Kingsley Cortes - MAGA 2024: The Supreme Court Swallows the Red Pill and Lessons Learned from Trump 2020

Show notes and Transcript...

Kingsley Cortes is someone with a deep understanding of the political and social  media world. 
At GETTR Social Media she was integral, along with Jason Miller, to their incredible rise and Kingsley also served on the Trump 2020 campaign. 
She joins Hearts of Oak to share her experiences from that campaign and what lessons were learned that will make the Trump 2024 campaign a completely different beast.  
We discuss how 'The Don' has been able to mould the party in his image and make MAGA so much more than just a political slogan. 
Then there is the revelation of the Supreme Court. We are now a year after the overturning of Roe vs Wade, how has it suddenly been red pilled with 3 huge decisions in one day?  
Then we end up discussing voter demographics looking ahead to 2024.

Kingsley Cortes is the Digital Media Manager for 'Center for Renewing America', she is a political communications and marketing professional with experience in journalism, presidential campaign strategy, and social media. 
Kingsley most recently worked as Director of Operations at GETTR Social Media.
Prior to GETTR, she served on President Donald J. Trump’s 2020 Re-election Campaign as Executive Assistant to the Senior Advisor for Strategy. 
Kingsley graduated in 2021 from the University of California Los Angeles with degrees in Political Science and Classical Studies.
A Chicago native, she now resides in Arlington, Virginia.

Connect with Kingsley
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KingsleyCortes?s=20
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/kingsleycortes
Center for Renewing America: https://americarenewing.com/

Interview recorded 5.7.23

*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.

Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20 

To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more... 
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Transcript

(Hearts of Oak)
Hello, Hearts of Oak, and welcome to another interview coming up in a moment with Kingsley Cortes. I got to know Kingsley through my time at GETTR. She at the moment is working for the Centre for Renewing America and was on the 2020 Trump campaign, and that's where we start, asking her about her experiences, what that was like, then looking ahead to 2024, whether Republicans have actually learned the games the Democrats play and whether they've learned how to more effectively play the game. And then we go on to so many things. MAGA, how MAGA has become much more than a slogan, how it is literally a way of life. Putting America first. Game-changer. The Supreme Court, how they've been red-pilled in the last few weeks and back overturning Roe v. Wade decision a year ago. How that has happened, how their Court has become so conservative. Part of it, of course, we discuss is in Trump's three nominations to the Supreme Court, which is huge. And then we just end up talking about the demographics, voting demographics, looking at 2024, the youth vote, and how that will play into the elections. 

Kingsley Cortes, it's wonderful that you could join us today. Thanks for your time.

(Kingsley Cortes)

Thanks so much for having me, Peter. 

Not at all, and obviously we, well I knew you from back in the GETTR days. We'll maybe touch on that, but people can find you @KingsleyCortes on GETTR, Twitter, or those are the two main places.

GETTR, Twitter and Truth Social as well. I've opened an account on there.
So yeah, you can find me, same username on all of the platforms.
Please give me a follow. I put out a lot of content that I think is engaging and fresh. So check it out.

Definitely. And obviously you're heading up to digital media at Center for Renewing America.
We'll touch on that. You are part of the leadership team of Washington, D.C. Young Republicans, and you obviously were part of the Trump 2020 campaign, which we'll delve into as well.
I mean, tell us about Centre for a New America, because I love watching Russ Vought on War Room.
And I hadn't come across, being a Brit, I can always make excuses.
So I've enjoyed watching him there.
But tell us a little bit, you've only been with Centre for a New America for a short time.

That is correct, yes, and you'll see a lot of our fellows or our president, Russ Vought on War Room frequently.
I think we have, you know, someone at least from our office on there almost every day, which is fantastic.
But at the Center for Renewing America, we're basically a Washington, D.C.based think tank, but we are kind of different from the establishment think tanks that have existed for years in you see in that I think we really have our finger on the pulse.
Of the issues that the base cares about, right? Gone is the GOP of endless foreign wars, tax cuts, and gay marriage. We are here to fight the culture war. We're here to fight for American communities across this country. We have a large grassroots operation. And we're just here to fight for America, right? I think becoming proud of America's founding has really kind of devolved into something that people see as evil or as something that one shouldn't strive for. We want to renew that pride and that patriotism. So that's really our mission as an organization.
And I run their digital media operation. So I'm putting out a bunch of content every day.
We have a lot of folks that are on TV every day. I'm putting out clips of those, and we're really just kind of trying to shift the narrative, right? Shift from this Old Testament GOP thinking to the new kind of America first Republican party that we're seeing emerging here.
So I'm really excited about the work that we're doing at the center. I think it's incredibly important. We're small, but we punch above our weight class. So please check us out on all the platforms as well. We're @amrenewctr for Centre. And give us a follow. And you know, if you like what we're doing, feel free to sign up for all of our email lists and things of that nature. But we're really trying to push forward this America First agenda. I think that is the bottom line.
That is the only way we are going to save this country from decline. 

