Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Morning, Michae Glin Dragon in my opinion that Charlie kirk
assassination was a pro I don't think they'll ever catch
this guy. Charlie changed a lot of people's votes into Conservatives.
The guy was powerful, and they could have taken this
guy out anywhere, and they didn't publicly to make an
(00:21):
example of him. So I think we're all in trouble
with our republican democracy right now.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It probably seems.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
That way, and I know that I've felt that way
for some time, and it may seem disrespectful, but I
certainly don't mean it to be disrespectful. But Charlie's assassination,
coming on the heels of coming just.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Before this.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
National day of Remembrance of nine to eleven, actually reinvigorates me.
It actually, as I you know, I as I skimmed
through the journal.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And thought about some of the things that I've read.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Are some of the things that I had written based
on my experiences, those notes made cotemporaneous with those days.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
One thing that I find.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Interesting is this particular paragraph written on September nineteen, two
thousand and one.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
In several.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
You know, let me back, let me be, let me
really open the kimono here for a moment on September nineteen,
two thousand and one. I was going to skip the
first paragraph, but you know what, no, I want you
to feel the raw feelings.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
That I had.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
I am so exhausted tonight that I really just could
not talk to Tamar because all I wanted to do
was just sit down and cry. I tried to call Blank,
our friend for so many years, but I wasn't able
to find her. Instead, I talked to another friend of mine, who,
(02:29):
if he was in town right now, would be listening,
and I just broke down. Tamar can't know how tired
and worried I am, because I can't have her worrying
or taking off to show up here. It's just too dangerous.
In several of the briefings today, I'm beginning to understand
(02:51):
just how serious the situation is across the entire world.
I am convinced that when and if we retaliate against
the terrorists, they will immediately start their second phase of
attacks and incidents, inflicting psychological terror and destroying this country
sense of security. Of course, that will ultimately lead to
(03:11):
my greatest fear that we will sacrifice liberty for security
We're just too fat and lazy. The President has asked
me to tare a task force to coordinate the entire
federal government's domestic response to any future terrorist incidents against
us here. It's an awesome responsibility, and I'm honored by
(03:37):
the Trustee has put in my skills.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It was a really.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Incredible intense part of my life. And even then twenty
four years ago, I was saying then what I'm saying
now that as all of these attacks, and when I
say attacks, I know that in the context of today,
we tend to think solely about terrorist attacks. And when
(04:10):
I wrote that, that was my fear that they would
start these terrorist attacks. Indeed, that may be some of
what's going on. I don't put anything off the table,
and of course that paragraph ends that with my of course,
that would ultimately lead to my greatest fear that we
(04:30):
will sacrifice liberty for security is we're just too fat
and lazy. How many times have you heard me say
that over the past twenty years on radio. It's it's
time that we recognize that we have been under attack.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Since with Roe Wilson.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Progressive politicians, domestic enemies and foreign enemies.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Evil as an enemy.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Has been attacking this country for decades, longer probably, but
certainly in my lifetime. For decades and shortly prior to
my lifetime, this country has been under attack. And the
reason is we personify, we exemplify what so many people
(05:37):
in the world yearn for, crave, and we've shown them
that we can do it. But the evil, the evil
that exists in the world sees freedom and liberty as
an anathema to their ability to control the souls, the lives,
(06:01):
the very well being of individuals, and we're the opposite
of that. The foundational principles of this nation is, as
I say all the time, encompassed in the concept of
individual liberty and individual's freedom. And that's what's been under attack,
(06:25):
whether it's domestic political enemies, whether it's international foreign enemies,
whether it is just that ephemeral evil that exists in
many men's hearts and that then becomes exposed by their
deeds or becomes exposed. You know, Satan is very sly,
(06:52):
and Satan takes evil, couches it in things that for
don thinking people.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Seem very very wonderful.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
It's this concept that I have that we have advocated
our compassion to the government.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
That is evil.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
The government is inherently incapable of being compassionate. And when
we say that, and I don't care, I do not
care what your religious belief is. But when you say that, oh,
I'm too busy, or I don't have enough money, or
(07:40):
I can't spare a dime, or I can't do this,
or I can't do that, so I want It's not
even that you want your church to do it or
your synagogue to do it. It's not even that you want
some charitable organization to do it. You want the freaking
government to do it. We are to blame for that,
(08:03):
and we have allowed that to happen. Yes, we have
little victories here and there, and when those victories occur,
we tend to slouch. Well, we won that battle, so
we'll wait till the next big battle shows up. And
(08:25):
I think many people woke up this morning thinking that, oh,
now it's time for the battle again. I've got news
for you. The battle never stopped. The battle in my
life started long before I even went to college. Not
in my battle, fortunately for me, because of my agent
(08:47):
where I grew up in the education that I got
in a government school but was taught by teachers that
embodied the principles of individual liberty and freedom, that believed
in the founding documents, that believed in the basic values
of this country. And that's who taught me. In addition
to my parents, to my relatives, to my grandparents, to
(09:11):
my in.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Laws, all of that circle around me.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Instilled in me that love of freedom. So the battle,
insofar as I'm concerned, has been this ongoing battle. I
think some people, not necessarily you, but I think some
people only get riled up when something happens. Okay, well,
(09:44):
if that's the case, then if when something happens, then
something happened yesterday, actually something happened twenty four years ago
today on this date.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
It was a Tuesday, not a Thursday.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
And already I sense, and maybe it's because of Charlie's
assassination yesterday, but I already sense, just as I sense
with the E Day or VJ Day or the Japanese
surrendering on you know, to MacArthur or Pearl Harbor, or
(10:28):
any other epical point in our history. I already sense that,
for example, nine to eleven is becoming tricked, is becoming Yeah,
because I looked up and now they're not doing it currently.
