October 25, 2024 • 47 mins
Garrison dissociates at a Charlie Kirk x Vivek Ramaswamy rally and wonders if it's even worth it anymore.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/11/us/politics/elon-musk-donald-trump-pennsylvania.html
https://www.9news.com/article/news/verify/immigration/new-york-city-free-one-way-plane-tickets-migrants-fact-check/536-c6e7168f-7f16-4bf9-97cd-33389729869c
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/nyregion/nyc-hotels-homeless-shelters.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/09/kamala-harris-afghanistan-withdrawal-report
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/undocumented-immigrant-offending-rate-lower-us-born-citizen-rate
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/08/1237103158/immigrants-are-less-likely-to-commit-crimes-than-us-born-americans-studies-find
https://www.tampabay.com/news/2024/07/02/how-did-black-americans-do-economically-under-trump-biden/
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-trump-administration-embraces-the-saudi-led-war-yemen
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/saudi-arabia-arms-deal-trump-what-to-know/
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/01/20/trump-the-anti-war-president-was-always-a-myth/
https://newslit.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/NLP-Teen-Survey-Report-2024.pdf
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
A zone media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This is it could happen here today. I'm your host,
Garrison Davis, and they're sure has been a lot happening
this past year. I am kind of feeling emotionally exhausted
and just numb in general. It's a different feeling from
the political desensitization that my job usually provides me. I'm
(00:26):
frankly still recovering from attending the DNC, even more so
than the RNC. At the RNC, I knew I was
going to be walking through the pits of hell, and
despite the immense evil on display, the sideshow conspiracy theory
freak nature of the event made it almost absurdly amusing.
(00:47):
But the DNC kind of broke me between the infighting
among Palestine protesters and the insistence from the official organizers
TM to oppose any course of action that would actually
disrupt the event or apply pressure to attendees, and instead
just use the Palestine protests to promote their little socialist
(01:07):
newspapers and political orgs. Meanwhile, inside the actual event, I
was surrounded by some of the richest, most powerful people
I had ever been around, and just watching them maintain
their like Kamala is bracked party atmosphere at all costs
and purposely blind themselves to the atrocities happening around the world,
especially Gaza was a deeply unsettling experience like these are
(01:33):
supposed to be the if not the good guys, at
least the better guys or the less openly fascist guys,
and like among the American right wings, unprecedented focus and
organized attack on trans writes. This was the first d
n C SINS twenty twelve to not feature a trans speaker,
and trans people were never directly mentioned during the convention's
(01:56):
prime time speaking slots. And now it's the election ramping up,
and the Southeast still recovering from two devastating hurricanes, Israel
escalating tensions with Iran, and with the backing of the
United States continuing strikes in Lebanon and Palestine. I am
just feeling more lost and discombobulated than I have been
(02:17):
in years. So to cheer myself up, I decided to
go to a Charlie Kirk and vivek Ramaswami rally at
Georgia State University. Now to some that may sound just
completely batshit or perhaps some form of bizarre self harm,
but look like I've been covering far right rallies and
(02:38):
writing about these weird conservative influencers for years now. It's
almost second nature to me. Going to these events can
feel paradoxically relaxing, even though it may trigger some stress.
My body just kind of subconsciously knows what to do
in environments like this. The RNC was so easy, it's
(03:00):
like an autopilot just takes over, and so I thought
going to this Turning Point USA event might help reset
my brain by giving myself a simple task that I
know I can excel at. But before we get into
all that, first, for those more fortunate than I, here's
some background on Charlie Kirk, also known as the far
(03:21):
right podcaster with the Smallest Face. As a teenager, back
in twenty twelve, Charles J. Kirk co founded in organization
for campus conservatives called Turning Point USA, and then in
twenty nineteen he founded a sister organization called Turning Point Action,
which focuses on elections and conservative political advocacy. Though initially
(03:44):
more aligned with the so called alt light rather than
the alt right, Kirk has slowly moved farther and farther
to the right during the past ten years, and by
twenty twenty, he embraced election fraud, COVID nineteen, and vaccine
conspiracy theories. Also during twenty he started his own podcast,
The Charlie Kirk Show, which is now somehow ranked as
(04:06):
the number seven podcast for news in Apple Podcasts. So
that's not good. At this point, Charlie has kind of
taken the place of, if not surpassed, the role that
was previously occupied by Stephen Crowder before his fall from
Grace isteming from his breakup with Ben Shapiro and the
(04:26):
allegations of abusing his ex wife. Through the Turning Point
Action organization, Kirk is more tied in with the actual
mechanisms of the Republican Party than even the Daily Wire is.
Just this past Wednesday, Turning Point Action hosted a rally
for Trump in Duluth, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. Trump
(04:46):
spoke at this event, and Tucker Carlson made a very
fascist speech advocating to refuse the results of the election
if Trump loses and likening Trump to a quote unquote
daddy figure needing to punish the country for being a
quote unquote bad girl the past four years. It's a
(05:07):
huge indictment against Americans. Deeply Freudian politics now. The event
that I attended on October twenty first was a part
of Charlie Kirk's Your Being Brainwashed tour, where Kirk and
friends travel from swing state to swing state to debate
college students on camera about why Trump is the better candidate.
(05:30):
Charlie's focus on debating unprepared college students shows how he
has kind of picked up the baton from Stephen Crowder
and his old change My Mind videos, but this year, specifically,
Charlie's version of this college debate content creation strategy is
more in line with this overall strategy to inflate Kirk's
(05:50):
political influence leading up to the election so that he
can get more directly involved in the GOP's get out
the vote campaign in key swing states. As a part
of this strategy, Kirk has been on a bit of
a media blitz the past few months to promote himself.
Some listeners may have seen the viral video featuring Charlie
Kirk debating twenty five quote unquote woke college students for
(06:12):
over ninety minutes. This video, from the YouTube channel Jubilee,
has over twenty million views and like just as an
aside Jubilee is just so deeply evil. This company claims
to advocate for like empathy and human connection while turning
life and death political issues into fucking game show segments
(06:35):
for YouTube ad revenue, often pitting media trained conservative activists
against just random clueless liberals. I hate this company. They
are so bad, but I digress now. I actually attended
a Turning Point USA event on the GSU campus last year.
It was a smaller event that was ostensibly about defending
(06:58):
the Copcity training facility in a Atlanta, though halfway through
the event it just stopped being about Copcity and it
just turned into an ad for Turning Point USA and
this other political organization started by Candice Owens called BLEXIT,
which stands for the quote Black Exit from the Victimhood
mentality unquote. This was one of the most racist events
(07:22):
I've ever been to. The main speaker, in his best
metrosexual attire, blamed black people for creating situations that result
in police murders. Said that the real problem is that
black kids are never taught accountability and that in the
MLK days, people only ever advocated for more police training.
(07:42):
He also claimed that rap music is causing a spike
in violent crime and ranted against jay Z and Beyonce
and closed by saying that we need to support more
conservative rappers and singers. It was really bad, But on
the plus side, I went undercover to this event, and
when talking with the Turning Point USA officials, I convinced
(08:06):
them that I was actually a student at a different
nearby university, and I reserved the right to start a
fake TPUSA chapter in that school. So hopefully that will
never happen, since I'm the one who's supposed to be
doing it. For the Brainwashed Tour event this past Monday,
I dressed like an unfashionable campus conservative and donned my
(08:30):
Reagan movie baseball cap acquired at the RNC welcome party,
and arrived at campus an hour early to scope out
the terrain. They didn't announce the exact location for the
event ahead of time, so for about half an hour
I just walked around to GSU with the fucking Ronald
Reagan hat, looking for like a TPUSA booth. Now, luckily
(08:51):
I spotted some people with red mega hats that I
tailed to the nearby Hurt Park, where it was immediately
evident that this would be a much big, bigger event
than the Copcity one I attended a year prior. In
the middle of the park was a big table with
microphones set up for questions and debate, and on either
side there were booths with turning point stickers, buttons, flyers,
(09:14):
a pocket constitution, and sign up sheets to get involved
in their political advocacy programs. I took home a big
button that read Republicans are Hotter, and I got another, uh,
what I would call a brat style button, but brown
instead of green, that reads high period stop being a
(09:37):
socialist period thanks period. Not good. Not good. But I
watched the crowd grow from like twenty people I would
say around two hundred. You know, it got kind of fluid,
but yeah, around two hundred to fifty. Maybe A small
majority were students or at least young, and appeared to
(10:00):
be equally made up of liberals and conservatives, with the
rest of the crowd mostly made up of conservatives from
all ages who came to campus just to see Charlie Kirk.
As the event was about to begin, TPUSA staff moved
all of the older, quote unquote non college students out
(10:21):
of frame of the cameras to make the video seem
more focused on liberal college students, and after waiting in
the surprisingly warm October sun for over an hour, Charles J.
Kirk finally arrived thirty minutes late from the official start time,
tossing free mega hats wildly into the crowd, one of
(10:43):
which I am now in possession of. For this leg
of the tour, Kirk has been accompanied by the twenty
twenty four Republican presidential candidate with the tallest hair, vivek Ramaswami, who,
by the way, has also won the Cool Zone Media
Award for Presidential care Candidate with the most Nick Fuentes
Groyper Energy. So there you go. I can't believe I've
(11:08):
seen the vek Ramaswami like four different times this year.
