition. That's right. Yeah, she signed the petition
and she did an event there, and this should have
been a harbinger of things to come. But our event
was much bigger than Kamala Harris's event, despite the fact
(10:49):
it was right on the California border and that she
was a presidential candidate. Our attendants far exceeded hers. So
as that gather, I mean, you mean, you're a famous
person now and you've really become a national figure. But
if a normal, everyday concerting student, I understand that in
a number of these left leaning colleges you really do
face discrimination. What are the kind of reports you get?
(11:09):
I could mention several. Actually one involves Talane. Believe it
or not, you keep coming back to my alma mater here, No,
I do that, you know, only just to make it relevant.
I'll use one you see Berkeley, for example, one of
our students a couple of years ago, guy by the
name of Harrison, was punched in the face and knocked
out cold. You might have remembered. That video went super
viral at the time. And look, I could go through
some of the violence of people that you get, bear
(11:30):
sprayed on campus or physical threats or have the tables overturned.
But it's actually the less sexy news stories that happen
more often, which is students that get graded differently, that
get kicked out of fraternity sororities that get bullied, that
lose friends. That sort of soft power is much more prevalent,
I should say, and I think post is a greater
(11:50):
cultural threat. And what's so remarkable if you kind of
tie it all together with what we are doing at
our Student Actions Summit at Turning Point USA, is you
have five thousand students that are publicly making a declaration
that they want their life to be harder in the
short term. That's an extraordinary thing where they say, I
know the backlash, I know that people are going to be,
you know, treating me differently, but I'm okay with that.
(12:14):
That's a sign that the conservative movement, I think is
strengthening from the bottom up. What I'm impressed with is
not only are you doing this on college campuses, but
you now have a school board watch list that goes
right at the heart of where the teachers Union and
left is trying to change our schools. How has that developed?
It's been a phenomenal project. So it's all about awareness,
(12:35):
so people can find it at Schoolboard watch List dot org.
It's a twenty four seven three sixty five surveillance project
basically where a donor funded it, and we have three
full time people and their full time job is to
look at school board meetings all day long. That's all
they do. They just look at what's being passed, because
who has the time to wait till two am to
look at some of these guys. So, for example, you know,
Loudon County is the one that gets all the notoriety,
(12:57):
but at Scottsdale Unified School District in Arizona, we've that
they were trying to push queer theory and CRT and
being able to have our eyes on it, we then
notify local parents groups and spread the awareness. And so
basically the Schoolboard watch List our goal. By the end
of the year, we'll have seven hundred and fifty school
districts that we have eyes on, that we are monitoring
and that we're publishing. And our whole goal with the
(13:18):
school Board watch List is to be able to have
parents have the information necessary to keep the pressure on
their local government schools. And so I'm a big fan
of charter schools. I'm a big fan of private schools
and homeschooling. But one of my big concerns is that
if we as conservatives build all these new institutions, we're
going to just forget the public schools altogether. I believe
we have to keep the pressure on to reform however
(13:39):
we can, and we can leave no child behind. I
know that saying that phrase puts a bad taste not
of people's mouths, kind of post bush, but it's true.
They're all our fellow countrymen, they're all our fellow citizens,
and I think engagement and involvement in the local school
issue is imperative. I couldn't agree with you more. I
think it's very important for us to recognize that our
decleation independence is that all of us are endowed by
(14:02):
our creator, and we can't turn our back on anybody
who has an endowment from God. I mean, I think
it's a very important reassessment of conservatism to insist that
it has to care about everybody. I do want to
(14:34):
note that your very first book was entitled The Maga Doctrine,
The Only Ideas that Will Win the Future, and that
became a number one Amazon, a New York Times bestseller.
So first of all, I just want to congratulate us,
a guy who's written a fair number of books. I
think it's pretty darn impressive when you get launched from
the New York Times of number one. Well, thank you.
And they did so reluctantly and begrudgingly. And I will
(14:56):
have to say though, I was given a little unfair
advantage because President Trump seemed to like that book a lot,
and he promoted it heavily that week, and so it
was a blowout. But thank you, And that book is
just as applicable today as it was back then when
I did my best to really try to articulate the
philosophical base of Trump is um you wrote a very
similar book, mister speaker. But I liked that term, the
(15:17):
Mega doctrine. It was a playoff of, obviously the Monroe
doctrine in the eighteen twenties that kind of reconfigured hemispheric
geopolitical dynamics. I think that President Trump did something very
similar where I think he reasserted kind of Western civilization
as the ideal for all humanity. And so anyway, it
was a big accomplishment. So thank you for that. Yeah,
that was great, But now your new book has a
(15:39):
much more complicated title, The college Scam. How America's universities
are bankrupting and brainwashing away the future of America's youth.
Very interesting word. How is college a scam? I get
some interesting feedback on this. You know, I'm very pro learning,
and I think everyone decent is or that strives me
decent is, and I'm pro education. What we're seeing though,
(16:02):
if you really dive into the numbers, and I've been
thinking about this for over a decade since starting Turning
Point USA, the numbers are extraordinary. I'll share a couple
of them. For example, forty percent of people that enter
and enrolling college will drop out forty percent. So if
I said, hey, let's go get dinner tonight. Oh, by
the way, you have a forty percent chance of getting
food poisoning, you'd say, wait a second, what kind of
(16:22):
restaurant is this? Not to mention? Then, if they graduate,
over half of all college graduates end up getting their
long term career in a job that does not require
a college degree, and sixty five percent end up getting
a job in a different profession or different field than
their college degree actually was. And so we have this
(16:43):
mounting student loan crisis, heavily subsidized by the American taxpayer.