100%. I know you've just celebrated. We didn't celebrate, obviously, Fourth of July. Maybe you need a Centre for Renewal in the UK. I think we need something like that to challenge the, I guess, so-called conservative groups and parties that have absolutely failed on any engagement in the culture wars. 

Right, yeah. I think your Tory party maybe makes our GOP, which I complain about, look, you know, radical. So you guys have a bit of the same problem we do, that's for sure.

We really do. So let's get... Trump. Obviously, we have a Trump 2016, Trump 2020, and Trump 2024 is just around the corner.
You were very much part of that 2020 campaign. Let us know how that happened and how did you find it? Most people have no idea what it's like to be in a political campaign of that level, so give us some kind of insights on what that was like for you.

Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of started out my career in politics when I was in college.
I wrote for the National Pulse, which is a publication of Raheem Kassam, who you know, and that's kind of how I got my feet wet in this movement. I just applied, you know, online to do a free writing fellowship, and I was able to kind of explore how to frame a narrative, how to research political issues, and all of those things. And a couple of my articles did very well and I got to do a couple of war room appearances here and there. So through that I met Jason Miller who founded War Room Impeachment with Bannon and with Raheem Kassam.
So you know, great network there and he ultimately dragged me on to the 2020 race and I worked with him there kind of as his deputy and we did a lot of marketing and communication strategy.
But no, a presidential campaign, I mean, is all hands on deck. It's exhausting, you know, long hours for sure. It's high stress, it's fast paced, but I really enjoyed it because I believed in what we were fighting for.
I believed, you know, that Trump was ushering in incredible wins for the American economy, for the American people. We were respected abroad again, right? And unfortunately, the election didn't go, you know, as planned. It was stolen. And, you know, I think that in the aftermath of that, we quite didn't have the litigation or the lawyer kind of strength to fight it wholeheartedly. But I think, you know, that election in many ways was a wake-up call.
Not just on the election integrity front, but also on the big tech front. They censored the president of the United States. This was a totally unprecedented move. And I for one never thought, you know, the Silicon Valley oligarchs would be so bold. It was shocking to me that, you know, they would totally de-platform a duly elected president of the United States.
And if you remember as well, it wasn't just him. The New York Post was, they had their account locked for a number of days for posting a story about the Hunter Biden laptop. I mean, the way that the media in many ways stole the election with big tech, colluding with our government was just absurd. It was unlike anything we had ever seen before. So I think for me, you know, being on that race at a high level, I realized exactly what we're up against, because I think for a long time, conservatives have kind of felt that we can work with the Democrats, right? We can reach bipartisan conclusions and bills. But I think this Democrat Party that we're dealing with in the modern age is totally unrecognizable to a Democrat, you know, of my grandpa's generation. These are radical neo-Marxist ideologues that are hell-bent on destroying the fabric of American society.
So ultimately, you know that big tech kind of brazenness in censoring the president led me to really take an interest in pursuing big tech and free speech issues and that's why I wound up with Jason Miller at GETTR and we really tried to create a platform where all speech was allowed. You could engage in the exchange of ideas. You could have debates. So that was something that I think is really important to strive for as we continue. Whatever we do, whether that's working in politics or whether that's working, you know, in business, what have you, we all need to be embracing of ideas, right? We can't be afraid or be shut down by the leftist kind of mainstream thinking. We need to stand up for what we believe in and know that what we believe in is something that is foundational to America, right? It's embedded in our history and our heritage. So kind of a long answer for you there, but I just think, you know, the campaign in 2020 is a lesson and looking forward to 24.
I think that there are a lot of things that we can take from 2020 that maybe we didn't do so well, or maybe that we did great.
And I think we're going to really see in 2024 a clean, well-oiled machine.
I think, you know, this Trump group, they know exactly what to do.
Trump knows exactly what to do. He has his kind of marching orders.
He has his mission. He knows how to take down the deep state that is aimed squarely at him and aimed squarely at the American people.