That doesn't feel good. But do you know what does
feel good? That's right, these products and services that support
this podcast. Okay, we are back. It's time to finally
(11:33):
talk about this fucking rally. So I'm not gonna go
over like the whole event play by play, because there
was over two hours of quote unquote debating that I
have neither the time nor the desire to recap, but
I will mention some of the overarching topics and common
lines of questioning even as the first student took the mic,
(11:56):
I knew that this was gonna be a rough day.
The first person to quote unquote debate, Charlie and Vivek,
stated that their quote primary opposition to Trump is that
he's anti American and anti patriotic unquote. They said that
they believed that Trump fundamentally undermines American values, and they
(12:18):
specifically invoked Trump's rhetoric online about suspending the Constitution and
the whole January sixth incident. Now, look, I don't think
this is a very compelling line of attack, especially in
a debate setting. And I just don't believe that patriotism
is like an inherently good thing. And I think Grifters
and Conman are pretty dark American. But Vavek and Kirk
(12:42):
responded by talking about how social media censorship in twenty
twenty was a much greater act of anti Americanism, although
later on in the day they defended Elon Musk in
his running of Twitter, since he's a private citizen and
should be allowed to do whatever he wants with his
own platform. This is course ironic amidst reporting from The
New York Times that Musk and the Trump team colluded
(13:04):
to suppress information damaging to Trump on the platform, basically
exactly what the right was accusing the old Twitter doing
the last election. But none of that really matters. There's
no such thing as hypocrisy. You can never hold anyone
account to this sort of thing on the right. Charlie
Kirk then just went on to deny that Trump called
to suspend the constitution.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Here's a clip he never had.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
You're misquoting him. But let's just look at what he did,
not just rhetoric.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Nice little quick pivot there from Charles. But yes, technically
Trump didn't say suspend. He actually said terminate, which is
like worse. I don't know. In twenty twenty two, Trump
posted on truth Social calling for the quote unquote termination
of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in
(13:53):
the Constitution unquote, in response to the twenty twenty election.
I don't know how Kirk thinks that saying terminate is
better than suspend. Of course he doesn't. He's just playing
this game. It doesn't matter. Kirk went on to lie
about the nature of January sixth and whether Trump literally
personally committed the legal act of insurrection, eventually saying that
(14:16):
even if Trump did it would be thrown out under
the new presidential immunity ruling by the Supreme Court, and
stating that though Trump didn't actually do a coup, the
Democrats did actually do a coup to get Kamala Harris
on the ticket. Okay, sure, buddy. Now, part of Kirk's
(14:37):
just flagrant January sixth revisionist history was claiming that Ashley
Babbitt was suddenly killed with no warning as she was
retreating from the Capitol, and just none of that is true.
That just isn't what happened.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
The only person to die on January sixth is a
Trump supporter killed by one of Nancy Pelosi's bodyguards.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Okay, even that part isn't true. Two other Trump supporters
died of heart attacks, and another died holding a don't
tread on Me flag after being trampled by fellow rioters. Now,
a student countered Kirk's claim of Babbitt's innocence by confirming
that he believes in stands your ground laws that if
you're breaking into property you can be shot.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
Hold on, But Ashley Babbitt was unarmed. Isn't the whole
kind of shtick of the American Left? Like don't shoot
unarmed people. If I break into your house, then I
was unarmed but broken I was breaking into your house,
was George Floyd? Was that a rightful death?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Okay, first of all, incredible deflection, but oh yes, as
if these two situations are in any way comparable, a
black man being pinned down and choked to death for
over nine minutes and a woman leading a mob intent
on killing US politicians right up to the last line
of defense protecting set of politicians as they try to
(15:54):
evacuate the capital. Kirk tried to make this same gross
George Floyd compared Grison like an hour later, again to
booze from the audience. Later in the day, a second
student hit the Charlie Kirk debate chair debating on whether
Trump is anti American, and mentioned Trump's recent comments talking
(16:14):
about a quote unquote enemy within, some enemy inside the
United States that poses a far bigger threat than foreign enemies.
The veck claimed that Trump was referring to people who
shot at Trump, and Kirk claimed that it was a
reference to drug cartels.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
So Donald Trump is talking with enemy, then he's talking
about the cartels that are here that are poisoning our streets.
With drugs that are bringing illegal guns into the country.
That is the enemy within. Yet we say Russia is
an enemy. Russia has never attacked the United States of America.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Curious Russia comment there, certainly, but like for this enemy
within thing, we know that's just not true. Trump has
specifically named multiple Democrats as the enemy within. It's not
about cartels, it's not about people shooting him. There's just
non stop lying coming from Kirk and Novek, and none
(17:02):
of the students are like equipped or researched enough to
call him out on it. Another common topic of debate
was war and the insistence that Trump didn't start to
any new wars, unlike Biden and Harris, who have personally
started wars. I guess, with Kirk crediting Biden for starting
the Russia Ukraine War by financing the Ukrainian defensive, as
(17:25):
well as roping in Harris by saying that she was
quote in charge of the Russia Ukrainian War before it happened, unquote,
which really doesn't make much sense as a sentence. The
VEK later added that Kamala Harris was personally in charge
of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which again just isn't true.
(17:46):
The Vek is parroting a failed attempt by Republican lawmakers
from last September to invent some way to blame Harris
for the Afghanistan withdrawal now that she is the presidential nominee.
Harris is only mentioned three times times in the three thousand,
two hundred and eighty eight pages of interview transcripts from
the Foreign Affairs Committee's investigation of the withdrawal, but by
(18:10):
far Charlie and Avek's main focus on the topic of
war is just defending Russia.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Donald Trump's going to negotiate an end of that war.
That's reasonable.
Speaker 5 (18:18):
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have created that war and
escalated that over the last three year.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Trump did not really end any wars in his first term.
In fact, he increased US troop levels in twenty seventeen
and raised the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan from
drones strikes by three hundred and thirty percent, according to
Brown University. Still, Leveck tried to frame Trump as the
much more principled anti war candidate, in which candidate was there.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
A major war in the Middle East? Was there a
major war in the midleaser Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
There were multiple arms deal packages to Saudi Arabia for
the war in Yemen, and the US increased its involvement
in the Syrians Civil War under Trump. But to Thevek's
earlier point, I really don't see no way Trump would
end the war in Ukraine. That isn't just giving more
territory over to Russia. But to Charlie Kirk that might
(19:08):
not be such a bad thing, since he seems to
be kind of fond of Russia.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
You know who is the enemy?
Speaker 4 (19:13):
China is the enemy, Hey, Russia, Well, Russia's not the enemy.
Exactly how many of your friends have died because of Russians.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Here's another SoundBite from the VEK.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Joe Biden and Kyple Harris, along with some Republican help.
I'm gonna admit is sending more money to escalate that
war that otherwise would have resolved itself if we had
just negotiated peace back in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Resolves itself. Sounds a lot like the VEK just means
that Russia would have just seized territory, and like later
on the VEK argued that Ukraine just shouldn't be getting
any NATO protection at all.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
So the US actually made a commitment back in nineteen
ninety to say that NATO would expand not one inch
past East Germany.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Hmmm, I wonder what may have been different geopolitically in
nineteen ninety in relation to Russia the vas. I wonder
if anything has happened since nineteen ninety that might affect
certain Slavic territories of a vek I wonder, Oh my god. Now,
the topic discussed probably the most during this event was immigration.
(20:17):
Even the liberal college students seem to believe that an
influx of immigration was the biggest problem currently facing the
United States. Kirk claimed that Kamala Harris let ten million
new quote unquote illegal immigrants into the country, and like
no the total population of undocumented immigrants in this country
(20:38):
has fluctuated between ten to twelve million over the course
of the past twenty years. Though, like JD. Vance, Kirk
considers most immigrants illegal regardless of their actual status. Kirk
claimed that the quote unquote nine million immigrants seeking asylum
that have come into this country under Biden are all
(20:58):
illegal because they are quote cartel sponsored fraudulent asylum claims unquote.
Kirk said that these false asylum seekers pay cartels ten
thousand dollars to be smuggled into the United States.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
They're all illegal because they're we know it's actually we
know it to be true.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
It's not the question line. They're frauds.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
They're defrauding the American immigration system, is what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
When pressed for proof on this, Kirk just stumbled, and
Vivek took over and later just plugged his new movie
about illegal immigration.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Yes, I mean so, for example, what is the asylum
claim if you're coming from from George Korea?
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Actually?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Wow, wow, very very convincing stuff happening. Theaveck argued that
most immigrants lie about seeking asylum in order to enter
the country, and since that's illegal, that makes them more
likely to commit other crimes once in the United States.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
So right now, our immigration system literally selects for the
people who are most willing to lie to the US
government to get in. And that's why it's no surprise
that the people whose first act of entering the country
breaks the law often continue to break the law while
they're already here.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
I don't think that's racist or xenophobic.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
I think it's a fact based on who we're actually
selecting to come into the country.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
In actuality, Immigrants and especially undocumented or quote unquote illegal immigrants,
are far less likely to commit crimes than US citizens.