We have these incredible enormous endowments that are untouched, that
wild tuition continues to go up, and not to mention,
of course, the societal and the cultural cost, which I
spend a fair amount of time in this book making
the argument that almost every bad idea that you now
see being taken seriously by the left was incubated and
(17:06):
perfected and message tested in the American university. And I
make the argument happens on college campuses, does not say
on college campus that goes to corporate boardrooms and the
halls of Congress. And so I believe that, of course
college is necessary for some people, But the vast majority
of young people that are going to college I do
not think should be going. In fact, I think if
they didn't at all, America would be in a much
(17:27):
better place. You know, somebody asked me other day, and
I didn't really have as good an answer as I
should have. How did the slide to this kind of brainwashing,
hypocritical left wing approach? How did this suddenly catalytically come together?
So it's the news media, it's the college campuses, it's
(17:47):
the c suites of the big corporations. Suddenly they all
kind of gelled. What's your theory of that? I have
a couple answers. You know, the first time I ever
heard the name Slinski was when you were running for
president and you accused Obama of being an Olynskyite. And
I was like, who is this guy? I was eighteen
years old in high school. I remember you doing that.
(18:08):
You wrent around and said, this guy's an Olynski. I said,
who the heck is Olinsky? And one of Olynsky's rules,
or one of his tactics, was infiltration. And this is
something that the Left was very good at for years.
It's one of the reasons why I think we're going
to really destroy the left. Is there actually disobeying Olynskyite commandments,
which is Olynski would always say that the true radical
(18:28):
wears a three piece suit and slowly and surely inserts
himself into a pre existing institution, and then that he
is a radical. It's not the person in the street
throwing Molotov cocktails. I think they're kind of breaking Olynsky's rules.
But to answer the question, this combination is really they
have figured out that the left is best at infiltration
(18:49):
and primarily this combination. I think my thesis is something
that people don't talk about enough HR departments. I believe
HR departments could be blamed largely for diversity, equity inclusion,
for wokeism, for the over emphasis on affirmative action, for
the weakening of American corporate culture, and men and the
HR departments are filled with college minded activists that come
(19:12):
in and they see their purpose not as making money
or turning a profit, but putting forward some sort of
social justice agenda that I would be my working theory
not to mention, though they almost all live in harmony,
that their goal is to continue the revolution towards some
form of a utopia. So I mean there's utopianism. I
think in part is buffered and protected and coddled by
(19:34):
the fact that if you look at the ten wealthiest
universities in the US, they collectively have over two hundred
billion dollars in their endowments. If these guys want to
really believe in taxing the rich, maybe they ought to
be the first groups we tax. Yes, So I say
in the book that American colleges have become hedge funds
with a school attached, and they have these massive albatross
(19:58):
of money that is tax free, by the way, and
then now we the American taxpayer, I have to pay
for student loan forgiveness. Why don't we have the actual
institution itself that got the kids into debt, tap into
I don't know, Harvard's fifty six billion dollar endowment to
maybe pay a little bit for the suffering these kids
are now feeling well. And the fact is, having gone
(20:19):
through this whole student loan process and pel grand process,
every time the government puts in more money, the cost
has gone up. If I remember correctly, higher education costs
have risen faster than the cost of healthcare. Yes, that's right,
and there's a couple of reasons for it, because everything
we do with higher education is at war with the
laws of economics, everything from who actually pays to deferred
(20:44):
cost to vetting of the actual person. For example, if
I'm a straight A student from the suburbs of Dallas
and I want to go to University of Texas Austin,
and I took all AP classes, but I want to
take out student loans, I will get the same student
loan interest rate as someone who is maybe a questionable
student that's not very passionate when they want to go
(21:04):
study North African lesbian poetry. And so the issue is
that when you have a model that treats every single
student the same, well, then who's on the hook. Then
the American taxpayer is So you're right. The more the
government has got involved, the more pell grants, the more
loans that have been distributed, the more the cost of
college goes. Because the question really remains, it's the only
(21:24):
operative economics question, why would college ever lower their tuition
because kids are coming in with the backing of the
full faith and credit of the United States government local loans.
This is interesting since the passage of Obamacare, basically there
is not a private student loan market anymore. It's been
completely nationalized. Now. It was on its way, but it
(21:47):
was a provision of Obamacare many people didn't know about.
And it used to be in the seventies, eighties, or
nineties you had to go to a local community bank.
You had to look a banker in the eye. They
asked for your tests, They asked, hey, how are you
going to pay this off? What are you studying? That
ask for your scores your raids. Now you can go
forty five thousand dollars in debt in fifteen minutes or
lass at Fastisa dot gov. I'm curious when you look
(22:23):
at the fights here in the middle of and you
look at the scale of what you're taking on, would
you call yourself an optimist or a pessimist? You know,
I get asked this question a lot. I force myself
into optimism. I have to or else why would I
be doing all of this right? But here's what the
exciting moment is that I know for certain that our
defeat is not a guarantee, and that's what gives me hope.
(22:47):
And so people ask me, Charlie, you optimistic or pessimistic.
If I were to say I was pessimistic, then everyone
listening would say, oh, I shouldn't do anything because Charlie
said we're gonna lose. If I said I was nothing
but optimistic, people say I have to do anything because
Charlie thinks we're gonna win. I think that it's to
be determined. It's solely and completely on our action, our dedication.
(23:07):
But I will say there is so much fight left
in the American people. I think that there is a
vast underestimation of how hard the normal, everyday American is
willing to fight for this country. That's my greatest source
of optimism. So from your standpoint, patriotism is at the
core of all this. Yes, it's love of country. You know.
(23:29):
I went on a very liberal podcast recently and they
laughed at me because they couldn't believe what I said.
They said, what should really the goal of civic's education be?
I said, gratitude. A nation that does not have gratitude
for the sacrifice is made prior to the existence of
the structure of the country you're living in, then why
wouldn't you want to revolutionize it? And so patriotism is
(23:49):
at its core. But you cannot be patriotic if you
are not thankful. And we live in the greatest nation
ever to exist in the history of the world. And
one of my goals is to try to educate as
many students as possibly thankful and then willing to commit
to do something about it. So from your standpoint, may
you now have a national organization, you have a national reputation,
You've been very successful with books. How do you win
(24:13):
this fight? I just want to play my role, you know,
it's really interesting. You mentioned that I gave the opening
speech at the Student Action Summit and I challenge the
audience to reframe how you view yourself in America. And
this is very provocative, but I believe we must now
think as if we are dissidents in our own country,
that the Left is now in invading, occupying force, and
(24:36):
that we have to think of ourselves is how do
you decouple an invasion or an occupation? And that means
we have to outlast them. We have to outthink them,
we have to outwork them, we have to outcreate them.
