Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Drew Thomas, author for Christ and Country,
The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. In it, Drew asserts that
the Left killed Charlie Kirk now with a single bullet,
but with years of hatred, slander, and moral corruption that
made his assassination inevitable. More So, Kirk's death was not
an isolated act of violence, as we know, but the
culmination of a toxic political movement that has gone mainstream,
now fully embodied by the Democratic Party. Drew, thank you
so much for joining us in this edition of the
Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to
talking to you about this.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, this is in a year filled with big stories,
this one was huge because I just think it took
our collective breath away. I think it took the conservative
movement's breath away. I think it took away the breath
of those who knew Charlie Kirk and loved him, and
even for some members of the left. Although I think
what we learned in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination
is that we really are living in an assassination culture
on the left. This was certainly quite an undertaking, because
you know, you go from September tenth and you know,
putting this all together now, I know that you've been,
you know, looking into examining the life of Charlie Kirk,
a conservative icon, but this really hits home on all
of those points.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I was Charlie's publicist last summer for
Right Wing Revolution, but as I make clear in the book,
I didn't know Charlie Kirk personally. You know, I've worked
with a lot of famous people, Tulca Gabber, doctor Ben Carson,
Carrie Lake, a lot of people, and a lot of
these people I have talked to and I have met,
and some of them, like Christina Bob is a you know,
I consider her a friend. But Charlie was different because
I didn't interact with him, and I think, like millions
of other people, I was struggling to process why his
death devastated me in the way that he did. I mean,
you know, the older you get, the more people die.
I'm thirty eight and no death I've experienced in my
life affected me like this. And part of it was
it hit so close to home. I've got two young
kids who are basically Charlie's kids age and as a
matter of fact, Matt I was the day Charlie Kirk died.
You know, It's kind of like in the book, I
have a chapter called nine ten is the New nine
to eleven, and that's not the downplay nine to eleven.
But you know, I remember where I was on nine
to eleven. I was a freshman in high school, and
I think a lot of people probably remember where they
were when they learned the news about Charlie Kirk. And
for me, I did something I rarely do. I accompanied
my wife to pick up our two and a half
year old from preschool and we pulled into the parking
lot and that's when I got the notification. And then
as my wife went to retrieve our daughter, I was
you refreshing news feeds. I was looking on X and
then I came across the video and your gut, everyone's
gut told them that it wasn't survivable. And as I
was starting to process that, my wife is bringing my
daughter towards the car, and my daughter's running towards me,
and she's just her face is lit up with joy,
Matt and she's just saying, Dad has in car. And
I was just confronted with this duality. You know, here's
my daughter that's so happy to see me, is so innocent,
and someone else's little girl, Charlie's girl and son would
never have that experience again. And then to see the
celebrations by the left, the mockery, it reminded me of
nine to eleven two. Because more shocking to me, I think,
even than the tower's falling, was the jubilation in the
streets in the Middle East by certain Muslims who were
celebrating our collective pain. And I just realized, you know,
this country, there's too much fear to confront the severity
of the situation we have in the country, and we
need to take it head on, and we need to
call it out. We need to hold people accountable. And
you know, these weren't jihadis celebrating over in Pakistan. They
were leftists that were politicians, they were news anchors, they
were people I went to high school with. That all
showed such disregard for the life of a human being,
a Christian, a father, a husband, and an inspiration of
so many millions. And that's what really gave birth to
this book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're absolutely right. These weren't jihadist overseas. Some of
them were jee hottiest here unfortunately, because we know what's
happened with the unvetted immigration failures of the auto pen
Biden era. All of that said, these were Americans. These
were people you went to high school with. These were
people you're on a Facebook feed with, and you're saying,
I got these are teachers, these are professors, and they're
saying this, they're celebrating the death, the assassination of this
young man. Okay. And I say that because I know
a lot of our listeners are a little long in
the tooth like yours. Truly, you know, I've been around
the block several times as a fellow in my fifties,
and it's the kind of stunning stuff that we have
watched in this country over the years, a young man
named John F. Kennedy, you know, who's shot right in
front of us. And those images still remain with us,
of course. And you go down the line of those assassinations,
those very public assassinations, and you talk about your kids,
your little ones, there's Charlie Kirk's little ones. The last
image that they have of their father is this horror,
a fine murder that is committed at a college where
Charlie Kirk is defending free speech, proselytizing for free speech,
and for more importantly, I think his core beliefs, his
faith in Jesus Christ, in God, in family, and in country.
