Bill cunning in Great American, of course, one of the apostles I think of the twenty first century. I'll call him the Saint Paul the twenty first century. It was Charlie Kirk.
To me, it's.
Amazing how the left needs to vilify him quickly, even more than they've done in the past, to make sure his message is not heard. I would note there's a couple of stories out recently about colleges that have refused Turning Point USA chapters, including the riot that took place
at Berkeley. So the radical left has to demonize Charlie Kirk despite his christian like message, because it is feared that if many college kids develop a conservative philosophy about God and about family and about America that's so positive about our country that they may become, shall we say, conservatives, form family structures, worship God, and also salute the American flag, which are some of the principles of Charlie Kirk during
his lifetime. I still can't believe Charlie is murdered as of number tenth.
It was awful. We'll find out how.
The trial takes place later next year, but there's a documentary out Captain Kirk Captain Kirk a new documentary set for release, How a Young Leader Charted the way forward for the next generation of great Americans. Joining you and on now is the creator of that documentary, Joshua Phillips
and Joshua Welcome to The Bill Cunningham Show. And first of all, before we get into the history of what Charlie Kirk did, starting about twelve or thirteen years ago, do you find it amazing that colleges, which should be arsenals of democracy, colleges that should allow the free flow of ideas, especially at Berkeley, where free speech supposedly began back about fifty years ago, that colleges are barring Turning Point USA chapters from forming.
Do you find that surprising?
You know, I should find it surprising. Unfortunately I don't, because this is the pattern we've seen. I actually just spoken an event to California with Rob Schneider, who is you know, one of the main speakers at that event. In Berkeley's attack, they got they got attacked by Antifa. I will ask a question, though, why do college campuses allow Antifa to shut down events but they don't allow a Christian conservative organization to operate? You a good question to ask.
Well, Rob Schnauder was at that event, and we've haent on assistant US attorneys who are going to pursue that possibly criminal charges.
Let's go back to the beginning.
Charlie Kirk went to college quite briefly and said him out of here. Explained the origins of Charlie Kirk when he got out of high school, a brilliant guy. The messages you got to go to college, get that sheepskin, you got to do it.
He briefly went and left.
Why maybe the same reason of a lot of the big successful names tend to follow the same battern. You know, I did the same thing. I went to college for a couple of years that you know what, I'm not really doing anything with it. I'm gonna do something else, and the same same way with a lot of people like that. I think the unfortunate reality is college colleges don't educate people like they used to. And I mean I'm not trying to, you know, shoot it down, people
have degrees or whatever. But I do think being self educated will teach you things that you're not going to be taught in college these days. And I think what is being recognized is that a lot of kids are being sold a bad deal. They go to college, they get their degree, they graduate, and they find that they can't do a lot with it because they've been miseducated, or they've just been taught activism. They've been taught how to go in protest, but not how to go and find a job.
So really they're indoctrinated, not educated.
And one stack came out from the Gallupole a few days ago that forty percent of young women want to leave America forty percent, and so the promises and most of these women are highly educated. When I see protests today, Joshua Phillips, I see often bright, a young educated white females that are angry at everything and they want to leave the country.
That's an example of bad education.
Correct fully agreed. And it's unfortunate too. I mean, imagine you, you know, you raise a daughter, bring her up right, she goes to college. You know, you pay what fifty thousand a year or whatever it is. They come out of it, they can't find a job, they hate the country, and they think that totalitarian communism or socialism is the
answered all their problems. They want to bring a system into place that has killed with you know what, one hundred million to one hundred and sixty million people, and I think that's good. But they think America is evil. I think that is a result of an absolutely failed education, total misrepresentation of history.
Joshua Phillip, Why did Turning Point USA succeed so greatly? I'm going to ask you later, what's the future when they When the leader dies, often the movement dies. But what made Turning Point USA successful during the living years of Charlie Kirk?
You know, I think what made Turning Points so successful is that Charlie Kirk went to the college campuses and basically called them out. He was the guy saying, hey, the emperor has no clothes. And then when he's said that, everybody said, you know what. I saw that too, and I didn't want to say it. He was going to college campuses, getting on the microphone and saying, hey, whoever disagrees with me, most grab the microphone, Let's have a conversation.
