Transcription
Earlier today, I sat down with the American conservative political activist and social media sensation Charlie Kirk. He's part of a new wave of young pro-Trump personalities who have risen to prominence with unwaveringly loyal media and podcast appearances since the president trounced Democrats in the election last year. Charlie has 5 million followers on X, 6 million on Instagram, and millions and millions more across Facebook and Tik Tok. He's known to have the ear of President Trump and indeed the Trump administration, reportedly recommending JD Vance to serve as vice president.
During the run-up to the 2024 US election, the 31-year-old toured 25 different universities in the United States as part of his "you're being brainwashed" tour. And as part of this tour, he held rallies encouraging Marxist students to debate him on a wide range of topics.
Should I have to be forced to call a grown man a woman? I think it comes down to respecting if you don't. Uh, so I respect them too much to lie. So I will call them sir, not ma'am. What should the penalty be when someone breaks into the United States of America? Personally, me, I think we should help them get processed. Do you invite random people into your home and be like, "Hey, you could just squat on my floor and eat my food. Make eye contact with me, please." Like a man. Wow. People who Wait, so you acknowledge that I'm a man? What is a woman? I did not ask about that. I'm not a woman. I don't care. I wouldn't know. I'm asking you about What is a woman?
I sat down with Charlie today in London ahead of his tour of Oxford and Cambridge universities. And I began our chat by asking him what President Donald Trump thought of the UK. What about you? You're massive. You're a massive conservative leader in the US. I'll call you that. I mean, you've been credited with, uh, helping getting Donald Trump elected, uh, and even advising him on cabinet picks, right? So, you are very, very influential. What do you and conservatives and the Trump admin in the US think of the UK? What's your perception of the UK right now? I mean, as a country, and I'll get to the government.
I mean, sadly, this place is a husk of its former self. This, this place needs to get its mojo back. I mean, this is the place that split the atom and invented the steam engine and brought common law to the world. And unfortunately, the perception amongst American conservatives is that this is increasingly a conquered country and that there is not a firm opposition to try to bring Britain back to greatness. I, I hope that's reform. We'll see what happens. It certainly isn't Labour and, you know, Kier Starmer and all the nonsense that he's doing in this country. But look, I mean, we want this country to be great. America is Britain-obsessed and we talk about the royal family all the time. If you come in with a British accent, we take you more seriously. My friend Steve Hilton, who is an adviser to Cameron, is literally running for governor of California. There, we, we love this country from afar and we're really sad about what's happening to it and what has happened to it. And I think that there's a potential political revolution that can happen in this country.
I know it cuz I've lived through several with reform you talking about. I don't even know. Yes. But like I hope so cuz I like Nigel, but I'm not here to tell you what to do politically. I hate when foreigners come to America and say, "Vote for Republican, not Democrat." Like, "Okay, calm down. You don't live here." All I can do is as an outsider, kind of like De Tocqueville coming to America. I can tell you right now as an outsider who's seen themes and trends and patterns, there is an explosion waiting to happen in this country, there is mass repression. And here's why. People are coming up to me quietly, me as an American who follow me on social media, Charlie, I love what you're doing. I wish I could speak out against it. There's so much the silent majority is what we called it in America. And President Trump tapped into that. And these are the muscular class of London. These are the people that are building your hotels. They're driving your taxis. They're the ones that really make London work. And they are so animated about how this country has been run down, down the gutter.
What do they make then? What does Donald Trump You're good friends with JD Vance. You know, you've got you've got Donald Trump's here. What do they make of Kier Starmer and this Labour government? I don't know. I know President Trump was very, uh, positive about the trade deal and he said that was good dealing, you know, with Kier Starmer. I don't want to put words in their mouth or sentiments. I know that that as a totality of Europe, they want Europe to pay more in their contributions to NATO. I can give you my opinion of Kier Starmer, not a fan. Go ahead. Stop it.