Most research puts it between forty to sixty percent less likely,
at least according to Stanford, the Texas Department of Public Safety,
and the Cato Institute, all famously liberal organizations. One thing
(22:36):
that Kirk kept trying to do is pander his nationalism
towards the racially diverse audience of Atlanta students.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
The people in this audience, which is a very diverse audience,
specifically Black Americans, should be incensed that they're being replaced
by foreigners. Black Americans are now being put aside so
that a bunch of foreigners can come undercut wages and
fill your city. The black community, which you obviously both
care a lot about, is actually not being prioritized. Instead,
(23:06):
people from the Third World are coming in and Black
America is getting put last, which seems to be a
common theme over the last sixty years when Democrats are
in control.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Well, okay, we'll find that, Thank you guys, so much,
thank you, thank you guys.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
The worst part is that this seemed to work the
audience seemed to resonate with this grossly fascistic framing, seemingly
unable to recognize what Kirk was doing, and at this
point I was just like fucking losing it. Vi Veck
said that if you don't know English, you shouldn't be
allowed in the United States, and like no one cared,
(23:42):
no one pushed back on that. A pro Kamala person
repeated false migrant crime wave rhetoric in her question about
the Venezuelan refugee crisis. That student said that three hundred
thousand Venezuelan refugees came to the United States in twenty
twenty three, and Kirk then claimed that three million more
would arrive if Kamala is elected, along with twenty million
(24:05):
more immigrants. Kirk promised that if Trump's elected, any immigrant,
whether legal, undocumented, or a refugee, just any immigrant who
commits a crime like a dui will be immediately deported.
And unfortunately, when pressed to defend or even just openly
express their own personal views on whatever the topic of
(24:26):
debate was, multiple students just like completely backed down, saying
that they would rather quote unquote stay out of the
political realm or in another instance, political charge fair enough,
what are you doing. You're trying to debate about access
to abortion or if all immigrants should be rounded up
and deported, But you don't want to get quote unquote
(24:48):
too political. What are you talking about. I'm sorry you
couldn't get a fast dunk on Charlie Kirk, but come on.
But perhaps the most disheartening moment was when Charlie Kirk
was challenged on his opposition to the Civil Rights Act.
Someone asked why Charlie thinks that the Civil Rights Act
(25:08):
was a mistake. Kirk started by saying that even if
some of the original intent was good, it's now being
used for bad things, like allowing men in women's locker rooms,
to the complete shock of the questionnaire, Kirk and Vivek
then went on to explain why we should repeal the
Civil Rights Act.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
The fanfare that the Civil Rights Act is met with.
It's almost like the new Constitution. We talked about the
Civil Rights Act more than the Constitution. Is it is
cited more than the Constitution. We almost had a new
American founding in the nineteen sixties with the Civil Rights Act.
Speaker 5 (25:45):
So let me share a couple of couple hard facts
with you, which is that turns out that you're much
more likely to end up in prison, you're much more
likely to end up in poverty, you're much more likely
not to graduate from high school if you grow up
in a single parent household versus dual parent house So
today you're talking about upwards of sixty percent of black
kids born into single parent households rather than dual parent
(26:07):
What number do you think that was in the nineteen
fifties before the Great Society? Probably it was even less
twenty percent twenty percent back then. So then we look
at what the results have been of this entire agenda.
Put the Civil Rights Act, put the LBJ, Great Society.
Black Americans are worse off today even economically in terms
(26:27):
of mobility than they were back then, in the name
of laws that were passed to supposedly advance black interests.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Oh God, do you know what that can actually be
attributed to. It's the massive increase in policing and the
cartional justice system that was specifically intensified as a conservative
reaction to black people gaining more civil rights in society.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
The Civil Rights Act has nine different titles in it,
and you have this this leviathan that was created and
something that most Black Americans don't support is men and
female sports. Would you agree.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Men playing in female sports?
Speaker 4 (27:02):
I have no, Yeah, I know, no, no, for sure, right,
believe it or not, The Civil Rights Act is now
being used to keep men playing in women's sports. So
the Civil Rights Act was used to help Black America
originally totally get that, but now the.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Way it was written is that any.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Claim of identification, so someone says I'm a woman, therefore
I can compete in your volleyball team, they come in
with a civil rights claim. And so what we're saying
is no, no, no, it should be specified to racial,
not gender all that other stuff. And there were all
these other provisions as well.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
All right, how sad is it that this kid was
convinced that the fucking Civil Rights Act is bad through transphobia.
It's so fucking predatory what Kirk is doing here. This
was so fucking gross to watch in person. As the
day went on, things just started to get more and
more kookie. A whole batch of like libertarian Austrian traded
(27:57):
economists went back and forth with Charles in a Vak
on tariffs, free markets, and the validity of the economic
philosophy of Frederick Hayek. This fucking dude with a little
mustache who ostensibly got up to debate Kirk on abortion,
said that quote, I think my generation has started to
abuse the option of abortion. Unquote, like why the fuck
(28:20):
are you up there debating him? Then Jesus Christ and
then what I would call generously a himbo in a
white dude's for Harris shirt said that Kamala's greatest accomplishment
is being an idol. After debating Kirk about FEMA money
being spent on illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, Kirk just continued to
(28:43):
to spew COVID nineteen conspiracy theories to very little pushback.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
They were wrong about everything. They were wrong about six
feet of sould his spread. They were wrong about the
vaccine safe and effective.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
They were wait, they were wrong about whether the Arthur
revolves around the sun.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
One student just got so fed up up with Kirk's
endless rambling about topics unrelated to their question and decided
to walk away, which then, of course, Kirk claimed as
a rhetorical victory.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
How to biden laptop misinformation? Where did the virus come from? Biolabs?
Speaker 4 (29:14):
No, it's exactly how fun it's okay go to your
epics class.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
I was losing it and frankly just shocked at how
little pushback Charles and Vivek were receiving for what I
saw is very clear lies and manipulative debate tactics. The
majority of people clearly did not think too hard about
the question they were going to ask, or let alone
research the topic of debate beforehand. I saw people in
(29:43):
line to ask a question using chat GPT to generate
questions to ask using a prompt about how to debate
Charlie Kirk at a turning point USA event, like what
the fuck is going on now? I fundamentally refuse to
participate in quote unquote debates like this for reasons that
(30:05):
I will soon get into. So I just started taking
notes of all the things Charlie was lying about, and
I was right at the very front of the crowd.
So whenever TPUSA publishes the video Charlie Kirk destroying silly
liberal college students, you should be able to see me
pretty clearly in the background in my fucking Ronald Reagan
(30:27):
a hat, just furiously scribbling down notes. Though I would
recommend watching with an ad blocker not to give Kirk
extra money. The whole event was a pretty pathetic affair.
By my count, there were only eight liberal leaning challengers
who questioned Kirk compared to thirteen conservative leaning questionnaires who
(30:48):
entered a friendly discussion with Kirk. Out of all, the
liberal debaters, too backed down because they didn't want to
get too political, and three others appeared to be at
least somewhat swayed by Kirk and Vivek. Now, Like, I
can't entirely blame these students, right, Like, this setting is
(31:09):
not a real debate. Kirk holds all of the power.
He does this for a living, and he fucking brought
a friend with him to health. It's two of them
versus one. It's Kirk and Vivek. There's a reason he
prefers debating college students rather than working professionals. Most students
are not prepared to effectively counter Kirk's claims and don't
(31:29):
have enough general knowledge on current events to call him
out on every one of his many lies. And even
if they do catch him on something, Kirk will try
to project authority to sway the uneducated audience into believing
that he is correct, just because teens are chronically online
doesn't mean that they have better media literacy, critical thinking,
(31:51):
or know how to determine the validity of information. A
twenty twenty four survey by News Literacy America found that
only fifty percent of teens could identify that in article
labeled as branded content on a news site was in
fact an advertisement. Barely over half of teens could accurately
identify an op ed with the word commentary in the
(32:12):
headline as an opinion piece. Forty four percent claimed that
a company's own press release was more credible than an
independent news report on the same subject, and thirty four
percent of teens incorrectly labeled a random picture of damaged
traffic lights as quote unquote strong evidence supporting a viral
(32:32):
false claim that hot July temperatures had melted traffic lights.
These teens surveyed said that local TV news and TikTok
were the most trustworthy sources of information, and thirty five
percent of teens said that professional journalists are more biased
than social media content creators. Meanwhile, forty five percent said
(32:53):
that journalists are just as biased as these TikTok influencers.
Let's do a test right now now. Try to see
if you can determine that these following clips are in
fact advertisements. Okay, we are back now. This was technically
(33:20):
my first time seeing this format of conservative YouTube debate
in person. The videos that get published online later get
heavily edited down, and while I was going at it
in my notepad, I started to recognize the repeating patterns
that Kirk and Vivek employed to gain dominance in almost
(33:40):
every single debate matchup. So now I'm going to talk
about some of these common tactics used by Kirk. When
Kerk Orvivec wants to end a particular line of questioning
or move on to the next person, they'll just restate
their own opinions as fact and then end that debate,
leaving the impression that they won. They can just stop
(34:03):
whenever they feel like they have made the final point
that gives them victory. Here's the VEC.