And that's really what your book comes down to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really you know, I mean, part of the
book is just my own personal testimony related to my
own transformation as a Christian husband and father because of
Charlie Kirk's amazing life he lived and then obviously his death.
And you know, Charlie Kirk was so unique because he
sought debate, He relished walking into style environments and talking
to people. Most people don't have that courage and conviction.
And I asked myself, why why didn't I have. I mean,
I'm not tepid. I you know, I have a podcast
to go in shows like this and I talk about
my beliefs. But there's still this fear that we have
of that type of action that Charlie Kirk undertook. And
where did it come from. It came from his Christian faith,
plain and simple, and you know, he he It was
just it was just remarkable to see the response after
his death too. The the it was global. I mean,
you had the Prime Minister of Italy, Georgia Maloney, you
had others in South America, and you know, you don't
see reactions like this of grief except in very rare cases,
you know, maybe Ronald Reagan's funeral or you know, Billy
Graham's crusades. And Charlie Kirk was important, obviously, he advised
the president, advised you know, many politicians, but he wasn't
in that level of power himself. And you know that's
often the case with martyrs too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt. Were you surprised at the vitriol though
from the left. I mean, let's face it, it was
a little more than a year before that President Donald
Trump campaigning for a second term in office was shot
in a field in Pennsylvania during a campaign visit. We
have there's an interesting report that came out earlier this
year from Rutgers and it was about how fifty five
percent of those who identify as left leaning individuals believe
that assassination of political figures on the right. Certainly fine,
you know, at least at some level. But were you
still were you surprised by what we saw the reaction
from the left.
Speaker 2: I'm always surprised, not prized at the same time, because
you just have this hope that maybe the left will,
you know, display some kind of decency, look in the
mirror and accept some accountability, or at least just stay quiet.
And they couldn't do that, and I just we have
to confront this head on. I mean, the left today
is not dissimilar from the radical left, is not dissimilar
from radical Islam. You know, look, the Jihadis commit their
acts of terrorism and murder in the name of religion.
Radical leftist activists commit these acts of violence in the
name of so called progress that is a religion unto itself.
And Charlie Kirk, one of the things that made him
so special was his ability to do an autopsy on
this cultural decay, where it was coming from and fundamentally
it came because let me say this first off, the left,
all they do is propagandas and we've heard these lies
for so long about you know, all episodes of extremist
activity come from the rights. And they do this by
cooking the books using the Anti Defamation League, excluding acts
of prominent left wing terrorism and including obscure acts that
don't have anything to do even with the ideology of
conservatism or Maga or you know, Christianity, and you know,
the the left, their rhetoric is leading to violence. You
can draw a direct line. And you know, I just
kept thinking of all these you know, similarities. But I
mean to first to get back to Charlie and what
his autopsy was. You know, really it's not it's not
left versus rights so much anymore as it is the
God fearing versus the godless, in my opinion, and that
is to say that Charlie would talk about. Look, you
know what makes us different, me different, the right conservatives
different is our belief in a transcendent power. We believe
in moral absolutes. We accept that this nation has a
Christian Founding and that our freedoms flow from that. And
on the left they despise God. It's like communism. I mean,
it is Marxism at this point. And therefore everything is relative.
And so to take one issue, Matt, you know, Charlie
Kirk was a huge advocate of the unborn and it
wasn't a there was no nuance in his position. I mean,
it was the unborn has the right to live and
be protected. And so the Left, as he would point
out in these arguments and well debates with people on campus.