Bring your professors out. I will debate your professors in front of you. And he was making absolute fools out of them because he was exposing it.
That's why it succeeded, and it grew from a little colonel into a huge mountain of ideas. When this happened, when Charlie was murdered because of what he was saying, almost immediately the memes on YouTube, there were hundreds of thousands, generally young, educated white females, mocking the murder of a father and a husband in an odd way. Did that help turning point movement go forward? Or because didn't it expose who they are?
I think it exposed the radicals, and I think it exposed Let's put it this way, a lot of the people who promote socialism do it under the guise of moral good. They say, I'm a good person, you're an evil person. I'm the I'm the one who's right by history, and you're you know, you're the one, you know, basically
doing the wrong thing. As soon as they come out and they support the murder of a man in front of his children, you know, being shot of a neck, will trying to have an open debate someone someone whose only crime was to engage in discussion, and they're saying, I hate freedom of speech so much that if someone disagrees with me, I want to see them murdered in front of their in front of their children. For somebody to be like that show that they lose the moral
high ground. And when people recognize, oh, you don't. These people don't believe in kindness, These people don't believe in honesty, these people don't believe in debate, the mask falls off and you see them for what they are, and a lot of people say, you know what you know? Rather than retreating into the shadows, what happened was a lot of college could said I'm going to go be just like Charlie Kirk. I am Charlie Kirk, and I'm going to do exactly what he did.
What surprised you most in this documentary about it's called Captain Kirk. What surprised you about the internal dynamics and growth of Turning Point USA.
Right, So it's called I think Captain Kirk was the marketing things, but it's called that truth under Fire, the framing of Charlie Kirk. But but what surprised me the most actually was actually what I really dug into was how Charlie Kirk was framed. I wanted to do two things with his documentary. One is set right the legacy of Charlie Kirk, and two is to expose what led
to his death. You know, how is he how there's a hit piece machine that tries to ruin people's reputations, destroy their organizations, destroy their finances, make them too afraid to speak out, and ultimately lead to threats of violence, which can result in actual violence, which is exactly what happened to Charlie Kirk. But all so, just because I think his legacy is being undermined right now, I wanted to do something that explains what did he actually stand for?
Who was Charlie Kirk? What values did he espouse and what effect most importantly, what effect did he have on young people?
Well, I would ask you the question, what values did Charlie Kirk espouse? What was his belief system? Did it evolve over the twelve years of his public life? What do you say about that?
You know? My conclusion is this, I don't think we can replace someone like Charlie Kirk. He was a rare individual because he had the ability to bring people together across differences. I think for the conservative movement in particular, he was a uniting force. He brought together. I mean, honestly, you look at the Civil War among conservatives right now, Charlie Kirk had his pastor speaking, He had you know, Candice Owen speaking at events previously. He had Tucker Carlton
speaking at the recent ones. He brought together conservatives who don't agree with each other, and that is challenging to do. He brought together religious denominations that are very different from each other. He brought them all together under a single roof and said, you know what, put those aside. We know we have a country to say. It's basically, we have something we need to stand for that is that is broader than our differences. And I think what he
focused on instead was the issues. He focused on this is what our kids are being taught, this is this is this is the problem in our country that if we don't resolve it, we're going to lose our country. He focused on those types of things, not all the not all the petty squabbling. And I think the effect of Charlie Kirk was visible when I when I went to colleges and I talked to young kids and I said,
why are you here? What are you doing? And I talked to some of the people the turning point chapters. Despite the disagreements, we're now seeing at the surface the legacy of Charlie Kirk does live on in the youth, and a lot of them were deeply inspired to you know, find their faith, to become more religious, to not be afraid of speaking out, to talk about their values, to not be silenced. I think his legacy will live on in the youth.
How critical was Charlie Kirk in that movement to the re election of Donald Trump in twenty twenty four.