Oh, 2024 is going to be so different. But about 2020, because looking at it as a Brit where our issue is tribal voting and people saying, I don't agree with that, but I'm going to vote for them anyway, because I've always, that's our kind of stuck in the rust. We don't have the mess, I guess, which you have. I've watched the voting regularly at many elections and the rush to get the paper ballots, you physically watch them, you can check everything, there are piles of them, everything is there. I'm wondering how it took until 2020 for Republicans to, wake up and think something's not right, because this obviously had been building up to then.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's a fantastic question. As a Republican Party member, it's one that frustrates me greatly, right?
How underprepared we have been for a lot of the tactics that the leftists have pulled, you know, just in the past 10, 20 years.
I think that the Democrat Party kind of had a leg up because they've owned a lot of these kind of city operations and controls, right? They have a lot of institutional power when it comes to blue cities.
So I think those kinds of environments gave them time to perfect their craft in a way.
And I think a lot of Republicans, sadly, were just asleep at the wheel.
I think Republicans, because we are good natured, because we are honest and we truly want the best for this country, we don't think like our enemy, right? We're not devious.
We're not trying to cheat, of course, but what we've come to realize, I think, with Trump is that he's really pulled back the curtain, right, and shown us who these people are.
He's shown us the Swamp's true colours. I mean, for so long, you know, we didn't know just how much the people in, you know, the D.C. Beltway despised those of us outside the Beltway, those of us who have traditional American values, but Trump kind of showed us who they are.
And I think that's a wake-up call, right? we realize now that we're sort of playing a game of poker, one side's cheating, and we haven't been cheating this whole time, so we're wondering why we're losing, right?
We need to get off the deck, right? Play a totally different game.
We have always kind of tried to beat the Democrats at their own game, at their own kind of methods and ways of doing things, and we need to break out of that kind of mental matrix, I think, and I think Trump, because he was such an outsider, was able to do that.
He was not in this typical, you know, DC pipeline where you go from the RNC to a different think tank.
And then, you know, you become a lobbyist and you cash in and you don't really care about what Americans are thinking and you're not in touch with the issues that matter to them.
And I think because Trump was totally outside that world, it allowed him to bring that different perspective.
And of course there was backlash, right? The traditional kind of Republicans, what I like to call the establishment Republicans were fearful of that.
They don't want someone to come in and kind of shake things up.
So I think you're always gonna see those elements with Trump even in the 2024 campaign.
You're gonna see folks at the RNC that aren't totally on his side that are maybe even kind of trying to hurt him in ways that are underhanded and things of that nature. But I think that what we need is someone who is an outsider. We can't have someone fix it from the inside, right? The system has become so entrenched, so corrupt, we need kind of a bulldozer to go through it and to just blow it all up and rebuild it as something that is really for the American people. And I think that person is Donald Trump in 2024. I think, you know, it's always been Trump. He has started something that cannot be put back in the bottle. You know, the genie can't be put back in the bottle. The America First movement isn't going anywhere, even after Trump. I think a lot of people in the UK as well with Brexit, I think you saw a lot of people wake up to just the way things had been done.
It wasn't working for them. It didn't represent them. There was this cabal of global elite that that didn't have their national interests at heart. And I think the American people and perhaps the British people know that and they're ready to fight.
They're not gonna forget.

