Ep.100 Charlie Kirk’s Legacy: Our 100th Episode!

In the Programming Lions Podcast milestone 100th episode, the hosts dedicate the session to honor the late Charlie Kirk following a recent tragedy. They discuss Kirk's immense impact on their lives, his legacy through Turning Point, and the significance of his work in the conservative movement. The episode also explores the troubling rise in political violence and its repercussions. Additionally, the hosts reflect on their journey of producing 100 episodes, the skills they have gained, and the challenges faced. 

00:00 Intro

00:45 Charlie Kirk's Impact

01:04 Personal Encounters

03:15 Charlie Kirk's Legacy

07:23 Political Violence

12:57 Moving Forward

16:41 Celebrating 100 Episodes

18:18 Skills and Growth

20:53 Conclusion

Transcript

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CharlieKirk-Matt-webcam-00h_00m_00s_310ms-StreamYard 0:00

Welcome to the Programming Lions Podcast. This is our 100th episode, instead of having a unique guest, we had a tragedy happen last week, and we're gonna use this time to honor Charlie Kirk, a hero, a friend, someone we all looked up to, what he meant, what this. Horrible tragedy means for the movement where we go from here so without further ado, let's get into it. Episode 100. Yeah. This is a milestone for us. Not necessarily in a good way this time. Yeah. Not in a, not in the way that we anticipated. Yeah. Let's maybe do a little reflection about. Charlie what happened? And I think also maybe we can talk about, our journey to get to 100 episodes. It's a good milestone. Not a, not a lot of podcasts get here, so Yeah. Like less than 1%. It is, it is. A lot of people, guys we're the top one percenters, so. Let's start with this Charlie Kirk. You guys have had the chance to meet him at a few events, ask him questions. You've seen his family, and so for those reasons, this hit a little closer to home for us, but tell me what you took away from the events and tragedy that happened last week. Well, the event that we met at Matt was like two years ago. It was cool because me and Max. We like super excited to meet him. Right? And then once we got there, we, uh, asked him his questions at this big church place. Yeah. Freedom Night. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That was really cool. 'cause um, well. He's a big guy. Right. And then he's also a chill guy. Mm-hmm. He was very inspiring. Very nice to us. Yeah, it was a very cool experience. It was, it was. You guys both got to ask questions. It was a more intimate event. And because we live in the same town that, uh, Charlie and his family and turning point are in, we've had the opportunity to go to some of their more intimate events where we've gotten asked questions and that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, so we also went to AM Fest, we had a booth at Am Fest last year in December. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. We didn't get to connect with him there, but we connected with a lot of Turning Point contributors and met tons of supporters. It was pretty cool too. Yeah. All right. Max, what's your thoughts about what happened? Well, I just think that it's really sad to know that like someone killed him even though he had like a family, two kids younger than 30 or three and younger. Mm-hmm. And then next thing you know, vin, those kids will never grow up with father, like what we did. And it's just like. And also he, he was trying to live his own like life, trying to make the American dream happen. So I just think it's a horrible tragedy that he actually got assassinated, right. Yeah, it's awful. Political violence has no place in this country. And we'll get into that a little bit more, but what did Charlie mean to you? You've had the opportunity to see him a lot, uh, in terms of his content, a couple of his events of, of course. But what did the work that he did mean to you? Or what did you take from it? Well, I'd say that he was pretty inspiring, it was pretty cool seeing him doing all of his. Debates and stuff against these liberals and like being totally chill. Right. And then just like destroying them. That was something that was really cool and I wanted to be, and I kind of wanna be something like that. I think that's just like a sick feature to have. Yeah. A skill you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Skill. Mm-hmm. Also his stage presence mm-hmm. Like when we went to Am Fest and stuff, that was, he is very good at speaking. Right. And then especially after what happened. Right. We've been watching the news and they've played some, you know, of his clips and stuff, and I've seen even more things from like farther back right before I even really knew him. And he is a good speaker, he's very inspiring. He's very, like, he's just such a cool guy. Yeah. Yeah. He's very, he's articulate good, crisp, confident, and he's very sharp. He, he has a lot of knowledge too, especially on, yeah. On faith and American history and the Constitution. And so he was a, a difficult guy to debate with. I can understand why a lot of people had challenges debating with him for me it was mostly his faith but he also was one that got me into faith and stuff. I like how his wife did, uh, 365. Right. I liked