I want to take the start of this show to address some of the things that have been going around on public, namely about a text, a group text chain that has been made known and released by Candace Owens. And I just want to address it head on because, you know, that was a text grab, a screen grab that I had shared with people. So it is authentic.
And I want to go into it because I actually am really excited that the truth is out there. I first want to say the reason I didn't share that screen grab publicly is because it was a private exchange. And I felt like it didn't necessarily comport with things that were already public.
I wanted to not betray my friends' trust in that way. But I did share it with some people in government because it happened really quick. It took 33 hours for authorities to get their suspect. And in those first moments, we wanted no stone unturned. We wanted to leave nothing unturned.
So I shared it with a few people. Don't know where it went from there, apparently, but here we are. So, one of the reasons, Blake, that I'm glad to have this now public, it was not mine to share publicly, but one of the criticisms we've received is that we don't care, we're not investigating every lead, we're not looking under every stone, and that somehow we're just sweeping
things under the rug. And when I say that we want justice for Charlie more than anybody else, I really mean it, and no stone unturned. I mean, I don't know if you want to chime in on that part alone, but I have more to
say.
Yeah, so it has been so frustrating to have people blow up about this. And I've certainly stated publicly, the reason I haven't weighed in on things is I am an eyewitness to events and they said don't comment on things Because anything you say can mess that up. I don't want to mess up any trial for the person who did this That's a thousand percent right and and I will say I wasn't an eyewitness. I was not there. I flew to Utah immediately to be with the family and the team, but I was not an eyewitness. So there's that. But I am aware that in my role as spokesman for
Turning Point USA, which is another hat I wear, that things I say – I'm cognizant of the fact that things I say could negatively impact an ongoing investigation, all right? But I will weigh in specifically on this issue of Israel, because I know there's a lot of fascination. And I just want to say that, you know, we have to let free speech be our North Star here. Okay? Charlie was adamantly free speech, and I am not personally going to impugn anybody's character who is asking questions and looking for answers. All right? And I will say that that text chain is consistent
with public frustrations that he voiced many times, and I know Blake you were in the trenches on a lot of this stuff because we were workshopping how we were gonna do the tour and what we were, you know, he's gonna get asked about Israel, what was he gonna say, and this is consistent with things that he told his friends, people that are in the wider movement about his wrestle that he was going. And so I just want to say, what is the truth about the way Charlie felt about Israel?
Well, it's complicated, and it's nuanced, and it was a wrestle that was going on for months, and it's probably somewhere between the BB letter and the text I don't even think there's a between about it. I think those are entirely Consistent with the exact same worldview Charlie was not hiding things from people There's going to there's people are going to try to make you fixate on a particular quote or a particular line To make you think that there was something hidden. There was nothing hidden about Charlie's views on Israel
Like Charlie I worked with Charlie on every major issue that we talked about, immigration, abortion, transgender stuff. And he thought about the Israel issue a ton all the time. It was in the news all the time. People cared about it a lot.
He cared about it a lot. Just before the shooting happened, I finished reading, this is a 700 page book about the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict I read this book because Charlie said Blake get really well-versed on this so you can help me Whenever it comes up and just know stuff off the top of your head Yeah, so I read it for that reason if you want to know Charlie's views on the Gaza war
He wanted the war to end he didn't want America to take Palestinian refugees. He was annoyed when people advocated that he didn't want American troops on the ground there or with any other war. And he was upset when he saw stories about churches being damaged or Christians being killed. But at the same time, he recognized Hamas started the war. Hamas could end the war.
Israel ultimately represented European civilization. Hamas represented Middle Eastern barbarism. And Hamas were the chief evildoers and people who supported them were almost always supporting them for these bad like anti-civilizational reasons Yeah, that's what his view was and he was public about that and then as it continued Charlie talked to young people all the time He could see what was going on on the internet He could see among young conservatives. There was a big shift to be hostile to Israel. There was a shift
big-time on the left, but it was also visible on the right. He could tell anti-semitism was rising in America, and that upset him. Charlie was public about this. He loved Israel, he cared about Israel, and he cared about how that... and he wanted to help the pro-Israel movement. Yeah, and I want to play this. It's a long clip, but you know, I said something on the Alex Clark show that was, in my mind, completely consistent with Charlie's public views about Israel, and that is something that he also
expressed very publicly on Megyn Kelly. Now, I know this clip has gone viral, but I think it's worth playing again. So here's Charlie in his own words with Megyn Kelly. Cut 65.
And I will say this. The behavior by a lot, both privately and publicly, are pushing people like you and me away. Not like we're going to be pro-Hamas, not like we're going to, but we're like, honestly, the way you are treating me is so repulsive. I have text messages, Megan, calling me an anti-Semite. I am learning biblical Hebrew and writing a book on the Shabbat. I honor the Shabbat, literally the Jewish Sabbath. I visit Israel and fight for it.
