➡ Charlie Kirk, a political commentator and founder of Turning Point USA, advises people to be brave when tackling controversial issues, even if it means losing some relationships. He built a conservative empire that spans over 850 college chapters and played a significant role in voter registration and political campaigns. His friend, Cliff Maloney, CEO of Citizens United and founder of the Pennsylvania Chase, shares his experiences working with Kirk and praises his dedication to influencing Americans and taking action. Despite his tragic death, Kirk’s legacy continues to inspire and impact the nation.
➡ The text discusses the legacy of Charlie Kirk, a prominent figure who organized large events and had a significant impact on young people, particularly Gen Z. The speaker praises Kirk’s forward-thinking approach and his ability to challenge popular academic notions. The speaker also highlights the importance of continuing Kirk’s work and suggests that Erica Kirk could be a key figure in this. The text ends with a critique of the left’s rhetoric and its potential to incite violence.
➡ The text discusses the harmful effects of dehumanizing language and false labels, which can incite violence and murder. It emphasizes the need for truthful communication to prevent such incidents. The text also highlights a spiritual awakening among many Americans, leading them back to their faith. Lastly, it discusses the importance of political involvement and the efforts to encourage more people to vote.
➡ The speaker fondly recalls a significant moment with Charlie, attributing their success in Pennsylvania to their collective efforts and faith. They express gratitude for the support they’ve received and encourage continued backing for Cliff’s projects in Pennsylvania, which aim to secure a political shift in the state. The speaker remains optimistic about their future endeavors, inspired by Charlie’s dream.

Charlie, what advice would you give to our viewers who are afraid to take on controversial issues? I get is hard. So you just have to admit one truth and then you could chart your course from there, which is you will not be able to get your country back and keep everything you have. It’s impossible. You will lose friends, you’ll lose contracts, you’ll lose relationships, but you will gain in wisdom and encourage, and you’ll actually end up gaining in friendships that matters. Hey, gang, it’s me, Dr. Steve, your patriot professor. And I have a wonderful guest on with us today, a very good friend of mine and an even better friend to Charlie Kirk.

As we’ve noted time and time again, Charlie wasn’t just another political commentator. At just 31, he had built Turning Point USA into a conservative empire spread spanning over 850 college chapters. His organization was credited with registering tens of thousands of new voters and helping flip Arizona for Trump in November. One of the things that you may not know is that many of you played a direct part in that, and that’s because of your support for the Pennsylvania Chase and their efforts at knocking on an unprecedented 500,000 doors in the single most massive get out the vote campaign in Pennsylvania’s history.

And the Pennsylvania Chase was basically Pennsylvania’s version of Charlie’s Arizona get out of the get out the vote campaign. And I am joined today by the widely recognized godfather of door knocking, the CEO of Citizens United and founder of the Pennsylvania Chase, Cliff Maloney. Cliff, welcome, my friend. It’s so good to see you. My friend. Steve, great to see you as always. Thanks for having me. Oh, it’s. It’s our honor. So you and Charlie were obviously very close. We were talking about this earlier. I never, unfortunately, I never got to meet him personally. I was really looking forward to maybe doing some events with him this year and.

But I’ve been saying, and I. My audience has certainly been telling me, and I think we can all see it, just because you don’t know someone personally doesn’t know you, doesn’t mean you didn’t know them preciously. And our audience loved Charlie, but you were fortunate enough to be a part of his inner circle to know him both personally and preciously. So first, you know, Cliff, how are you doing? And then secondly, just give us a little bit of the backstory of how you met Charlie and started working together. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to come out here and talk to the whole Turley community.

Look, to start, of course, I’m devastated. Right. I don’t, I don’t want to make too much light of it or jump past was horrific. You know, to watch one of my good friends who was a political partner, a political ally, a mentor of mine, an American titan, if you will, to have to watch him, as millions did on a live camera feed, take a bullet is. Is just, you know, there’s not really words. It was horrific. At first. You’re scrambling, saying, you know, well, you know, is there a chance he could still be alive? Yeah, the first 30 minutes were, you know, a time I don’t.