We have to use humor, we have to use innovation.
But let's be honest. Though they outnumber us just with
how many institutions they control, we outnumber them with people.
(24:59):
And we have the truth, and we have I think
the greatest country ever to exist. That's a fifty fifty fight.
Who knows how it's going to end up, but I'll
tell you, when you're around five thousand kids for a
couple of days and they're dedicated and they're fired up,
they're like, I'm gonna do whatever it takes. We got
a lot more fight in us than I think the
Left even realizes. I can't quite imagine how much energy
(25:20):
five thousand students gathered from the whole country coming together
and meet each other. I mean, the level of just
social interaction and excitement that must be unbelievable. It's on fire,
it's electric, you know. I always get a kick out
of President Trump when he comes to our events. He says,
how many people? How big is the crowd? I said,
it's huge, I said, but it's not about the number.
I said, mister President, I'll due respect, the decibel per
(25:43):
person at our event is going to be much more
than a MAGA rally. And afterwards he says, that's the
loudest crowd. I said, yeah, they're seventeen eighteen years old.
For example, you got a guy in the front row.
He goes to Brown. He doesn't get a chance to
scream about his politics very often, right, maybe get screamed at.
And so the energy is electric, it's invigorating. And I
think there's something really profound and special happening in this country,
(26:05):
and the media's missing it. They're intentionally missing it. It
will materialize in the next couple elections, and I think
in the next ten years you're going to see the
fruit of this movement in more ways than one. Do
you now have both a college campus approach with all
these students, you also have sort of watching the school boards.
(26:26):
Would it be your hope to literally ultimately be on
every single campus in the country. Yeah. So there's twenty
seven thousand high schools across the country. And now this
drives my team nuts when I say this, because we're
on pace for a thousand high school chapters. And I said, well,
what's our plan to get to ten thousand? Why not?
What's our plan to get to fifteen thousand? And we
have to think bigger. There's no reason why we can't
(26:47):
think the way the left did. Now, we'll get censored
and we'll get pushed back, but there is this massive
untapped potential. And this is kind of one of the
laws of economics that Milton Freeman used to talk about,
which is it's not a fixed And this was one
of the things that people told me when I first
started turning point Charlie, every young conservative has already been identified,
this has all been done before. You can actually create more,
(27:10):
and you can persuade people, and you can grow the
pie and get people that otherwise we're not involved involved
and so you could grow your ranks. And so our
goal right now is a thousand high school chapters. We're
going to hit it soon and then five thousand and
ten thousand, and we'll see where we go next. Do
you find it harder to grow chapters, for example, at
historically black campuses, that's very tough. Yeah, We've tried a lot.
(27:34):
We have some amazing Turning Point USA leaders there. Now,
I will say this, schools that are predominantly Latino are
some of our most vibrant and exciting chapters. For example,
Florida International University in Miami is one of our strongest
Turning Point USA chapters in the country. University of Texas
El Paso u TEP one of the largest chapters in
the country. HBCUs far more difficult. There is a cultural
(27:57):
expectation that you will be at best moderate but almost
a card carrying liberal democrat. I agree with you. In
the data, I'm saying something has happened in the Latino
culture where they have reached a conclusion that the left
is bad for them. That's right, and I think it's
a little different than how most people are observing it.
(28:19):
I think social issues are what's driving it. I really do,
in particular the destruction of the traditional archetype of the
strong male and of the motherly female that is embedded
in Latino culture. That is a fundamental value of a
strong family. So when they hear someone that gets up
on Capitol Hill and says they think men can become pregnant,
(28:42):
as you said on my program, New that's just weird.
In fact, I mean beyond weird. But a Latino came
up to me and he said something incredible, a young
Latino activist. He said, Charlie, when I hear a white
liberal tell me men can become pregnant, I feel like
it's Christopher Columbus bringing poison blankets to us. I said,
that's a little aggressive, but that's the way they look
(29:03):
at it, white woke imperialism. Well, and then when you
think about it, in that particular culture, to talk about
birthing persons instead of mothers is a violation of the
entire culture. And not only that, the language. I mean,
in Spanish language, they conjugate verbs of masculine and feminine.
I mean, just to say that all genders are the same.
(29:24):
Good luck, you know, Manhattan liberals. I think there's there's
something so historical. I believe in the next five years,
if we don't massively screw it up, Hispanics will be
a predominantly Republican voting blood. Oh. I think that's right,
And I have to say that Colesto won't let me
do it, but I want to actually do an alternative
version of Genesis in which God invents man and woman,
(29:49):
and then he invents sort of man and sort of woman,
and then he goes through like the sixty two different pronouns,
and the poor snake gets exhausted carrying apples around to
all of the these various strange people and finally says
enough already. Can we just go back to man and woman? Yeah,
that's right. That would definitely get people's attention. And I'll
tell you that you look at kind of the Hispanic
(30:10):
culture being predominantly Catholic and Christian, this idea of post
birth abortion, widespread transgenderism, it is moving the dial, not
to mention the small business culture, inflation and all that.
So you know, it's amazing, mister speaker, at our event,
our turning point, you'll say, event, I gotta tell you
it was at least twenty to thirty percent Hispanic Asian,
(30:31):
you know Nicaraguin. Yeah, why are the same strengths oment
to the faith and freedom? Big meeting about three thousand people,
a thousand and we're Latino. I mean, it was just
an astonishing turnout. Yes, and it's happening at every level
of the socioeconomic ladder. And it's the exact opposite. They
told us Donald Trump would be the death of the
Republican Party and that it would only be white men,
(30:54):
and it's actually more diverse than ever. Yeah, this a
remarkable time. I want to thank you for joining me.