And there's another article out in the Times of Israel today. I could read it on air. I was just reading before I got on. Charlie, what are you doing? Like, why are you, what am I doing? I'm sorry, like, let's just take a step back here. Like I'm an American citizen.
Yes, I want Israel to win. Yes, I'm a Christian. But like the some of the mess and you saw it, man, you've seen how I've been treated, Megan, by some, not all, by some.
No, it's very irritating. It's, it's, it's almost unfair. And so unfair that they were coming after you after turning point for among other things. So you had Dave Smith there. Dave Smith is allowed to criticize Israel. You had both sides. The Israeli side was not allowed to though.
No, you're not allowed to.
It's even worse than that. Again.
I just want to repeat for the fifth time. I love Israel. I want Israel to win. But my moral character is now being put into question. Megan, not my decisions, not like, hey, are you doing this? Is it smart or is it dumb?
But no, I am a bad person if I do this. And I could go, I mean, you saw it, Megan. It was trending on Twitter, thousands of tweets and text messages. And if I were to be charitable and generous, I will say, the people that are attacking me
are in a hyper paranoid state because they're at war and war tends to make things black and white and you're a hammer looking for a nail. So I'm trying to be charitable, Megan, literally, I'm trying to cut as much slack as I can, right? Big, okay, what would it be like if all of a sudden I'm starting to see a pattern of
behavior similar to what my grandparents saw in 1930s Germany online, how would I behave? So that's like my charitable kind of over compensation spirit. At the same time, I'm like, but it's not defensible to be dumb, right?
Yeah.
And it's offensive.
It's offensive to those of us who have been out there defending them in many instances against critics on our own side.
So this text, this group text, he does say that he's leaving him no choice but to leave the pro-Israel side. Here's what I want people to know. Charlie said these things publicly and privately to us, like that he was frustrated. He would say something like that and then he would go in a public situation and he would strike a more moderate tone and we can blow the brakes if we have to. No I wouldn't I wouldn't frame it that way I would say he
was he was frustrated because he didn't like uh we can get into this actually well yeah yeah get past the break here. No it's it's fine what I'm saying is he would he would be frustrated but like the point when I say moderate tone, then when he would say something off the cuff, maybe to you or to me or to some other friend, like his public statements, he would kind of strike just a little bit more tender tone, if you will. And so here's the thing, I looked at that moment as like, he's just blown off steam,
he's frustrated, he's venting, right? And I just want to say, he made that very clear under any circumstances that he was not going to be cowed or bullied into deplatforming Tucker, for example. He made that expressly clear to us. Would he have invited Candace? I have no idea. I think what he was saying in that text, he's like, keep coming at me, bro, and let's see what happens, right? And Charlie was wonderfully defiant. He was wonderfully independent.
And he would not, you know, he believed in the freedom of speech, and he felt like he deserved, as a friend of Israel over many years, the right to speak out and have criticism. I will say one other thing, is that he's loyal, Charlie was loyal to people that he had shared history with, right? He was asked, I think this may be what you were about to say, Blake, he was asked about Candace before in public,
and he would always say, listen, we're friends, he would never say an ill word about her, and if people tried to force him to do that about Tucker or whatever, he would always be defiant because he didn't want to be morally blackmailed exactly exactly Charlie was he was loyal to people who had ever been friends to him whether it was very old donors or just people who had Worked with the turning point and and you know as long as they were not
Attacking him he would you know he would he would not air any dirty laundry or frankly any disagreements He had with people he did disagree with Candace on the Israel issue He disagreed with Tucker on the Israel issue But he also recognized Tucker had positions they agreed on Tucker was a useful voice in the conservative movement on many things and so he invited him to events and you know, they were popular events and So he would react sometimes people would just say yeah, don't invite him or we're going to cut off some large donation.
