Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
“Real Life Investing” with Jason and Rachel Wagner is a multifaceted podcast that blends insights from real estate, entrepreneurship, family life, and political discussions. Known for their candid and engaging style, the Wagner’s explore how their conservative values shape their approach to both business and life. They often discuss their personal journeys in real estate, offering practical tips on topics like how to buy a house or investment property while navigating a challenging housing market.
In addition to real estate, the show frequently delves into entrepreneurial lessons, highlighting the importance of mindset, perseverance, and staying focused on long-term goals. They are open about the challenges they’ve faced and provide valuable advice for anyone looking to head into entrepreneurship or seek the best version of themselves.
Dinner table conversations are central to the podcast. The Wagner’s discuss their experiences balancing various topics that families face, while often featuring guests who share similar journeys. Political conversations are explored from a conservative perspective, particularly when they touch on how these beliefs influence their business decisions and personal growth.
With a blend of relatable stories and expert advice, “Real Life Investing” is a show that appeals to a wide audience, from aspiring entrepreneurs and real estate investors, to those seeking inspiration in their personal lives.
Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
73. The Unforgettable Impact of Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk's life was cut tragically short at just 31 years old, but his impact on American politics and conservative thought will endure for generations. We're still processing the shock of his assassination, which has rippled through communities worldwide and revealed deep fractures in our political landscape.
Few figures have accomplished what Kirk did in such a short time. Founding Turning Point USA as a teenager without a college degree, he built a movement that gave voice to young conservatives on campuses across America. His approach was unique – engaging in difficult conversations with political opponents while maintaining a kind, open demeanor that invited dialogue rather than division. This combination of principled conviction and conversational tone made him remarkably effective and beloved by millions.
What's been most striking in the aftermath is the range of reactions. While many mourned deeply – including people who never met him but felt connected through his content – others responded with indifference or even celebration. This troubling dichotomy points to a deeper crisis in our political discourse. The digital age has compounded these issues, with graphic footage spreading rapidly online and context-stripped quotes fueling misrepresentations of Kirk's actual statements.
As we reflect on this tragedy, we're left with important questions: How do we protect ourselves from the psychological impacts of witnessing violence through our screens? Can we disagree with someone's politics while still acknowledging their humanity? And how do we begin healing a political culture that has become so venomous?
Perhaps the most powerful moment came at Kirk's memorial service when his wife Erica forgave his assassin – a testament to the faith-centered values he espoused. As we move forward, the most fitting tribute to Charlie Kirk might be restoring the kind of respectful dialogue he advocated for, where disagreement doesn't devolve into dehumanization, and political violence is universally condemned.
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Life Investing Podcast with Jason and Rachel Wagner Heavy. Two weeks recently. We wanted to spend this episode kind of talking about some of the tragic events that happened, how it impacted ourselves, how we think that it impacted other people, and let's just get into it. Let's talk about Charlie Kirk, all right. So, rachel, how would you describe who Charlie Kirk is? Let's just go with that For anybody that literally does not know who this person is. Okay, what's the first thing that comes to mind of who Charlie Kirk is for you?
Speaker 2:I almost feel ill-equipped to do that and I even told you I almost feel ill-equipped to do this podcast on him, To do that, and I even told you I almost feel like ill-equipped to do this podcast on him. But I guess for us, Charlie Kirk was young, relatable guy in the sense of you know, he's close to our age, a little bit younger actually, and he's from Illinois, actually from the town that we're living in now. He was born here, went to high school not too far from here, but as a very young kid about 18, he started an organization called Turning Point USA.
Speaker 1:Did he do that at 18 years old?
Speaker 2:I think he started at 18. He went off to college and then quit. Wow, that's insane, yeah, and this is why I feel a little ill-equipped to do this.
Speaker 1:It's okay At the end of the day, he started Turning Point USA, which has turned into this huge, massive movement of conservative young people. And it's amazing because he didn't go to college right away, right?
Speaker 2:He never got a college degree. Yeah, yeah, no-transcript a Republican, because I think, historically, republicans that party, the Republican parties changed a lot. The Democratic parties changed a lot too. We could talk about that too, but both parties have changed.
Speaker 2:But I think conservative remains rooted in, really, I think, christianity, arguably. So he would go around and start having conversations for people. He stood for having open and honest conversation and it's been quoted saying you know when the conversation stops, that's when bad things happen. And so you know, if you think about the type of political atmosphere we've been in over the last I would say mostly six years, but really even dating back to some of the Obama administration, we've become very polarized and that polarization and divide has just deepened and deepened and deepened and grown with so much hate and anger, grown with so much hate and anger. And so he would go and have these very heated, emotionally charged conversations with young, young adults on college campuses and he was kind and open and listened and educated. And so I think, because of that very that combination of how he approached these really heated topics, he became very popular.