As you know, I'm a big fan of yours. I
think what you're achieving is truly historic. You're one of
the major full chromos on which this culture will save itself.
And I think your new book, The College Scam, How
America's universities are bankrupting and brainwashing away the future of
(31:16):
America's youth. It's a must read for anyone concerned about
what is happening on our college campuses, and for anyone
who'd like to find out more about Turning Point USA.
You can go to TPUSA dot com and we will
have on our show page to how to buy the book.
So I'm delighted that you would take time to be
with this. I always love doing your show and I
(31:36):
look forward to being with you again. Thank you, mister speaker.
One last note, try to not give money to Amazon.
College Scam dot Com goes straight there. Thank you so much,
mister speaker. We appreciate it. Thank you to my guests,
Charlie Kirk. You can get a link to buy his
new book to College Scam on our show page at
newtsworld dot com. Newts World is produced by Getting the
(31:58):
Street sixty and Hard Media. Our executive producer is Garnsey Sloan,
our producer is Rebecca Howe, and our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
Special thanks to the team at Gingridge three sixty. If
you've been enjoying news World, I hope you'll go to
Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and
(32:21):
give us a review so others can learn what it's
all about. Right now, listeners of news World can sign
up from my three free weekly columns at gingwire dot
com slash newsletter. I'm newt Gingrich. This is news World
On this episode of News World. For decades, it's been
an open secret that colleges and universities are filled with
far left professors who use their classrooms to force anti
American and progressive ideologies onto students. In his new book
The College Scam, How America's universities are bankrupting and brainwashing
(00:25):
away the future of America's youth, Charlie Kirk puts the
college industry on trial with a ten counter indictment of
why academia has lost all credibility. Here to talk about
his new book, I'm really pleased to welcome my friend
and my guest, Charlie Kirk. He is the founder and
president of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing
(00:47):
conservative youth activist organization in the country. He's also a
number one New York Times bestselling author and host of
The Charlie Kirk Show, which is both a podcast and
a radio show. Charlie, welcome and thank you for joining
(01:08):
me on the News Worlds. You speaker and honor to
be here. Thank you so much. Now I understand you
were coming off a huge weekend for Turning Point USA
with the annual Student Action Summit or SAS, and you
really had some amazing speakers there, including Senator Ted Cruz,
doctor Ben Carson, Senator Josh Holly, Laura Ingram, just to
name a few. It sounds like it was a great weekend.
(01:31):
It was. It was extraordinary. We had five thousand students
from all across the country, all fifty states represented, and
our sister organization, our Political Arm Turning Point Action, hosted
Ron De Santis and Donald Trump. Donald Trump spoke for
nearly two hours and a person did not move in
the entire room for two hours. Who was something to see?
(01:52):
And then we did a straw pole that was really
interesting and Donald Trump won seventy eight percent of the
vote when the question was asked, who is your preference
for twenty twenty four, But the next question was equally
as interesting. If Trump does not run, who is then
your choice? And Rhonda Santis won eighty three percent of
that vote, And so that really goes to show that
it is Donald Trump's party. But Rhonda Santis has a
(02:15):
major future and regardless of what he does. You know,
some people said, oh De Santis lost, No, Trump won
more than DeSantis losing because eighty three percent as a
second choice, that's unheard of. It's extraordinary. Well, I mean,
my view is that Trump and DeSantis dominate two twenty
four in a way that people don't understand yet that
(02:36):
whoever is number three, and then Mike Pence currently who
comes in you know, like a nine percent, and then
nobody else is above one or two percent, and they
don't get it yet. I mean in the news media house, Trump,
of course, is just a phenomenon who's now been around
long enough that he's an event in his own right.
But DeSantis has done such an amazing job both of
(02:57):
governing Florida and picking the right fights that it seems
to me he's really penetrating as a guy who may
well be for any reason, Trump did not run to Santis,
I think would be the prohibitive front runner. And I
think it says a lot about your organization that you
have that caliber of people showing up and eager to
(03:20):
talk with your folks. Well, thank you. It's been a
lot of work for about a decade. And you know,
I want to say this, this pulls a little different
than most because these are the workers. I mean, you
know how campaigns work. You need the people that are
going to show up at seven am on a Saturday
morning and be willing to knock on doors and put
together yard signs. That's the type of people that show
up at our events, and so it goes to show
(03:41):
the absolute grassroots of the party, not the passive listeners,
but the active participants. They're one hundred percent behind Trump
coming into twenty twenty four, not one hundred percent let
me say seventy eight point seven percent behind Trump. Let's
put it that way, which is still overwhelming, rather extraordinary. Yeah,
so take a minute for our audience and tell us
a turning point USA, which is astonishing achievement on your part. Yeah,
(04:05):
thank you. It's been about ten years of work started
when I was eighteen years old, didn't go to college
and did this actually instead, which actually kind of leads
into part of the thesis of the book. But our
whole premise is that we live in the greatest country
ever to exist in the history of the world, and
we believe we are making a series of decisions through
how we're educating our children or not educating them, I
(04:26):
should say, to go in the wrong direction. And our
mission is to try to restore the American constitutional Republic
through an engaged citizenry, primarily through student engagement and education.
We're on pace to however, one thousand high school chapters,
an extraordinary number. Just this last weekend at our student
Action summit, we had over three hundred new chapter signups
(04:47):
just there alone, and over six hundred and fifty college
campus sign ups, which is a pretty considerable number. So
it speaks for itself. To get five thousand students for
anything in the room is a big accomplishment, let alone
in Tampa, Florida in the summer when it's super expensive
to travel to get kids from all fifty states, that's
a big accomplishment. But the credit goes to our staff,
(05:08):
and God's been so good to us. We feel immensely blessed.