And that would make him angry. He would say this, yeah, as you say, this is moral blackmail. And he's this Scottish guy, he's combative. His reaction to that is, you know, the classic like, screw me, no, screw you. You know, that's what we think. No, he had and it's one of the my favorite parts about Charlie's just how look defiant and independent He was he was never going to not be controlled by other people
You could not buy him he was not bought and paid for you could not control him With money it just wasn't the way he was wired. He didn't actually care about money that much And so what's going on here? What is going on here? You guys can look up what the text say what is going on is Charlie as I mentioned he always he loved Israel he cared about Israel he cared about the Holy Land and he was aware there was a surge of anti-israel sentiment on the right Charlie was thought seriously about this issue and was trying to chart a path forward for people who are sympathetic to Israel he
was playing the good cop here he was saying you guys don't realize how bad it could potentially get you might have to you have to change your PR that's why he writes a letter to BB you are losing the have to you have to change your PR That's why he writes a letter to BB. You are losing the PR war You need to change how you do your PR you need to change your messaging to the American, right? You might need to change what you expect from us that you're not going to be able to count on just for example Unlimited military aid from America. That's just not going to be tenable going forward. So maybe it has to be a more passive relationship. Maybe you need to give more support towards America. So, more support towards America in, for example,
opposing Islamic migration into America. That's one thing he thought we could ally on. And he was trying to do all of this because he cared about the relationship and wanted to chart a way forward on it. And he would feel angry and upset when people would react to this by blowing up and suggesting he was an anti-Semite or a hater. He would get angry about that because he knew it was untrue, and then he would sometimes vent about this. He would vent about this to people who understood that, who were pro-Israel
people, who shared his view on that issue. Well, exactly, and just why I, you know, didn't share this publicly, it was because this was a private message between Charlie and some people, some Jews and non-Jews, where he was frustrated. He was frustrated and that would have felt like a betrayal to my friend because he never said anything like that publicly in a show, right? He said things with Megan that were very, like we just played him. I went on Alex Clark's show and I felt like I did a faithful job of expressing what Charlie, what I believed his genuine feelings were. One thing that I, I'm just, again, I want to reiterate.
This is an ongoing investigation. There are things that are happening that I don't know about. I also, however, am cognizant of the fact that I, whatever I say, could, first of all, it could negatively implicate an ongoing investigation, but I also want you guys to think about, you know, before you press send, before you hit publish, just
think about, you know, maybe tainting a jury pool. Maybe the implications could be negative in that way. Another thing I want to say is that when it veers into, you know, attacking some of the people that love Charlie the best, the most, and we're closest to him, I just want you to have pause and think maybe... There's so many people around here, Blake, that haven't even had a chance to grieve yet fully, because you go from this, and then obviously...
And again, I don't begrudge people, or I'm not gonna impugn their character for asking questions, because I think a lot of it comes out of love and respect for Charlie and wanting the truth. And I just want to say, me too, I want the truth. That's why I shared that screen grab in the first place,
because no stone unturned. But here's two things that I know about Charlie, and I think you would back me up on this Blake. Two things I know Charlie would not want to see come out of the investigation or just the, you know, people's fascination with this case. He would not want to see it divide the movement or divide the coalition because he worked so hard at helping build the coalition,
the Trump coalition and helping build the movement and the many players that play such an important role in it. And he wouldn't want to see it hurt Turning Point USA. This Turning Point USA, he loved like you can't believe. It was his baby. He put so much time and energy into building Turning Point, into picking the people that could play in different roles.
And I know that those are the two things Charlie wouldn't want to see happen out of this. But again, I actually totally am sympathetic. Like a lot of you have been lied to, a lot of us have been lied to by people that shouldn't be lying to us, whether that be about COVID or lockdowns, or even what happened with the President Butler. There's still open questions there. I am very sympathetic to wanting to get the truth of these things. But again, just because I don't say things publicly doesn't mean that we aren't asking
questions privately, or we aren't pursuing things privately, and I think this is an example of that. And candidly, I'm just really, like, it wasn't mine to share publicly, but I'm actually just really excited that it's public, okay? Because I want the truth to be known. The truth was, it was a wrestle. And actually, Blake, you know that probably better than anybody, because you were helping him really prepare on the Israel topic for this tour. And the last thing, and I've been asked to address this
by a few people that are in really good faith, some people on our team, and that is Doge, that the idea that there was a concern about the finances, first of all, of Turning Point. First of all, of course, Charlie drove always constant improvement. That was one of the things that he was really fixated. He loved Doge so much that he made us make Doge shirts on the show. These are
currently on the show website. And kind of down low, Charlie was a bit of an Elon Musk fanboy. He really loved that Elon built things in America. He didn't just make his money by selling financial instruments or pieces of paper or hedging bets. He builds beautiful things, well-designed things. So he really loved Doge and wanted to sort of bring that spirit. And I just want to say, every spring he would kind of plan the fall audit and he would try and drive improvements He wanted to know where every dollar was going. I just you know, he just loved doge I mean, it's it's one of those there's not a whole lot more there on the doge thing
But you know this as well, but anything else you want to add before we bring Halperin in? Yeah, I just I I want to really emphasize that People will use screen grabs of things to suggest there was distance between what Charlie personally believed and what he said publicly, and I really don't think there was. I think anything you can see in a screenshot from any group chat is also what Charlie was saying publicly.
Charlie would say publicly, I am frustrated by what pro-Israel people in the US do to pressure people. I am frustrated— Well, he thought it was counterproductive. He actually thought it was making the problem worse. It was counterproductive for the issue at large and it was personally hurtful to him
because he faced attacks that he thought were unjustified and that, you know, and were hurtful to him because they were people he considered friends and allies. And he cared a lot about that because Charlie, as I've always said, Charlie was a person who cared. He was a good person. He cared about the good of America.