I don’t really ever want to have to live through again for anybody else, whether I know them or not. Because you’re just scrambling to figure out what is happening. My story with Charlie, you know, is pretty lengthy. About 10. Gosh, no, it’s probably even more than that. Maybe about 12 years ago, you know, we had crossed paths. I was running a youth org. You know, he was launching Turning Point usa. I was always impressed. I do events, and these Turning Point USA activists would always show up. Now, this is not a shot at, you know, the other groups like YAF or College Republicans or any of these.

These young conservative groups. But Charlie had real people, right? He knew what he was doing. He knew how to organize. And so over the years, you know, we kind of end up at events together, speaking together. And then pretty much in 2018, when I decided that, look, I want to really focus on knocking doors, I think there’s some power here. And I was focused on, really, state House and state Senate races. Well, as I said to your audience probably a year and a half ago now, Steve, I said, look, I get this phone call from Charlie, and he says, hey, he says, Turning Point’s going to do Arizona and Wisconsin.

But, you know, Trump wants somebody to really own PA when it comes to chasing ballots. This is not registration, TV ads, this is not digital. This is not mailers. When it comes to chasing or harvesting ballots in the swing states. Charlie was owning Arizona and Wisconsin through Turning Point, hiring thousands of people. And our job at Citizens alliance was to run the PHA program. And so Charlie really was the one who encouraged me to go back to my home state. Justin, my number two, he’s also from pa. A lot of our team at Citizens alliance, they’re from Pennsylvania.

And so we kind of took the directive from Charlie, and obviously, smashing success changed my life. You know, now on the national stage, talking about a swing state, heck, talking to you and getting connected with so many patriots because it was one of the most important swing states, and we were the One solution to fix the mail in ballot program. So it’s been an honor and I really thank Charlie for setting me up for success in PA and, you know, delivering the White House. Yeah, it wasn’t one of the most important. It was the most important.

You’re being, you’re being humble and I. So I will say, I will trumpet you here. If we didn’t win Pennsylvania, I don’t know how we could have won one in the end because you, and you know this. Michigan and Wisconsin tend to follow Pennsylvania. So Pennsylvania’s. If wherever Pennsylvania goes, Michigan, Wisconsin goes. So I’m glad you guys double teamed up between Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But if, well, let’s just put it this way, if Democrats don’t win, and you know this, you and I have talked about this ad nauseam. If they don’t win Pennsylvania ever again, they’re, they’re, they’re boxed out of power permanently, at least when it comes to the White House.

So you were the man and you deserve all the accolades that you get because I know how hard you worked now. You know, one of the things that has blown me away over the last several days now is just the extraordinary impact that Charlie made in this nation in just such a short period of time. It never hit me that I just, you know, the vast empire he created was enormous. I’m going to have a vice president accompany your casket on the Air Force Two. I mean, this is the flag being flown at half staff anywhere outside of la.

That flight freak. So, sorry, I just. So can you talk a little bit about that? Charlie was, he wasn’t just sitting behind a microphone pontificating. He was literally building a nationwide conservative infrastructure for Republican dominance for literally the next century. Can you, can you talk about that? Yeah. Here’s how I describe the life and the tactics of Charlie Kirk. Pretty much what Charlie would do is find any way that you could reach voters, any way that you could influence Americans to either take action or to change their mind. Any of the tactics, any of the systems, any of the processes, Charlie would analyze them and say, how do we become the best in the world at this? Whether it’s stuff that the left was doing, whether it’s stuff that kind of the more establishment on the right was doing, but he would take that and he would try to figure it out.

He was a problem solver. Right? This was the thing I always liked about him. When we would talk Pennsylvania, he’d always want to talk to three congressional targets that we had. He always wanted to talk about, you know, where are the mail and ballot requests where the mail in ballot returns. He was metric driven, right? He wanted this. He wanted to see the results, not just yap about them. And you know, as a former math teacher and a guy who loves looking at the metrics and the analytics, that’s why we got along so well. Because it wasn’t just all this gobbledygook that you hear from both people on the right and the left that want to talk.

