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September 10, 2026 • 32 mins

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Lock and load.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Michael Berry Show is on the air.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
He built Turning Point USA from a two-man startup into
an $ 85 million youth political machine. Became one of the
most listened to voices in America. A kid from Prospect Heights, Illinois.
Eagle Scout. Turned down by West Point. One semester of
community college and no degree. And he'd tell you so himself,

(00:35):
standing at a folding table in the middle of a
hostile campus, handing the microphone to the loudest 19-year-old in
the crowd. 2,000 chapters, three hours of live radio a day,
three quarters of a million downloads a day. By 2021,
he wasn't only building campus chapters. He was building Turning

(00:56):
Point Faith, taking the whole operation into the churches because
he decided the country's trouble was never really political. He
said we were in a constitutional crisis for one reason.
We were no longer a Christian nation. And every Friday night,
the phone went off until sundown Saturday. The rest of
the week belonged to the country. That day belonged to

(01:20):
his wife and his two babies. A hundred thousand people
came to his memorial. It looked less like a funeral
than a worship service. In the week after his death,
32,000 young people asked to start a chapter. Today, his
college chapters have nearly tripled. His high school clubs are
up almost 600%. And this Sunday, the movement he left

(01:42):
behind is asking Christians across America to do one thing.
Bring somebody to church. Charlie Kirk was assassinated one year
ago today.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
What did I.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
See Coming for to.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
Carry me home Band of angels Coming after me Coming
for to carry me home Swing low Swing low Sweet
chariot Coming for to carry me home Swing low Swing
low Sweet chariot Coming for.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
To carry me home.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
I would like on the show today to talk about
Charlie Kirk. It was a year ago that he was assassinated.

Speaker 5 (02:54):
And I would like to talk about the midterm convention
and the incredible success that yesterday was on so many levels.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
I think you know me well enough to know that
I'm not going to say that unless I believe it
to be true. It was an incredible success. But to
put this into perspective, this was Rush Limbaugh several years ago.
Talking about Charlie Kirk, obviously this is before Charlie Kirk

(03:28):
passed because Rush died before Charlie passed. But he's talking
about a very young Charlie Kirk here. I don't want
to jinx him. But I'm just going to tell you.

Speaker 6 (03:40):
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 I spoke with
him for about a half hour. This is the kind
of guy.
That you can see really becoming big in politics as

(04:02):
he gets older.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
It just has the courage, the personality, the charisma. I.

Speaker 6 (04:09):
You may think this sounds weird, but I remember when
Bill Clinton became president, 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 in a way that he could tell you that
people are saying the same things about about Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
This is President Trump talking about Charlie Kirk last night.
Number 14. Number 14. One year ago tomorrow, a far.

Speaker 8 (04:44):
Left extremist assassinated my great friend and conservative voice, Charlie Kirk,
because Charlie Kirk spoke the truth. What shocked millions of
American was not only the fact that Charlie was murdered
as bad as it was, but also how many. people

(05:05):
made an excuse for it or cheered for it. They
were cheering.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Some people, sick people.

Speaker 8 (05:10):
For a brief moment, the mask came off the radical
left and.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
You saw what they were really all about.

Speaker 8 (05:17):
And now those same people are trying to get power
over you in this election. And they are all voting Democrat. OK,
they're all voting, every one of them. And you can't
let it happen. We will not let them win. And
in Charlie's honor, I just want to Say we love you, Charlie,
and Erica is here someplace.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Erica, where is Erica? It's an amazing life. You know,
we spent a lot of time thinking about the show
this week, and this evening we'll focus, in fact, the
entirety of the second hour, we will focus on Charlie
Kirk and his legacy, so I won't spend as much

(05:59):
time on it this morning. But I spoke to a
Turning Point USA event at the request of Ken Paxton,
whose daughter works for she's an organizer for Turning Point.
And this was after his after Charlie had been assassinated.
And there was a lot of excitement for Turning Point.