Speaker 5 (34:08):
The number one human attribute that our legal immigration system
selects for isn't who's smart. Isn't who's going to work hard,
isn't who loves the country. It's are you willing to
lie to the US government or not? If you are,
you get in.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
If not, you don't. That's the way it works.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
And here's another example from Kirk.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
Black Americans are treated far worse than illegals in this country,
and we have, we have violated our social contract to
our own citizens. And I just want you to think
about that, okay, is that if you break into America,
you get a flight to the country the city of
your choosing, You get taxpayer funded luxury hotels, you get
a taxpayer funded phone, taxpayer funded food stamps, whereas many
Americans are struggling to even make ends meet.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
So thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yeah, what a convenient way to say a bunch of
bullshit without having to back any of it enough. Now,
of of course, welfare programs like food stamps and even
assistants to get access to smartphones, since they basically are
now requirement of everyday life, those programs do exist, right,
Those are important programs. But those free flights to any city,
(35:08):
that's actually a reference to New York City's reticketing program,
which offers one way bus or plane tickets out of
the city. This program was actually started because the governor
of Texas sent forty thousand immigrants to New York against
their will, and those quote unquote. Luxury hotels are actually
a small part of an emergency housing program that utilizes
(35:30):
some converted hotels as well as airport motels and even
office buildings as temporary shelter for immigrants. But I'm sure
Kirk would rather these people just be homeless living on
the street. I'm sure he wouldn't find ways to complain
about that too. A very common Kirk tactic to avoid
answering a question is just to simply flip it around
(35:51):
and ask the students a different question that might eventually
be related to the student's original question, but not necessarily.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Let me ask you just one more question. Can men
give birth? Can men give birth? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (36:05):
If they're a transgender.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Q. The audience's shocked response. These people probably don't even
know if this refers to a transgender woman or a
transgender man. Whatever. For another example, here's how Levek responded
to a question about voter fraud allegations.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Do you think dal Trump committed a coup against the
US government?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
This was part of Kirk's response to a question about
US aid to Israel.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
What is your strong opinion about the civil war happening
in the Central African Republic?
Speaker 2 (36:31):
For another example, a student asked Kirk what should be
done about hate crimes against Venezuelan immigrants in cities like Chicago.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I think that we.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Should do about I have a question, So what part
are chicagi from?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
So these are all just classic red herricks. Here's another.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
You admit that the Hamas tried to commit genocide on
October seven?
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Also simply not what a genocide is now. Sometimes students
can catch what Kirk is doing with red herrings and deflections,
but even when drilled down on the original line of questioning,
Kirk will try hard to pivot away whenever the momentum
is not going in his favor.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
You guys are super focused on technical things that we
could talk about forever. Let me just ask a question.
I asked you, what is Kamala Harris's greatest accomplishment? Can
you tell me what that would be?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Perhaps the most common tactic Charlie Kirk employs to maintain
control over the interaction is instead of just stating his opinion,
Kirk will throw a question back to his opponent with
the intent of getting them to say something that's in
support of Kirk's own argument. Alternatively, Kirk will ask a
(37:39):
question that the student probably doesn't know, like some specific
stat but something that Kirk already has a prepared answer for,
so that he can throw off his opponent, make them
question their own ability to debate, and make himself seem smarter.
Here's a short compilation.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
If there was a policy that made markets more free
but hurt your country, would you support it? Do you
believe that FDR was right and partnering with Joseph Stalin
to defeat Hitler?
Speaker 5 (38:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (38:09):
So, I guess two questions with tariffs? How do you
avoid a Tariff's? Ask another moral question?
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Then?
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Is it ever okay to do something evil? After an art?
Under abortion?
Speaker 4 (38:17):
Do you carve out a new morality? Is there like
a different kind of morality that we apply only to abortion?
At what point does it get human rights?
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Let me ask you just a question.
Speaker 5 (38:25):
Do you know which nation is the biggest supplier of
the US military today?
Speaker 3 (38:29):
You could probably guess it.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Is your phone paid for by US taxpayers. Let me
ask you, did you have a vacation this summer in
a luxury hotel paid for by taxpayers? Ten people are
murdered in Chicago. Out of those ten, how many of
those cases will be solved on average. Do you think okay,
so you said he suspended wanted to suspend the constitution?
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Did he do that when he was president?
Speaker 2 (38:47):
His arcumentative style looks pretty goofy when it's all broken
down into its respective parts. Now to circle back to
my stance of just never engaging with these bad faith
debate spectacles, lastly, I'll show you what happens when you
quote unquote do well against someone like Charlie Kirk. I
think the only time Kirk was really thrown off was
(39:09):
during one of the very last matchups, with a student
asking about Kirk's support of military aid to Israel despite
his alleged anti war stance and his call for the
US to pause all foreign aid until the southern border
is secured. Like usual, Kirk first tried to deflect by
using red herrings and turn questions back on the student.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Let me ask you a first principal question. Do you
think the Jewish people have a moral right to their religions?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Do not have any?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Kirk then failed to accuse the student of anti Semitism.
Kirk then tried to trick the student into saying that
Hamas is more morally good than Israel, but the student
saw what Kirk was trying to do with his bizarre
moralistic framing.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
Do you think that Israel as it's currently constituted is
morally equivalent with Hamas?
Speaker 2 (40:00):
The student quite wisely did not answer Kirk's precariously worded
yes or no question, and instead reframed the question in
their own words, and only then stated their opinion that
both Hamas and the IDs actions can be constituted as evil. Still,
Kirk wouldn't relent.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
So which one is better? Which one is good? Is better?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
His nonsensical framing was once again rejected, But then Kirk
accused the student of being propagandized and then asked if
they had personally been to Israel to assess the situation.
And this is when everything fell apart.
Speaker 6 (40:38):
Let me tell you this that you know that there's
Arab serving in the Knesset, and you know that why
your point of Jews saying I don't like Jews because Israel.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
I'm just gonna I'm gonna go back to this because
I think it's so interesting though, which is that I
believe that the Jewish people do have a right there
in Cstralhia.
Speaker 6 (40:54):
Well, first of all, you believe that they should be
leveling buildings because that's.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Their in central. I'm not I'm not defending every decision.
That's exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Interrupt every you're interrupting, I'm gonna have for our next
question because you're not arguings. Not much a debate because
I believe that Israel should exist in its current form,
you do not, thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Last couple of the.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Moral confusion on the Israel topic is it's it's hard
to clear up in a veny like this.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Again, like these aren't real debates. If the conversation goes
any way other than how Kirk wants it to go,
he has complete control of the environment and can move
on to a more desirable opponent because, like, beyond convincing
any gullible people that might happen to be in the crowd,
the real reason Kirk does events like this is to
(41:42):
make content. It's YouTube debate. These debate videos rack of
thousands and sometimes millions of views on YouTube and TikTok,
and every single person that participates as if these are
real debates is directly helping Charlie Kirk and make money
and grow his brand. This TPUSA Brainwash Tour will continue
(42:05):
into November, and I'm sure Charlie Kirk will keep doing
events like this in the years to come, regardless of
who wins the election. So what's the options to counter
something like this? I'm of three minds. My default response
to stuff like this is usually just to ignore. Don't
give these attention hounds what they're looking for, don't try
(42:27):
to debate, don't try to own Charlie Kirk with facts
and logic. There's no real benefit from engaging with him
and his ILK on their own terms. But there will
always be at least a few college students who think
they can get one up on Charlie Kirk. So since
these events are gonna continue to happen even if my
(42:49):
friends and I withhold our participation, the second option is
just to simply confuse. This is what I call the
skibbity bite in strategy, one which I deployed against the
my pillow guy, Mike Lindell in front of the Israeli
Consulate as he tried to set up as much attention
as possible during the DNC them skibbity Biden, Sir, skibbity Biden.
Speaker 5 (43:15):
If you buy one.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
This was probably my favorite moment of the DNC. This
strategy of complete confusion doesn't just deny the subject what
they want if you're the my pillow guy attention from
reporters or, in the case of Charlie Kirk, an unfair
debate against a non media trained college freshman. But the
Skibbity Biden strategy also eats up their time, prohibiting others
(43:40):
from being able to engage on the terms decided upon
by turning point USA. The more time you spend spewing
your near unintelligible gibberish about how Warhammer connects to US
foreign policy or explaining your made up conspiracy theory about
how the Hawktua girl is a CIA asset. All of
(44:00):
that is less time for some nineteen year olds to
challenge Kirk on his abortion views, and a knowing Charlie
Kirk is just a fun bonus. Now that I think
about it, This is essentially the patent Oswalt filibuster tactic. Now,
obviously Kirk has control of the mic and probably won't
let you ramble on about gibberish for too long, so
(44:23):
this strategy becomes more successful if you can get a
whole team lined up in front of the microphone now. Finally,
the last option is disruption through force, preferably in a
way that limits the possibility of creating an on camera
spectacle that can be utilized by TPUSA. This has typically
(44:43):
not been a common tactic used to counter turning point
events on campus, but it may be time to reconsider.
Forceful disruptions were often utilized when figures like Milo Uanapolis
toured college campuses back in twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen,
and more recently against campus events featuring Daily Wire employees
(45:04):
like Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh. Historically, this strategy has
not been applied to Charlie Kirk, as he's been viewed
as less radical than some of these other figures. But
I just don't think that's true anymore. Kirk is spreading
and normalizing hardcore as xenophobic and nationalist rhetoric across college
(45:24):
campuses with little to no resistance, not to mention his
complete embrace of conspiracy theories and use of transphobia to
undermine civil rights. There's many ways to disrupt events like
this through forceful means, sound disruption, visual disruption, physical disruption,
Planning an alternate event to take place at the same
(45:45):
time and place big banners with Charles's tiny face carefully
placed in view of the debate cameras. Creative opportunities abound,
but it requires people to be actively monitoring when and
where these events take place and actually plan a counterdemo
ahead of time, and that just doesn't seem to be
(46:07):
happening at the moment. And so I thought going to
this event would help reboot my brain, cheer myself up,
and amuse me with Charlie's childish display of debate kid politics.
But it just left me more sad watching hapless kids
fall prey to Kirk's transparent scheme, just feeling like I
(46:30):
had no way to stop the train wreck. But it
doesn't have to be this way. With a few friends
and a little preparation, there is an alternative, and hey,
it could happen here. Well that's my recap on this
fucking Charlie Kirk rally. Oh and heads up, next week,
there's gonna be no Spooky Week episodes for the first
(46:53):
time in four years. Sorry, the world has just gotten
too spooky this year. Between the election and hurricanes and
the genocide and Gaza and everything else happening, the world's
just too spooky. I'm really just not feeling Halloween pilled
as I usually am. Hopefully things will get better soon.