how he followed with that and I, yeah. I just love what he was doing with his faith in Jesus. Yeah. Definitely a strong. Jesus believer talked about faith all the time. In fact, I think when he was asked what he wanted to be remembered for, it was his, his faith. Yeah. Number one. And I think maybe number two is being a good family man and a father which I'd say he, he did all of those quite well. What else did Charlie do during his life that was amazing? Well, he started Turning Point, which has been a big company that has made a bunch of really big contributors, uh, to like contributions to the conservative area. And then they came and just talked and talked. So yeah, it's really, really cool that he could do that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Turning Point went from a garage operation into a multi-thousand employee tens of thousands of people activated out in the communities, whether it was Turning Point action, getting people out to vote or mm-hmm. Yeah. Turning point chapters at high schools and colleges. They're all over the country now. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. He helped a lot with the, um, election, right? He helped Trump win and stuff. Yeah. Trump pretty much gives him credit for getting the youth vote out. Yeah. He also helped a lot with Gen Z. Right. Very inspirational to a lot of them. That was literally his main message. Right, right. And it seems like that that message was or succeeded pretty well, right? Yeah. Because, well, you could see how far his company went and how influential he was to many people. Yeah. Gen Z kind of swung the vote in the last election, and Gen Z has been. Notably the most conservative generation in a long time, and it's undeniable that Charlie Kirk had a huge impact in that. Mm-hmm. Right? And now we see a lot of young people coming back to faith, and I think. It's valid to say that Charlie Kirk and Turning Point have a lot to do with that. 'cause as you know, they have Turning Point faith. We've had the opportunity to talk to people like, uh, Lucas Miles on our show, remember. And, uh, they're expanding that operation and having a lot of success too, getting young people into faith. Mm-hmm. Yeah, overall I think those are probably the best. You could probably go on for a long time. I bet. Like everything that he is done. But yeah, I'd say those are probably the best things that he is done. Right. Well, what do you make of this political violence that happened? I mean, he was assassinated. We, we do not go out and like, let's say Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, right? Mm-hmm. We do not go out, pull out like a weapon and just try to shoot at them yeah. Well, the, like Democrats and all of them, like they tried it on Trump and then it succeeded on Charlie Kirk. Melissa Hortman and her husband and their dog were shot and killed in Minnesota. Yeah. That was also a hor horrible tragedy. Yeah. And so it happens, it does happen both, both sides of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, uh, there's been a lot of violence towards political opponents, particularly in the last couple of years. It's wild and it's really, it's uncalled for, but it seems to be kinda ratcheting up with radical ideologies and probably on both sides. Like the, the frequency of this is unlike anything I've seen in my lifetime. What do you make of it? What do you think is causing that? Something that I've noticed, and I've also done like a little bit of research on this, right. I think what it might be is where a lot of Democrats, as I said before, I think, or mainly Republicans are being assassinated, is that. Case in Minnesota. Yes. Which is also sad, democrats typically, they, you know, call Trump a Nazi. Right. A fascist, a, uh, Hitler. Hitler, right. Evil threat to democracy, things like that. The devil, right? Yeah. Even like, even South Park said that. Yeah. South Park does episodes with him. Yeah. Sleeping with the devil. Yeah. Yeah. So like, everybody's basically depicting him. Charlie Kirk, a bunch of people. On the Republican party and conservative party as, um, all those things, you know, bad, bad, very bad people, like the worst things you can imagine. Yeah, yeah. And then people who are basic, or in my view, mentally insane. Kinda like the person who just killed Charlie Kirk, so what I think is what are possibly those people that have mental illnesses are like, oh my gosh, this person's Hitler, I should kill him. Yes. Because that's the best thing to do. I mean, Hitler's bad, but you would want to, you would want to get rid of Hitler, right? Yeah. But like, or Satan or somebody who's gonna ruin democracy or a Nazi what you're pointing to is the rhetoric that we attach to certain people. Puts them in danger. Pot, potentially. We talked about association fallacies recently, remember? Mm-hmm. And when you associate people to these horrific figures in history or demons or threats, then crazy people will say, I gotta take out the threat. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it. And they do it and. It's insane. Or the attempt and it's, uh, insanity. Yeah. People are insane. They the fact that they do that. Yeah. It's crazy. We live in a country with the constitution, a lot of freedoms and if your ideas can't win in the public channel of debate, if your ideas can't win there, then violence is not the way. Violence shouldn't be the way. Violence is not, for some reason, not the way reason. A lot of people think that is the way. Yes. Right. Imagine thinking that I'm gonna convince people that my ideas are better through violence. Like that's insane. It is insane. But that's the way some people think particularly Yeah. Certain ideologies that want revolutions and Yeah. You know, real radicals and, and they are, there are radicals on both sides. Right. There's the far left, then there's the far right. And so on the far left, you might think of communists on the far right, you might think of fascists. And both of them have some Claude ideologies, but that's where the radical things tend to come out. And so you've probably heard a lot of fascist references to Trump and others who are clearly not fascist, but they like to call them fascist because then you get to demonize him and dehumanize him. Yep. And call them Hitler. Yeah. Yeah. And uh, okay, so that's a really good point in that some of that rhetoric can be a big factor. What do you think about the reactions to Charlie Kirk's murder? What do you take of that? You've seen some things on social media or on the news. I've seen a lot. On YouTube, i've seen a lot of people that are actually sad. Mm-hmm. For Charlie Charlie's death, I even posted a video about it. Right. And but the comments are like, why are you sad that Charlie died? Like he was a horrible person. And I, I just don't get it. Like, and like the only people that are posting, those are sad videos, but the comments, like, 75% of them are just people like hating on Charlie. Yeah. Right. I've seen that also on the Instagram comments that you've showed us. There's like been a lot of bad people who have dmd you and stuff. Yeah. Bad people in the comments. Yeah. Now you're basically kinda like, uh, publicly humiliating them kind of, right? Saying like, this is an awful idea. Why do you think this is good that somebody died? Right. Like. We've had a lot of pretty vile people reach out, like telling us we should be next. Things like that. Crazy. And uh, yeah, the real threats will expose, but there's just a lot of disgusting people in there too, celebrating it the fact that people are so evil, right? And they are happy about somebody being dead is literally insane. It is. There's no other way to put it. Where do we go from here? Where do you think Turning Point goes? How do you feel about the movement and maybe what we can do to. Carry Charlie's voice forward. Well, um, I remember, uh, Erica Kirk, when she was talking on that live. She said that they will never stop and they'll keep going until, or like they'll keep going. They're never gonna stop. Right. So, um, that's probably a sign that they're gonna keep on going with the business, so, right. They're getting. Incredible outpour of donations to keep opening chapters. We've had a lot of people reach out to us, very touching. We've put out a couple of posts, you know, celebrating Charlie and, uh, a lot of young people wanted to have their voice heard that they are gonna embody Charlie. And so people can see that. Yeah, I actually put out today, but just kind of caught and viral. Yeah. One of 'em went kind of viral today saying I am Charlie Kirk. Young people basically embodying Charlie. Which I think he would appreciate. But okay, so a turning point is going forward. Anything else? Well there's also, now the, now as I've heard before, there probably will not be any more. People speaking outside. Right. Without being like, probably inside like on a gymnasium or something. Or like an auditorium or they speak. Yeah. 'cause it might be slightly safer. Mm-hmm. Another thing, so yeah, these outdoor events might get shut down to some extent. How? However, it's been fun to see, Ben Shapiro and a couple others came out and said, we are gonna absolutely keep our campus tours and maybe even increase the level of campus tours. But for safety reasons, yes. They may be more inside versus outside. I think when they're outside, you can get a lot of attendees and it can be. A cooler atmosphere. And so it's just, it's too bad that you have to worry about threats like this Yeah. Too, when you're having civil discourse. Mm-hmm. Another thing another thing that I've been thinking of is now there's probably a little thought even in the back of my head and probably in the back of your guys' heads also, and probably everybody who's online Right. Now the worry that you might actually get shot or whatever. Yeah. Like that was pretty brutal. Right? Like, you know, it's one thing to see like a bullet Ms. Trump, right? Mm-hmm. It's another thing to see somebody dead Yeah. After being shot. Yeah. It actually instills like, something in your mind thinking like, oof, I do not, I don't wanna, I don't wanna die. Right. But also you wanna. Keep pushing forward because you do wanna be like the, uh, you want to be the next Charlie, or I kind of wanna be the next Charlie Kirk, right? Mm-hmm. The person that spreads on his legacy and in a nice manner. You're right. Yet you also don't really wanna die. So now there's probably just that thought in the back of people's