So as you've been building this, you also have a
very close relationship with Praiger University. Explain that, Yeah, I'm
very close with Praiger you and I'm even closer to
Dennis Prager. I have to say, Dennis Prager is a
mentor of mine and is just fabulous. He has taught
me so much. I love his books, and I'll tell
(05:30):
you you know, actually Dennis Prager was the first person
to say what I argue in the book as forcefully
as he did. I always believed it, but someone who
is as educated as Dennis Prager really kind of gave
me the confidence to articulate that. But Prager use a
great partner for us. They do phenomenal work online, some
of the best videos, educational video content, and we're great
(05:52):
partners in this fight for liberty. So when you use
their videos, man, how does that work out? We help
distribute them. So we have millions and millions of followers
on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and so we do
partnerships to help distribute their videos and content. And I
could tell you that some of the top talent at
Prager University comes and speaks at our university campus events
(06:14):
and some of the things we do. And I kind
of make the analogy that Prager University is the Air
Force and we're the Marines. So they're the ones that
kind of come in with the chokunaw and we're the
ones that are kind of going foxhole to foxhole. Both
are necessary to kind of win this culture war. And
so we're honored and touched by that. And the contribution
Dennis Prager is made to my life is enormous. So
(06:34):
one of the things you've done at turning point USA,
is you've developed this Professor watch list where students can
expose the bias on their campsus walk us through that. Yeah,
this used to be a pretty controversial project. I say
used to be because even some people on the right
gave me some criticism when I launched this project back
in twenty sixteen, where effectively we name the names of
(06:57):
some of the most radical faculty members of academia in
the country. And mister speaker, this was best on display
when you saw Senator Holly's back and forth with Professor
Kiera Bridges from UC Berkeley just a couple weeks ago,
where she was basically berating him as the expert witness
that he's transphobic because he does not believe that men
(07:17):
can become pregnant. There's examples of that happening all across
the country. We use factual, third party documentation, local school
student newspapers, video evidence, and look the criterias. This is
we believe if you're a forcefully anti American academic that
is going out of the way to indoctrinate your class,
not educate your class, then you win a place on
our Professor watch list. Some of them consider it to
(07:39):
be a badge of honor. Others find it to be
a little bit less than they love it. But the
idea of the Professor watch List has always been about
information to give students, parents, board members, and donors the
information they need to make informed decisions about what's happening
on university campuses. So is it you experienced it? For example,
students will actually look at the list in terms of
(08:01):
who to avoid, yes and no. It's actually had the
bigger impact with donors to universities, and so we have
a side project of the Professor Watch List called DIVESTU,
which tries to encourage conservative donors to stop giving money
to their alma mater, especially some of these bigger liberal schools.
And so we've actually tracked over one hundred and twenty
six million dollars that we've helped divest from some of
(08:22):
these universities thanks to the Professor watch List. For example,
you know, if a professor will come out to say,
I don't know at a school to Lane that you
might be familiar with, of course joking around and they
come out and they say something radically anti American, you know,
a T Lane downer might say maybe I shouldn't give
that million dollars to the university. Maybe I should direct
it in another place. That's really where we've seen the
(08:43):
biggest success and students. Also, it's helped with some of
their let's say, faculty choices as well. So, as I
understand it, you have seen firsthand college campuses trying to
censor opposing viewpoints, namely you. I mean, I've been told
that in the follow two thousand nineteen, faculty members and
staff at the University of Nevada Reno actually circulated a
(09:04):
petition against Turning Point USA titled quote concerning White Nationalism
on the University of Nevada Reno Campus. What was that
all about? This happens all the time. Thankfully that's a
public school, so they didn't have any sort of legal
ability to shut us down. But this goes to show
the kind of petulance that has infected the American academy.
(09:27):
Higher education should be and used to be a place
of a marketplace of ideas. Let the best ideas win.
But imagine being a college professor and you have a doctorate,
and the best use of your time, you believe, is
circulating a petition saying that we don't want a guest
speaker to come give a ninety minute optional lecture in
a building that really is hard to find on campus
(09:48):
by the way, that you have to wait in line
to go into. But it was amazing about that event
and so many of our events is we can't find
rooms big enough to fit all the students that want
to actually attend our lectures. You know, whether it be
Boulder or UC Berkeley. I speak all across the country
and we do see this pattern. The pattern is there
are a lot of students that want to attend our speeches.
(10:08):
It's just hard to be able to find the physical
rooms to fit them all in there. And so look,
the professors, in some ways they're a little bit of
a distraction. I mean, they obviously have a lot of power,
but we pushed through it. Unfortunately universities such as Cornell
University in Ithaca, New York, they were successful in canceling
our appearance there a couple of years ago. But thankfully
we've kind of found a way to navigate that. But
(10:29):
it doesn't come as a great shock to us, so
as I understand though. Back at the Univation of o
Arino Petition, Kamala Harris was as a presidential can actually
signed the petition. That's right. Yeah, she signed the petition
and she did an event there, and this should have
been a harbinger of things to come. But our event
was much bigger than Kamala Harris's event, despite the fact
(10:49):
it was right on the California border and that she
was a presidential candidate. Our attendants far exceeded hers. So
as that gather, I mean, you mean, you're a famous
person now and you've really become a national figure. But
if a normal, everyday concerting student, I understand that in
a number of these left leaning colleges you really do
face discrimination. What are the kind of reports you get?
(11:09):
I could mention several. Actually one involves Talane. Believe it
or not, you keep coming back to my alma mater here, No,
I do that, you know, only just to make it relevant.
I'll use one you see Berkeley, for example, one of
our students a couple of years ago, guy by the
name of Harrison, was punched in the face and knocked
out cold. You might have remembered. That video went super
viral at the time. And look, I could go through
some of the violence of people that you get, bear
(11:30):
sprayed on campus or physical threats or have the tables overturned.
But it's actually the less sexy news stories that happen
more often, which is students that get graded differently, that
get kicked out of fraternity sororities that get bullied, that
lose friends. That sort of soft power is much more prevalent,
I should say, and I think post is a greater
(11:50):
cultural threat. And what's so remarkable if you kind of
tie it all together with what we are doing at
our Student Actions Summit at Turning Point USA, is you
have five thousand students that are publicly making a declaration
that they want their life to be harder in the
short term. That's an extraordinary thing where they say, I
know the backlash, I know that people are going to be,
you know, treating me differently, but I'm okay with that.