You know, if if you're ten or twenty, whatever, doesn't
matter how many weeks pregnant you are. You know, if
a woman wants the baby, it's considered a viable you know,
a human being worthy of protect life. If the woman
doesn't want the baby, then it's just called the clump
of cells and dismissed. And so if you understand and
start with the abortion issue, you can begin to understand
why the left is so predisposed to violence. It's not symmetrical.
It's completely asymmetrical. It's all coming from the left and
to the left. Charlie Kirk was simply a clump of cells,
you know, So morality isn't based on absolutes. It's just
based on whatever justifies the behavior that you want. And
of course, as a Christian, we're called to call out sin.
It's not that we don't love people love, you know,
calling out sin, addressing it, not condoning it, is an
act of love. That's what Jesus taught us to do.
And that's what Charlie did. And the Left says those
words are violence. And then when an actual act of
violence takes the life, claims the life of Charlie Kirk,
they would say that that was righteous, that it was
good in the collective, because Charlie Kirk was an evil monster, Hitler, stalin, fascist,
you know all those names, right, And I'm just sick
and tired of seeing this in the country and there's
no accountability whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that it is amazing the impact
that Charlie Kirk in his you know, just over thirty
plus years of life on this planet, how he was
able to connect, particularly with the young audience. That's why
he concentrated so much on college campuses. He knew that's
where the battle lines were being drawn. He knew that
we had to start fresh in our college campuses because
the right in this country had seeded influence to the
left in our institutions of higher education, and this society
is paying dearly for that. But do you think that
the left's hatred, almost demonic hatred for Charlie Kirk had
something to do with his appeal to an increasing number
of young people who I think are longing for exactly
what you talk about in your book.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: More than just this vast void of you know, whatever
feels good or you know the there is no truth.
You know, you're speaking your truth, as as the left
likes to say.
Speaker 2: Well, in their view, if you aren't one of them,
you're an enemy to be destroyed. Let me draw another
parallel between radical Islam and the radical left. Both are
ideologies that demand complete surrender. Their ideologies about complete domination.
And this is the radical lens with which through which
they view the world and their opponents. And of course
they hated Charlie Kirk because he was effective. I mean,
Charlie Kirk exposed you know, I mean, it's they're snake
oil salesman. The left promises utopia but delivers their recruits
into darkness. And they can never lead any of their
you know, loyalists to actual peace and happiness, because it's
not designed to do so. It's designed to create constant
victims and outrage and stir up anger. They don't want
peace and the soul. Peace from the soul comes from
christ It comes from Christianity. It comes from belief in
something greater than yourself. And they don't believe in anything
greater themselves. The Left they are gods, right, this is
how they view things. Charlie Kirk understood there is actually
a God, and you know, there are bumpers up, you know,
on you know what is acceptable and appropriate in terms
of how we create a society and how we conduct ourselves.
And Charlie Kirk would go to these young people and
he would show them a better path. He would show
them a path that would ultimately lead them to actual fulfillment.
So you've got all these disillusioned, angry people who have
been indoctrinated by the Left and told that, you know,
this is the path to enlightenment. But they never feel enlightened,
they never feel happy. And this in itself is a
vicious cycle that eventually leads to violence because you get
angrier and anger if if you're a farmer and you're
sitting on a barren patch of soil, and every season
you repeatedly try to plant in that soil. Over time,
you're gonna become frustrated, and that frustration is going to
lead to anger rage, and that's what's happening. And so
Charlie Kirk had the antidote to all of that. Some
of it, of course, was political in nature, in terms
of policies you know, affecting the black community for example,
that is keeping them victims, policies regarding the border, regarding
the economy, things like this. But others were spiritual antidotes.
And it was saying, hey, you know what, I'll tell
you what brings you fulfillment. It's not what the left says,
you know to women that you should, you know, pursue
careers at the cost of family and children. No get married,
have kids, raise a family. These these you know, historically
throughout history, we know these things create stable societies. And
the Left is tearing those things down, and it's not
surprising that they lead to unrest and turmoil. So he
was so he was such a genius and so articulate,
and so studied, and honestly he was so compassionate that
he was able to bring those people out of darkness.