(06:21):
And I turn down speeches almost always now. But I
did that speech and I don't know why. And I'm there.
And I'm looking out over the crowd, and it's a
bunch of high schoolers. And their parents are back in
the back. And they are excited about patriotism and goodness
and our country and our values and how great we

(06:45):
can be and how wonderful we can be. And I thought,
you know, one man did this. He was 31 years old.
I had done nothing by the age of 31. In comparison,
I've done nothing at all. And who has? At 31
years old, he had already accomplished all of this. And

(07:06):
it lives on and will live on in so many
people whose lives are changed. That's not political. That's evangelical.
That's incredible. That is amazing. Living about quite as many
years as Christ. I don't think he's Jesus Christ. Don't worry.
Don't worry. But he did set off a movement. And

(07:29):
it didn't change the left. I think that's what a
lot of folks hoped. The left would change their ways
after this. It didn't change the left. It did change
our people. A lot of people got engaged. A lot
of people got involved. And not just politically, but personally.
Their Christian faith. Wow, what a legacy. Michael Berry Show.

(07:58):
I don't know Dave Weigel well. I had dinner with him.
There were six of us, and we were introduced in 2016.
And they were very interested in why I was a
Cruz guy instead of a Trump guy, but it was
put together as a social evening.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
And.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Dave Weigel was a big deal in media at the time.
He was he was with The Washington Post. He was
doing TV hits. He is a left leaning but unadmitted Democrat.
And the political class read him. I was uncertain about
spending time with him because what will happen is that

(08:45):
I'll get friendly. And when I get friendly with people,
I jab. I say what would be considered inappropriate things
if they were posted. And I'm not talking about the N-word.
I'm talking about I kid with people. I fuss at people.
I joke with people. That's my nature. And you've got
to be careful because someone like that will lure you in.

(09:06):
Andrew Kaczynski and I got to be pretty good friends,
but I was very careful at all times that you
can't say anything that he's the CNN investigative reporter that
you wouldn't want repeated. And I say all that to
say this. Dave Weigel is very left-leaning. He is everything

(09:26):
you would hate about what a Washington Post reporter is.
He's not there anymore. He was a columnist at the time.
And he was being interviewed yesterday. And understand who I'm
talking about saying this. This would be like Hillary Clinton
saying this. They said, what do you think of the
midterm convention? And he said, well... It's not the belly

(09:48):
flop the Democrats were hoping for. Whatever comes out of
this convention, if it's covered, if it's watched, if it's
talked about, it's either going to give Republicans a bump,
which is why you do it, or it's going to
be the example, if the Democrats have it, of Republicans

(10:09):
are out of gas, they have no ideas, they're crazy.
This is why the state convention of the Democrats earlier
this year was not televised. was because in order to
accommodate their whack job base, the people who believe we're
standing on stolen land, the BLM, the transgender, the transition,

(10:29):
the kids, the God is binary, the rainbow flag, God is,
Jesus was homo. I mean, there's all this coalition that
they have to pull together under one big tent, they
love to say. The socialists, the communists, they don't want,
They don't want the normies out in the suburbs because
your wife, if she saw that, wouldn't be worried about
passing anymore. She'd be worried about them freaks. And so

(10:52):
they kept that tamp down. So for Trump to push
for a very public midterm convention. That's riverboat gambler stuff, right?
You better get it right. You better get it right.
And Dave Weigel said, this is not the belly flop
the Democrats were. That's as big an endorsement you're going
to get from Dave Weigel as is possible. That's saying

(11:16):
the Republicans are hitting a home run. The best description
of the upcoming election. Stop worrying about Ken Paxton and
everything nasty. This is a guy in Tallarico who is
such a freak, would do so much damage to everything
you hold dear, including your own child, that that's the
focal point. And this was Brandon Gill, young congressman, at

(11:40):
the convention last night. I think he laid it out
in such perfect terms that this is the clip of
the night.

Speaker 7 (11:48):
This election is very clear. It's the mainstream versus the extreme.
Because there's another political movement in our country right now
that doesn't believe that America.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Is or ever was great.

Speaker 7 (12:11):
They sometimes call themselves socialists. Some even call themselves communists.
But most of them simply go by Democrats. They're the
ones who will tell you that your love for America
is nothing but bigotry, that our heritage is rooted in

(12:31):
white supremacy, and that your Christian faith is patriarchal and
needs to be dismantled.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
That's extreme.

Speaker 7 (12:43):
They're the people like Democrat congressional nominee, Daria Eliza Chevalier,
who tweeted, quote, I forgot to get napkins, so I
just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.
And later said, quote, this country is a effing disgrace.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
That's extreme.