Uh, well, look, I mean, first of all, what he's doing with this Brexit thing based on my limited understanding, and again, as an outsider, is like the ultimate denial of democracy, you guys had an up or down vote of the highest turnout election in modern British history ever. Right. Ever in the history of the country, right? And they lost and people said no. When you had 80 plus percent turnout, people did not want to be part of the European Union. And now Kier Starmer is undermining the democratic will of the people. That is not a democracy. And these are the people that are always saying, "Yes, you know, we're very big about liberal democracy." No, you're not. You're about an oligarchy. Your oligarchy is an expert class permanently entrenched. Not a fan of Kier Starmer. Obviously, politically ideology, you know, he's a far-left winger. I would even almost put him in the Marxist camp at times. What he's doing in immigration is a total fraud. No one should actually believe it.
Um, well, I'd say as well, it's not just Labour who, who opened the flood, the floodgates. It was the Conservative, name of the Conservative party cuz in America conservative means something very, very different. Well, that's the scam they've been pulling for the last decade calling themselves conservatives and they're anything but, they're liberal Democrats. Their left of center is being generous actually. Yeah. And like I mean Hillary Clinton would be like a right-winger compared to some of the people in the conservative party here. And you're right, it the Conservative Party allowed the mass migration crisis of Britain and Kier Starmer just happens to now be prime minister trying to, you know, make justifications for it. But this has been I, I hate to use this term. I don't know if it's a term you guys use, bipartisan. Yeah. Uh, which like it's bipartisan of both conservatives and Labour that have now overseen this crisis. We call them the uni-party here. Yeah. Exactly. We have a similar term in America. I think there is an opportunity for an ascendant political force. I don't know if it's reform because of the social media era because people are consuming information in a decentralized way because they're not just getting information from the BBC and from the the gatekeepers of the information of Britain and I think it's a huge existential threat to the power brokers here in this city and country.
You talked about immigration being one of the big levers there, the change in culture and society. Can I ask you, do you think I mean you guys have had a similar situation on the southern border, just I hope you guys understand it's worse, it was worse in America than what you have 100%. Yeah, I mean we both per capita and the volume and we have this ridiculous idea that I don't even think you guys have which is called birthright citizenship which is like if you just I hope you I hope everyone watching understands how insane it is in America. Can you just explain there's some things you guys get better than us. A Chinese woman from Beijing can fly in 9 months pregnant, land in San Francisco airport, go straight to the hospital, get a C-section, and that baby's a US citizen. Full US citizen, full passport, no reservation, no asterisk, nothing. That's called birthright citizenship. So all 10 million people come across the border, if they have babies, of which 250,000 a year, all of them get US passports. We call those anchor babies in America. So it's a it's a it's a problem that Joe Biden manufactured. 10 million people in four years, about 30 million people total. We don't actually know the entire number, but immigration is a number that is an issue that transcends political minds. And I think here in Britain, you guys are finally kind of getting into the willingness to have that conversation.
Okay. Can we talk about um have you had a lady called Lucy Connelly since you've been here? Of course. I talked about her yesterday and no one knew who what I was talking about in Cambridge. Who are we talking about? Who the students didn't know? I mentioned her cuz I did the research. My team did an amazing job and I think she just had her petition denied in the in the last hour or so today. It's Tuesday today. She's had her appeal denied. So, she's going to be carrying out her two and a half year sentence for four solitary tweets. So outrageous. She deleted four, four hours later. What's your take on the whole situation? Well, I'm going to try to get the US State Department involved. I don't know if you know what their bandwidth is here, but I'm sorry. Like, again, I'm speaking as a citizen, not as US government. I just want to be very clear. Like, is this a way that a liberal democracy and an ally of the United States acts? Just to be clear, what she said would not be any prison time in America. I don't like what she said, but she showed contrition. Well, there's two parts. The first part where she said like I don't want immigrants in my country. Perfectly acceptable. That's fine. You can say that you're allowed to have that. I think there was one part about like potentially like violent whatever. Well, she said, let me clarify what she said. Yeah. I want to be clear. So, So I think I think by by the time she sent the tweets, some asylum hotels were in the midst of being burned down or their Molotovs thrown through a window. She tweeted, "Burn them down for all I care." You're allowed to say that in America. So, so the argument is was she inciting via or or was she reacting to the images she was saying? You could. And by the way, just to be clear, you guys have the wrong incitement threshold in America, you need to have specific time and specific place in order to reach the incitement threshold. Every day people say, you know, well, someone should go kill Charlie Kirk. I don't like it, but that's protected speech. In America, we care about what you do, not about what you say. And then she showed contrition and she apologized. And from my understanding, when the police force showed up to her door, they asked her questions being like, you know, do you think that do you hate immigrants? No. She gave like very satisfactory answers and they still arrested her. And I just find it so outrageous that she's going to now jail for 2 and 1/2 years for a deleted social media post that she apologized for. I as as you guys have birthed free speech the world, you now guys are becoming a totalitarian country.