And that's taking away from the left's ranks, and they
couldn't abide it. Pay it off, Pay it off now.
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Speaker 1: He tirelessly fought for the First Amendment and the right
to speak, which had been closed down in so many quarters.
Still in so many ways is closed down. And you
know it's not just here you think about This week,
a Christian woman, pro life Catholic who had silently prayed
in the streets across the street from an abortion clinic
was arrested and charged with violating the speech cop laws
over there. She'd been down this road before. I mean,
you know, we look at that and we say, my goodness,
that's the United Kingdom. How could that happen? Well, that
has happened here, That is happening here. It's a little
better time for Christians in America than it had been,
but it's a grave concern all around. And Charlie really
wanted to carry that banner to say, you don't have
to be afraid to be a Christian, you don't have
to be embarrassed about being a Christian. But that's what
we see so much in this society. Well, I don't
want to offend anybody. Charlie wasn't about protecting people's feelings.
But what do you think about those who described him
and cagorized him as a racist for taking on some
very difficult truths that they didn't want to hear.
Speaker 2: He wasn't a racist. He was the opposite of that.
You know. He looked at the black communities that are
being afflicted by the social policies of the last you know,
sixty seventy years, and he wanted them to have success.
And he knew that the current structure and what the
left had done and the Democrat Party had done to
the black community had destroyed it. It's not conjecture, it's
just statistical. There's evidence of it. It's objective fact. The
black family has just been destroyed by left wing policies,
these social policies and welfare. And you combine that with
I mean welfare one, as he would explain, you know,
I mean, it's not designed to get you out of poverty.
It's designed to keep you in poverty, to discourage you
from improving your circumstances. And of course all of these
beliefs come from Christian faith. We're all made in the
image of God. Race is irrelevant, and you know that
message was misconstrued. You know, one of the big things
he attacked him on was, you know, he didn't quite
do the full rush Limbaugh, which is, you know, pointing
out the absurd with the absurd, as he would say.
But when you had the DEI hires, and I had
I knew pilots on Southwest and other airlines that were
telling me, man, hey, if I were to tell you
what's going on in these cockpits, you would never get
on a plane again because you were lowering the standards for,
for example, minorities, so that would include black pilots. In
order to increase the number of black pilots, it should
be based on excellence. Now you're denigrating black people as
well by doing that, because the message is, you know, hey,
if you're black, you're not smart enough. You're not the
equal of this other candidate who happens to be white,
for example, So we're going to lower the standards to
permit you entry. That doesn't inspire one, any black individual
to strive for excellence. It excuses the opposite, settling, and furthermore,
it raises suspicion. So the obvious out outcome of that
is that it creates actually racism because if it's known
that you're hiring black pilots on lower standards because of diversity,
equity inclusion initiatives, if any person, including a black person,
walks on a plane and they see a black pilot,
you're going to think. And Charlie said something to this
effect like, wow, I don't want to be on this plane.
He wasn't being racist, the left or the racist, and
he was calling them out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt about it. And we have seen unfortunately,
whether the left or people who just don't want to
rock the boat, don't fully understand we have seen equity
kill people in this country. And Charlie said, wait a minute,
let's let's consider that. Let's consider what walking away from
merit based hiring, merit based recruiting, all of that that does.
When did you obviously the book came out of the
events of September tenth, But have you been thinking about
this book for a while or did it really just
strike you as you mentioned before, and you began the
writing soon thereafter.
Speaker 2: So I haven't even explained this to anyone before in
an interview. But actually, so I wrote a book in August,
you know, my wife and took the kids down to
see Grandma, and I was left a bachelor for a
couple of weeks, actually, and I did what any thirty
eight year old guy who has kids would do in
that situation. I spent all my time writing a book.
And that book was on that was that was on
Trump Russia collusion, based on the declassified documents, and that
was very important to mean that's going to come out
in March. I actual actually sidelined that book after Charlie
was killed because I thought this one was more important
because I wanted to address and let me be clear
about something too. I'm really I don't want to say disparaged,
but I'm really disappointed in what the conservative movement has
kind of done in the three months since Charlie Kirk's assassination.