Right. He wanted to take action. So that’s how he gets to be the guy who’s running a $100 million a year organization, meaning he can fundraise. He’s running a five day a week, multiple hour show on current events, breaking news every single day. He’s got one of the biggest influencers and just the ability to get clicks and eyeballs not just through him, but all of the turning point influencers and the ambassador programs and all of that. Then he’s also running the largest high school and college ground game, both on the right and left and probably all combined for real events.

Meanwhile, he himself is doing these campus tours. He himself is putting Together events with 10, 15, 20,000 people at America Fest last year in Arizona after the election where I spoke, I mean, this is not somebody you replace. Right? And the left knew that. Right. I mean, that’s, that’s something that we all know. But when people ask me, who’s the next Charlie Kirk? It’s not who’s the next Charlie Kirk? It’s how do we assemble a team of people or different folks that really can make sure his legacy is preserved. And more important than his legacy is that we do the work, that the results of what he wanted, his vision, become true.

Look, Erica Kirk, her speech knocked me out. One of the, one of the best of the 21st century period. And I look at that speech and I say to myself, man, you know, I had to take a step back because I said, man, I second guess certain things. You know, when I have 50 of my investors reaching out saying, you better have security. That’s a weird. Yeah, weird conversation to have. Yeah. I’m talking to these different people about how can we continue Charlie’s work, what can we do? And then, man, Erica gets up there and just triples down and talk about a message, talk about a vision.

You know, Erica, to me, is the new face. Yes. You need to figure out how to build around her to continue Charlie’s legacy. And I’m excited. I do think I would never, ever, ever say that there’s a silver lining or wish for harm to one of my friends. But the one thing we can take from this is I truly believe turning point will be stronger, be more robust because of this horrific tragedy and heinous act from some radical lunatic. Yeah, and that’s the beauty of Charlie’s Christian faith, you know the most. The ugly, horrific, torturous symbol of execution and horror.

The cross can transfigure into a tree of life, into a symbol of hope and eternal blessedness. And how does God take this absolute horror and turn it into something beyond our wildest imaginations for his glory? It’s beautiful. You know, speaking, I mean, many, many are focusing just on the impact that Charlie made on, on young people in particular, of course, Gen Z and particularly Gen Z men who have swung 44 points to the right since 2020. Again, what I’m so, I’m so blown away by is how holistic his thinking was, how forward thinking. He wasn’t thinking in the now, his sense of Future.

Future wasn’t 2026. It was that of course we have to be concerned about 2026, but he seemed to be just as concerned about 2056 as he was 2026. He just, he see, he realized that if you win Gen Z, you win the future. And he, and he completely overturned the silly academic notion that was really popular like back in 2018, 2019, that, that it’s called the cultural backlash thesis. I think you and I have even talked about it, that argued that Trump was just the last gasp of a dying old white male generation that will eventually, inevitably be replaced by an Obama inspired, woke progressivism that dominates Gen Z.

Charlie, I mean, he demolished that. Can you talk about his impact on the Gen Z voter? Yeah, I think demolish is the right word. I mean, I think Charlie, you’re right, he’s looking forward, you know, obviously decades even, even just, you know, as simple as saying, look, when a lot of people on the right said, hey, we don’t want to touch vote by mail, you know, we want to vote on election day, it’s the most secure way. And you know, I’ve said this on your show before, I hate mail in ballots, right? And I might be a mail in ballot guy, but that’s just because I’m playing by the current rules.

And some of the first people to really tell me, listen, Cliff, we can hate the rules, but I’m not going to give up on an election because I don’t like the rules. I’m going to play by the rules to the best benefit of our candidates. Winning. And whenever the rules change, we look at our tactics and we adjust as we need to. Charlie’s impact on young people. I was not a believer, let’s say 10 years ago in the idea that, you know, we were going to win this battle. And Charlie was, and I give him a lot of credit because the amount of resources he had to raise, the amount of work that he had to do to go up against the behemoth that is higher ed in America, the indoctrination central camp, if you will, of just churning out people that think that, you know, free speech is hate speech and that everybody on the right is misogynistic, racist, homophobe.