Speaker 2:He became very well known and this last election he had a huge impact on Donald Trump getting elected, jd Vance being chosen for the VP, trump and Kennedy teaming up, and Kennedy no longer running independently but teaming up with Trump and now is obviously the head of HHS. He had an instrumental role in all of those placements and he was only 31. Very young guy but, as we've seen over the last week and a half, his impact was worldwide. It was huge. It's remarkable. And it's so remarkable too because, as I said, like he, I'm pretty sure it was 18. You can fact check me on that, but I'm pretty sure at 18 is when he had this vision, and not just the vision and the goal, but actually did the work to make it happen and do it, and that that that's just not something you see often. It's just remarkable and, again, like his demeanor and how he went about doing it, I think has is what made him so notable and what made this loss so, so huge and so impactful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think we really saw how impactful he was, particularly yesterday, because that's when they had the memorial for him. Um, you know, we saw in this pack stadium we saw the most powerful people in the United States at that gathering. You know, we saw footage from all over the world of people chanting Charlie. I think it was Britain, right, there was footage of people gathering. I mean, I think they were gathering for other reasons, but they also were chanting Charlie. I think it was Britain, right, there was footage of people gathering. I mean, I think they were gathering for other reasons, but they also were chanting Charlie.
Speaker 1:And you're, you're totally right, he had a global impact. And for a guy that's 31 years old, from the Chicago suburbs, dude, you are never too young to to have an impact, right, you're never too young to have an impact. And I, you, you're never too young to have an impact. And you know, you keep kind of hearing some stories about him too. It's like, you know, he wasn't a guy that was like going after the money, he was going after he was. He was like pure, he was this dude that was just full of Christ. And you know, faith was always first for him, faith and country and family, like that was his whole demeanor, in which, during a time you think about it, when, when the faith stuff has has, in my opinion, collapsed up until recently, you know where we saw a downward trajectory.
Speaker 2:Especially for that age group.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, right, yeah Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah For being that strongly rooted in his faith, that young to be out there having conversations and influencing people to find Christ like it's just remarkable.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:It's just remarkable and I'm going to piggyback off of what you said about how you know he wasn't, you know, just out there on camera or on you know podcasts speaking to this. But yesterday at the memorial there were so many people who I didn't even know who they were coming up and sharing personal stories of him doing things and I'll just share a couple of them. But there was a woman who he worked with who lost her husband and she had a young daughter at home and she was sharing how he supported her during that time and she shared a story of how she kind of broke down, was feeling like she wasn't fulfilling her end of her professional role working for him, and his response to her was family first, family first. And you heard that echoed from a number of people that that was not just something he said but that was something he did and something he supported other people doing too. He believed that was the most important thing and that that really struck me for having such a huge organization and having that woman have such a critical role in just his response to her. No, family first, it's, it's okay, right.
Speaker 2:And then another thing that he did was he would share biblical verses through his contact list.
Speaker 2:He would like go through his contact list and send messages to people of a verse of a day, just because he wanted their day to be rooted in faith and wanted to share that reminder and knew that you know your day is better if you know you read the scripture and I don't know.
Speaker 2:There were so many amazing stories and reflections shared at his memorial yesterday and there's a really really cool, cool guy and I think it's a shame to see such a different spin on some of the things that he said floating around out there right now and I hope that people can find the full text of things that he said and videos of him having these conversations and arguments, because really he was very open, he was very kind and he listened and I think came from a place of education.
Speaker 2:So I guess, like when you're going back to your original question of like who he was, it's like he kind of became this person that you would see on videos scrolling through Instagram of like having these tough conversations, of like controversial topics, and there'd be like a kid on the other end with the microphone, kind of arguing or yelling or giving him a tough position, and he's sitting there smiling like OK, yeah, yeah, it's good, yeah, cool, like what's your name and what do you do, and like trying to make a connection with them and then giving a very strong, solid argument back to them. That was kind of who he became, I guess he was.
Speaker 1:He was totally effective. You know he was able to take any. You know his best. One of his favorite lines was like give me your best liberals, right and give me your best arguments. And char and give me your best arguments. And Charlie was always able to come up with a response that was, in my opinion, better than anything that they could throw at him.
Speaker 2:He just truly believed what he spoke.
Speaker 1:It was amazing. It was incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nothing shook him, like he had an answer well thought out, well rooted in his beliefs and a kind delivery.
Speaker 1:Every time I mean I can't say every time right.
Speaker 2:Like it's not like I sat there and all that stuff, but they're not listening to the whole context of what you said.
Speaker 1:They're not listening to the full context of those videos. There are plenty of people. There's some really great conservative viewpoint people. They're black too, which is fantastic. They give the whole Charlie's not a racist. Did you watch the entire video, right? And they break it down, dude, you can find all kinds of stuff of that online and of literally somebody giving you the full context of it, versus just the snippet.