(47:15):
But in lieu of Spooky Week, we actually have a
special series from James on the Darien Gap, so you
have that to look forward to next week. Goodbye everyone,
see you on the other side.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
fool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out from the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can now find sources for It Could Happen Here
listened directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
A zone media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This is it could happen here today. I'm your host,
Garrison Davis, and they're sure has been a lot happening
this past year. I am kind of feeling emotionally exhausted
and just numb in general. It's a different feeling from
the political desensitization that my job usually provides me. I'm
(00:26):
frankly still recovering from attending the DNC, even more so
than the RNC. At the RNC, I knew I was
going to be walking through the pits of hell, and
despite the immense evil on display, the sideshow conspiracy theory
freak nature of the event made it almost absurdly amusing.
(00:47):
But the DNC kind of broke me between the infighting
among Palestine protesters and the insistence from the official organizers
TM to oppose any course of action that would actually
disrupt the event or apply pressure to attendees, and instead
just use the Palestine protests to promote their little socialist
(01:07):
newspapers and political orgs. Meanwhile, inside the actual event, I
was surrounded by some of the richest, most powerful people
I had ever been around, and just watching them maintain
their like Kamala is bracked party atmosphere at all costs
and purposely blind themselves to the atrocities happening around the world,
especially Gaza was a deeply unsettling experience like these are
(01:33):
supposed to be the if not the good guys, at
least the better guys or the less openly fascist guys,
and like among the American right wings, unprecedented focus and
organized attack on trans writes. This was the first d
n C SINS twenty twelve to not feature a trans speaker,
and trans people were never directly mentioned during the convention's
(01:56):
prime time speaking slots. And now it's the election ramping up,
and the Southeast still recovering from two devastating hurricanes, Israel
escalating tensions with Iran, and with the backing of the
United States continuing strikes in Lebanon and Palestine. I am
just feeling more lost and discombobulated than I have been
(02:17):
in years. So to cheer myself up, I decided to
go to a Charlie Kirk and vivek Ramaswami rally at
Georgia State University. Now to some that may sound just
completely batshit or perhaps some form of bizarre self harm,
but look like I've been covering far right rallies and
(02:38):
writing about these weird conservative influencers for years now. It's
almost second nature to me. Going to these events can
feel paradoxically relaxing, even though it may trigger some stress.
My body just kind of subconsciously knows what to do
in environments like this. The RNC was so easy, it's
(03:00):
like an autopilot just takes over, and so I thought
going to this Turning Point USA event might help reset
my brain by giving myself a simple task that I
know I can excel at. But before we get into
all that, first, for those more fortunate than I, here's
some background on Charlie Kirk, also known as the far
(03:21):
right podcaster with the Smallest Face. As a teenager, back
in twenty twelve, Charles J. Kirk co founded in organization
for campus conservatives called Turning Point USA, and then in
twenty nineteen he founded a sister organization called Turning Point Action,
which focuses on elections and conservative political advocacy. Though initially
(03:44):
more aligned with the so called alt light rather than
the alt right, Kirk has slowly moved farther and farther
to the right during the past ten years, and by
twenty twenty, he embraced election fraud, COVID nineteen, and vaccine
conspiracy theories. Also during twenty he started his own podcast,
The Charlie Kirk Show, which is now somehow ranked as
(04:06):
the number seven podcast for news in Apple Podcasts. So
that's not good. At this point, Charlie has kind of
taken the place of, if not surpassed, the role that
was previously occupied by Stephen Crowder before his fall from
Grace isteming from his breakup with Ben Shapiro and the
(04:26):
allegations of abusing his ex wife. Through the Turning Point
Action organization, Kirk is more tied in with the actual
mechanisms of the Republican Party than even the Daily Wire is.
Just this past Wednesday, Turning Point Action hosted a rally
for Trump in Duluth, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. Trump
(04:46):
spoke at this event, and Tucker Carlson made a very
fascist speech advocating to refuse the results of the election
if Trump loses and likening Trump to a quote unquote
daddy figure needing to punish the country for being a
quote unquote bad girl the past four years. It's a
(05:07):
huge indictment against Americans. Deeply Freudian politics now. The event
that I attended on October twenty first was a part
of Charlie Kirk's Your Being Brainwashed tour, where Kirk and
friends travel from swing state to swing state to debate
college students on camera about why Trump is the better candidate.
(05:30):
Charlie's focus on debating unprepared college students shows how he
has kind of picked up the baton from Stephen Crowder
and his old change My Mind videos, but this year, specifically,
Charlie's version of this college debate content creation strategy is
more in line with this overall strategy to inflate Kirk's
(05:50):
political influence leading up to the election so that he
can get more directly involved in the GOP's get out
the vote campaign in key swing states. As a part
of this strategy, Kirk has been on a bit of
a media blitz the past few months to promote himself.
Some listeners may have seen the viral video featuring Charlie
Kirk debating twenty five quote unquote woke college students for
(06:12):
over ninety minutes. This video, from the YouTube channel Jubilee,
has over twenty million views and like just as an
aside Jubilee is just so deeply evil. This company claims
to advocate for like empathy and human connection while turning
life and death political issues into fucking game show segments
(06:35):
for YouTube ad revenue, often pitting media trained conservative activists
against just random clueless liberals. I hate this company. They
are so bad, but I digress now. I actually attended
a Turning Point USA event on the GSU campus last year.
It was a smaller event that was ostensibly about defending
(06:58):
the Copcity training facility in a Atlanta, though halfway through
the event it just stopped being about Copcity and it
just turned into an ad for Turning Point USA and
this other political organization started by Candice Owens called BLEXIT,
which stands for the quote Black Exit from the Victimhood
mentality unquote. This was one of the most racist events
(07:22):
I've ever been to. The main speaker, in his best
metrosexual attire, blamed black people for creating situations that result
in police murders. Said that the real problem is that
black kids are never taught accountability and that in the
MLK days, people only ever advocated for more police training.
(07:42):
He also claimed that rap music is causing a spike
in violent crime and ranted against jay Z and Beyonce
and closed by saying that we need to support more
conservative rappers and singers. It was really bad, But on
the plus side, I went undercover to this event, and
when talking with the Turning Point USA officials, I convinced
(08:06):
them that I was actually a student at a different
nearby university, and I reserved the right to start a
fake TPUSA chapter in that school. So hopefully that will
never happen, since I'm the one who's supposed to be
doing it. For the Brainwashed Tour event this past Monday,
I dressed like an unfashionable campus conservative and donned my
(08:30):
Reagan movie baseball cap acquired at the RNC welcome party,
and arrived at campus an hour early to scope out
the terrain. They didn't announce the exact location for the
event ahead of time, so for about half an hour
I just walked around to GSU with the fucking Ronald
Reagan hat, looking for like a TPUSA booth. Now, luckily
(08:51):
I spotted some people with red mega hats that I
tailed to the nearby Hurt Park, where it was immediately
evident that this would be a much big, bigger event
than the Copcity one I attended a year prior. In
the middle of the park was a big table with
microphones set up for questions and debate, and on either
side there were booths with turning point stickers, buttons, flyers,
(09:14):
a pocket constitution, and sign up sheets to get involved
in their political advocacy programs. I took home a big
button that read Republicans are Hotter, and I got another, uh,
what I would call a brat style button, but brown
instead of green, that reads high period stop being a
(09:37):
socialist period thanks period. Not good. Not good. But I
watched the crowd grow from like twenty people I would
say around two hundred. You know, it got kind of fluid,
but yeah, around two hundred to fifty. Maybe A small
majority were students or at least young, and appeared to
(10:00):
be equally made up of liberals and conservatives, with the
rest of the crowd mostly made up of conservatives from
all ages who came to campus just to see Charlie Kirk.
As the event was about to begin, TPUSA staff moved
all of the older, quote unquote non college students out
(10:21):
of frame of the cameras to make the video seem
more focused on liberal college students, and after waiting in
the surprisingly warm October sun for over an hour, Charles J.
Kirk finally arrived thirty minutes late from the official start time,
tossing free mega hats wildly into the crowd, one of
(10:43):
which I am now in possession of. For this leg
of the tour, Kirk has been accompanied by the twenty
twenty four Republican presidential candidate with the tallest hair, vivek Ramaswami, who,
by the way, has also won the Cool Zone Media
Award for Presidential care Candidate with the most Nick Fuentes
Groyper Energy. So there you go. I can't believe I've
(11:08):
seen the vek Ramaswami like four different times this year.
That doesn't feel good. But do you know what does
feel good? That's right, these products and services that support
this podcast. Okay, we are back. It's time to finally
(11:33):
talk about this fucking rally. So I'm not gonna go
over like the whole event play by play, because there
was over two hours of quote unquote debating that I
have neither the time nor the desire to recap, but
I will mention some of the overarching topics and common
lines of questioning even as the first student took the mic,
(11:56):
I knew that this was gonna be a rough day.