I mean that, that is Nazi, fascist, you name it. And so I give Charlie so much credit. I mean, like you said, 40 point swing. Yeah. Of Gen Z males, you know, double digit swing of Gen Z across the board. I mean 18 to 30 year olds, the amount that they shift just from 2020 to 2024. I just don’t think people understand the ramifications of what Charlie has done. Not just now for 2024 or 2025 or 2026, but I think that what he has really done, and I’m going to say this here on your show, is I think he has exposed so many people to the idea that real Americans want somebody that’s authentic, that can have real conversations.

2024 proved that with Trump and Vance doing the long form podcast, the Real Conversations. And the left did nothing. Right. Charlie reaffirmed that by going out. Who on the left do you know right now that is out on college campuses saying, come prove me wrong? We’ll have an open debate and open dialogue in open conversation. Yeah, great point. Phenomenal point. There’s no, there’s no one. No. That’s a phenomenal point. And so I feel like Charlie really cemented this idea that because of social media, because of alternative media, because of shows like this, that regular people are craving something real.

And, and, and the, the prove me wrong showed that when you have thousands of people showing up because they want raw interaction, they’re so tired of the scripted, the corporate mainstream legacy media bogus. Everyone’s tired of it. And I think that if all goes as planned, this will be a turning point from 2024. Authenticity with the election, 2025, authenticity with real conversations. I don’t think we’re going to look back. I think the people are going to continue to demand this. And Charlie Kirk gets a lot of credit for that and he could even push that. I love how you Brought that up because, because you know, he was going into hostile environments.

The most hostile environment. All the studies showed the, the faculties of universities like 98% liberal. I mean they’ve just, they’ve basically purged universities of any conservative voice. So it’d be something akin to a, a, some, a well read, say for lack of better term, leftist going to, I don’t know what would they, they’d be going to hunting shows or like UFC arenas or you know, or, or, or NASCAR or something where wherever conservatives gather in mass. And then having, you know, one of these prove me wrongs. They wouldn’t go there because they’d just be sitting, they’d just be sitting there insulting people audience the entire time.

Because of course, how can you argue if your whole frames of reference are molded around the notion that anyone who dissents or disagrees is evil? And Charlie just didn’t believe that he was willing to say no if we disagree. Let’s find this point of disagreement and I think I’ve got a better argument. I think you’ve been cheated. I think progressive realism has been, has been forced on you. And I provide some light for an alternative way of understanding the world that I think you’re going to find true, good and beautiful. Yeah. And look, I mean any of these people that don’t think that, you know, you can blame the left for what this guy did, sure, maybe there’s not one person you can blame.

Nobody. Maybe, maybe nobody that’s prominent called him and said, hey, take out Charlie Kirk. But they have to at a certain point understand the rhetoric. And if rhetoric which, when you read these text messages, you know, between, oh yeah, between the shooter and between his gay lover who’s, you know, deranged and thinks he’s becoming a woman that, that ABC News found to be like Hallmark card. Yeah. Yeah. Very tough to watch some of these reporters, you know, isn’t it unbelievable? Yeah. I just don’t get it. But when you read those texts, it proves the whole point.

You know, when he says that it’s, it’s so much hate that it’s, it’s worth taking out. It’s worth taking a life. They believe the BS that is being spewed to them by their leaders that if someone is filled with hate, it is justified to take them out with violence. Hate is words. I don’t, you don’t have to agree with the person. You don’t have to, to go out and you know, praise them. But for us to be at a point in America where you think you can justify violence and murder. Yeah, I mean just, just heinous on rhetoric.

Yeah. Based on what somebody says. We need, I don’t, I don’t use the word tone it down. We need to fix and correct. Yeah. Use actual labels that are truthful. Right. Instead of demonizing people. And then when somebody kills the person you demonize, you say, oh well, I wasn’t calling for violence. Yes, you were. Fix your labels and speak truth. And these things won’t happen. When you convince people that are deranged in the head, they then take action thinking the, there’s some hero. It’s, I mean the technical term, it’s been floated around quite a bit is stochastic terrorism.