(12:14):
That's a sign that the conservative movement, I think is
strengthening from the bottom up. What I'm impressed with is
not only are you doing this on college campuses, but
you now have a school board watch list that goes
right at the heart of where the teachers Union and
left is trying to change our schools. How has that developed?
It's been a phenomenal project. So it's all about awareness,
(12:35):
so people can find it at Schoolboard watch List dot org.
It's a twenty four seven three sixty five surveillance project
basically where a donor funded it, and we have three
full time people and their full time job is to
look at school board meetings all day long. That's all
they do. They just look at what's being passed, because
who has the time to wait till two am to
look at some of these guys. So, for example, you know,
Loudon County is the one that gets all the notoriety,
(12:57):
but at Scottsdale Unified School District in Arizona, we've that
they were trying to push queer theory and CRT and
being able to have our eyes on it, we then
notify local parents groups and spread the awareness. And so
basically the Schoolboard watch List our goal. By the end
of the year, we'll have seven hundred and fifty school
districts that we have eyes on, that we are monitoring
and that we're publishing. And our whole goal with the
(13:18):
school Board watch List is to be able to have
parents have the information necessary to keep the pressure on
their local government schools. And so I'm a big fan
of charter schools. I'm a big fan of private schools
and homeschooling. But one of my big concerns is that
if we as conservatives build all these new institutions, we're
going to just forget the public schools altogether. I believe
we have to keep the pressure on to reform however
(13:39):
we can, and we can leave no child behind. I
know that saying that phrase puts a bad taste not
of people's mouths, kind of post bush, but it's true.
They're all our fellow countrymen, they're all our fellow citizens,
and I think engagement and involvement in the local school
issue is imperative. I couldn't agree with you more. I
think it's very important for us to recognize that our
decleation independence is that all of us are endowed by
(14:02):
our creator, and we can't turn our back on anybody
who has an endowment from God. I mean, I think
it's a very important reassessment of conservatism to insist that
it has to care about everybody. I do want to
(14:34):
note that your very first book was entitled The Maga Doctrine,
The Only Ideas that Will Win the Future, and that
became a number one Amazon, a New York Times bestseller.
So first of all, I just want to congratulate us,
a guy who's written a fair number of books. I
think it's pretty darn impressive when you get launched from
the New York Times of number one. Well, thank you.
And they did so reluctantly and begrudgingly. And I will
(14:56):
have to say though, I was given a little unfair
advantage because President Trump seemed to like that book a lot,
and he promoted it heavily that week, and so it
was a blowout. But thank you, And that book is
just as applicable today as it was back then when
I did my best to really try to articulate the
philosophical base of Trump is um you wrote a very
similar book, mister speaker. But I liked that term, the
(15:17):
Mega doctrine. It was a playoff of, obviously the Monroe
doctrine in the eighteen twenties that kind of reconfigured hemispheric
geopolitical dynamics. I think that President Trump did something very
similar where I think he reasserted kind of Western civilization
as the ideal for all humanity. And so anyway, it
was a big accomplishment. So thank you for that. Yeah,
that was great, But now your new book has a
(15:39):
much more complicated title, The college Scam. How America's universities
are bankrupting and brainwashing away the future of America's youth.
Very interesting word. How is college a scam? I get
some interesting feedback on this. You know, I'm very pro learning,
and I think everyone decent is or that strives me
decent is, and I'm pro education. What we're seeing though,
(16:02):
if you really dive into the numbers, and I've been
thinking about this for over a decade since starting Turning
Point USA, the numbers are extraordinary. I'll share a couple
of them. For example, forty percent of people that enter
and enrolling college will drop out forty percent. So if
I said, hey, let's go get dinner tonight. Oh, by
the way, you have a forty percent chance of getting
food poisoning, you'd say, wait a second, what kind of
(16:22):
restaurant is this? Not to mention? Then, if they graduate,
over half of all college graduates end up getting their
long term career in a job that does not require
a college degree, and sixty five percent end up getting
a job in a different profession or different field than
their college degree actually was. And so we have this
(16:43):
mounting student loan crisis, heavily subsidized by the American taxpayer.
We have these incredible enormous endowments that are untouched, that
wild tuition continues to go up, and not to mention,
of course, the societal and the cultural cost, which I
spend a fair amount of time in this book making
the argument that almost every bad idea that you now
see being taken seriously by the left was incubated and
(17:06):
perfected and message tested in the American university. And I
make the argument happens on college campuses, does not say
on college campus that goes to corporate boardrooms and the
halls of Congress. And so I believe that, of course
college is necessary for some people, But the vast majority
of young people that are going to college I do
not think should be going. In fact, I think if
they didn't at all, America would be in a much
(17:27):
better place. You know, somebody asked me other day, and
I didn't really have as good an answer as I
should have. How did the slide to this kind of brainwashing,
hypocritical left wing approach? How did this suddenly catalytically come together?
So it's the news media, it's the college campuses, it's
(17:47):
the c suites of the big corporations. Suddenly they all
kind of gelled. What's your theory of that? I have
a couple answers. You know, the first time I ever
heard the name Slinski was when you were running for
president and you accused Obama of being an Olynskyite. And
I was like, who is this guy? I was eighteen
years old in high school. I remember you doing that.
(18:08):
You wrent around and said, this guy's an Olynski. I said,
who the heck is Olinsky? And one of Olynsky's rules,
or one of his tactics, was infiltration. And this is
something that the Left was very good at for years.
It's one of the reasons why I think we're going
to really destroy the left. Is there actually disobeying Olynskyite commandments,
which is Olynski would always say that the true radical
(18:28):
wears a three piece suit and slowly and surely inserts
himself into a pre existing institution, and then that he
is a radical. It's not the person in the street
throwing Molotov cocktails. I think they're kind of breaking Olynsky's rules.