He cared about the good of the world.
He was American first, too.
He cared about the good of American Jews. He cared about the good of Christians. And he saw that the Israel issue was important to all of those things, and he wanted to have a healthy way forward in that relationship. That is why he did the panel at student action summit. That's why he would talk about this so much he was trying to chart a good way forward in that and
He met opposition and obstacles that frustrated him. I saw it all the time. I talked to him about all the time I talked to him at length How should we word things because this is something we have to be careful on and we have to be precise on yeah And that's how it was.
That's how he seriously took the issue.
These chats, by the way, it was a place for him to feel like he could vent. Mark Halperin to ATV, next up with Mark Halperin. Are you there?
Gentlemen, I'm here. Well, I'm told you were watching.
What are your reactions, Mark?
Well, first I want to say how extraordinarily brave and steadfast and inspirational you both have been along with your team. I see glimpses. I was in Arizona for the service and I follow things closely, but I know I can only imagine what you both have dealt with. And I congratulate you, and I'll tell you that the folks in your life are lucky to have
you around to help them guide through this, because never been anything like having to deal with what you guys have done. So well done, both of you.
Thank you for saying that, Mark. And yeah, I think, Blake, it's safe to say a little bit of this is uncharted territory. And I just want – there's a very personal side of this where it's like we lost somebody that was tremendously close to us in this horrific way. And I get that it's given the profile of the situation that there are going to people,
that this was kind of an inevitability, right? But what I am cognizant of is that really good people are getting caught up in some of it. And I don't think people necessarily mean to do that, or I don't... Again, I do not want to impugn anybody's character here. I know there's just a ton of attention that's going to be on it.
Go ahead, Mark.
You want to go back to the Israel thing? Is that what you're queuing up there?
Oh, no. I'm just saying that people want to get the truth. And it's something Tucker mentioned to me when he was on the show, and it was a really super valid point. And I immediately was like, yes, thank you for making that point because people do want the truth.
And I just wanna let everybody know that if you think you want the truth, I can assure you we want justice, we want the truth more probably because-
The show you two did with Tucker was incredible. Tucker was Tucker and made it easier on you guys because he was so vibrant and jocular, but I really was impressed again with how you both shared so much during that. Look, it depends on how much trouble you want me to get into on Israel. Part of why I understand, I think, the texts and some of the other things Charlie said and did related to Israel publicly that caused controversy
is because I sort of shared that view, which is, you know, I'm an appreciator of Israel, I'm a supporter of Israel's and a respecter of Israel, but just like every American president I've ever covered, you have to stand up to your friends sometimes when you think they're making a mistake. And that applies also to the people in this country who are supporters of Israel,
many of whom are wealthy and many of whom play politics at a very high level. And like other people who play politics at a high level, who are rich, if you disappoint them, one of the leverage points they have is they say, well, if you're not doing what I want, I'm gonna not give you money. That's not specific to AIPAC or the American Jewish
community, but they do it along with everybody else. And to say, I wanna be more honest in public about my criticisms of Israel, and if that means certain people who would otherwise give me money won't give me money, that's something to consider. And the musings in a text is not a lifetime of statements and point of view about Israel, it's a moment.
And I would like to note, so this would happen with donors related to this issue, but as another example, I know that we faced pushback in 24 because Charlie was so pro-life, for example, and there are some donors who were not as on board with that issue, and they would say, you know, you guys either need to dial it back or we'll be less interested, and he would say, too bad, I'm pro-life. He just would not be bossed around on issues. Yeah, he faced... I mean, listen, I will tell you, Charlie was amazing at not being cowed by donors. And it just, like I said, one of my favorite parts about Charlie, wonderfully
defiant. Like, completely independent-minded, and if you pressed him, he would dig his heels in. And that's why we would joke, he'd be like, well, Tucker's gonna speak twice. And you know, like, bring it. Not literally that they would do that, but that's just how defiant he was. He would say that in passing or whatever. And I just want to say, the other thing that's frustrating about this is, again, there's an ongoing investigation. There is a suspect. Apparently they have a real good case, and I don't know, because I'm not involved in
all those conversations, but I can tell you that people that are feel really strongly about it. Communication has been robust, and I can't weigh in on that, because guess what? I could have negative implications on something that is really important. And so I think, listen, we've spoken about this issue. Free speech is free speech. People are
fair to ask questions. I just hope that you think about the two things Charlie wouldn't want to happen. Dividing the coalition, dividing the movement, and hurting Turning Point USA. That's what he wouldn't want. And I hope that we can all hurting Turning Point USA. That's what he wouldn't want. And I hope that we can all keep the main thing the main thing.
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