(10:51):
But and this is why I refuse to do it today.
I made up my mind several days ago, long before
Charlie got assassinated. I made up my mind that I
was not going to play any audio whatsoever today of
any of the sites or sounds or anything else, the
news reports or anything of nine to eleven, because that's
(11:12):
become a crutch. That's become and that's become a crutch
because that allows us to, for a very brief moment,
let those emotions swell up in us. I'm not gonna
(11:33):
be a part of that. Instead, I want to challenge
you intellectually. I don't want to challenge you with a
sound bite. I don't want to challenge you with the
horrors of the sounds.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Of that day, which I can. I can.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I don't even have to I was gonna say, I can.
I can go out here and lay down on this
couch outside the studio, and I can close my eyes
and I can relive and hear all of those sounds
of that day, of down the mountain, of trying to
get onto the climbing up the rope to get onto
the airplane, of crawling into the trough, listening to the
cackle of ATC basically military ATC all talking about we've
(12:14):
cleared this sector, we've cleared that sector. I can replay
that all in my head again, and I'm sure you
can play and see sights and here sounds in your
head of that day. Also, I don't want to be
lazy like that. We've internalized it. What have we acted
(12:37):
on it? Charlie Kirk personified what Now. I'm an old fart.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I've still got a.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Lot of energy. I've got a lot of energy. I've
got a lot of I've got a you know, depending
on my DNA and my jeans, I've got a lot.
I've got decades left. Charlie had even more and more
energy than some of us old boomers. Do you know
(13:18):
what he did? He did what I preach. He took
my preaching and lived it. And that was engagement, something
that I talk about to the point that I imagine some
of you are tired of me hearing hearing me talk
about it. And that is Charlie. Now granted he got
(13:43):
he he You know, we often look at think about
fed X. Fred Smith died recently. Fed X started with
one plane, one jet, and I forget was it Dallas, Houston.
I forget, but it was that was it. I'm gonna
(14:04):
fly packages from Houston Dallas back and forth. Look at
fed X today, we only tend to think of fed
X as what we see today. And I think many
of us say, well, gee whiz, I'd like to be
the next Fred Smith, and I'd like to create the
next fed X and have it to be this global,
(14:26):
international behemoth that you know, turns up profit, makes a
lot of money for shareholders and allows me to get
something from halfway around the world the next day at
an amazingly cheap price. We forget that that behemoth that
we see today started with one plane flying between Houston
(14:51):
and Dallas or wherever it was. It doesn't mean difference.
It was it was one flight. And then when he
made enough money in is able to you know, live
off peanut butter and crackers for a while, then let's
save that money and let's get a second plane, and
let's find a second route. And then you know, maybe
a year later, let's find another route. And it is
(15:13):
it is what I preach to you constantly, step by step,
individual by individual, one person at a time. And I
know that's frustrating to you. But that's the entrepreneurial spirit.