Speaker 2:Well, and the full video is out there. Right and go watch it yourself and then decide Right.
Speaker 1:And so that's the problem, because I actually did that.
Speaker 2:I was seeing this same quote pop up on people's Facebook. There were so many comments, man, you could have got totally lost in the comments the last two weeks on everything that was going around social media, but this quote kept coming up in the comments about something about black women not being educated or something. I'm like totally badgering it now and I'm like gosh, that doesn't seem like something he would say, like I want to like check this out, right, because that's wild. If he did say that and I, of course, looked it up, came across the full text, but then I also wanted to watch it and so you can listen to the entire thing and if you take out that small little sentence, yes, you could make that argument, but if you put it in full context, he's actually saying something completely different and you have to watch the full video to hear it and understand. He was talking about affirmative action and he didn't say black women or black people, as I quoted several times. He was talking about three specific people. I don't remember who at all.
Speaker 2:I think it was like Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and somebody else, but he's like you know, a couple of weeks ago, if I would have said that they were in their roles because of affirmative action. I would have been called a racist. But he said well, now they're actually saying that themselves, because there was a quote of one of them saying I wouldn't be where I am right now if it wasn't for affirmative action. And his argument was well, exactly, you're now saying that you're not there because of your credentials, because of who you are as a person, because of what you know, because of your experience, because of all these things. You're saying you're there because of the color of your skin. And that was his argument, right, is? I'm not saying that they are saying that and that should bother them, right? Like you shouldn't want to be somewhere because of what you look, like you should want to be somewhere because of what you know, what you think, who you are as a person.
Speaker 1:That was the context is so good at just picking out. Here's the little clip and we're gonna wow. We can easily take that out and put a narrative behind it. Yeah, and that's what happens when they're good, they're good at that, like that's, that's where the division kind of comes from.
Speaker 2:They're very good at taking the little snippets, yeah, putting the narrative behind it and having every single person rally behind that narrative, and that's what's happened with Donald Trump A lot of the time I won't say all of the time, but a lot of the time he is so bad at making easy snips out of his full context speech for them to take and use. He does it all the time. And I'm just like dude he does. Yeah, stop it To the point where I actually.
Speaker 1:He does it all the time and I'm just like dude.
Speaker 2:stop it To the point where I actually think he does it on purpose. You know that happens to him all the time.
Speaker 1:It can happen to anybody right, but honestly that's what they do is that they take these wildly.
Speaker 2:You know, these comments kind of put it together into a different narrative that is not even like close to what you were talking about well, and then like what happened with this one too, with charlie, is like people, people bend it like it starts getting bent because they can't remember the exact quote. We do that too, right like you. You paraphrase and then the paraphrase all of a sudden becomes the quote, and I saw so many times in comments of people being like him. He said black women weren't smart or something like that, but he didn't. He named by name three specific people, so that changes. The narrative, too is he wasn't giving this generalization across the board of all black women. He was talking specifically about something these people said and their specific positions. Like it's just, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I digress yeah, yeah, all right. So that's that's kind of what they do and so that's why you have so much backlash about. Well, charlie kirk actually was. We shouldn't make this guy a martyr. We shouldn't, you know, make him a hero for america, because you literally have, like aoc came out and she was on the on the floor and she put a whole speech together about why he isn't good for it wasn't good for America. I mean, it was. It was crazy to actually see that right and post death.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And what happened. So you know, unfortunately, that's just that's what's coming from the other side, and so kind of like.
Speaker 1:I wanted to go into a little bit like the moral stuff here, like what, what is this done for you? You know, we just saw a guy who, just in our opinion, was a very big role model for a lot of people. A lot of young people loved him. He touched people globally. And then you've got people that are like you know, aoc, saying no, he's not really a role model, like he's not who you thought he was, and people on the side like doing that, like how does that? What's your reaction and how does it like? What is your moral statement, kind of say, when you hear people that are doing that?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think I think aoc is entitled to the opinion to say that he's not a martyr. I think where I start having an issue with it is like the vandalizing of the memorials that exist out there.
Speaker 2:People celebrating his death, people going as far as to say you know, he deserved it, and I'm happy and grateful to say that I haven't seen anybody I personally know celebrate it, which is amazing, because it's very concerning to see that those comments do exist out there. But there have been people that we know who have shared and said things like I'm not going to have any empathy for that, and that is, I think, a hard thing to digest. What you do with those friendships or acquaintances or family who publicly wants to say that they don't have any empathy or any emotional impact from this happening. I think that that's wild to say. More bothersome for me personally just as a mom is is the arguments that I was seeing as oh, if you know, you care if it's Charlie Kirk, but you don't care if it's a school shooting, or you don't care about this Minnesota woman who got shot and it was. It was like all this like tit for tat, kind of like arguments of like oh, everybody's all loud about Charlie Kirk, but you weren't loud about this and you weren't loud about this and you weren't loud about this. Oh, everybody's all loud about Charlie Kirk, but you weren't loud about this and you weren't loud about this and you weren't loud about this and it's like you're trying to make your political point and I think it comes off ill willed.