Speaker 7 (13:12):
They're people like Democrat congressional nominee Flair Valdez, who described
American foreign policy as one of, quote, white supremacy and
capitalist exploitation.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
That's extreme.

Speaker 7 (13:28):
And here in Texas, we have James. God is non-binary.
There are six genders. We need to dismantle capitalism, Tallarico.
It's somebody who will hollow out your most deeply held
Christian faith and wear it like.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
A skin suit. That's extreme.

Speaker 7 (13:54):
And now as we near the 25th anniversary of 9-11,
Democrats are nominating Abdulrahman Mohammed El-Sayed. An extremist who sympathized
with terrorists and who campaigned with a man who says
America deserved 9-11. That's extreme and deplorable. Now we have

(14:20):
to admit that every party has their crazies. The difference
is that the Democrat Party is nominating theirs for Congress.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
It's true.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
This is a question that faces America. Which direction do
you want to go? In past elections, we've talked about
moving over to the middle of the lane or the
side of the lane. Now we're talking about a direction
of going that is contrary to everything we've ever held true.

(14:58):
And this isn't just coming from me. When John Fetterman,
a Democrat, does the introduction for McCormick last night, the
other Pennsylvania Senator, and talks about the steel mill behind
him and President Trump supporting that. There are Democrats, not many,
who are stepping up and saying, if we don't stand

(15:18):
up boldly and speak out about the takeover of our party,
it's not only going to be bad for our party,
it's going to be bad for our country. But politicians
are very rarely leaders. You've heard me say this. Politicians
are typically not leaders. They don't get out in front
of the parade to start. They stand to the side

(15:40):
until they figure out there's a crowd and which way
it's going. Politicians don't control the direction of the party.
That's for George Soros. That's for the big money boys.
Tallarico didn't come up with all this stuff on his own.
You do understand. The Michael Berry Show. I was asked
to have Brandon Gill on the show months ago, and

(16:09):
I got a text one day, and one thing that
sets me off, my wife will tell you, Ramon will
tell you, there's a lot. I got rules. This is
how the world works for me. I got to have
rules so that I can make it all work with
my schedule, my energy level. And I can't have people
out there, you know, trying to do their own thing.

(16:32):
Don't ever give out my cell phone number. Just don't
do it or we're done. And so I get a
text from Brandon Gill. And it says, Azar, love to
be on your show. Talking about this. I did what
I normally do. How did you get my phone number? Uh, Yeah,

(16:58):
and so I'd like to be, who gave you my number?
And he said, well, my father-in-law did. And then it clicked.
I remembered Dinesh D'Souza is his father-in-law. So I sent
a message to Dinesh. With all due respect, don't give
out my phone number again. But he was talking about

(17:18):
something I wanted to talk about. And I have toward
him the same thing I sensed when I was coming
up as a young man entering the scene. I had
a sort of, slow down there, bud. Pay your dues.
Who are you? And I read a great book years

(17:41):
ago called Habits. And it talks about how the human brain,
and this goes back to hunter-gatherer days, the human brain
processes things by, once it overcomes a new stimulus, It
wants to put it away and not think about it anew.
So it went through your routine. And for most people,

(18:04):
when they wake up in the morning, you don't realize this,
but you have an incredible routine, even if you think
you're a person who is the least routine person. When
you wake up, you roll over a certain way. You
grab for your watch. You grab for your wallet. You
grab for your glass of water. You stumble, even if

(18:25):
your eyes are closed and you're hungover, even if you're
up too early, you stumble in the same way. You
turn the corner by rubbing your left shoulder on that
because that's where you know to stabilize yourself. You lean
against the counter. You could grab for your toothpaste and
your toothbrush without ever looking because your brain has already

(18:48):
put that away. Now you're looking for is there a
lion or a tiger because you're still hunter-gatherer. So once
we get things boxed away, this is who we talk to,
this is who we don't, this is who we like,
this is who we don't. So to enter something new
is a bit of a hassle. I've got to get
up and do that.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
But I must say I've been very impressed. I've been
very impressed with Brandon Gill.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
And I.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Think this was Jim Mudd who said, I've never heard
another politician describe it this way. I have heard this reference,
but not from politicians. And I think being young gives
him gives him a greater sense of being able to
use phrases that older people recognize because they're more tick tocky,
but they come naturally to him.