The entrepreneurial spirit is that I've got an idea, and
if I can convince one person of that idea, that is,
(15:39):
it's more than most other people have done. Charlie was
living what I preach. Now I think I live what
I preach too, but I get to do it behind
a microphone, and I get to do it, and I
know what my numbers are, both for the broadcast and
for the podcast, and so I know that in terms
(16:02):
of what I do every single day, for six days
a week, that my rally is as large, if not larger,
than Charlie's. Charlie's over here is in terms of the
visuals is starkly different than mine, because he sees and
(16:25):
has those visuals of all of those.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
People at those rallies.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
But we forget it wasn't always that way. Charlie started
with the idea, just the idea that he wanted to
do something like that. So he found a couple of
buddies and they started in high school, and then they
built that, upon built that and built that. Again entrepreneurial spirit,
(16:54):
but in the political realm, he did for you what
I do on radio and he was incredibly successful in
So if you think that what I preached, so what
I encourage you to do is a waste of your time,
(17:16):
then you de integrate the memory of Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
There are a lot of great tributes on X for
Charlie Kirk. A few of the notable ones would be
Donald Trump Junior, JD Vance and Benny Johnson. You get
to see a side of Charlie that we never saw
as the average person. Jd Vance was pretty amazing about
(17:44):
how Charlie reached out to him after an event, helped
him when he decided to run for a sender. Just
check it out.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
On the text line Gouber number fifteen seventy three asks
I wonder if one of these inspirations was Rush.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
Yes, I know they desperately want Trump gone, and I
know that they desperately want it codified that Trump cannot
run again, because make no mistake, they remain scared to
death of you, and they remain scared to death of Trump.
Trump's seventy five million, eighty million votes.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
And I'm going to.
Speaker 6 (18:26):
Tell you you're not going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Even if Trump does. You're not.
Speaker 7 (18:33):
They can't separate you from Trump and More importantly, they
can't separate you from the ideas. They can't separate you
from MAGA, They can't separate you from make America Great Again,
which I think remains one of our big campaign strength
(18:56):
going forward. They believe that they can they can destroy
this bond that exists between you and Trump if they
somehow make Trump look bad, make Trump look like a reprobate,
embarrass you about Trump. They can't do it because you
came before Trump.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
That's just one. Charlie was a rush baby.
Speaker 6 (19:23):
Do you know that they brought Charlie Kirk to the
golf course to meet me about a month ago. He
was in town to set up this turning Point thing,
and they brought him to the golf course to meet me.
It was during We're getting ready for a eight forty
five am start, and they brought him out while I
was getting ready to go to the range loosen up,
(19:44):
and I spoke with him for about a half hour,
and he told me how he grew up in a
home where my program was on all the time. He
was just effusively complimentary to me, which I of course
understood and.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Told him he's very wise, his family is very wise.
He chuckled. He laughed.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
This is the kind of.
Speaker 6 (20:07):
Guy that you can see really becoming big in politics
as he gets older. He just has the kind that
carries the person out of the charisma. You may think
this sounds weird, but I remember when Bill Clinton became president.
(20:29):
There were all of these stories about Bill Clinton at
Oxford and Bill Clinton at Yale, and Bill Clinton here
and all these people who went to school with him.
There were a story after story after story where people
were saying that they just knew Bill Clinton was going
to be president someday in college. He just had that
kind of ambition and he impressed people. And I'm telling
(20:51):
you that people say the same things about about Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Saying the same things about Charlie Kirk. Yes, RuSHA was
a great fluence on Charlie Kirk. And what was it
about rush? Rush always believed in the country, He believed
in the founding principles, He believed in the Great American experiment,
(21:20):
that above all else, we were Regan's shining city on
the Hill, and that we were exceptional. And I know
that phrase has gone sour for many people, But I
think it's gone sour for many people because they don't
understand what American exceptionalism is. It is not that we
(21:44):
are somehow better than anybody else. It is that this
system of government, the Founding Documents, and the construct under
which we self govern ourselves is exceptional in world history,
in the history of mankind, more so than the Greeks,
(22:08):
or the Romans or anybody else. And next year we
will survive for two hundred and fifty years. And I believe,
as I believe that Rush believed, we can survive for
another two hundred and fifty years. But that requires all
(22:29):
of us being a fred Smith and not seeing the
FedEx that we see today, but the FedEx that fred
Smith saw when he had one plane, or that the
Founding father saw as a country as a form of government.
(22:53):
When the British Red Coats were trying to assassinate them,
had to because they didn't have social media. They didn't
have x Facebook, they didn't have TikTok, they didn't had
any of that crap. They had pamphlets, they had boasters,
they had word of mouth. What's more effective in your life?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Now?
Speaker 3 (23:21):
If you tell me that it's something you read on X,
I'm going to slap the.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
S word out of them.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
But if you tell me that it's a conversation that
you had with an individual, or that it was something
that I said, or that some other talk show hosts
said on air that caused you to do a double
take and stop and think about that for a moment
(23:52):
and realize, oh, yeah, that's what I think too. Or
I've always believed that I've never known quite how to
say it, And now you've gone and repeated that elsewhere
to a family member, a spouse, a friend, a coworker,
or whatever. And maybe you know when you I think
(24:19):
everybody's a salesman one way or another, but I've never
had a quote sales job. I can't take the rejection
when you go call on twenty people hoping that one
person takes the bait, or that one person expresses an interest,
(24:43):
or one person at least says to you, make your pitch.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
That's what they live on.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
One out of twenty, or you know, whatever the number
may be. But so many people get caught up in
the idea of I can't make these wholesale changes all
at once. Seventeen seventy six to seventeen eighty nine. One
(25:15):
of those two dates the Declaration of independence, and then
not until seventeen eighty nine is the Constitution finally ratified.