And what I mean by that is there was a
fragile window after he was murdered to have serious conversations
that we avoid in this country, mainly related to left
wing violence in this country and that ideology that is
brewing it. I mean, you had a copycat attack a
week after Charlie Kirk's assassination in Dallas, a guy that
tried to take out ICE agents, and you know ICE
is being demonized as well, so you can see the
connection between a rhetoric and violence on the left. And
we didn't have many of those conversations. In fact, we
really didn't have those conversations at any national level. People
were peddling conspiracy theories, they were trying to tear down
Charlie Kirk's legacy, and it was really disgusting to me.
And that was happening even after I wrote the book.
It was really coming to fruition. So kind of the
silver lining and the decision to just really go hard
on this book and talk about these issues was that
I think this book offers a course correction that says, look,
let's refocus on Charlie's legacy and what we need to
do to pick up the slack. You know, there's a
lot of rope hanging out there now because he was
such a giant and no one can replace him, but
we can emulate his example and the example of Christ
as well, which is what Charlie did his best to emulate,
especially in the later years of his life, and we
need to learn from his example and pursue it. We
need to become bold and courageous. We need to put
our faith first and from that we'll have conviction. And
you know, Charlie Kirk wasn't always Charlie Kirk Matt. He
became Charlie Kirk because he had a hunger for truth,
a hunger for self improvement. And you know, a lot
of us don't spend that amount of time on ourselves
and have clear goals and objectives like he did. So
so no, I mean, and I didn't, you know, I
didn't intend to write a book right away. I just found,
like I wrote a book the day Charlie Kirk died,
which is in the book, that became kind of the
first chapter of the book, And that was just me
wrestling with what I said at the beginning of the show,
like this devastation I was feeling in the tears, I
was crying and I don't cry, and trying to process
all that. And from that grief, you know, I articulated
what a lot of people felt, millions of people who
didn't know Charlie either personally. And then I felt like
an obligation to address these issues that we need to
talk about. A reckoning hasn't come, but it needs to come.
Speaker 1: Indeed, our guest today is Drew Thomas, author of for
Christ and Country, The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, the other book,
by the way, as well, sounds fascinating. I hope you
know you have a standing invitation to come back and
talk to us, because, as you probably well know, the
Federalist has been very interested and has spent a good
deal of time writing about the whole Russia collusion hoax
and all of that. We're getting a better picture of that,
but I think that issue kind of feeds into everything
that we are experiencing with the modern left is that
the truth is relative once again, and that lies can
be used justifiably to further the truth that they want
in the burning down and the recreation of a republic
that many unfortunately loathe. And that's where we have been
for some time. And that's why I think twenty twenty
four happened the way that it did, because they're clearly,
truly is a disaffection with what a lot of Americans
have experienced over the last several years, the whole idea
that this is an inherently racist nation, that it is
systemically racist, and if you're white, you are automatically racist,
and there there's nothing you can do about that, and
we need to find ways to stop that. You know,
oppression is the big word, and you know a lot
of people are feeling oppressed about all of that in
that mentality, and so I think you're right. I really
do drew that we had an opportunity in after Charlie's death,
and I think you remember the memorial service and the
you know, the thousands who turned out in the messages
that we you were hearing across the country, and then
it just went away and all of a sudden I
think about, there's a government shutdown, you know, basically right
around the corner, which there always is, and it's just
back to normal. Why is that? Why can't we sustain
on the conservative side of things something that was just
so fundamentally altering in our lives.
Speaker 2: Well, it's because a lot of people we thought were
allies in the conservative movement have actually proven themselves to
be saboteurs of the movement. And people know who I'm
talking about. I don't even need to name their name.