Speaker 7 (19:35):
And here in Texas, we have James.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
God is non-binary. There are six genders.

Speaker 7 (19:39):
We need to dismantle capitalism, Tallarico. It's somebody who will
hollow out your most deeply held Christian faith.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
And wear it like a skin suit. Wearing things like
a skin suit, other than Hannibal Lecter and Jamie Gumm,
it puts the lotion on his skin. I don't know
that I'd ever really heard that phrase much, but it
is something that the young people use often. And for

(20:13):
him to say that probably appealed to a lot of
the turning point youth. That phrase has a lot of
punch to people my age, and Jim is my age,
because you don't hear a politician do that. One of
the things Trump did so astutely, so adroitly in 2016

(20:33):
was he didn't talk the way Mike Pence and Mitt
Romney and George W. Bush and the boring old politician
John Cornyn, he didn't talk the way they did. He
talked in a manner about things that the everyday American
cared about and He didn't stick to the same script
of these are the five issues we've been battling about

(20:56):
playing tug-of-war and never doing anything about. Here he is
making fun of. This is a younger person. Trump does this.
But this is a younger person pointing out when the
Democrats have their convention, which they did, and they come
out and say we apologize on this land. Listen to this.
This is 501, Ramon.

Speaker 7 (21:14):
Now, I think it's only appropriate that we kick this
convention off properly. with a land acknowledgement. I'd like to
acknowledge that we stand here today in the great state

(21:37):
of Texas in the United States of America The ancestral
homeland of great American patriots, pioneers, and explorers who put
down roots, fought for freedom all over the globe, and
bled and died to build the greatest civilization ever known

(21:57):
to man. My friends, we live in the finest country
in the history of the world. And we're no longer
going to apologize for that.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
He's making fun of what happened at the Democrat convention
a few months ago. But the most famous, remember this
in Arizona? Listen to this.

Speaker 9 (22:26):
Let us not forget our fellow creatures. Those that stand,
those that blow in the wind, those that are tall
and stately. Those that crawl on the earth. Those that
slither on the earth, those that live under the earth.
Let us remember and bless the winged ones, those that

(22:49):
swim in the waters, the four-legged and also our brothers,
the two-legged that walk throughout this world.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
The Democrat convention a few months ago was not widely broadcast.
And the reason was it had a twofold goal. Number
one was to mobilize the bass. Number two was to
tell the fringe elements who've now taken it over. We're

(23:24):
here for you. We're not ashamed of you. We're going
to put you up on stage. And so they did.

Speaker 10 (23:31):
I'll bet you we've got 10,000 sweet little old ladies
of 70 or more that would make a pound cake
that you could eat cold and enjoy.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
The Michael Berry Show. 1981 that film was. I remember
being blown away. It's not rare that you are moved
by a movie, but I was moved. It's amazing how

(24:06):
many old movies that were already old when I was
a kid moved me as a child. Yul Brynner and
the King and I, my goodness, Mr. Clean was good.
You think Ben-Hur When Charlton Heston raised his hand and said,

(24:30):
from my cold, dead fingers, I was like, man, that's Moses.
That wasn't Charlton Heston?

Speaker 2 (24:39):
What?

Speaker 1 (24:41):
No, I didn't say he did it during the movie,
you jackass. Please don't interrupt me while I'm trying to
pay tribute to Charlton Heston. I'll tell you this. Bet
on a winner. Bet on a winner. In team sports,
a winner can't always... The bigger the team, football would

(25:06):
be a great example. You've had some great quarterbacks who
had difficulty getting their team to the Super Bowl and
to a win because there are too many moving parts.
I think Michael Jordan affected the court more more than
any single player, and I don't just mean with shots, defense, rebounding, passing,

(25:34):
because there are players who have done that. I think
he willed his team, and Phil deserves a lot of
credit for that as well, a lot of credit, but
Michael Jordan willed his team to victory in a way
that only a Bill Russell or Larry Bird or Magic

(25:56):
Johnson could do. Paxton is a winner. And the reason
he's a winner is very hard for the media and
the establishment to understand. It's very hard for them to understand.
You intuitively understand it even if you can't give voice
to it. Paxton advocates, and I don't just mean lip service.