I remember at CPAC, listened to one and a half hours of Trump and it was pure theatre, loved it.
We'll get into that and I won't talk about clashing the Republican establishment and what Trump brings in, but you mentioned about playing the game.
And one of the things that Republicans are playing catch up is how you vote, getting people to vote.
And again, in the UK, so different. We have, well, probably well over 90% is voting on the day.
We don't have your drop boxes, your collect as many bits of paper and fill them in.
We don't have that. We don't have weeks and weeks of voting.
We have one day from seven in the morning till nine at night.
Playing the game means understanding how the other half are doing it and coming up with a better attack. And on the voting, on the getting out early, I've heard a lot of conversation about that, certainly in the War Room, Bannon talking a lot about Republicans having to wake up. Does that mean the ground game is better on using the system and getting those votes out early?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you talk about War Room, they mention this all the time, we need to be ballot harvesting, right? We need to be going up to individuals' doors, asking them to vote just as the Democrats have done. Republicans, again, because I think they're good-natured and honest, they want to vote typically in person on election day. They want to see their vote, you know, go in the machine. They want to present their ID. And there's no problem with that, right? Of course, that's a fantastic way to vote. But unfortunately a lot of the rigging that's happening is through the mail-in. So we can't shy away from the mail-in.
And I think this is a mistake that we made on the 2020 campaign.
We really went back and forth on the messaging, right? We said, oh, mail-ins are unconstitutional.
We can't push for this, even with COVID. And then we also said, oh, wait, but if you do want to vote, you know, mail-in.
If you do feel kind of, you know, it's a danger to your health going to your precinct, then please mail-in.
So there was kind of a lot of back and forth.
I think going along with our campaign messaging, I think we should have been much clearer on that.
And I think you see President Trump being much clearer on that in his 24 race.
But yeah, we can't shy away from mail-in voting.
We have to have grassroots activists engaged as well. I think, you know, a lot of Republicans, they go to their day job and, you know, they follow politics as a hobby, but they're not really actively engaged in it.
I think, you know, Democrats, all of them, it's basically their hobby, right, is politics.
They're knocking on doors, they're protesting.
They really have kind of cornered that activist market, especially for young people.
So I tell people, you know, in DC all the time or outside of DC, just get off the side-lines, right?
Run for your school board, become an election poll watcher. There are so many different things that you can do, even at small local levels that will make a change in your county, in your state, and ultimately in your country.
We can't afford for anyone to be sitting this one out. I think this is truly the most pivotal election that we are going to have in American history. We are truly fighting for the future of our country.
So we all have to be a part of it.
We can't have any single person, you know.
Just checked out or leaving it up to the professionals everyone has a role to play everyone has a vested interest in this country, too right, if you have kids if you have grandkids you want them to grow up in a nation as great as the one you remember. I talked to so many older folks or the boomer kind of generation. They have such fond memories of Reagan's America, right? It was such a wonderful place to live. It was safe. The economy was booming. We were kicking the Soviets butts. It was just a wonderful time and I think, you know, they see what our country has devolved into so quickly and they're disheartened but it really needs to kind of be a kick in the butt in many ways. They need to realize I need to fight for my children's future because I want them to have all of the freedoms and opportunities that I had as a kid and I think sadly those are slipping away. We are truly devolving into a radical Neo-Marxist kind of country with an ideology that is just pure evil. So we need to all be standing up and fighting against this and that starts at the ballot box, absolutely.

Yeah. You talk about the establishment side and Trump, probably like no other, has shaped the party in his image to an extent, and probably even further shaped the Republican voter base in his image. I think that's probably more. And you mentioned Reagan. I don't know whether it's just people looking back and thinking it wasn't a great under Reagan. I don't know actually if at the time that it was seen as his party. So I think Trump's done it in a way that's never been seen before. Is that a fair enough comment?

Yes, absolutely. And again, I think it's just because he is that brash outsider, right?
You can't fit him into any box.
He doesn't fit a mould. And I think traditionally, republicanism has really represented states' rights, small government, few taxes. That's always what we've thought of as right wing in this country for decades.
And I think Trump came in and he said, no, we have big government.
It's not going away. I'm going to use it.
I'm going to weaponize the government powers that I have to protect the American citizens and to go after this woke bureaucracy that we're seeing entrenched in DC.
He's also pretty populist, right? We've seen a lot of economic policy advancements from him, that aren't, you know, your traditional, we just want tax cuts and that's it.
He wants to give people a chance, particularly young people.
He's talked about it on the campaign trail with his, you know, freedom cities idea, building different freedom cities across national parks in the country to give young people the opportunity to realize their American dream, right?
Because I think so many young people in this economy today, they're crippled with student debt.
Inflation is just hitting them really hard.
The idea of someday owning a home, owning a car even, raising a family, paying for college, it all feels so out of reach.
Young people have been really, really tarnished by the economy that Biden has largely created.
But even just the Democrats have largely created for years, right?
They've shipped all of our manufacturing jobs overseas to China since basically the 90s, And they've essentially ripped off the American worker so much that, you know, the notion of having wealth or being able to accrue wealth just totally feels, you know, like a fantasy. It doesn't feel like something worth doing anymore.
I even think to, you know, my parents' generation, my dad was able to have a home, purchase a home, own a home.
On one salary, right. Now, that's almost, you know, unheard of. Two parents have to be working to be able to to be able to purchase a house.
So I think that the kind of populist bent that Trump gives the Republican party is definitely why it is kind of in his image now.
It's something totally different than Republicanism we've seen before.
It is something that is new.
It is something that's for the people. It's engaged with the base.
I think too, a lot of Republicans for years haven't been engaged with their voters.
They've been listening to, you know, pollsters in Washington, D.C.
Talking to New York stockbrokers about what they should do. They've never quite been as in touch with the average American as Donald Trump is. So I think that's the difference. I think that's why this is truly his party. But like I said before, once you know this Trump saga is over, after his 24 presidency, once we're done with Donald Trump, I think this America First movement is here to stay. I don't think it's going anywhere. 