You just mentioned the US State Department. I mean, what, what do you are you inclined to do? What do you I don't know. I mean, I'm going to I'm going to bring this up to Marco Rubio. I'm just going to send him a text being like, "Hey, you have a whole department, you know, and he's done an amazing job, by the way. Marco's incredible." Like, this should be mentioned. And by the way, cuz not it's not new. JD Vance brought this up in Germany. The the context of Lucy Connelly, the her argument is that she fired off that tweet because she'd lost in tragic circumstances a 19-month-old dehydration and she was so shocked to the core about seeing three little girls massacred in Southport near Liverpool that that's why she reacted in that way, but she deleted it 4 hours later. But, but again, this is what this is what's so wrong about how you guys are not you, but your country is viewing this. Who cares the circumstances? You're allowed to say these things and the fact that you guys are policing speech, unspecified speech of someone that then deleted their tweet or their social media post. I mean, you guys know the reference. I mean, this is this you are becoming Orwell's 1984. This is wrong on every fundamental moral level. Is the Trump admin I know JD Vance has mentioned it before. Is the Trump admin aware of that? Is Donald Trump broadly? Yes, I'm sure. Again, I don't know all the specifics. Look, there's like five different dynamics here. We're trying to get, you know, the war in Russia and Ukraine and like there's a lot of different levels here. I do know the State Department is keenly aware about the assault on free speech throughout Europe. And again, they always preach like we're the bastion of democracy. You do not have a free liberal democracy without freedom of speech.
All right, there we go. There's going to be a longer version put online. You can get it on YouTube and a second part to that at 10:20. So, in the second hour of this show, we talk about religion, we talk about immigration, Brexit as well. Uh, so stay tuned for that. And as I said, the full version will be on YouTube. Let's get the thoughts of my panel now. The Conservative MP Esther McVey, GB News presenter Alex Armstrong, and the political commentator Andy Williams. Good evening, panel. Welcome. Evening, Esther. I'm sorry. I, I threw the Tories under the bus there in that chat with Charlie. And of course, always can't be trusted. 16%. You mean Liberal Democrats? I wasn't right behind the sofa as I wasn't. Yeah. Anyway, what's your thoughts on that? You're, uh, the US and people like and I must let me just stress again as well and Alex, you're you're you've got big history in the US. Charlie Kirk is probably the most influential conservative commentator in the United States. He was credited with largely helping Donald Trump get elected. He's good friends with JD Vance, the vice president. He recommended JD Vance to Trump. He's he's pretty much, uh, credited with getting him that position. So he's not just some TikToker who's a good talker and quite eloquent. He is very influential and he's saying the United States looking at us and thinking, oh my god, what is going on in the United Kingdom?