head, right? Yeah. It's scary. Very scary. Right? It's scary thinking, wow, I can just be shot because I'm speaking or sharing my opinions or debating with people who don't agree with me. Max? Like, does this motivate you more or less? Are you nervous? What? What do you think? Well, I'm nervous because probably get, if we get big enough and Democrats stay like this, well there's a chance that we might be able to get, or one of us maybe might get assassinated or something. Yeah. So that's one reason. But then the other reason is that since he died. It can't like back us down. We need to, you know, keep going so we can inspire same people with Charlie Kirk inspired. Mm-hmm. So that's another reason. Let's kinda wrap up the Charlie assassination topic and let's talk a little bit about just a retrospect view of 100 episodes. We've been at this now. For a while. Good year and a half, and we've got a hundred episodes under our belt on the podcast. We've got, gosh, I don't know, hundreds of posts out on social media. We've grown. What do you guys make of all this? What's, what's the journey been like? Wow. Well, the journey has been very fun. We've had a lot of cool guests on. It's also been kind of hard, but. And that's also, you know, what you expect from any journey, basically a journey that brings prosperity should not be super easy. Right. Yeah. Good. Like, you know, I bet you Elon Musk did not make Tesla in one day and suddenly got a billion dollars. Right? So, that's right. It's definitely a journey. But I think we've come a long way. I think overall this thing has been amazing. Max, what's your take? What do you think about this trip we've been on GSD. I mean, it's been a long journey just to get to a hundred episodes and you know, like Joe Rogan has like, what, 23,000 or something like that. So like we're all like, compared to him we're only like a little ant. Yeah. But, so we've not, we've at least made to a hundred podcasts, but if we keep going. We I feel like we can really make this into a growing movement. Yeah. And do you guys think you've gained skills in this endeavor we've been on? Yes, definitely. Like what kind of skills? I honestly think talking to people at least, 'cause I remember I kind of was a little, at least me, me and Will were kind of shy sometimes. Mm. Talking to like random people. Mm-hmm. Uh, but now, you know, we get to meet them and we get to talk and we have questions, so. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with Max, right? We are very talkative at home, but then at school and stuff we are kind of shy. But now we're definitely more talkative. Also, I think we've learned how to think better or think more critically. Okay. Right. We're, um, now we now we're able to, process down something, realize it's more with the best answer, wrong answer, the benefits, drawbacks, all those things. We've just like learned a lot in general, right? From all of the guests that we've had on, right? Yeah. Like we've had Bitcoin, we've had some trans people on. Mm-hmm. Right? We've had like, uh, brand Tatum. Mm-hmm. Brand Tatum. We've had so many different types of people on, right. And we've learned so much from that. So that's something I'd say I definitely, yeah. Have learned right. Yeah, that's good. That's, you know, part of the purpose was to learn, build communication skills and also understand what it's like to grow a business and the pain that goes along with it. It's not easy, right? Sometimes. Yeah. Uh, but it's also really fun sometimes. Yeah. You've met some incredible people and so. You've also learned a lot. Would you say when you go to school and you talk about whether it's politics or the economy or money do you think you're more equipped than some of your classmates? Yes. Yes. Especially in history class now talking about American politics like Federalist, anti-Federalists and all that. Yeah, I agree. It's been really cool. I definitely learned a lot of skills like, if we ever go into like, uh. Media business or like, I don't know, maybe like we make t-shirt designs or mm-hmm. Or maybe like, I don't know, we make thumbnails or Yeah, you come up with questions for people. Right. Now we're much more equipped with all those things. Yeah. And also now, if we ever wanna actually start a business of our own right now, we know how to set up like a website, do media in general, right? Because now, and I've learned this from Shark Tank, right? Media it's a very key way to grow your business. Sure, yeah. Because, yeah. Everybody's on the media. Yeah. So. Media marketing. You learn a bit about marketing. We've figured out what kind of videos do better than others how to get our ideas done crisply. And so I think, I think our content looks better and it's sharper than it was when we started. We just tried to get a little bit better every time. Right? Every single time. Yeah. It's a good strategy. Okay. Well this has been a good journey. We are not done. We got a long way to go. We're still absorbing the tragedy of last week, everyone can send their prayers and thoughts to the Kirk family. There's gonna be a memorial coming up on Sunday, I imagine it'll be very well attended. With that, let's close out. All right. Thank you very much. Subscribe, like, and share. See you. Thank you.