Well, I remember in 2016, I remember looking at Ben Carson. I thought Ben Carson was the best choice and then looking at Ted Cruz. And then when Trump got the nomination and then had a MAGA slogan, which wasn't a slogan, it went far, usually elections have slogans, but I think it went far beyond a slogan to actually a way of life, is, are we going to put America first or not? And that really struck me because now politicians aren't supposed to say they'll put their country first.
That's bad in a global system, but Trump said, like, screw you.
I'm going to put America first. That's the priority.
And how, I guess, has it taken that long? Because there hasn't been a priority and the slipping away of US influence, US manufacturing, jobs on US oil has been slipping away, not just under Democrat, but under Republican. So, I mean, tell us about that and how that's changed things.

Yeah, so a lot of people don't know this. This actually really largely started with Joe Biden.
In 2001, Joe Biden advocated for China's inclusion into the WTO.
And after that, in the next decade, from 2001 to 2011, the Chinese took 2.7 million jobs from Americans.
So I think in many ways, Biden has actually kind of been the chief architect of this offshoring to China and elsewhere, to India and various places.
And I think that because Republicans started to put GDP kind of above the interests of their countrymen.
All they cared about was GDP. All they cared about was trade deals, right?
And Wall Street numbers and things of that nature. They kind of just went along with it.
They said, oh yeah, a global system, you know, it's great for our stocks.
It's great for the millionaires on Wall Street, on K Street, they're all making bajillions.
They have no kind of reason to stop this globalization because it's serving them.
So I think Republicans and Democrats together really kind of created this crisis.
And it has accelerated like crazy. I mean, I certainly didn't think America's decline would be so swift, but in the past, I mean, 20 years, you have just seen our economy totally tank.
You have seen communities across this country be ravaged by economic crises.
They are no longer able to enjoy the things of life that their grandparents did.
They are leasing cars, they're leasing apartments. I even saw the other day Apple was offering some sort of lease an iPhone deal.
It's kind of the WEF model of, you know, you will own nothing and you will be happy.
We've been sold this totally false bag of goods.
And it's totally contradictory to our identity as Americans, right?
Americans care about ownership.
We're very individualistic. You know, we're rough and we'll fight for what we want.
And that's always been our identity. And unfortunately, this kind of global identity that has superseded America's identity in the eyes of our beltway and coastal elite has really been one that doesn't align with our founding.
And I think it's really just been a disservice to the American people as well.
I mean, over 50% of Americans today say they are living pay check to pay check.
I mean, that is just something that would be unheard of in the Reagan years or even earlier than that. So I think that we're seeing
a truly economic crisis. And for young people especially, I think it's just going to be immensely difficult, right? It's just such a barrier to entry now that you can't even, you know, get rid of student loan debt, that your salary can't even pay for somewhere nice for you to live. It's just what they have totally done to young people and to just people in general across this country, I think is really sick. And Trump is the only one who really kind of brought it to the light. He was the only Republican who said, Hey, these trade deals, they're not working for you. They're not in our interest. Why are we pursuing them? Why are we kind of just for, you know, Oh, this is the way we've done it. Why is that our approach? We need a totally different mindset. We need to completely decouple from China, bring all of our manufacturing and jobs here. You even look at the situation in Taiwan, right? The reason that we're kind of so hesitant to get involved in Taiwan or wondering if we should get involved is because our semiconductors are there, right? Of course we want freedom for the Taiwanese, but that's a big part of it, right? And we're in this situation where all of our semiconductor manufacturing is over there and we're in kind of a pickle because of the establishment Republicans and Democrats, because they've shipped all of our jobs overseas, all over the world. And they've just, they've really kind of tarnished the American working class in doing so. So I think, you know, Trump is really at the forefront of bringing those jobs home. I think that is one of the only things that can revitalise this economy because unfortunately, it has been on a downward trajectory for far too long.

Supreme Court. They seem to be red pilled recently, like very recently. But stepping back, I mean Trump had nominated, was it, three Supreme Court judges and I was looking back and
I mean, you look at Obama and Bush and Clinton, they did two in two terms.
And I don't think, I mean...
Two-thirds of our viewers are UK, about 20% are US, so most of our viewers won't realise the, I guess, importance and power that the Supreme Court has in US society in the law-making process.
So tell us about it, because three Supreme Court judges is huge, that is a massive legacy, and who knows what will happen 24 to 2028?