The first person to quote unquote debate, Charlie and Vivek,
stated that their quote primary opposition to Trump is that
he's anti American and anti patriotic unquote. They said that
they believed that Trump fundamentally undermines American values, and they
(12:18):
specifically invoked Trump's rhetoric online about suspending the Constitution and
the whole January sixth incident. Now, look, I don't think
this is a very compelling line of attack, especially in
a debate setting. And I just don't believe that patriotism
is like an inherently good thing. And I think Grifters
and Conman are pretty dark American. But Vavek and Kirk
(12:42):
responded by talking about how social media censorship in twenty
twenty was a much greater act of anti Americanism, although
later on in the day they defended Elon Musk in
his running of Twitter, since he's a private citizen and
should be allowed to do whatever he wants with his
own platform. This is course ironic amidst reporting from The
New York Times that Musk and the Trump team colluded
(13:04):
to suppress information damaging to Trump on the platform, basically
exactly what the right was accusing the old Twitter doing
the last election. But none of that really matters. There's
no such thing as hypocrisy. You can never hold anyone
account to this sort of thing on the right. Charlie
Kirk then just went on to deny that Trump called
to suspend the constitution.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Here's a clip he never had.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
You're misquoting him. But let's just look at what he did,
not just rhetoric.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Nice little quick pivot there from Charles. But yes, technically
Trump didn't say suspend. He actually said terminate, which is
like worse. I don't know. In twenty twenty two, Trump
posted on truth Social calling for the quote unquote termination
of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in
(13:53):
the Constitution unquote, in response to the twenty twenty election.
I don't know how Kirk thinks that saying terminate is
better than suspend. Of course he doesn't. He's just playing
this game. It doesn't matter. Kirk went on to lie
about the nature of January sixth and whether Trump literally
personally committed the legal act of insurrection, eventually saying that
(14:16):
even if Trump did it would be thrown out under
the new presidential immunity ruling by the Supreme Court, and
stating that though Trump didn't actually do a coup, the
Democrats did actually do a coup to get Kamala Harris
on the ticket. Okay, sure, buddy. Now, part of Kirk's
(14:37):
just flagrant January sixth revisionist history was claiming that Ashley
Babbitt was suddenly killed with no warning as she was
retreating from the Capitol, and just none of that is true.
That just isn't what happened.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
The only person to die on January sixth is a
Trump supporter killed by one of Nancy Pelosi's bodyguards.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Okay, even that part isn't true. Two other Trump supporters
died of heart attacks, and another died holding a don't
tread on Me flag after being trampled by fellow rioters. Now,
a student countered Kirk's claim of Babbitt's innocence by confirming
that he believes in stands your ground laws that if
you're breaking into property you can be shot.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
Hold on, But Ashley Babbitt was unarmed. Isn't the whole
kind of shtick of the American Left? Like don't shoot
unarmed people. If I break into your house, then I
was unarmed but broken I was breaking into your house,
was George Floyd? Was that a rightful death?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Okay, first of all, incredible deflection, but oh yes, as
if these two situations are in any way comparable, a
black man being pinned down and choked to death for
over nine minutes and a woman leading a mob intent
on killing US politicians right up to the last line
of defense protecting set of politicians as they try to
(15:54):
evacuate the capital. Kirk tried to make this same gross
George Floyd compared Grison like an hour later, again to
booze from the audience. Later in the day, a second
student hit the Charlie Kirk debate chair debating on whether
Trump is anti American, and mentioned Trump's recent comments talking
(16:14):
about a quote unquote enemy within, some enemy inside the
United States that poses a far bigger threat than foreign enemies.
The veck claimed that Trump was referring to people who
shot at Trump, and Kirk claimed that it was a
reference to drug cartels.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
So Donald Trump is talking with enemy, then he's talking
about the cartels that are here that are poisoning our streets.
With drugs that are bringing illegal guns into the country.
That is the enemy within. Yet we say Russia is
an enemy. Russia has never attacked the United States of America.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Curious Russia comment there, certainly, but like for this enemy
within thing, we know that's just not true. Trump has
specifically named multiple Democrats as the enemy within. It's not
about cartels, it's not about people shooting him. There's just
non stop lying coming from Kirk and Novek, and none
(17:02):
of the students are like equipped or researched enough to
call him out on it. Another common topic of debate
was war and the insistence that Trump didn't start to
any new wars, unlike Biden and Harris, who have personally
started wars. I guess, with Kirk crediting Biden for starting
the Russia Ukraine War by financing the Ukrainian defensive, as
(17:25):
well as roping in Harris by saying that she was
quote in charge of the Russia Ukrainian War before it happened, unquote,
which really doesn't make much sense as a sentence. The
VEK later added that Kamala Harris was personally in charge
of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which again just isn't true.
(17:46):
The Vek is parroting a failed attempt by Republican lawmakers
from last September to invent some way to blame Harris
for the Afghanistan withdrawal now that she is the presidential nominee.
Harris is only mentioned three times times in the three thousand,
two hundred and eighty eight pages of interview transcripts from
the Foreign Affairs Committee's investigation of the withdrawal, but by
(18:10):
far Charlie and Avek's main focus on the topic of
war is just defending Russia.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Donald Trump's going to negotiate an end of that war.
That's reasonable.
Speaker 5 (18:18):
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have created that war and
escalated that over the last three year.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Trump did not really end any wars in his first term.
In fact, he increased US troop levels in twenty seventeen
and raised the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan from
drones strikes by three hundred and thirty percent, according to
Brown University. Still, Leveck tried to frame Trump as the
much more principled anti war candidate, in which candidate was there.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
A major war in the Middle East? Was there a
major war in the midleaser Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
There were multiple arms deal packages to Saudi Arabia for
the war in Yemen, and the US increased its involvement
in the Syrians Civil War under Trump. But to Thevek's
earlier point, I really don't see no way Trump would
end the war in Ukraine. That isn't just giving more
territory over to Russia. But to Charlie Kirk that might
(19:08):
not be such a bad thing, since he seems to
be kind of fond of Russia.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
You know who is the enemy?
Speaker 4 (19:13):
China is the enemy, Hey, Russia, Well, Russia's not the enemy.
Exactly how many of your friends have died because of Russians.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Here's another SoundBite from the VEK.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Joe Biden and Kyple Harris, along with some Republican help.
I'm gonna admit is sending more money to escalate that
war that otherwise would have resolved itself if we had
just negotiated peace back in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Resolves itself. Sounds a lot like the VEK just means
that Russia would have just seized territory, and like later
on the VEK argued that Ukraine just shouldn't be getting
any NATO protection at all.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
So the US actually made a commitment back in nineteen
ninety to say that NATO would expand not one inch
past East Germany.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Hmmm, I wonder what may have been different geopolitically in
nineteen ninety in relation to Russia the vas. I wonder
if anything has happened since nineteen ninety that might affect
certain Slavic territories of a vek I wonder, Oh my god. Now,
the topic discussed probably the most during this event was immigration.
(20:17):
Even the liberal college students seem to believe that an
influx of immigration was the biggest problem currently facing the
United States. Kirk claimed that Kamala Harris let ten million
new quote unquote illegal immigrants into the country, and like
no the total population of undocumented immigrants in this country
(20:38):
has fluctuated between ten to twelve million over the course
of the past twenty years. Though, like JD. Vance, Kirk
considers most immigrants illegal regardless of their actual status. Kirk
claimed that the quote unquote nine million immigrants seeking asylum
that have come into this country under Biden are all
(20:58):
illegal because they are quote cartel sponsored fraudulent asylum claims unquote.
Kirk said that these false asylum seekers pay cartels ten
thousand dollars to be smuggled into the United States.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
They're all illegal because they're we know it's actually we
know it to be true.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
It's not the question line. They're frauds.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
They're defrauding the American immigration system, is what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
When pressed for proof on this, Kirk just stumbled, and
Vivek took over and later just plugged his new movie
about illegal immigration.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Yes, I mean so, for example, what is the asylum
claim if you're coming from from George Korea?
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Actually?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Wow, wow, very very convincing stuff happening. Theaveck argued that
most immigrants lie about seeking asylum in order to enter
the country, and since that's illegal, that makes them more
likely to commit other crimes once in the United States.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
So right now, our immigration system literally selects for the
people who are most willing to lie to the US
government to get in. And that's why it's no surprise
that the people whose first act of entering the country
breaks the law often continue to break the law while
they're already here.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
I don't think that's racist or xenophobic.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
I think it's a fact based on who we're actually
selecting to come into the country.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
In actuality, Immigrants and especially undocumented or quote unquote illegal immigrants,
are far less likely to commit crimes than US citizens.
Most research puts it between forty to sixty percent less likely,
at least according to Stanford, the Texas Department of Public Safety,
and the Cato Institute, all famously liberal organizations. One thing
(22:36):
that Kirk kept trying to do is pander his nationalism
towards the racially diverse audience of Atlanta students.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
The people in this audience, which is a very diverse audience,
specifically Black Americans, should be incensed that they're being replaced
by foreigners. Black Americans are now being put aside so
that a bunch of foreigners can come undercut wages and
fill your city. The black community, which you obviously both
care a lot about, is actually not being prioritized. Instead,
(23:06):
people from the Third World are coming in and Black
America is getting put last, which seems to be a
common theme over the last sixty years when Democrats are
in control.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Well, okay, we'll find that, Thank you guys, so much,
thank you, thank you guys.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
The worst part is that this seemed to work the
audience seemed to resonate with this grossly fascistic framing, seemingly
unable to recognize what Kirk was doing, and at this
point I was just like fucking losing it. Vi Veck
said that if you don't know English, you shouldn't be
allowed in the United States, and like no one cared,
(23:42):
no one pushed back on that. A pro Kamala person
repeated false migrant crime wave rhetoric in her question about
the Venezuelan refugee crisis. That student said that three hundred
thousand Venezuelan refugees came to the United States in twenty
twenty three, and Kirk then claimed that three million more
would arrive if Kamala is elected, along with twenty million
(24:05):
more immigrants. Kirk promised that if Trump's elected, any immigrant,
whether legal, undocumented, or a refugee, just any immigrant who
commits a crime like a dui will be immediately deported.