Speaker 2:I don't know that that was necessarily the intent behind some of those shares, but I will say, reading those kind of pissed me off, because I think I can't imagine there's a single parent out there who doesn't feel every single school shooting. And just because you're not publicly sharing your empathy for that situation, your fear around that situation, your thoughts around that, publicly posting about it all the time doesn't mean you don't feel it, doesn't mean you aren't aware about it, doesn't mean you're not mourning that for those kids, right. And it's like I could take it a step further and be like oh well, you're posting about all the school shootings but you're not posting about all the kids who get shot in Chicago every year or in other inner cities, right. It's like we can keep doing this spinning round and round and round. All we want and all that does is deepen the divide.
Speaker 2:But I will say, those posts and those shares I was seeing from people, those were hard, those were hard to like, not want to be like oh, unfriend, unfriend, unfriend. It's like I don't know, the whole thing is so hard. But I think, reflecting on like what Charlie's mission was, was to continue to have conversations, even the difficult ones that you don't like and the people you don't agree with. If you kind of lean into that, you know, just let it be. And I think you can learn a lot from like what Erica Kirk said at the memorial. Yesterday too, she went up there and less than two weeks later told the world that she forgave the assassin and the shooter.
Speaker 2:Dude, that was the most powerful statement I've ever heard in my life. Pretty wild thing to say.
Speaker 1:That was the most powerful statement I've ever heard in my life statement I've ever heard in my life. Pretty wild thing to say. That was the most powerful statement I've ever heard in my life. When I heard it we were live and we were messing around the kitchen and, dude, I heard, I heard exactly what she said on the TV and I like immediately got emotional about that. I was like holy cow, yeah, how is that even possible? And I asked. And then I asked you. A little bit later I said if I was murdered, would you have the ability to say something like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I said no Right.
Speaker 1:I said no, I'm not a good enough.
Speaker 2:Christian.
Speaker 1:Well, right, yeah, no way. Anyone would probably have that exact same answer. Majority of people would have that exact same answer. Majority of people would have that exact same answer. And I think that just puts Erica Kirk on a whole nother level of who they are, with their faith, with understanding that this was part of the risk, of what their whole mission was, of what their whole mission was, and it seems that the mission was accomplished for Charlie right, and what he has done and what he's been able to influence, and I don't, I don't, I don't know, but it just it was a very powerful thing.
Speaker 1:It makes you really look at, like you know how you're just mentioning, like all these well, you know, they said some things and you know maybe I should unfollow, or like there's that temptation to unfollow, temptation to unfollow on social media, and it's okay. If you unfollow me, you don't have to follow me, that's totally fine. You post some things. I probably will still follow you and that's the like. But that's my choice because I kind of want to hear what you have to say.
Speaker 1:If it's inflammatory to a point where, like you know, I probably had enough of that, well, maybe I might do one of those things. But at the same time I also like to remember that you know, my friends are the people that I've known for a while, like to kind of see how they think and just hear the differences. I'm very much in. I'm very much in in a sense of, like you know, I think we've identified, you know, some of the things that are really important to us and you know the the pieces that we want to harp on a little bit more and maybe we want other people to also be able to see. So I'm very much convicted, in kind, of the ways that I think. So it doesn't bother me if other people are also the same way and in the way that they think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I have a mixed bag. I think there's definitely people that I've gone through and I've chosen to do the unfollow button, and it's because I either didn't really know them very well, so didn't necessarily care what they had to think or care what they had to say If you don't really have a much of a history behind them.
Speaker 1:Okay, Whatever.
Speaker 2:And then there's people where you know I do care what they think, but I felt like it wasn't a good choice to remain Like it wasn't a good choice to remain like. It wasn't a good choice to keep following and seeing content that made me upset and potentially change the way I view them, and I wanted to maintain that friendship and connection. So I chose to either unfollow or mute or whatever. Right, I think there's a lot of different ways you can do it. I have like strategically changed my Instagram logarithm to be like Babies, puppies, homeschool, like no news. I kind of get my news from you at this point and the last week. That's probably going to change my logarithm a little bit. But I have like purposely Chosen to be like homeschool Kids, babies, puppies, all happy things because I didn't want to see all the Crap on Instagram anymore.
Speaker 1:I also think that how did you feel when you first heard about Charlie Kirk getting shot?