I'm not afraid to name their names, but people can
just decide for themselves who these people are. But they
were the ones that refused to accept that the killer
was who the FB I and a rational mind could
see was likely the killer based on evidence. You know,
the son of you know, conservative Family Mormons, who was
steeped in radical you know, leftist ideology, was dating a
you know, trans person out a trans partner, and you know,
I mean there was ample. You don't you don't have
to even believe the FBI to Okham's razor. I mean,
you know, I just I can't believe what they did
to get Erica Kirk involved. And you know, I'll say
her name. I don't care if written articles about it too,
But you know, Candice in particular, you know, what she's
done is just just so wrong. I mean, in all
these insinuations and theories that she claims she'll bring receipts for,
and the theory is changed by the hour, and each
time she introduces a new theory, it's proof that she
lied before. But she was pointing the finger at Erica
Kirk and people around TPUSA. And there may very well
be issues within TPUSA. I mean there's a power struggle
probably in things like that, and I pray for them
and I want them to have nothing but success. But
the idea that, oh, the Jews killed Charlie Kirk, this
rampant anti Semitism that is brewing in this country, where
the Jews are behind every single thing that happens, I mean,
we don't need this right now. It's a distraction. And
the conversation could have been even from Candace, who claimed
to have been such a great friend of Charlie's, which
I know actually isn't true. Maybe at one point in
her life, but you know, not later recently. You know,
she loved Charlie Kirk, like she said to and was
so upset by this. She should have talked about what
Charlie stood for. She should have, you know, promoted his
legacy by talking about the things that were important to him,
and that didn't happen. And you know, I don't want
to just reset to what it was before. I mean,
I'm tired of this. I mean, look, Ran Paul's ribs
were broken by a Democrat neighbor. You had a Bernie
Sanders supporter who shot up a Congressional you know, Republican
baseball team practicing and nearly killed Steve Scalise. You had
a trans later who came out as trans individual who
traveled all the way from California to Maryland with the
intention of assassinating Justice Kavanaugh because of the Roe v.
Wade a decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. You have
a Trump assassination attempt. I mean, there are more examples.
You have trans people that you know are targeting Christian
schools and their manifestos. Matt, this is not hyperbole. It's
in the book too, and it's I bring receipts. Things
are cited. They're manifestos, like Audrey Hales in the Covenant
case in Nashville. It reads like a Barack Obama speech,
it reads like a Joe Biden speech, it reads like
a cn N panel on you know, attacking white people.
And I'm just fed up with it. And I don't
know why enough people don't have the courage to address
the left as they are. You know, I don't want
to my girls to, you know, live in a country
that tolerates this, and I'm not going to tolerate it.
And the one thing that Charlie's Kirk death did for me,
which I imagine people in your audience feel this way too,
really it really killed the man I was too before
Charlie's death and rebuilt a new me. And that's just
somebody who I don't want to say takes things more seriously.
I've taken things seriously in this country. But I have
a new courage to really steady myself in scripture, to embrace,
you know, what God has called me to be, and
to let the residual fear of attacks from the left
or the condemnation of man be more important to me
than the applause of God. And I hope that that's
the case for Christians in this country, because there's more
than two hundred million of us that claim to be
Christian in this country, and obviously many believe in something
other than the Bible or woke churches and whatnot. But
if we actually dug in and we're Bible based and
lived our life authentically as Christians, we'd be an unstoppable force.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, do you look over your shoulder a little
more often in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination.
Speaker 2: I don't, but I could see myself doing that in
the in the relatively near future. You know, I don't.
I don't feel fear right now, and I you know,
I don't. You know, I don't want people to be like, oh,
you don't I you know, I don't want to die,
you know. I mean, I I love my family so much,
and I still, like, it's hard not to tear up
thinking about Charlie's family and kids. But I think if
you if you do what Charlie did and you really
make your life faith centered, you don't fear it. You know.