And unfortunately, when pressed to defend or even just openly
express their own personal views on whatever the topic of
(24:26):
debate was, multiple students just like completely backed down, saying
that they would rather quote unquote stay out of the
political realm or in another instance, political charge fair enough,
what are you doing. You're trying to debate about access
to abortion or if all immigrants should be rounded up
and deported, But you don't want to get quote unquote
(24:48):
too political. What are you talking about. I'm sorry you
couldn't get a fast dunk on Charlie Kirk, but come on.
But perhaps the most disheartening moment was when Charlie Kirk
was challenged on his opposition to the Civil Rights Act.
Someone asked why Charlie thinks that the Civil Rights Act
(25:08):
was a mistake. Kirk started by saying that even if
some of the original intent was good, it's now being
used for bad things, like allowing men in women's locker rooms,
to the complete shock of the questionnaire, Kirk and Vivek
then went on to explain why we should repeal the
Civil Rights Act.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
The fanfare that the Civil Rights Act is met with.
It's almost like the new Constitution. We talked about the
Civil Rights Act more than the Constitution. Is it is
cited more than the Constitution. We almost had a new
American founding in the nineteen sixties with the Civil Rights Act.
Speaker 5 (25:45):
So let me share a couple of couple hard facts
with you, which is that turns out that you're much
more likely to end up in prison, you're much more
likely to end up in poverty, you're much more likely
not to graduate from high school if you grow up
in a single parent household versus dual parent house So
today you're talking about upwards of sixty percent of black
kids born into single parent households rather than dual parent
(26:07):
What number do you think that was in the nineteen
fifties before the Great Society? Probably it was even less
twenty percent twenty percent back then. So then we look
at what the results have been of this entire agenda.
Put the Civil Rights Act, put the LBJ, Great Society.
Black Americans are worse off today even economically in terms
(26:27):
of mobility than they were back then, in the name
of laws that were passed to supposedly advance black interests.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Oh God, do you know what that can actually be
attributed to. It's the massive increase in policing and the
cartional justice system that was specifically intensified as a conservative
reaction to black people gaining more civil rights in society.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
The Civil Rights Act has nine different titles in it,
and you have this this leviathan that was created and
something that most Black Americans don't support is men and
female sports. Would you agree.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Men playing in female sports?
Speaker 4 (27:02):
I have no, Yeah, I know, no, no, for sure, right,
believe it or not, The Civil Rights Act is now
being used to keep men playing in women's sports. So
the Civil Rights Act was used to help Black America
originally totally get that, but now the.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Way it was written is that any.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Claim of identification, so someone says I'm a woman, therefore
I can compete in your volleyball team, they come in
with a civil rights claim. And so what we're saying
is no, no, no, it should be specified to racial,
not gender all that other stuff. And there were all
these other provisions as well.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
All right, how sad is it that this kid was
convinced that the fucking Civil Rights Act is bad through transphobia.
It's so fucking predatory what Kirk is doing here. This
was so fucking gross to watch in person. As the
day went on, things just started to get more and
more kookie. A whole batch of like libertarian Austrian traded
(27:57):
economists went back and forth with Charles in a Vak
on tariffs, free markets, and the validity of the economic
philosophy of Frederick Hayek. This fucking dude with a little
mustache who ostensibly got up to debate Kirk on abortion,
said that quote, I think my generation has started to
abuse the option of abortion. Unquote, like why the fuck
(28:20):
are you up there debating him? Then Jesus Christ and
then what I would call generously a himbo in a
white dude's for Harris shirt said that Kamala's greatest accomplishment
is being an idol. After debating Kirk about FEMA money
being spent on illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, Kirk just continued to
(28:43):
to spew COVID nineteen conspiracy theories to very little pushback.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
They were wrong about everything. They were wrong about six
feet of sould his spread. They were wrong about the
vaccine safe and effective.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
They were wait, they were wrong about whether the Arthur
revolves around the sun.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
One student just got so fed up up with Kirk's
endless rambling about topics unrelated to their question and decided
to walk away, which then, of course, Kirk claimed as
a rhetorical victory.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
How to biden laptop misinformation? Where did the virus come from? Biolabs?
Speaker 4 (29:14):
No, it's exactly how fun it's okay go to your
epics class.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
I was losing it and frankly just shocked at how
little pushback Charles and Vivek were receiving for what I
saw is very clear lies and manipulative debate tactics. The
majority of people clearly did not think too hard about
the question they were going to ask, or let alone
research the topic of debate beforehand. I saw people in
(29:43):
line to ask a question using chat GPT to generate
questions to ask using a prompt about how to debate
Charlie Kirk at a turning point USA event, like what
the fuck is going on now? I fundamentally refuse to
participate in quote unquote debates like this for reasons that
(30:05):
I will soon get into. So I just started taking
notes of all the things Charlie was lying about, and
I was right at the very front of the crowd.
So whenever TPUSA publishes the video Charlie Kirk destroying silly
liberal college students, you should be able to see me
pretty clearly in the background in my fucking Ronald Reagan
(30:27):
a hat, just furiously scribbling down notes. Though I would
recommend watching with an ad blocker not to give Kirk
extra money. The whole event was a pretty pathetic affair.
By my count, there were only eight liberal leaning challengers
who questioned Kirk compared to thirteen conservative leaning questionnaires who
(30:48):
entered a friendly discussion with Kirk. Out of all, the
liberal debaters, too backed down because they didn't want to
get too political, and three others appeared to be at
least somewhat swayed by Kirk and Vivek. Now, Like, I
can't entirely blame these students, right, Like, this setting is
(31:09):
not a real debate. Kirk holds all of the power.
He does this for a living, and he fucking brought
a friend with him to health. It's two of them
versus one. It's Kirk and Vivek. There's a reason he
prefers debating college students rather than working professionals. Most students
are not prepared to effectively counter Kirk's claims and don't
(31:29):
have enough general knowledge on current events to call him
out on every one of his many lies. And even
if they do catch him on something, Kirk will try
to project authority to sway the uneducated audience into believing
that he is correct, just because teens are chronically online
doesn't mean that they have better media literacy, critical thinking,
(31:51):
or know how to determine the validity of information. A
twenty twenty four survey by News Literacy America found that
only fifty percent of teens could identify that in article
labeled as branded content on a news site was in
fact an advertisement. Barely over half of teens could accurately
identify an op ed with the word commentary in the
(32:12):
headline as an opinion piece. Forty four percent claimed that
a company's own press release was more credible than an
independent news report on the same subject, and thirty four
percent of teens incorrectly labeled a random picture of damaged
traffic lights as quote unquote strong evidence supporting a viral
(32:32):
false claim that hot July temperatures had melted traffic lights.
These teens surveyed said that local TV news and TikTok
were the most trustworthy sources of information, and thirty five
percent of teens said that professional journalists are more biased
than social media content creators. Meanwhile, forty five percent said
(32:53):
that journalists are just as biased as these TikTok influencers.
Let's do a test right now now. Try to see
if you can determine that these following clips are in
fact advertisements. Okay, we are back now. This was technically
(33:20):
my first time seeing this format of conservative YouTube debate
in person. The videos that get published online later get
heavily edited down, and while I was going at it
in my notepad, I started to recognize the repeating patterns
that Kirk and Vivek employed to gain dominance in almost
(33:40):
every single debate matchup. So now I'm going to talk
about some of these common tactics used by Kirk. When
Kerk Orvivec wants to end a particular line of questioning
or move on to the next person, they'll just restate
their own opinions as fact and then end that debate,
leaving the impression that they won. They can just stop
(34:03):
whenever they feel like they have made the final point
that gives them victory. Here's the VEC.
Speaker 5 (34:08):
The number one human attribute that our legal immigration system
selects for isn't who's smart. Isn't who's going to work hard,
isn't who loves the country. It's are you willing to
lie to the US government or not? If you are,
you get in.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
If not, you don't. That's the way it works.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
And here's another example from Kirk.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
Black Americans are treated far worse than illegals in this country,
and we have, we have violated our social contract to
our own citizens. And I just want you to think
about that, okay, is that if you break into America,
you get a flight to the country the city of
your choosing, You get taxpayer funded luxury hotels, you get
a taxpayer funded phone, taxpayer funded food stamps, whereas many
Americans are struggling to even make ends meet.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
So thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yeah, what a convenient way to say a bunch of
bullshit without having to back any of it enough. Now,
of of course, welfare programs like food stamps and even
assistants to get access to smartphones, since they basically are
now requirement of everyday life, those programs do exist, right,
Those are important programs. But those free flights to any city,
(35:08):
that's actually a reference to New York City's reticketing program,
which offers one way bus or plane tickets out of
the city. This program was actually started because the governor
of Texas sent forty thousand immigrants to New York against
their will, and those quote unquote. Luxury hotels are actually
a small part of an emergency housing program that utilizes
(35:30):
some converted hotels as well as airport motels and even
office buildings as temporary shelter for immigrants. But I'm sure
Kirk would rather these people just be homeless living on
the street. I'm sure he wouldn't find ways to complain
about that too. A very common Kirk tactic to avoid
answering a question is just to simply flip it around
(35:51):
and ask the students a different question that might eventually
be related to the student's original question, but not necessarily.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Let me ask you just one more question. Can men
give birth? Can men give birth? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (36:05):
If they're a transgender.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Q. The audience's shocked response. These people probably don't even
know if this refers to a transgender woman or a
transgender man. Whatever. For another example, here's how Levek responded
to a question about voter fraud allegations.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Do you think dal Trump committed a coup against the
US government?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
This was part of Kirk's response to a question about
US aid to Israel.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
What is your strong opinion about the civil war happening
in the Central African Republic?