(26:24):
on issues that actually matter to people. Going after Amazon
slash Meta for what they were doing to children, the
juxtaposition of Paxton, the people's lawyer, that's what the attorney
general is, going after Meta, billions of dollars they had

(26:46):
to cough up. He's the best attorney general in the country.
That's a widely, President Trump has said it, but a
number of others have said it. And everyone knows intuitively
what Amazon has done is wrong. Everyone knows that. And
doing something about it. Going after Big Pharma and OxyContin

(27:09):
for the damage they've done. If you've never seen what
OxyContin did to a friend, a family member, A favorite entertainer?
If you've never heard the stories about lives destroyed and
they knew what they were doing, if I can recommend

(27:31):
one thing that you go off and listen to, I'll
give you the name of it when we go to break.
There's a podcast about OxyContin. It's about a 10-part podcast.
And and look, I realize everybody wants to make the
addict into a victim or the criminal into a victim
or the murderer into a victim or the pedophile. And,

(27:52):
you know, maybe this is just good storytelling, but there's
a guy who's not your typical drug addict bank robber.
But he has an accident playing hockey, playing hockey out
in the parking lot after work. He's put on a
drug that he doesn't understand, and he doesn't understand what
it does, and he can't get off of it. Eventually,

(28:14):
he can't keep getting back to where he needs to be.
People think that people take drugs because it feels good.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
No.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
They take drugs to make it not feel bad. You're
always chasing the high, but the high is really avoiding
the low. Once you get hooked on it, It's not
that you love it so much. It's that you can't survive.
You feel so awful when you don't have it. It's
the most powerful addiction. He went after them for that.

(28:44):
And he won. This guy wins. He wins in court.
He wins in politics. Because he talks about things people
care about. And by the way, so does Tallarico. He's
just on the satanic side of it. So this is
President Trump. Trump has a manner, like a football coach,

(29:07):
like me, like Ramon. This is how guys talk. We
kid with each other. In the middle of endorsing Paxton,
he says he's a sloppy dresser and he's not handsome.
Which is true. That's true. Do you want a model?
Are you looking for are you trying to cast the
main character in your movie or do you want a

(29:27):
guy that's going to go and vote the right way?
He's not a great dresser. He's he's he's kind of
not presentable in that sense. He's not handsome. He's not
good looking. He's not out of central casting. Is that
important to you? Because whether you advise it or not,
to some people, that is important to you. Let me

(29:51):
ask you why. If you're having a heart attack and
you have access... to the best heart surgeon, and he
comes rolling in, and he's got bed head, and he's fat,
and he's ugly, and his teeth are crooked, are you gonna, whoa! No,

(30:12):
because you understand the assignment. I need my heart done.
I need to be fixed. I need to know that
guy gets in there and does stuff better than anybody else.
Wouldn't it be shallow of you to pick on the
basis of anything else? Isn't that really what DEI is
all about? Picking people to perform a task on the

(30:36):
basis of something other than how well they perform the task,
and yet they've looped you into it. The very people
who love DEI have looped you into DEI. They've looped
you into focusing on how he looks. Well, Michael, he
got a bad eye. He does. Actually, he doesn't. He
only has one eye. The other eye was gouged out

(30:57):
when he was a kid. Is that the reason he
can't be your senator? Is that the reason he can't
go to D.C. and fight against everything the Obama Democrats
are for? Because he lost his eye as a kid?
That's the basis? He can't help that. And that's what
we're going to judge him by? You don't like the

(31:20):
cut of his jib. He doesn't get his hair cut
at Tony and Guy or wherever. His suits aren't properly fitted.
That's what you effing care about? Your country is burning
and you're over fiddling Nero on how your senator looks?
You need him to look nice? Are you kidding me?
You need him to look nice? Seriously. You didn't think

(31:45):
that up on your own. They taught you that. Hey,
he's sloppy. So when Trump makes a joke about it,
he's telling you he likes the guy. He knows him well.
I wish Trump hadn't said that.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
Listen.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
Lindy the literal, he doesn't mean it. It's a joke.
It's for fun. He likes the guy.
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