It’s the idea that, that the, the elites use a very particular dehumanizing language for a group of people so as to literally inspire some lone crazed wolf to take the action that they could say, I never called for any violence and so forth. So the, the bottom line with stochastic terrorism is Charlie wasn’t killed because he was a Nazi. He was called a Nazi so he would be killed. That’s the, that’s the, the nefarious, malicious, malevolent forces I think we’re dealing with, with progressive realism today. And fortunately it just sounds, I don’t, I don’t know if you caught JD’s filling in for Charlie.

Was it on Monday? I can’t even remember. Gosh, time is a little bit blurry here. Did you see it when he gave one of the best monologues of, you know, there is no peace, There is no unity with, with a group of people that basically want us all dead? Yeah. And I, I did the show about 30 minutes after he wrapped. I was, oh, okay, there you go. I should have kept watching. I was on with Poso, you know, sharing, sharing stories. But yeah, I did get a chance to watch it. And look, here’s the one thing that I will say.

There are two, two major things I think come of this incident in this tragedy. Number one, I think a lot of Americans now realize we’re in a spiritual battle. Yeah. I don’t come on your show, Steve, and talk about my Christian faith. I probably should more the amount of people that I know to not be religious or to be non practicing Christians or non practicing Catholics that now had a kind of a re. Awakening, you know, myself included. You know, I’m not a perfect man. I’ve got my own issues as a Christian. But when Charlie as, as imperfect as he would say he was, as strong a Christian as he was, I just think that too many people see somebody who was speaking at an event where they said, come exchange words and let’s figure out who has the better set of ideas.

And for that to be such a threat that they killed him, I think this is going to be a reawakening. You’re seeing it with the vigils across the country. You’re seeing it with the social media posts from different, not necessarily people on the right, but just normal folks who are saying, I’m turning back to the church, I’m turning back to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. That’s the first very powerful thing. I think the most important development that has come from this. The second is a dark, dark, dark reality. And that is seeing the reaction from some of these radicals online.

Yeah. And seeing how deranged they are. There are people I knew from high school, from college, people that know that I am close with Charlie and for them to post certain things. Yeah. I saw too in my life. Life. Yep. Justifying it and praising and saying that, you know, oh well, if you support the second Amendment, you deserve a bullet in the neck. I’m telling you right now, Steve, this plays into the first one of the spiritual battle. But the amount that they are radicalizing normal people that see that and say what you believe that about exactly.

31 year old kid who was shot and murdered. Yeah. It is going to backfire on them. It’ll play into the spiritual battle and. But it was tough for me to see all that and realize that there are so many people out there that actually believe they buy in to some of the nonsense. This is going to harm them politically over the next five, 10, 15 years. I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree with you more. And, and I, it’s funny the way you brought that up because I think it was, I can’t remember who I was watching. I think it was Jesse Waters or some.

Just last night he was talking about how Charlie had brought together the spiritual and the political, where he believed that converting people to political conservatism was a bridge to faith and spirituality. In other words, if he could win Gen Z to faith, family and freedom that’s inherent in conservatism, he could win them ultimately to Christianity and renewed Christian commitments. And the reason why that impacted me when I heard that last night so much is because that’s exactly what happened to me, Cliff. That’s literally my testimony. My early 20s in college, I started listening to Rush. I said, not the band.

I started listening because I did go to A music conservatory. But I started listening to Rush, Limo and I, and I got totally converted to political conservatism. But the more I read, the more I realized that it was rooted in principles that were eternal and transcendent and values of truth, goodness and beauty that themselves were revealed in and through the Christian faith. And so I committed my life to Christ as a result of being converted to conservatism. And, and I. We’re just, we seem, you’re, you’re so right. We seem to be getting. I’m, we’re getting it in our insiders club, in our private club that we have.