Speaker 2 (36:31):
For another example, a student asked Kirk what should be
done about hate crimes against Venezuelan immigrants in cities like Chicago.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I think that we.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Should do about I have a question, So what part
are chicagi from?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
So these are all just classic red herricks. Here's another.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
You admit that the Hamas tried to commit genocide on
October seven?
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Also simply not what a genocide is now. Sometimes students
can catch what Kirk is doing with red herrings and deflections,
but even when drilled down on the original line of questioning,
Kirk will try hard to pivot away whenever the momentum
is not going in his favor.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
You guys are super focused on technical things that we
could talk about forever. Let me just ask a question.
I asked you, what is Kamala Harris's greatest accomplishment? Can
you tell me what that would be?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Perhaps the most common tactic Charlie Kirk employs to maintain
control over the interaction is instead of just stating his opinion,
Kirk will throw a question back to his opponent with
the intent of getting them to say something that's in
support of Kirk's own argument. Alternatively, Kirk will ask a
(37:39):
question that the student probably doesn't know, like some specific
stat but something that Kirk already has a prepared answer for,
so that he can throw off his opponent, make them
question their own ability to debate, and make himself seem smarter.
Here's a short compilation.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
If there was a policy that made markets more free
but hurt your country, would you support it? Do you
believe that FDR was right and partnering with Joseph Stalin
to defeat Hitler?
Speaker 5 (38:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (38:09):
So, I guess two questions with tariffs? How do you
avoid a Tariff's? Ask another moral question?
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Then?
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Is it ever okay to do something evil? After an art?
Under abortion?
Speaker 4 (38:17):
Do you carve out a new morality? Is there like
a different kind of morality that we apply only to abortion?
At what point does it get human rights?
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Let me ask you just a question.
Speaker 5 (38:25):
Do you know which nation is the biggest supplier of
the US military today?
Speaker 3 (38:29):
You could probably guess it.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Is your phone paid for by US taxpayers. Let me
ask you, did you have a vacation this summer in
a luxury hotel paid for by taxpayers? Ten people are
murdered in Chicago. Out of those ten, how many of
those cases will be solved on average. Do you think okay,
so you said he suspended wanted to suspend the constitution?
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Did he do that when he was president?
Speaker 2 (38:47):
His arcumentative style looks pretty goofy when it's all broken
down into its respective parts. Now to circle back to
my stance of just never engaging with these bad faith
debate spectacles, lastly, I'll show you what happens when you
quote unquote do well against someone like Charlie Kirk. I
think the only time Kirk was really thrown off was
(39:09):
during one of the very last matchups, with a student
asking about Kirk's support of military aid to Israel despite
his alleged anti war stance and his call for the
US to pause all foreign aid until the southern border
is secured. Like usual, Kirk first tried to deflect by
using red herrings and turn questions back on the student.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Let me ask you a first principal question. Do you
think the Jewish people have a moral right to their religions?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Do not have any?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Kirk then failed to accuse the student of anti Semitism.
Kirk then tried to trick the student into saying that
Hamas is more morally good than Israel, but the student
saw what Kirk was trying to do with his bizarre
moralistic framing.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
Do you think that Israel as it's currently constituted is
morally equivalent with Hamas?
Speaker 2 (40:00):
The student quite wisely did not answer Kirk's precariously worded
yes or no question, and instead reframed the question in
their own words, and only then stated their opinion that
both Hamas and the IDs actions can be constituted as evil. Still,
Kirk wouldn't relent.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
So which one is better? Which one is good? Is better?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
His nonsensical framing was once again rejected, But then Kirk
accused the student of being propagandized and then asked if
they had personally been to Israel to assess the situation.
And this is when everything fell apart.
Speaker 6 (40:38):
Let me tell you this that you know that there's
Arab serving in the Knesset, and you know that why
your point of Jews saying I don't like Jews because Israel.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
I'm just gonna I'm gonna go back to this because
I think it's so interesting though, which is that I
believe that the Jewish people do have a right there
in Cstralhia.
Speaker 6 (40:54):
Well, first of all, you believe that they should be
leveling buildings because that's.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Their in central. I'm not I'm not defending every decision.
That's exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Interrupt every you're interrupting, I'm gonna have for our next
question because you're not arguings. Not much a debate because
I believe that Israel should exist in its current form,
you do not, thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Last couple of the.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Moral confusion on the Israel topic is it's it's hard
to clear up in a veny like this.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Again, like these aren't real debates. If the conversation goes
any way other than how Kirk wants it to go,
he has complete control of the environment and can move
on to a more desirable opponent because, like, beyond convincing
any gullible people that might happen to be in the crowd,
the real reason Kirk does events like this is to
(41:42):
make content. It's YouTube debate. These debate videos rack of
thousands and sometimes millions of views on YouTube and TikTok,
and every single person that participates as if these are
real debates is directly helping Charlie Kirk and make money
and grow his brand. This TPUSA Brainwash Tour will continue
(42:05):
into November, and I'm sure Charlie Kirk will keep doing
events like this in the years to come, regardless of
who wins the election. So what's the options to counter
something like this? I'm of three minds. My default response
to stuff like this is usually just to ignore. Don't
give these attention hounds what they're looking for, don't try
(42:27):
to debate, don't try to own Charlie Kirk with facts
and logic. There's no real benefit from engaging with him
and his ILK on their own terms. But there will
always be at least a few college students who think
they can get one up on Charlie Kirk. So since
these events are gonna continue to happen even if my
(42:49):
friends and I withhold our participation, the second option is
just to simply confuse. This is what I call the
skibbity bite in strategy, one which I deployed against the
my pillow guy, Mike Lindell in front of the Israeli
Consulate as he tried to set up as much attention
as possible during the DNC them skibbity Biden, Sir, skibbity Biden.
Speaker 5 (43:15):
If you buy one.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
This was probably my favorite moment of the DNC. This
strategy of complete confusion doesn't just deny the subject what
they want if you're the my pillow guy attention from
reporters or, in the case of Charlie Kirk, an unfair
debate against a non media trained college freshman. But the
Skibbity Biden strategy also eats up their time, prohibiting others
(43:40):
from being able to engage on the terms decided upon
by turning point USA. The more time you spend spewing
your near unintelligible gibberish about how Warhammer connects to US
foreign policy or explaining your made up conspiracy theory about
how the Hawktua girl is a CIA asset. All of
(44:00):
that is less time for some nineteen year olds to
challenge Kirk on his abortion views, and a knowing Charlie
Kirk is just a fun bonus. Now that I think
about it, This is essentially the patent Oswalt filibuster tactic. Now,
obviously Kirk has control of the mic and probably won't
let you ramble on about gibberish for too long, so
(44:23):
this strategy becomes more successful if you can get a
whole team lined up in front of the microphone now. Finally,
the last option is disruption through force, preferably in a
way that limits the possibility of creating an on camera
spectacle that can be utilized by TPUSA. This has typically
(44:43):
not been a common tactic used to counter turning point
events on campus, but it may be time to reconsider.
Forceful disruptions were often utilized when figures like Milo Uanapolis
toured college campuses back in twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen,
and more recently against campus events featuring Daily Wire employees
(45:04):
like Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh. Historically, this strategy has
not been applied to Charlie Kirk, as he's been viewed
as less radical than some of these other figures. But
I just don't think that's true anymore. Kirk is spreading
and normalizing hardcore as xenophobic and nationalist rhetoric across college
(45:24):
campuses with little to no resistance, not to mention his
complete embrace of conspiracy theories and use of transphobia to
undermine civil rights. There's many ways to disrupt events like
this through forceful means, sound disruption, visual disruption, physical disruption,
Planning an alternate event to take place at the same
(45:45):
time and place big banners with Charles's tiny face carefully
placed in view of the debate cameras. Creative opportunities abound,
but it requires people to be actively monitoring when and
where these events take place and actually plan a counterdemo
ahead of time, and that just doesn't seem to be
(46:07):
happening at the moment. And so I thought going to
this event would help reboot my brain, cheer myself up,
and amuse me with Charlie's childish display of debate kid politics.
But it just left me more sad watching hapless kids
fall prey to Kirk's transparent scheme, just feeling like I
(46:30):
had no way to stop the train wreck. But it
doesn't have to be this way. With a few friends
and a little preparation, there is an alternative, and hey,
it could happen here. Well that's my recap on this
fucking Charlie Kirk rally. Oh and heads up, next week,
there's gonna be no Spooky Week episodes for the first
(46:53):
time in four years. Sorry, the world has just gotten
too spooky this year. Between the election and hurricanes and
the genocide and Gaza and everything else happening, the world's
just too spooky. I'm really just not feeling Halloween pilled
as I usually am. Hopefully things will get better soon.
(47:15):
But in lieu of Spooky Week, we actually have a
special series from James on the Darien Gap, so you
have that to look forward to next week. Goodbye everyone,
see you on the other side.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
fool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out from the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can now find sources for It Could Happen Here
listened directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.