Well, I think he was honestly so successful that a lot of the media establishment wanted to I think without Charlie Kirk, Trump would not have won the twenty twenty four election, and I think that was recognized. And so what had happened was this Charlie Kirk basically got Charlie Kirk woke up the youth in America. The college campuses have been kind of a hotbed of socialism, going back to the hippie movement. You know, it used to be
that younger people tend to vote very far left. When they get a bit older and start paying taxes, they realize that those policies don't work so well. And you know, Charlie Kirk was really working to change that. A lot of young people were starting to realize, you know what, the enemy I've been taught is not the real is not the real enemy. And you know, some of the stuff I'm being taught in school is not the truth. They realized they were being basically miseducated, said false history
and said a lot of false arguments. Charlie Kirk was going there exposing it, and a lot of kids were saying, you know what, this is what's really going on, and they started really espousing that. What I also saw was that after the twenty twenty four election, a lot of the media started doing hit pieces on Charlie Kirk. New York Times made it like a personal vendebted to destroy
Charlie Kirk. A lot of the media establishment was pulling all kinds of narratives based on just false information, you know, misrepresentation, half quotes and so on, trying to frame him as racist and bigoted and all these things because I think politically they recognize is they had to destroy him to destroy what he represented.
Have they done that in the last three or four months. Is Charlie Kirk bigger today than he was when he was murdered on September the tenth?
Is the movement growing? Is the movement?
The same. Is it going to fail? Is it a false high? Is it whipped cream and not real? If I would have you on Joshua Philippin about a year from now, what will you say a year from now about the movement?
I would say the movement? Okay. So after tum Kirk died, he had his memorial in Arizona. It was incredible. I mean, anybody who was there knows this. They had two stadiums full, even aside from two completely filmed stadiums, you had overflow space people they had to turn away, like hundreds of thousands. I remember walking into the press area and it's kind of in the middle of the stadium, and you just saw something take place that day that I've never seen.
I mean, a lot of people said he was a monitor. A lot of people said that, you know, maybe in his death he was even more powerful than he was in his life because of what he inspired and all the people who are there. I think that his legacy is now being dragged through the mud because there's a lot of people are not trying to turn into other debates. They're fighting against him. They're fighting against turning point. People
are tearing each other's throats. I think we'll have to see what happens with Charlie Kirk's legacy, because what I saw that day and what also happened as people are trying to start up a edition Returning Point chapters, I mean tenfold increase in requests for him. That was an incredible movement. But in fighting people spreading rumors, this kind of things, I think that does risk tearing it all down and nothing will be achieved that that happens.
Headline out of Colorado quote Colorado professor emeritus calls Turning Point USA supporters Nazis, flips off camera after a chapter is approved on the campus as David Kozak ko Zak Kozak, former professor of anthropology at Fort Lewis College, was caught on camera calling students their Nazis and flipping them off and after the chapter was approved. I've seen many examples
where students overturning tables, defacing minu mentioned Charlie Kirk. Fort Lewis College in Colorado said that mister Kozak is no longer employed.
By the institution.
I guess that's a positive, but can you answer quickly the charge of the radical left to smear Charlie Kirk that he was a racist and a Nazi.
Hear that constantly. What's your response to that.
It's a false narrative that has been formed over the course of close to a decade, going back to twenty seventeen. Actually, my documentary focuses on exposing how those false narratives were formed and developed.
And it's ongoing. The documentary is Truth under Fire. And you had great success I see with the COVID nineteen documentary in twenty twenty some seventy five million views. And we'll see what happens. His legacy now is up to us to decide. I seldom see positive stories in the mainstream media about Charlie Kirker, Erica Kirk. And when they had that big memorial service, et cetera. It was on CNN, non on MSNBC, And now here we are a few months later, and guess what Nazis and brown shirts and
racists or filling the air whenever turning point USA. Nothing can be further from the truth. The three principles of Charlie Kirk were God, family, and America. And you don't hear much of that on college campuses. Well, God family in America, and what is the website to where I can direct people towards this for this documentary, they can.
Go to epictv dot com, epochtv dot.
Com, epictv dot com. And once again, Joshua Phillips, you're a great American. Thanks for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. And I'd get you back on in four or five months to see the effect of this. How many views there have been, what kind of reaction hasn't been. He's being vilified and crucified and blasphemed all over college campuses. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was all about God, family and America. Nothing wrong with those principles.
Once again, Joshua, thanks for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. And Joshua, you're a great American. Give my best to all the people epic and etc. And keep doing what you're doing. Thank you, Joshua, appreciate it. Thank you, God bless you all. Let's continue with more news coming up your home of the Bengals News Radio seven hundred WL