Well, I guess there's a couple of things, isn't it? We have been battered with a series of events over since about 2008. Uh, people said there would be once in a lifetime, once in a generation of, uh, events and they weren't. So we had the financial crash, we've had COVID and lockdown. We've had the first war in Europe; we've come out of Europe. So, I think all of those things happened at the same time. So, have we been battered and bruised and do we need to recover from it? Yes. But I would say do not underestimate the UK. Thank you very much indeed. For a small country, we punch well above our weight. We've defended the world not once but twice. We were the start of the industrial revolution, uh, the internet, the computer, we gave the world cricket, rugby, uh, and, uh, that's what was saying, so, so what I'm saying is yes, we have gone through a difficult time, but I am a strong supporter of the UK and I know that as individuals and as a nation we have resilience, we have brilliance and we'll go forward and I do think there is a a struggle at the moment with our British identity, we don't want to be hiding our light under a bushel anymore, we have to march forward and I
Um, you're talking about whether you're a Lib Dem or a conservative. I am a strong conservative, who you're one of the few genuine top working-class, worked my way up. So I agree with social mobility and opportunity. So yes, we do need to find our way. But I don't need an American telling me how to do it. No. Do you know what? I don't think Charlie, I don't think people like Charlie Kirk are saying this stuff, Alex, because he wants to dunk on the UK. They, they love the UK. As he said, he says it out of concern and out of, out of fear. We are condescending either. Well, I think it is condescending. I think you have to accept some, some criticism from, from good friends when it's justified. No. Yeah. Yeah. It's like when you're in a bad relationship, you'd want your friends to tell you, "Listen, this isn't healthy for you." And that's kind of where our country's headed, particularly on things like free speech. I do get very, very worried about that. I don't believe people should be in jail for tweets along the lines of what Lucy Connelly wrote. I actually agree completely with Charlie Kirk. The threshold is too low. Um, I think when people start saying dates, times, locations, that sort of stuff, then you are probably organizing a very violent rally. But I don't, when I look at her case, I don't see intent for her genuinely to cause harm to people. And as he said, she showed contrition. We need to be able to look, at the end of the day, there's also a man who's who came over to this country illegally. He was sentenced the other day, put into prison for 9 months for posting a video. I think it was a Palestinian migrant who came to this country, broke into our country and posted a video about how Allah should, uh, destroy all the Jews or something along those lines. I'm not quoting exactly. Uh, people can look at themselves. 9 months. Okay. So, there is to most people a two-tier system in this country. It is dangerous for democracy and it's dangerous for the health of Britain going forward. I want all those things that Esther is saying, but we need to get back to our, our roots first.
Andy, do we have free speech in this country? Yeah, obviously we do. I mean, the idea that we do not have free speech that obviously interject so quickly, but it's not that obvious. Lucy Connelly has been banged up for, for, for saying something on Twitter and deleting it four hours. So, if you, if you can let me have more than three words in a sentence, I think that would be fair. Um, it's absolutely clear that we have free speech in Britain. And anyone who can argue that we don't, I think is on a ludicrous platform. You know, we have rules that guard the guardrails around free speech. Now, we could have different interpretations of free speech. Some of us would think that we're, you know, you Ben, I think you're a free speech absolutist. I think that's not, not that's your view. It's not my view. I think the America, the Americans, my definition of free speech is akin to America. Yeah. As in you can say what you like and that's fine. That is not my view. My view is there have to be guardrails around free speech because if you're inciting violence then is it well I think if you're inciting violence or hatred or saying things that will cause people to commit harm on others I do think that's the test now Lucy No, hang on, so, so Lucy Connelly is in prison because she has violated so there's two things here firstly Lucy Connelly's violated the rules of our country and that is why she's in prison. Now, you may agree or disagree with that law, but that is the law as it stands today. So, if you stand for a rules-based system, you must agree that Lucy Connelly should be in prison. You could agree or disagree with the sentence, but she is in prison for that reason. This is where I'm coming. It's a total disproportionate sentence what she was given. And there's a couple of factors here that don't make sense. Invariably, the judges are at pains never or not to send women to prison. They would try not to. And if they've got children, they absolutely will try their best not to or with a shorter sentence. This didn't happen here. And the other thing that you'd have when you are in prison and you're coming to the end of the sentence from last November, she would have been allowed something like Rottle, which is sort of release on temporary license. She would have been able to have gone and seen her husband who's ill and her child who fell and she never got any of that. But what I will So, she never got any of that. And that's why I say disproportionate. But what I will