I don't think Charlie, you know, feared it. He didn't
want to die, but he knew it was possible, and
that's one of the things that makes him a martyr
as well. But you know, I mean, I'll be honest
with you right now, like I I've never been aj Rice,
my boss at Publius. You know, he says I'm being
hunted right now because Amazon's actually censored this book three
times now. It's actually not available on Amazon. I mean,
people can try and go buy it. I think it'll
let you go buy and then it says, you know,
can't shift to the address. But it doesn't matter what
address you put in there, you can't buy it. I
think the only place to buy it right now is
on Target, and you know they're giving due. There's a
whole other conversation we could have for an hour about
what Amazon's claiming to be the reason. So yeah, yeah,
well it's censorship. But what there's like, so I've been
an author for a long time. I've written you know,
four books, and they're saying and they can't prove any
of this, they use models, but they're saying, oh, this
is an AI book. And so now now, so you know,
I wrote this book to you know, confront these issues
they haven't been addressed, and now I find myself possibly
having to split my time in future interviews addressing something
I never thought about, which is backdoor censorship, which is
you know, they can say that you know, something's you know,
utilized AI, which is a new tool. By the way,
you wouldn't penalize a mathematician for using a calculator. And
I've written books before AI. This is the first time
I used AI for research and you know, copy editing
and things like that. It's a tool that writers are
going to use. I mean, it's it's here, and so
now I'm like a case study on you know, this
whole thing. I mean, you've got Michelle Obama who wrote Becoming,
and she didn't write Becoming. A ghostwriter wrote Becoming. You know,
nobody cares, and so it's not true that this is
an AI written book. But I'm not going to lie
and say that I didn't utilize AI as a research assistant,
and in the production of it, I did. But anybody
can read the book and decide for themselves if it's
an AI book, right, I mean, it's like the freem
So anyway, that's that's what's going on. And you know,
I don't know why the Charlie Kirk book in particular
is being targeted like this. You know, my publisher's post
Till Press. They've done a lot of big books, including
two of Charlie kirk Kirk's books. And I'm an established
author who've written you know, dozens of op eds before
the advent of AI, So it's just kind of shocking.
Now I'm like, wow, so first you know, so anyway,
so this is where we are, just matt full transparency. Man,
I've never experienced something like this in my life. It's
really it's really tough.
Speaker 1: But isn't it something that you're dealing with this? And
this is what Charlie Kirk spent the deal of his
life fighting the sort of censorship. I mean, we just
came out of a period of just dark, dark, government
driven censorship that I don't I don't think has fully
been exposed. We know about the Twitter files, we know
about out what was happening with the Biden administration and
FAUCI and COVID. We know about publications like the Federalists
that had been you know, absolutely attacked shut off from
you know, the main distribution channels by these these you know,
so called watchdogs of what is proper and appropriate content.
So we've lived a lot, so none of this should
come as a surprise. But are you concerned that what
we have seen from some of our conservative leaders out there,
especially as we watch the world of politics kind of
retreat again, that we could lose the gains that we
have in twenty twenty six because Charlie Kirk is gone,
and who is filling the void of people like Charlie
Kirk and who is really going to to inspire the
conservative grassroots movement to say, hey, I know Trump's not
on the ballot, but there's a lot at stake in
twenty six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the solution right now is not to
look for another leader like Charlie Kirk to kind of
hold this movement together. I think that individuals need to
operate a little bit more independently now. I think they
need to look at themselves as leaders. You know, you're
never going to replace Charlie. You're definitely not going to
come close, you know, before midterms, And you know, people
need to look at these midterm elections with the same
importance they viewed the presidential election of twenty twenty four,
because it's all on the line right now, and you know,
you know, God blessed Donald Trump man, what a force
in nature he is he's done so much good despite
the fact that you know, we have these narrow majorities
and the Senate won't confirm many of his his you know, choices.
I mean, you know, a lot of the reason that
people voted for Trump is they wanted accountability. The left
calls it revenge. We want accountability, and you know we
can't get it because you know, courts are you know,
using loopool holes regarding you know, temporary uh, you know,
placements of you know, whether it's Alena Haba or you
know others out there, and you know, the Senate's not
doing its job. I mean, you've got Marjorie Taylor Green
who claims to be a hero but is not a hero.