Speaker 2:You know, it was one of those moments like I will never forget where I was when I first heard about 9-11 when I was a kid. I'll never forget where I was when Donald Trump got shot. I'll never forget where I was when we found out Charlie Kirk got shot. You and I have these like moments in the day where we'll kind of like meet in the kitchen and we both kind of like dump on each other all the thoughts that we've had built up over the last like four hours. You know, like we had like 20 questions for each other and like, oh, did you hear this? Did you hear this? Did you hear this? And so we both like have our phones out and we're talking about I don't know something, and leading report came up on x and said charlie kirk had been shot and we just both looked at each other like what? Like it was like a a moment of what that? That can't be like. I remember your face.
Speaker 2:I remember us both standing in the middle of the kitchen looking at our phones, having these like back and forth brain dumps of what we needed to talk about and then just stopping and being like what you know? Then you immediately turn on the news, try to figure out what's going on. And there was all these, you know, these mixed reports of he's been stabilized. He's in critical condition.
Speaker 2:I know I talked to somebody at the girls' school. So I remember going to pick up Layla and I was talking to one of the teachers there Her husband's a police officer and she said that the police department was saying that he had passed, and so I remember coming home and sharing that with you and the news was still everybody was trying to speculate what, what happened, and of course we later learned that that he did pass and it was just crazy. It's just crazy, I mean, because, like we said, like so young, not holding any political office, so young, not holding any political office not that that makes it okay or anything, but like literally just a person who's out there having conversations with young adults and people he might have been.
Speaker 1:I mean, he was the most powerful up-and-coming young person that didn't hold an office like Like, didn't have any real power.
Speaker 2:He was arguably more powerful than people in office because of, like I said, his influence. Yeah, His influence, like you said, for it was, it was another. I mean we think he was probably going to be JD Vance's VP pick.
Speaker 1:Who knows, Nobody said that, but yeah, he would have been old enough. I thought he instantly could have been president. I mean, he could have been president for sure.
Speaker 2:Trump even came out and said that Could have been president someday, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean he that would you know this? This shooter took out what we had to look forward to Like this big.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This big name, I mean they, the person that shot him took out somebody that could have had a huge influence for the next 30, 40, 50 years yeah, 50 years, yeah, for sure, that is.
Speaker 2:That's the type of person that they took out. Yeah, it was. It was instantly felt too, because it it's a young guy, you know, like you said, kind of our age, young kids, young family. Just those kids are, you know, gonna grow up without their dad and they're young enough that they won't have those memories.
Speaker 1:I just can't imagine, you know, putting yourself. And that's where, like, the humanity part of it came from. Right it's, there were people celebrating this guy's death and you know, and they didn't remember, or maybe they did, but they just didn't put enough focus on it. This guy was a racist. He probably deserved it. He shouldn't have been saying the things that he did. He probably deserved it, and that's just. It's literally insane to say that about anybody dying, especially if they have a family and they're a young family and they're all young.
Speaker 2:Yeah, family, and they're all young, yeah, and kind of what I was talking about earlier, with the people talking about, like the other, like woman in Minnesota who held office and she was a Senator it's. It's not that his life was more important than hers or more important than these children who are victims of gun violence, right, like that is not true. All of these life lives are equally important. The difference is the impact. They're not all as impactful as he was worldwide and I think you can easily think of that of like, when somebody you know passes away, there's a funeral of their family and friends and people that knew them, and it's typically in a funeral home and a gathering of people. Charlie Kirk was a name known worldwide, so his impact was different. That doesn't mean the value of his life was different. So when I was seeing those things posted, it was upsetting because I like, I'm not no, I don't think anybody was sitting here not mourning the other things that had happened, right, but people are dying every day.
Speaker 1:It was the naiveness of people not knowing how important he was, impactful, how important and impactful like important to the conservative movement, and impactful in every, in everybody's life.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That followed and listened to him and respected him because he was. He was very good at social media. He had a lot of footage out there. He had a talk show.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know a very successful podcast. Millions of people would listen to his podcast.
Speaker 2:I had several people message me that day as that was happening, and from multiple people. People were saying I have never cried over somebody I didn't like. I have never cried this much over somebody I didn't know dying.
Speaker 1:I've heard people say that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was, so was so many people, and that was certainly true for me too is there are multiple days of being emotional and new news coming out making emotional the memorial yesterday, oh my gosh, you know, just so emotional I also want to talk about, like, how graphic this was too, because, dude, this image is burned in my head, it's totally burned in my head.