say when and judges do this and they did it in the riots of 2011. Should people do something at a time of rioting, civil disobedience, they give sentences which is to say do not do this. They are disproportionate in a time of rioting and they did that. But now I think it's gone on too long and I do think what they're doing is quite unnecessary. But don't you think just before just before because I think this might add into what you're going to talk about when we when we look at rulings for people who being deported for example right we see judges make decisions based on different different articles of the ECR like a right to a family life for example they must stay here and we give a lot of some of the ridiculous ridiculous things that judges obviously different categories let people off for we aren't showing leniency when it is due and I do blame the government for this because Sunak came up very very clearly and said he wanted these people locked up quicker than they could blink and that is a part that's part of the problem when politicians are calling the the calling for the system to so this is interference of of the separate arms of here's what I would say if you send a tweet that's and by the way let's be clear when you post on social media that is publishing you are publishing no one disagrees with that no one disagrees was wrong she deleted it she admitted it was wrong and she said that set fire to all the hotels she didn't say that yes she No, she didn't. Andy, what did she say? You tell me what she said. She said well, tell me what she said. What was the tweet? I don't I don't want to I can't repeat it because we're Repeat it. I'm giving you permission to to repeat. She said, "Set fire to all the hotels and apologies for for the swearing there." And what was the tweet? It doesn't matter what it doesn't matter. It does not matter. The whole the whole this conversation about the tweet is here. Mass deportations now set fire to all the hotels for all I care. That's what we're debating. for all I care. Is that inciting? Well, the courts have deemed it so. And again, I'm not defending this tweet. I'm just saying for all I care. My argument is she was not inciting people to go and set fire to hotels. She was saying for all I care that can happen. I'm not I can't I can't believe we're arguing this semantic point. She said set fire to all the hotels. That is clearly incitement. She also acknowledged it was wrong. Yes. She took it down 4 hours later. So she did air Cola. Everybody agrees it was a vile tweet. It was wrong. There was a sentence for it. She did. Everybody's got that. It is about the disproportionality. I agree with that. She's been prison. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry to interject. Just finally, do you think she's a political prisoner the way it's gone so far? Obviously not. No. Obviously, she's she's got a 12-year-old child who deeply misses her mother. Yeah. And I'm coming back. You said no. She She's got a 12-year-old child who deeply misses her mother. Her the father of that child is ill and she's a child minder. She had no previous convictions. She the court heard today. I was reading the the appeal, uh, transcript from the court. The court heard that she was sending private messages, WhatsApp to friends in the days after that tweet saying you expressing her fear that it could have been her own children. Say and then she went back onto Twitter to to make calls for no more violence in the riots. You know, none of that was taken into consideration. So is it 31 months her sentence? Is that right? So that seems to me like a disproportionate sentence. Do I think she should have a jail sentence? Absolutely. I think a deterrent is really important. She broke the law. I, I wrong is that she's being made. She's very little sympathiz rightly so. We need to make an example. That that's that's mob. I want to know why she's not getting Rottle and being able to go home for two a week a month. All right. We got to move.
On. We'll continue this because we've got the uh the second part of the Charlie Kirk interview coming up in the next hour. So, we will continue this. Thank you, panel.
I'm going to get a little bit deep now. The the the trans situation, medical experiments on kids, mass migration. Is it intentional? Is it not? I used to be of the premise, the thought that I didn't think there was good and evil per se. I used to think, well, people have different perspectives, and you know, give them a bit of uh, you know, benefit of the doubt and just kind of think, you know, we've maybe been brought up in different environments. I am now, after seeing many many different situations over the past couple of years, Southport the murders for example, as an example, that evil exists. Do you think evil exists in the world?
I mean, I I I'm I'm an evangelical Christian and just like, first of all, I just think that this materialist secularist lie I saw at Cambridge, that everything is just atoms and matter. There's a supernatural domain. There's a realm out there that's supernatural. Every civilization that's ever existed acknowledged this except the last like 200 years. We thought we're really super smart because like, actually no, we're just a bunch of subatomic particles and you're just a bunch of chemicals in your brain. No, there is a spiritual dimension. And there is a supernatural realm. And of course, evil exists. As an evangelical Christian, we believe evil has kind of like a chief executive officer, Satan or Lucifer. And we believe Christ our Lord is the not just the counter, but is the salvation for all of humanity. And I want England to believe that again, cuz you guys brought Christianity to so much of the world. I want the Church of England to get its its mojo back.