But to answer the question, this combination is really they
have figured out that the left is best at infiltration
(18:49):
and primarily this combination. I think my thesis is something
that people don't talk about enough HR departments. I believe
HR departments could be blamed largely for diversity, equity inclusion,
for wokeism, for the over emphasis on affirmative action, for
the weakening of American corporate culture, and men and the
HR departments are filled with college minded activists that come
(19:12):
in and they see their purpose not as making money
or turning a profit, but putting forward some sort of
social justice agenda that I would be my working theory
not to mention, though they almost all live in harmony,
that their goal is to continue the revolution towards some
form of a utopia. So I mean there's utopianism. I
think in part is buffered and protected and coddled by
(19:34):
the fact that if you look at the ten wealthiest
universities in the US, they collectively have over two hundred
billion dollars in their endowments. If these guys want to
really believe in taxing the rich, maybe they ought to
be the first groups we tax. Yes, So I say
in the book that American colleges have become hedge funds
with a school attached, and they have these massive albatross
(19:58):
of money that is tax free, by the way, and
then now we the American taxpayer, I have to pay
for student loan forgiveness. Why don't we have the actual
institution itself that got the kids into debt, tap into
I don't know, Harvard's fifty six billion dollar endowment to
maybe pay a little bit for the suffering these kids
are now feeling well. And the fact is, having gone
(20:19):
through this whole student loan process and pel grand process,
every time the government puts in more money, the cost
has gone up. If I remember correctly, higher education costs
have risen faster than the cost of healthcare. Yes, that's right,
and there's a couple of reasons for it, because everything
we do with higher education is at war with the
laws of economics, everything from who actually pays to deferred
(20:44):
cost to vetting of the actual person. For example, if
I'm a straight A student from the suburbs of Dallas
and I want to go to University of Texas Austin,
and I took all AP classes, but I want to
take out student loans, I will get the same student
loan interest rate as someone who is maybe a questionable
student that's not very passionate when they want to go
(21:04):
study North African lesbian poetry. And so the issue is
that when you have a model that treats every single
student the same, well, then who's on the hook. Then
the American taxpayer is So you're right. The more the
government has got involved, the more pell grants, the more
loans that have been distributed, the more the cost of
college goes. Because the question really remains, it's the only
(21:24):
operative economics question, why would college ever lower their tuition
because kids are coming in with the backing of the
full faith and credit of the United States government local loans.
This is interesting since the passage of Obamacare, basically there
is not a private student loan market anymore. It's been
completely nationalized. Now. It was on its way, but it
(21:47):
was a provision of Obamacare many people didn't know about.
And it used to be in the seventies, eighties, or
nineties you had to go to a local community bank.
You had to look a banker in the eye. They
asked for your tests, They asked, hey, how are you
going to pay this off? What are you studying? That
ask for your scores your raids. Now you can go
forty five thousand dollars in debt in fifteen minutes or
lass at Fastisa dot gov. I'm curious when you look
(22:23):
at the fights here in the middle of and you
look at the scale of what you're taking on, would
you call yourself an optimist or a pessimist? You know,
I get asked this question a lot. I force myself
into optimism. I have to or else why would I
be doing all of this right? But here's what the
exciting moment is that I know for certain that our
defeat is not a guarantee, and that's what gives me hope.
(22:47):
And so people ask me, Charlie, you optimistic or pessimistic.
If I were to say I was pessimistic, then everyone
listening would say, oh, I shouldn't do anything because Charlie
said we're gonna lose. If I said I was nothing
but optimistic, people say I have to do anything because
Charlie thinks we're gonna win. I think that it's to
be determined. It's solely and completely on our action, our dedication.
(23:07):
But I will say there is so much fight left
in the American people. I think that there is a
vast underestimation of how hard the normal, everyday American is
willing to fight for this country. That's my greatest source
of optimism. So from your standpoint, patriotism is at the
core of all this. Yes, it's love of country. You know.
(23:29):
I went on a very liberal podcast recently and they
laughed at me because they couldn't believe what I said.
They said, what should really the goal of civic's education be?
I said, gratitude. A nation that does not have gratitude
for the sacrifice is made prior to the existence of
the structure of the country you're living in, then why
wouldn't you want to revolutionize it? And so patriotism is
(23:49):
at its core. But you cannot be patriotic if you
are not thankful. And we live in the greatest nation
ever to exist in the history of the world. And
one of my goals is to try to educate as
many students as possibly thankful and then willing to commit
to do something about it. So from your standpoint, may
you now have a national organization, you have a national reputation,
You've been very successful with books. How do you win
(24:13):
this fight? I just want to play my role, you know,
it's really interesting. You mentioned that I gave the opening
speech at the Student Action Summit and I challenge the
audience to reframe how you view yourself in America. And
this is very provocative, but I believe we must now
think as if we are dissidents in our own country,
that the Left is now in invading, occupying force, and
(24:36):
that we have to think of ourselves is how do
you decouple an invasion or an occupation? And that means
we have to outlast them. We have to outthink them,
we have to outwork them, we have to outcreate them.
We have to use humor, we have to use innovation.
But let's be honest. Though they outnumber us just with
how many institutions they control, we outnumber them with people.
(24:59):
And we have the truth, and we have I think
the greatest country ever to exist. That's a fifty fifty fight.
Who knows how it's going to end up, but I'll
tell you, when you're around five thousand kids for a
couple of days and they're dedicated and they're fired up,
they're like, I'm gonna do whatever it takes. We got
a lot more fight in us than I think the
Left even realizes. I can't quite imagine how much energy
(25:20):
five thousand students gathered from the whole country coming together
and meet each other. I mean, the level of just
social interaction and excitement that must be unbelievable. It's on fire,
it's electric, you know. I always get a kick out
of President Trump when he comes to our events. He says,
how many people? How big is the crowd? I said,
it's huge, I said, but it's not about the number.
I said, mister President, I'll due respect, the decibel per
(25:43):
person at our event is going to be much more
than a MAGA rally. And afterwards he says, that's the
loudest crowd. I said, yeah, they're seventeen eighteen years old.