Yes. Right. No, absolutely. It is a massive accomplishment of the Trump administration.
There is no question.
And I think these three opinions that we've seen have been really encouraging for conservatives across the country. And of course, you know, we already see leftists now pushing ideas like packing the court.
They're kind of flailing. I think they didn't think that, you know, conservatives would be able to fight back in this way using the court.
And I think part of that is really an accomplishment of Trump.
And I think it's a wonderful one.
The affirmative action case in particular, I think is incredibly important. I mean, selecting individuals based on their race, not based on their merit or their skill set, is just totally backwards. And it's antithetical to every Western value that we've ever held, right? If you are able to do the work, if you are the most qualified candidate, then you should be selected, whether that is for a job promotion, for entry into a university, whatever it is. But unfortunately the left has totally turned that on its head and it's twisted it into this idea that race is all that matters and that we should judge people on the colour of their skin. And I just think as Americans, we have to stand up against that. I'm so encouraged to see the courts stand up against that. The other case, this student loan issue in particular, Biden's order using the COVID policies as leftover policies to justify his student loan cancellation of debt was completely against our American Constitution. There is no doubt about it. I will say, you know, I think conservatives need to come up with a creative approach to handle the student loan issue.
So many of our young people, as I mentioned earlier, are saddled with debt. They've been kind of sold a false bill of goods. These universities have, you know, told them they need to attend in order to get a job and that they should major in something like gender studies, or even if they did major in something useful like engineering, the school has only taught them leftist indoctrination, right?
That was something I experienced at my American university. I went to the University of California at Los Angeles.
So, you know, it was totally in the lion's den there. And I was taking political science, which I wanted to be in politics. It was something that I thought would really prepare me and equip me, and boy, it did not.
All I was told is that America's founding was evil, is that what it meant to be an American is to kill Native Americans. I mean, I was just totally, just faced with this radical leftism. I had professors who were openly Marxist. So I think, you know, in some capacity, we need to hold these universities accountable, right? They have large endowments.
They should be paying at least a portion of the student loan debts that are just saddling and crippling our young people across this country, because what these institutions are doing is truly evil. They're jacking up the prices of college. I mean, I think when I paid my tuition, I was paying for green initiatives on campus.
You can't say no to that kind of stuff. It's all wrapped in.
I think these universities are really up to no good and we have to hold them accountable.
And then the other case with the individual, the woman who didn't want to be conscripted to make the LGBTQ website, I think that's a massive win for social conservatism as well.
I think that we've seen this kind of LGBTQ cult of indoctrination really forcing their hand on a lot of American institutions.
You almost can't go anywhere in America in the month of June without seeing a rainbow flag or without being told you need to post that you stand in support with LGBTQ Americans.
I mean, it's totally become in many ways a religion, right? We've always said in America, we have this separation of church and state.
We don't anymore because our new state religion is this gender confusion.
And we are exporting it across the world as well. We're sending money all over the world.
We're funding pride parades in Prague, LGBTQ movie nights in Australia.
I mean, the way that this group has been able to kind of co-opt the American government and American institutions is totally ludicrous.
And what they are doing is really engaging in grooming, especially of young people, right?
One in five Gen Z Americans now identifies as LGBTQ. It used to be, you know, they just kind of pushed forward this born this way narrative.
And it was a very small subset of the population that kind of stuck to themselves.
And, you know, no one really cared what they did in the privacy of their own bedroom, but it's not in your own bedroom anymore. We're seeing this out on the streets.
We are seeing these marchers parading in front of kids, largely naked.
It is just devolved into total degeneracy. So I think pushing back against that as well with that decision is a massive win for Christian or socially conservative individuals.
And I'm really encouraged to see these wins from the court.
I will say the Democrats are of course going to try to fight back, right?
We already saw these universities with the affirmative action case say that they're going to consider race in things like the essay.
So we have to be sure that we're enforcing these rulings, right?
I think the Supreme Court makes the ruling and then it's up to congressional leadership to, in many ways, pass legislation that will enforce and strengthen that ruling.
So I think that's something to watch for in the coming months here.

Yeah, all three surprised me. The LGBT one is probably the one that surprised me most and we've just struggled through Pride as well. And it's interesting because the church has not, really, really have collapsed in actually speaking truth and opposing that taking the rainbow and completely changing its meaning. But what is that, because here a lot of conservatives are so scared to even go against, because I think the aggression from, especially from the trans movement. What is it like, because MAGA seemed to be fully hardcore on these, in a way the Republican Party as a whole should be. And how is it that you've got a subsection, MAGA, actually willing to stand against the nonsense of Pride and everything it brings, but yet, if you look at the more established Republican who you'd think, I mean, you look at Fox News and they were promoting LGBT Pride Month. How has that happened?