How frustrating do you think the Founding Father's got during
that timeline. How many of them at some point wanted
(25:36):
to give up? How many of them, you know, thought
to themselves, this is futile, but they kept They kept going,
just as a salesperson keeps going. You are a salesperson.
You are you have a belief, you have a deeply
(25:58):
held belief about the freedoms that are an inherent part
of this nation, and you know that they're being attacked
domestically and.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Forum.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yet I'm not really asking for much. I'm not asking
you to put together an organization. I'm not asking you
to be a Charlie Kirk in the sense of, you know,
Bill exact quit thing.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
I'm not asking you to be a Charlie Kirk in
the sense of having the rally that you saw yesterday
with those thousands of students gathered at that Utah University.
That's not where Charlie started. Charlie didn't start where he ended.
Charlie started back with going to an individual with an idea,
(26:59):
and well, actually even before that, it started when he
was in high school, and what he wanted to do
was he wanted to spread the gospel, if you will,
the gospel of freedom and liberty, the gospel of conservatism,
and the gospel of Christianity too. And then he took that,
(27:22):
got a group together, forced his way by sheer will
of power, to finally get a few media outlets to
have him on to talk about you know, a you know,
a cookie drive they were having to raise money for
a particular issue, and he extrapolates that into getting into
(27:47):
the next interview and then the next interview. But nobody
remembers all of that. Nobody remembers it because all they
know is because we again, we have our blinders on.
And while I do believe we should live in the moment,
living in the moment doesn't mean that you ignore the history. Yeah,
(28:12):
Rush Limbaugh, he was a rush baby. So think about
the impact that Rush had on one individual that today
we mourn because whether you knew him personally or not,
you saw what he was doing and you admired it,
and you wanted to replicate it, and you and it
(28:33):
gave you hope for younger generations.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
Why Brownie, I watched two people slump over and die
this week on the internets.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I'm mad as hell. It's time we fight back.
Speaker 8 (28:48):
This is a war. No laugh today, CBS News this morning,
And as Tony men said, not every one took to
his words or his rhetoric.
Speaker 9 (29:02):
You know, at times they were offensive to specific communities.
But with that said, this is not the time to
focus on that. We are focused on this tragedy. Speaking
of this tragedy, is this a moment for your party
to reflect on political violence? Is it a moment for
us to think about the responsibility of our political leaders
(29:23):
and their voices and what it does to the masses
as they get lost in misinformation or disinformation that turns
in and spills into political right. I say both parties.
Speaker 10 (29:35):
I don't even say parties, I say a nation. Okay,
if there's a moment in better we want to look to.
And I looked back and I watched this again.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
When Robert F. Kennedy is running.
Speaker 10 (29:46):
He's in Indianapolis and he just got the news that
Martin Luther King was killed and he has to tell
the crowd because we don't have social media at that time,
and it was remarkable the words he said. He said,
we have to ask as a nation, who are we
and how do we want to move forward. We have
watched this political attack on both sides. We've watched what
(30:08):
happened in Minnesota. We watched what happened to President Trump.
We've watched this on both sides. This is not a
question about parties. This is a question about nations. We
cannot normalize this. But Charlie was not elected. Charlie was
not doing something where you would sit there and one
party say something wrong. He was honoring. He was doing
it on a college where ideas this is what happened
(30:31):
in the sixties. This is a moment in time for
this nation to take this time to actually make a
question about all of that.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
We don't want to go back to the sixties. We don't.
Speaker 9 (30:40):
That was a more violent period than people recall.
Speaker 10 (30:43):
We could talk about the city.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Interesting that Nate burleson that host starts out by essentially
blaming lecturing Republicans to moderate their language and accept responsibility
for Charlie's death. No, I don't think so, that's not
how it works. But then Speaker McCarthy actually makes a
good point, and that is what do we do as
(31:07):
a nation? Well, that gets me right, back to where
I've been from the very beginning, and that is each
of us, individually, with your anger, with your hate, with
your sadness, with all of the range of emotions that
everybody has. You prepare for the worst, and you get
(31:36):
ready to do your part, whatever that part may be.
It doesn't make any difference. But be a Charlie Kirk.
He didn't have a college degree. He dropped out of
college to start turning point USA. So, as many people
have said before me, let this be a turning point
(32:01):
of all days. September eleventh. We should have been another
tourney