Charlie Kirk to Gavin Newsom: Democrats Don’t Represent ‘Majority of the Country’ Because They Have ‘Become So College Credentialed’ and ‘Snobbish’

By Alana Mastrangelo

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk explained to California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) that Democrats do not represent “the majority of the country,” because the party has “become so college credentialed” that they look snobbishly on the American people.

• During Thursday’s episode of the This is Gavin Newsom podcast, Newsom noted that Kirk makes “a point in pride” in not having obtained “a four-year degree,” to which the Turning Point USA founder replied, saying, “Yeah, because I represent most of the country.”

  “The majority of the country does not have a college degree,” Kirk continued. “And if I may bluntly critique the Democrat Party: you guys have become so college credentialed and educated that you guys snobbishly look on the muscular class of this country, the people that kept things afloat and running during COVID.”

  “The majority of the country didn’t go to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech, or Cal Berkeley, and the Republican Party has become far more representative of them, in large part thanks to Trump,” the Turning Point USA founder added.

  Kirk told Newsom, “I say it with some pride also, because as an entrepreneur, I tried to build something, not just seek a credential,” to which the California governor replied, “Love that,” adding, “And there are eleven million jobs out there, you make this point all the time.”

  “Yeah, open jobs that don’t require a college degree,” Kirk said.

  Newsom then asked Kirk to elaborate on his critique of the Democrat Party and the view “that we are captured by this sort of college elite.”

  “What specifically are you referencing in that context?” Newsom asked.

  Kirk immediately responded, “Your voters,” adding, “The higher you go up the education ladder, the higher the correlation it is that you vote for the Democrat Party. It’s almost a one to one with PhD, it’s like 75 percent for Masters degrees, and it’s 65 percent for a four-year college.”

  “Why do you think that’s the case?” the California governor inquired.

  Kirk noted that people theorize the answer to that question in different ways.

  “The sloppy analysis is, ‘Oh, they’re smarter, therefore, they must be Democrats,’ and I think that’s silly and insane,” he said, to which Newsom concurred, adding, “Yeah, and insulting. I agree with that.”

  “The deeper and more profound analysis is that a lot of ideological bubbles that exist on these college campuses, they are homogeneous, not heterodox, when it comes to what ideas are expressed,” the Turning Point USA founder continued.

  “Secondly, the value system that you have on college campuses is high trust of institutions,” Kirk added. “The biggest divide in America is not right versus left, it’s whether or not you generally trust institutions — and this has been largely inverted the last 20 years.”

  Kirk elaborated:

  Back in the early 2000s, Democrats were low-trust of institutions — Iraq war, anti-Bush, anti-NSA, anti-Patriot Act — and that’s when you guys had a lot of activist spark and energy. That has been completely inverted. The right is now low-trust of institutions, where the left is high-trust of institutions. We’re the ones that challenge the COVID vaccine, we’re the ones that think that public health authorities might have lied to us during COVID, we’re the ones that don’t necessarily believe the government when it says that we should keep sending money to Ukraine.
  
  Again, that’s a general rule. There are some exceptions to that. But when you go to college, you are trained to trust the experts, trust the scientists, trust the people that are leaders of authority. And the Democrat Party is largely the gatekeepers of that kind of ideological and intellectual regime.

  “Are you arguing for the disestablishment — the end of higher education?” Newsom asked.

  Kirk replied, “I think it’s going to happen, no matter what. In ten years, artificial intelligence is going to change everything, and I don’t know what these four-year degrees are doing to actually prepare these kids for that.”

  “But am I advocating for the end of the pursuit of learning? Of course not,” the TPUSA founder clarified. “That’s one of my big critiques: that a lot of these schools are not pursuing what is good, true, and beautiful.”

  “It’s become the oppression Olympics and weaponized complaint seminar of people sitting in a circle and finding out who’s been offended the most that day,” Kirk added, eliciting a laugh hinting of agreement from Newsom.

  “That’s not doing anybody any good,” Kirk said, to which the California governor concurred, saying, “No.”

  “And, in fact, it creates a very weak political movement,” Kirk added. “Which I think plays into one of the reasons why we were able to steamroll you guys back in November.”