Right. I think that, you know, the kind of new right, this America First movement that Trump started, has really realized that the Christian conservatives we kind of mocked during the Obergefell decision that said, oh, you know, gay marriage is legal now. This will be a slippery slope. We mocked a lot of those people back in the day. And I was one of those, you know, I was a little bit more libertarian in my youth. I thought, you know, what you want to do is your business so long as it doesn't affect me. But I think those Christian conservatives who sounded the alarm were really right. Once, you kind of open the floodgates to a lot of this perversion, to a lot of this degeneracy.
It sinks its teeth into almost every aspect of American life.
You can't watch a children's show today that doesn't have a gay character.
You can't, you know, walk into any university without being, you know, shown an LGBTQ flag or centre or things like that, right? It's absolutely ridiculous. So I think people have become so frustrated with how it's been shoved in their face because we were told, you know, oh, just be tolerant. They won't bother you. It won't affect your life. It affects everyone's day, every single moment now. So I think that realization that you can't just live and let live, right? There is always going to be some orthodoxy that is enshrined in the public square, and it needs to be an orthodoxy that is one of tradition, right? That is one of Western ideals of man and woman and marriage and things of that nature that are important and have stood the test of time. I think if our founders woke up today and they saw all of this craziness around us, they would be just shocked to the core. I mean, the way that the social decay has accelerated is absolutely nuts. So I think the new right and conservatives are kind of against the old Republican guard that think, oh, if you want to do that, that's fine. It doesn't affect me.
Now it's in your kid's school, right? You're seeing teachers across the country that have gay books in their libraries or they're switching their child's pronouns without the knowledge of the parents.
It's absolutely insane. And what they're doing is they're preying on children because those who cannot reproduce, they recruit, they groom.
So what they're doing is they're targeting different opportunity demographics and that's largely children. And they're preying on a child's imaginative kind of creative point in their life, right? Because when you're a kid, you obviously you have no concept of your sexual self and you shouldn't until you reach puberty. That's very normal. That's how biology works.
But unfortunately, the left has kind of gone after that period of maybe, you know, awkwardness. You had a growth spurt.
You don't feel totally at home in your body.
They're using that kind of growth and that period in a child's life and they're they're targeting it.
They're twisting it and they're morphing it into something that is wholly evil.
I mean, how awful is it to see trans violence across this country, too?
I think we have truly sick, mentally ill people walking around.
You have the Nashville shooter, for instance. There was a shooter just last night who police are saying was a cross-dresser.
I think we have individuals who are really hurting, whether they have a mental illness.
If that's body dysmorphia or something else.
And what we're doing instead of giving them adequate care is we're just chopping off their fully functioning organs and injecting them with a bunch of foreign hormones. It is totally a recipe for disaster. And if we keep going down this road, we're going to have a population that is largely unstable and that's not conducive to societal success. That's not something we want to strive for. So we need to go after also a lot of these institutions that are pushing this stuff. I mentioned the universities earlier. They're a big portion of it. I think, big pharma is a big portion of it. They see these people as lifelong patients. They want to get them hooked on, you know, certain chemically castrating drugs, things like that. So we need to be really fighting against this stuff. And I think the new right, the America First Trump movement understands that, they know that this has gone too far, it's gone over the line. And we need to get back to our roots to our traditional concepts of gender, man and woman. 