For example, you got a guy in the front row.
He goes to Brown. He doesn't get a chance to
scream about his politics very often, right, maybe get screamed at.
And so the energy is electric, it's invigorating. And I
think there's something really profound and special happening in this country,
(26:05):
and the media's missing it. They're intentionally missing it. It
will materialize in the next couple elections, and I think
in the next ten years you're going to see the
fruit of this movement in more ways than one. Do
you now have both a college campus approach with all
these students, you also have sort of watching the school boards.
(26:26):
Would it be your hope to literally ultimately be on
every single campus in the country. Yeah. So there's twenty
seven thousand high schools across the country. And now this
drives my team nuts when I say this, because we're
on pace for a thousand high school chapters. And I said, well,
what's our plan to get to ten thousand? Why not?
What's our plan to get to fifteen thousand? And we
have to think bigger. There's no reason why we can't
(26:47):
think the way the left did. Now, we'll get censored
and we'll get pushed back, but there is this massive
untapped potential. And this is kind of one of the
laws of economics that Milton Freeman used to talk about,
which is it's not a fixed And this was one
of the things that people told me when I first
started turning point Charlie, every young conservative has already been identified,
this has all been done before. You can actually create more,
(27:10):
and you can persuade people, and you can grow the
pie and get people that otherwise we're not involved involved
and so you could grow your ranks. And so our
goal right now is a thousand high school chapters. We're
going to hit it soon and then five thousand and
ten thousand, and we'll see where we go next. Do
you find it harder to grow chapters, for example, at
historically black campuses, that's very tough. Yeah, We've tried a lot.
(27:34):
We have some amazing Turning Point USA leaders there. Now,
I will say this, schools that are predominantly Latino are
some of our most vibrant and exciting chapters. For example,
Florida International University in Miami is one of our strongest
Turning Point USA chapters in the country. University of Texas
El Paso u TEP one of the largest chapters in
the country. HBCUs far more difficult. There is a cultural
(27:57):
expectation that you will be at best moderate but almost
a card carrying liberal democrat. I agree with you. In
the data, I'm saying something has happened in the Latino
culture where they have reached a conclusion that the left
is bad for them. That's right, and I think it's
a little different than how most people are observing it.
(28:19):
I think social issues are what's driving it. I really do,
in particular the destruction of the traditional archetype of the
strong male and of the motherly female that is embedded
in Latino culture. That is a fundamental value of a
strong family. So when they hear someone that gets up
on Capitol Hill and says they think men can become pregnant,
(28:42):
as you said on my program, New that's just weird.
In fact, I mean beyond weird. But a Latino came
up to me and he said something incredible, a young
Latino activist. He said, Charlie, when I hear a white
liberal tell me men can become pregnant, I feel like
it's Christopher Columbus bringing poison blankets to us. I said,
that's a little aggressive, but that's the way they look
(29:03):
at it, white woke imperialism. Well, and then when you
think about it, in that particular culture, to talk about
birthing persons instead of mothers is a violation of the
entire culture. And not only that, the language. I mean,
in Spanish language, they conjugate verbs of masculine and feminine.
I mean, just to say that all genders are the same.
(29:24):
Good luck, you know, Manhattan liberals. I think there's there's
something so historical. I believe in the next five years,
if we don't massively screw it up, Hispanics will be
a predominantly Republican voting blood. Oh. I think that's right,
And I have to say that Colesto won't let me
do it, but I want to actually do an alternative
version of Genesis in which God invents man and woman,
(29:49):
and then he invents sort of man and sort of woman,
and then he goes through like the sixty two different pronouns,
and the poor snake gets exhausted carrying apples around to
all of the these various strange people and finally says
enough already. Can we just go back to man and woman? Yeah,
that's right. That would definitely get people's attention. And I'll
tell you that you look at kind of the Hispanic
(30:10):
culture being predominantly Catholic and Christian, this idea of post
birth abortion, widespread transgenderism, it is moving the dial, not
to mention the small business culture, inflation and all that.
So you know, it's amazing, mister speaker, at our event,
our turning point, you'll say, event, I gotta tell you
it was at least twenty to thirty percent Hispanic Asian,
(30:31):
you know Nicaraguin. Yeah, why are the same strengths oment
to the faith and freedom? Big meeting about three thousand people,
a thousand and we're Latino. I mean, it was just
an astonishing turnout. Yes, and it's happening at every level
of the socioeconomic ladder. And it's the exact opposite. They
told us Donald Trump would be the death of the
Republican Party and that it would only be white men,
(30:54):
and it's actually more diverse than ever. Yeah, this a
remarkable time. I want to thank you for joining me.
As you know, I'm a big fan of yours. I
think what you're achieving is truly historic. You're one of
the major full chromos on which this culture will save itself.
And I think your new book, The College Scam, How
America's universities are bankrupting and brainwashing away the future of
(31:16):
America's youth. It's a must read for anyone concerned about
what is happening on our college campuses, and for anyone
who'd like to find out more about Turning Point USA.
You can go to TPUSA dot com and we will
have on our show page to how to buy the book.
So I'm delighted that you would take time to be
with this. I always love doing your show and I
(31:36):
look forward to being with you again. Thank you, mister speaker.
One last note, try to not give money to Amazon.
College Scam dot Com goes straight there. Thank you so much,
mister speaker. We appreciate it. Thank you to my guests,
Charlie Kirk. You can get a link to buy his
new book to College Scam on our show page at
newtsworld dot com. Newts World is produced by Getting the
(31:58):
Street sixty and Hard Media. Our executive producer is Garnsey Sloan,
our producer is Rebecca Howe, and our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
Special thanks to the team at Gingridge three sixty. If
you've been enjoying news World, I hope you'll go to
Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and
(32:21):
give us a review so others can learn what it's
all about. Right now, listeners of news World can sign
up from my three free weekly columns at gingwire dot
com slash newsletter. I'm newt Gingrich. This is news World
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