Speaker 1:Dude, this image is burned in my head, it's totally burned in my head, and I'll find myself just in a random part of the day. For some reason, something triggers it and you know, you just see it replaying over and over and over again in the back of your mind and, dude, that is a very big deal. For a lot of people, that's a very big deal, and the reality is is that we have cameras everywhere now and somebody, at any point, can capture this type of horror, and it's and it's on the and it's on the web, and you'll see it in an instant, and you may not even be ready to see it, and it's going to flash in front of your eyes and it could permanently hurt you mentally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so right before this happened, there was that video of that Ukrainian woman who had been stabbed on the bus, and I hadn't even heard this news yet because, like I said, my feed has been very filtered out to be happy things. And I came across the video as I was, you know, scrolling and I didn't even know what I was watching until it was too late, and that image in that video is something that will never get out of my head. And shortly after Charlie Kirk's news and video came out, I had, I saw something on Instagram that was talking about what we're talking about morning and it was like our brains are literally not designed to process that kind of trauma and fear and emotion in the 10 to 15 seconds that you're seeing it, as you're scrolling, and like you become numb to a lot of violence and fear when you're seeing so much of it and you're you're scrolling. It's actually like programming your brain differently because your brain's not designed to process that level of emotion and that level of trauma.
Speaker 2:And that really hit me. And so I actually I took I think it was a 36 hour hiatus from social media, cause I'm like you're right, like I'm I'm not supposed to be seeing these videos, you know, as I'm looking at puppies and babies in homeschool, somebody gets stabbed on the bus. So what the hell? Okay, keep scrolling. Like that is not how we are supposed to be functioning as humans. That is impacting us in a very negative way and I signed off and had to disconnect and feel. Take the time to feel the emotion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I think you know if you're still feeling the impact from this, in which there's so many people that are, I don't think it's okay to assume that all your friends are okay at this point, because I think they might need somebody to talk to. They might need, you know, just someone to connect with. The reality is is that politics is very divisive and so it causes people to talk about it amongst their inner circles or they don't talk about it at all. And if you don't have an inner circle, or if you don't let's just say you don't have a spouse that thinks the same way as you, you probably don't talk politics in your house. That person that may have a spouse that doesn't talk with them about what just happened and how the one person maybe feels, boy, I hope that person has a friend that they can call and talk about this stuff. Because, I'll tell you this, people want somebody to talk politics to and they're not comfortable just sharing with anybody. You kind of need to be on their side Because, especially in a time of trauma like this, they need to be around other people that are grieving and feeling the same way and what they certainly don't want to be around other people that are grieving and feeling the same way, and what they certainly don't want to be around is people that are saying, oh, I feel bad about this situation, but he probably deserved it.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely what we don't want to be around, and so all I would say is I would encourage is just check in on your friends, check in on your family, because you know, I'm I'm thankful for you, right Cause we get to talk about this stuff all the time. We can do it unfiltered and it's, it's fantastic. But you know, I'd be, I'd be lying to you if I said that I wasn't impacted by watching his death over and over and over again, because you know what. Somebody on the left did the same thing watched his death over and over and over again, and that, I think, is like traumatizing Can be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as it should be. It should be traumatizing to watch a death over and over again, right, and I think what was really disturbing is seeing opposite reactions. There's a video of someone who cheered in the crowd right after it happened, which is wild. There was a video that we saw of a mom videoing her two kids being like. What was the question?
Speaker 1:It didn't have to. That video didn't have to deal with Charlie Kirk. That video had to deal with you. Want to know what the greatest news in the world is?
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 1:And so, and the kid said Donald Trump got shot, yeah, and or Elon Musk got shot, yeah. And the mom is sitting there laughing no, no, taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey got engaged.
Speaker 2:Right, I know that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is that the one you were talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the one I'm talking about. I know that wasn't about Charlie Kirk, but that video I think was circulating during this time because of what those kids were saying was circulating during this time because of what those kids were saying, and that I think is an upsetting thing to see, is that there are people who are celebrating and teaching the level of hate to celebrate the death of somebody.
Speaker 1:Right, right, why, why would we ever do that? Why would you ever want to teach your children Children? Why would you ever want to think children?
Speaker 2:children why?
Speaker 1:would you ever want to think, dude, I will be so happy. One of the greatest things in the world will be if donald trump dies from an assassin, yeah, or just dies like, why insanely disturbing why is that ever a thing that should cross your mind?
Speaker 1:it shouldn't, and this this is just the moral aspect of this is, in my opinion, these morals are like. They're not hard to comprehend, they're not hard to the common sense. Is not that hard here? It's. Oh my God, this young man who has a family just got murdered in cold blood on a college campus in front of 3,000 people. That is an awful tragedy, and there's nothing else from what it is. That is an awful, awful tragedy, and so that is how you should be feeling. There should be no other. Yeah, but no, there shouldn't be any of that. If this were to happen to somebody on the left, I would literally feel the exact same way. Replace that person with somebody on the left that you think makes a huge impact in your life, that you idolize, that you could be president one day and replace Charlie Kirk with that person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to use the example of Joe Biden, because I despised most of his presidency and most of be in that role, because it was very clear and very evident that he was not well. And so there was this human aspect of it, of feeling like this is elder abuse. What they were doing to that guy. He was so drugged up just to get through speeches and he didn't know where he was going. He fell so many times Off the bike oh my God, I mean just so. So many times, you know he couldn't, he didn't know where he was going. He fell so many times Off the bike.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I mean just so so many times.