Couldn't agree more. Keep it simple. There's only two. You're looking ahead to 2024. How does the, voting demographics break down? When you look at the youth vote, there are so many ones, but specifically looking at the youth vote. How do you see that working out? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, so I think, you know, you'll hear a lot of Republicans say that Gen Z is a persuadable demographic. I'm not so sold being a member of that generation myself. As I mentioned, one in five Gen Z Americans identify as LGBTQ. I think this is truly the most radical generation that this country has ever seen. I think that these kids are Marxists. They've totally drunk the Kool-Aid and a lot of it too is largely not their fault, right? If you go to college apolitical in the United States, you are going to be a radical leftist by the time you get out. You have to go in with strong conservative values or you're just going to be indoctrinated, unfortunately, because your teachers, using their position of power, will espouse this radical left ideology that is just totally anti-American. It's not embracing of any other ideas or contrary views. So I think, you know, Gen Z is really going to be a problem for the Republican Party unless we start to shift narratives, right? Unless we start to really get ahead of issues that matter to young people. As I've been hitting home, you know, the economy is a major one. I talk to so many young people who just feel totally disenfranchised. They feel like their birth right has been stolen from them because they can't accumulate wealth. I'll give you an example. In 1998, which is the year I was born, millennials, Americans under 40, they held 13% of all national wealth.
Today, that same age group, they hold just 5% of national wealth.
So in almost 25 years, that's been cut in half.
Young people are being totally wrecked by this economy. So I think starting to put issues at the forefront, like the ability to have a family on one income, you see Blake Masters talk about that a lot.
JD Vance talk about that a lot.
I think that's something that's huge and going to attract a lot of young people, a creative student loan approach as well. I mentioned, you know, that
I think colleges should be partially held accountable for it.
I don't think it should just be up to the student to pay those off.
A lot of times, traditional Republicans, they say, oh, you know, you took out the debt. It's your responsibility to pay.
Absolutely. I think we should, you know, hold them accountable for at least some of it.
But I also think these universities need to be punished.
And then I think, you know, we need kind of a dual-pronged approach to that issue.
I also think the social issues matter a lot to young people.
I think the loudest voices in the conservative youth movement, sadly, are kind of the radical kids, you know, the pro-choice or the LGBTQ mafia. But I tell young people all the time, remember, there are so many young Americans across this country, in middle America, in the quote-unquote flyover states, that believe your values, right? They go to church, they prescribe to a two-gender viewpoint of life, they want to start a family someday. So I think just being loud and voicing your opinions if you are a traditional kind of conservative-minded American is so important because the left wins when we feel alone, when we feel like I'm shouting into the void, no one shares my opinions, I'm totally on an island here, I'm all alone. And I think that when we realize that there are so many voters out there that agree with us, I try to remind myself just every day, you know, how many people support Donald Trump. When I look at pictures of his rally in South Carolina, I think, oh, wow, I live in D.C. where I'm behind enemy lines and I'm surrounded by swamp monsters, but there are people in South Carolina that believe in this message and that believe in this president.
So I think, you know, young people, they're out there.
They're kind of a silent majority. They just feel like they've been silenced and they can't voice their opinion.
They need to get loud.
We need those people to come off the side-lines.

With a campaign, obviously, I've heard DeSantis speak when I was over in Florida in February.
Then heard Trump speak at CPAC, and I know I've talked to so many people, I know you've experienced different viewpoints in family, I'm sure it'll be across the country, and as much as I think DeSantis is brilliant for what he's done in Florida, if Trump's in the ring, you don't even get in it. I mean, Trump is Trump. You don't, you just cheer him on. And I'm perplexed why anyone thinks they should go up against Trump. 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I agree with you, you know, I am not a DeSantis hater by any means I think what he's done for Florida is absolutely incredible particularly, you know during the COVID pandemic his leadership. He really was at the forefront of a lot of stuff pushing back against, you know Fauci and all the lunacy we saw coming from the CDC and HHS. So he has been really a fantastic governor for the state of Florida, but he's young, right?
I think that you know, he certainly has a bright future maybe as our president someday. But I just don't think that time is yet. I don't think the Trump saga is over. You watch Trump on the campaign trail now. He is not missing a beat. He's totally 2016 Trump he looks as if he hasn't aged, that Florida Sun has been rather kind to him. His golf swing still just as strong as ever. So I think you know, we can't count him out he needs to finish what he started. I think too, there's always a learning curve with presidents, right? You get into the White House, you kind of have to get your bearings and assess the administrative state that's around you. That's what so many people don't realize is when you become president, you're kind of in charge of a lot of different agencies that are filled with individuals who aren't on your side. They didn't support your presidency. They've been working at, you know, the Department of Justice for the past 20 years. And they're totally, you know, a swamp creature that's radical and hates you and your platform and everything you ran for. So I think that can kind of be a difficult issue for a lot of presidents when they try to get things done.
And I think Trump, he's used to that. He knows exactly who to fire. He knows where the bodies are buried. He kind of had that first term as a way to assess
the deep state, just how entrenched it is, where we need to go after it. I think he knows better than anybody how to totally disrupt this woke and weaponized bureaucracy, and that's why I'm behind him 100%. I think you also see the media freaking out about him. He is absolutely the most hated individual by the DC establishment, by the mainstream media, by the global elite, and that's why I love him because the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Completely. Kingsley, thanks for coming on. Actually, I was wondering how you survived university and how you survived California. I think someone sent me a meme, stop complaining about your life. There are people literally living in California. How did you survive, it?

Oh, it was very difficult. It was tough. Luckily, I had Raheem Kassam's National Pulse as a way to creatively have an outlet, but it is, those kids are wacky over there on the West Coast.

Well, thanks for joining us. I'm looking forward to, obviously the viewers and listeners can watch your content throughout the campaign and of course follow Centre for Renewing America.
So thanks for joining us today Kingsley.

Thanks so much for having me, Peter.