I’m getting people who said, I just bought a buy last Monday night in our Q A, the private Q A, some one of our members said, I just bought a Bible for the first time. Which book should I read first? It’s happening. It’s absolutely happening. And it’s, it’s absolutely glorious. I just, it’s. I think it’s beyond anything Charlie could have ever imagined. I know you, you’re a busy man and I want to respect your schedule. You got some stuff going on, Cliff. You always got stuff going on. You’re always on the plane somewhere. You are changing the world.

So what can we do? I know Charlie would be very upset if I did not highlight your latest efforts at winning elections. So what do you, what do you got going on that we can help you out with? Yeah. So look, one of the things after the powerhouse of a time we had in 2024 with the PA chase is we realized that the Democrats never leave the state. Right. January of this year they were back with 105 full time people. They flipped the state Senate seat in a special election. And that was kind of a wake up call.

And so, you know, if we’re looking at JD Vance in 2028 and working our way backwards, we’ve announced that the phase is going to do this permanently. We’re going to be here every single year. We’re knocking 500,000 doors this year. We’re going to do 750,000 next year for the midterm. And if you look at 2028, I mean, we’re pledging to do a million doors. Now here’s, here’s the hard part, Steve. A lot of people in 24, I come on the show, you look in the camera and say, you guys need the sponsor. It’s $175 a day.

You can do it@phase.com in 2024. It was easy to understand it. Right. My pitch to everybody In Turley Nation right now is the most important thing we can do is keep the infrastructure in 2025. I have 118 people on the ground in Pennsylvania right now. They’ve been there since August 4th. We will be there through November 4th, hitting tons of different races up and down the ballots. It doesn’t matter what the races are. What matters is we are in target congressional races that are going to have an impact in 26 because we’re developing habit. We’re getting these low propensity voters.

Remember, these are not you, me, or any of the listeners that are going to vote. These are people that are registered Republican. They’re patriots, but they’re unlikely to vote. Right. And the more we get them in the habit of requesting a mail in ballot, sending that ballot back, that habit gets developed. And all of a sudden we add 2 to 3,000 people in each of these congressional districts that are now likely voters. We flip those seats or we hold those seats. Yeah. My big ask to everybody is pachase.com you can chip in $175 that sponsors somebody for a full day to chase ballots right now.

I don’t have to send them home right now in Pennsylvania. And Steve, I want to end with one quick story. When I was doing the show with Jack this week, you know, he mentioned something pretty crazy on election night when we called Pa and when Charlie had his moment of smiling and sitting in his chair and he starts to cry. And I’m doing the voiceover to tell Charlie, remember this moment. Remember where you were when we pushed back against the establishment. Remember where you were. And Erica comes in and gives him this huge hug. And of course, I remember that as one of the most beautiful moments in my life.

I’ve seen the video a million times, but Jack brought it up to me that the speech that she gave was from that exact same spot from where Charlie said, it’s all God. Wow. And once again, my Christian faith lit up by thinking about that being from that same spot. Turley Nation made that happen when it came to winning in Pennsylvania. Turley Nation is one of the reasons why we said it’s all God because all of us came together for a better cause, a greater cause. And I just want to thank Charlie and I really appreciate you giving me the chance to.

To talk about him, Steve, and to continue to talk to your entire audience. We got this nation back because of the people on this show. And we are just getting started. We will come back stronger than ever. And may Charlie rest in peace. Amen. Amen. For Charlie, as Poso loves to that refrain. So, yeah, Charlie was a national treasure and you are a national treasure, Cliff. Everyone, I want you to click on the link below and support Cliff in his latest projects in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Chase and get that permanent infrastructure in place. You saw how effective they were to deliver the Keystone State for President Trump.

The voter registration drives continue to just crush it, particularly all throughout Pennsylvania. It’s going red. It’s going. It’s just, it’s not a matter with guys like Cliff behind it and Scott and all those. It’s not a matter of if it goes red. It’s only a matter of when. And, and Cliff is on the forefront, the front lines of making that happen. So make sure you’re supporting Cliff and giving everything he needs so we can realize this extraordinary dream of Charlie’s beyond anything he could have ever imagined. Love you, Cliff. Thank you so much for being with us.

Thanks, doc. See you.
[tr:tra].

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