I was going to say, do you think what's happening in the West over this I'd say 20 years? Do you think what's been happening over the past 20 years is because of a lack of faith in maybe not God but just faith in something bigger than ourselves? Or I would say yes. I mean, something transcendent. I mean, look, can a civilization continue when it cuts off what gave it life? Probably not. And that's what modernity is flirting with right now. And so then you get all these counterfeit religions. You get environmentalism. Why do you guys think you guys are doing this insane net-neutral carbon stuff by 2050? Yeah. So, you get rid of a substitute form of earthship. You get rid of Christianity and then you get a substitute for anti-racism. You get rid of more dangerous, you go from secularism than to Islam because then you're like, well, we have to believe in something and then you you bring in a completely different ideology that's at odds with Western values.
People watching this now would say it's just Islamists who are the issue. Islam as a as a religion is peaceful by nature, so on and so on. What's your response to that? I know a lot of great individual Muslims. My primary doctor in America is actually a Muslim and he's amazing. That's not the point. You could walk the street and meet a great Muslim in London. The question is, is macro Islam compatible with Western values? Macro? Of course it's not. There are three maj major reasons why Islam does not believe in freedom of speech. Islam does not believe in freedom of religion. And Islam does not believe in separation of mosque and state. Those three things are antithetical to the West. In a Muslim majority country, you are not—most Muslim majority countries—you cannot criticize the prophet Muhammad. In most Muslim majority countries, you do not have the same robust freedom of religion protections. And finally, whereas we in the west are very careful to try to intermix religion and state, they are commanded to actually go into the state and try to change the state to be more Islamic around the core pillars of Islam.
And the last thing I'll finally say is I cannot see a single western country that has become more Islamic and has become a better place to live that is happier or freer by by what metric—just happiness, quality everything from quality of life from cultural cohesion from whether people want to live there from uh from I mean prior to the native-born fertility rates. Again, people watching this will say there are—is your criticism of the religion itself or not Muslim people? Because there are there are British Muslims. You'll have to caveat it all the time. I know you guys have to cuz you're British and all that. A culture ceases to exist. We don't have a unified language when you do not have when you cannot talk to your neighbor. I'm not discounting that there are good individual Muslims. The question that we need to reckon with: is the west compatible with the teachings of Blackstone? Is it compatible with the legacy of Wilberforce? And and and the great thinkers that have come from this country and I will say no. There's a reason why when you go to these Islamic countries that you're not going to see the equal protection of rights, that you do not believe in universal human equality, that you do not believe the same things that we believe in the West. And I think it's suicidal to import millions of them.
Yeah. And you know what? Just a passing point on that. It's most of the time, as far as I'm concerned, it's not even multicultural because there was an example in there was a school a few months ago during Easter which cancelled Easter celebrations out of respect for other other faith. So it's not as if it's multi—the word multicultural and multi-iverse doesn't include Christianity. No. And again, this is this is the red green axis and Britain is at the forefront of this. You have the Marxists that have infiltrated your government and the Islamists that are coming to your country. And when they combine together, they both agree on one thing. They have huge disagreements on a lot. They hate the West and they want to see it broken.
Okay, we're finishing up because we're pushed on time. You have to get to Oxford tonight, right, for more battles with some lefty students. But I have some quick fire questions. Go ahead.
Where's Elon Musk gone? Oh, he's around. He's running his companies. He disappeared. Where's Oh, no, no, no. He's just not on TV as much. He's around the White House. He's around the Eisenhower Executive Office building. Remember, he's running like multiple trillion dollar companies. Oh, no. He was very prominent in the first couple months. Everybody taken a step back. Yes. But there's also like a legal thing too. He's what's called a special government employee. So there's only so many hours you're allowed to spend on stuff. But it is noted that look, he was very very present the first like couple months. He set a lot of causes in motion. I think you're going to keep seeing a lot of them.