She's I can't even stick it out for her two
year term here, and it's a heck of a time
to jump ship. And I think that people need to
get serious about what's at stake, because look, if the
if the if the Democrats get the House, enjoy impeachment,
you know, enjoy endless impeachment. God forbid they were to
get the Senate. I mean, I don't think that's gonna happen.
But I always prefer to operate as an under dog.
So I just if you know, yeah, all the Charlie
Kirk stuff we've talked about so important, So is this
you know, just please please, I just I beg people
out there start thinking seriously about these midterms and treat
it like a presidential election, because you know, this opportunity
that we won for ourselves, that we fought for, doesn't
come along very often. We earned this, we fought for this,
and we will squander it if twenty twenty six is
not defended.
Speaker 1: All right, final question for you, because you know much
of what you write about is not really politics. It's spirituality.
It is core morality. It's the thing that I think
has bound this country together for two hundred and fifty years,
and it seems like it is absolutely tearing apart at
the scenes. So, given what I thought was just a
remarkable and miraculous time following Charlie Kirk's assassination, where you
had so many people now rediscovering and asking where am
I in my life? Where am I with my God?
Where am I in you know, my path in life?
And why do I feel so empty? So more and
more people were turning to the Christian Church. To Christianity,
is do you see that being sustained. Is that Charlie
Kirk's maybe biggest legacy, all the people that he brought
to at least thinking about God and what happens now
to turning point us a particularly with folks like Candae
Owens roiling the waters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean TPUSA is just going to be
in a fight for a while, and you know, I
just pray that everyone at TPUSA, you know, puts ego
aside if that should come up or is coming up,
and just really focus on the work that Charlie did.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's just it's it's hard to keep an organization like
that going because if you know people in the organization,
it was it was Charlie, you know what I mean,
And there's just no replacement for him. Uh, not like that.
I think this is sustainable, you know, I just Bible
sales people, you know, craving that thing that they couldn't
identify that was missing from their life, which turns out
to be faith and belief in God. Christianity. It's it's surging.
And I'm a personal example that you know, I've been
in christian my whole life, kind of an autopilot christian
though at times and you know, I've changed since Charlie's death,
and I haven't gone back to the person I was before.
So I think that's testimony and I'm not the only person,
you know, if that's happened to me. The next step, though,
is activism. You know, it's just prepare yourselves to be
in a cafe and for some atheists to just walk
up to your table and want to learn about Jesus Christ.
And if you can't talk intelligibly about that, you're not ready.
You got work to do. And that's me. So I've
been reading so much history of the Church and digging
into my Bible, you know, and the Gospels and you know,
really studying the history of them and mounting these you know,
I love the apologetics right, the defense of Christianity, you know,
which is and that's what I want to become. That's
what this nation needs, and that's what we need of
people listening if they're so inclined.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a moment in time that I think
we will remember as a marker, certainly September tenth, two
thy twenty five. Where we go from here, of course,
that remains to be seen. But I think Charlie Kirk
planted good seeds in his life. He was a great
communicator and anger, not only for this constitutional Republic, but
for his Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Yes, that is
really where all of this hits the bone.
Speaker 2: Amen, matt Amen. I mean, that's that's why he's so big.
It's not because the politics, is because of his Christianity.
That's what resonated so strong with me. It's not the
other stuff. It's that he was a living example of
what a Christian, including him, you know, strive to be
and should strive to be. And I didn't say something
matter earlier because it's like doom and gloom, like, oh
I'm being censored, you can't get the book and all
that sort of stuff. I mean, I think people are
feeling this and it's swirling in their minds. But and
if I think they can get the book at Target online,
so we've got a target, you can get it, I
think right now hopefully.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, very good. It's very compelling, and you know,
we need to take a look at where we've been
and where we're going, and as we like to say here,
we need to be anxious for the fray. I'm about
to do that again as a matter of fact. Thanks
to my guest today, Drew Thomas, author of For Christ
and Country, The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, you've been listening
to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt
Kittle's senior elections correspondent at The Federalist. We'll be back
soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom and
anxious for the fray.
Speaker 3: I heard the fame, voice, the reason, and then it
faded away.