Speaker 2:You know he couldn't, he didn't know where he was, what he was doing, he didn't know what year it was. Like he's just like clearly not mentally fit to have held that office. I will maintain that argument all day long. And so, despite the fact being super upset with the decisions and everything that was happening with him politically, there was still this piece of me that was just like dude, that poor guy, that poor guy is I don't know. I felt like he was a puppet, that he was a puppet for the left and there's a human aspect of that. Like that guy needs to be in a nursing home. Sorry, but he did yeah, right.
Speaker 1:So if joe biden was the one sitting in that chair, dude, you would feel awful, you would feel awful because, again, it's just the act. It's the act of. I cannot believe that.
Speaker 2:We just witnessed this and we are traumatized yeah, and I think seeing this footage the next layer of that was the fear of like. There's this awful trauma that just happened, that we just saw and that we just witnessed, and then I think there's a huge, great sense of fear. It was like it was just a few, you know, weeks ago that the school shootings came back into play, and then there was one that exact same day of charlie kirk, and so I think, just like this level of fear of like well, I agreed with what he said. So does that make me a target? I'm a Christian. Does that make me a target? I've got a husband who's very vocal and opinionated on social media. Does that make him a target? Right, we send our kids to an outspoken, you know private school. Does that make them a target? It's like, all of a sudden, this trauma now creates this, this, you know, fear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually, trump said it last night. The bullet was pointed at him, but it was actually pointed at all of us, right, that's. That's the type of reaction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think everybody felt that, not everybody. I think a lot of people felt that. I know many people felt that because I had conversations with people about that People questioning school choice, people questioning going to church and feeling safe doing that, people questioning, you know, walking down the street, I mean.
Speaker 1:There's a guy. There's a guy that he's a popular streamer I just came across. I think his name is Destiny, and he said well the right, if they're not fearful of being killed at events, that they're speaking at like we have a problem. Like he said, that they need to be fearful of being killed at events. I'm glad I didn't see that these are the deranged folks that are in the world, that actually have people following them and they say these things.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, some of the not some, a lot of the news networks were talking about the level of acceptance that seems to exist. They did polls, which you know you can take those with a grain of salt, but they were sharing polls on their news network about age ranges of people who think it's okay to be killed for something that you say or stand for, and that was it was like 34%, it was-.
Speaker 1:It was 34% that people Hugely high. It was Harvard, it was Harvard's campus that said. 34% said it was okay to have violence. Silence political rhetoric that you don't like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's very scary Holy smokes.
Speaker 1:Very scary Holy smokes and it just leads into a whole other conversation of what is going on in our schools and actually, in my opinion, this is a very what we've recognized and, after doing even self-reflection, the education system is totally captured by the left. College is where liberals are born. They teach you. All they need is first semester to teach you the things that they want to teach you. To make you feel the United States has always been inherently you. To make you feel the United States has always been inherently racist, to give you the guilt and all of these things which has ultimately led to violence here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely think it's being taught and I don't know. I'm grateful our kids are not heading to college right now because I don't know that we would be sending them at this particular time.
Speaker 1:No, but you know what I think, what's okay I do want to talk about why did Charlie Kirk choose college campuses? Right, this is a big thing. Charlie Kirk chose to talk on college campuses, anywhere that he could set up a little tent. He did that specifically because the guy knew that the education system was captured. The guy knew that this is where liberals learn all of their liberal ideas. It's taught by professors that lean that way. I mean, you could just you could see it in statistics of you know, the first time I found out about it was before the election last year. It was probably about a year ago, when Elon Musk had shared a stat that basically broke down all the majors and how they leaned and it was overall. All of the college campuses are taught by left-leaning professors.
Speaker 2:Which was our experience, which was our experience.
Speaker 1:Which was our experience by far. I mean, we had convocations. They required us to go learn about white privilege year one First, taking a step onto college campus. We didn't tell you about white privilege and all of this stuff, yeah, and then we want you to write about it and give your opinion and a lot of those, and then I'll get the arguments of like well, jason, you think that you shouldn't learn about that stuff? What do you think?
Speaker 2:I don't and I believe in economic privilege. I do think that is a thing. I think there is a very clear argument to say that somebody who grows up poor versus somebody who grows up financially privileged has a very different starting base and starting point. I think that is clear and I truly believe that's the root of what they're trying to say white privilege is. But I think they're doing it in actually an arguably racist way by trying to say that the color of your skin makes you more or less privileged, and you know you can bring up examples that counter argue that and they don't want to hear it. But the root of where the privilege I think comes from is finance and family. Do you have two parents present and do you have the financial capability to eat and have shelter and have opportunity? I think that is where privilege comes from.
Speaker 2:I don't. I personally don't believe it comes from race, so do I think it should be wanting to know people as people, wanting to know their souls, wanting to know their capabilities, wanting to know their experience, and I think I talked about that when we talked about our college experiences. I got in an argument with the professor who, you know, disagreed, but I feel very strongly about that. I you know, I don't know I don't need to go into the example again, I guess but Well, it just goes to show that this stuff has been going on for a long time.
Speaker 1:We graduated in 2000, 2012, 2011. And at the school that we went to, this was being talked about back then. It's been going on for a long time. Charlie Kirk was the only one. I mean, he was four or five years younger than us. Okay, he brought the defense to these other students. He was he probably single-handedly, and, which is totally true. Trump said it again last night. They got the most voters out of young people that they've ever had, the Republican Party has ever had, and it had to have been because of Charlie. A lot of the professors would like to plant in your head and give you the counter argument to that without making you feel like you're a racist, right, nobody ever wants to fall into that category of being called a racist, but if you noticed it, being called a racist all of a sudden just started happening. That wasn't happening when we were in college. You remember that happening in 2012, 2011? People would just people being called racist?
Speaker 2:yeah, no no, that wasn't a thing and it wasn't a thing to be called left-leaning or right-leaning it wasn't a thing until george floyd yeah, yeah, I mean that's when it really started being thrown out there like people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's when it became mainstream, being thrown out there Like people. Yeah, that's when it became mainstream, right? Yeah, very mainstream. You could just label somebody a racist for anything that you wanted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was some underlying tones that existed before that, like it was starting to exist, but yeah, yeah, but at the end of the day, all of this stuff was being taught and eventually we had a boiling over point, okay. And so now we've had Charlie, who has been able to infiltrate these campuses with Turning Point USA. Give them the counter arguments, make these young people feel that no, there's a better way and in my opinion, I think we're probably going to see colleges really shift over the next decade Is that we're going to see colleges really shift over the next decade? I think they're going to lean more towards the center. I think there's going to be a lot of liberal ideas that get tabled and I think by the time that we send our children over to college, it's going to be a place where we want to do that. That's my hope, that's my Charlie Kirk legacy thing that I think that he's going to.
Speaker 2:That's very optimistic.
Speaker 1:Oh, I, I, I think. I think that's a thing, I think that's so. The man will leave a legacy. The man has already he's done so many things in his 31 years. I mean I can't. I can't believe how young he was. I can't believe he grew up here in the suburbs.
Speaker 1:We went to his memorial that was in Arlington Heights. I stopped there myself just once and I remember I walked up to a guy. He was just kind of greeting people that were walking up and I asked him if he was one of the organizers and he's like no, I'm actually just one of the defenders. He said the city or the Parks and Rec here they actually wanted to take down the memorial. You know, not far after when we had kind of the memorial gathering, the vigil gathering, day or two later, and he was like you're not taking this down. I'll help you move it to a different part of this park, but you're not taking this down unless you arrest me. This was. And so I asked him where you know if he was a local, and now he said he's in the South Loop, but he had stayed there until like three in the morning, morning, making sure that like nothing was going to happen to it.
Speaker 1:And this was an older guy, probably put him in his 60s, but he was a nice guy. And then I saw the same. The same moment, I also saw a woman that was probably your age that had kids just like ours, two girls, well-dressed. She brought them herself. There was no dad with them, it was just the mother and the two girls, and the gentleman I was with said, hey, if you girls want to place a flower, you certainly can. And he gave them a flower. And then the mother and the two girls, they said a prayer.
Speaker 1:And this guy, he just started bawling his eyes out as he started watching this and I asked him if he ever knew Charlie. And he didn't. But that's the type of impact that people felt. Is that what you said? I've never heard of so many people that have never met a man cry like this.
Speaker 1:And this was a grown man and he didn't look like you know, didn't look like a soft guy. But that's what that's. That's what Charlie kind of stood for man, he was strong and this was a big blow to the hearts of many people. So I don't want to downplay any of his life at all. He was, he was amazing, and so I'm really glad that they honored him the way that they did. They treated it, as you know, a gathering of the Republican party, and they had a lot of great speeches talking about Charlie and also, at the same time, the great things that Charlie was able to help them accomplish as a Republican Party, and how there is so much momentum. Is that, even though he is gone, there is so much momentum and so much good that is coming from his doing, and wouldn't we all like to leave a legacy like that? Oh my gosh. So, anyways, good stuff, anything else you want to add no, I don't think so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, all right. Well, if you found any value in the show, please share it. Otherwise we will catch you on the next episode.