AUBURN – U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spoke to 6,000 students during Turning Point USA’s (TPUSA) event in Auburn on Wednesday. During his remarks, Sen. Tuberville echoed Charlie Kirk’s message encouraging young people to save this country by educating themselves, working hard, getting married, and having kids.
Read excerpts from Sen. Tuberville’s speech below or watch on YouTube or Rumble.
“I think I’ve been here before. […] We’re here for all of you young people who are here tonight that are in school—we have got some high school people here. And thanks for coming. […] This brings tears to your eyes for what Turning Point has been through—[what] Erika has been through over the past two or three months. It’s been a tough time. It’s been a tough time for everybody. It’s been a tough time for our country. I want to thank everybody for supporting—not just tonight—but for supporting Turning Point USA. It is a phenomenal organization that’s making incredible progress.
Charlie was a good friend. One thing that he wanted to do was bring knowledge to young people. It was awesome. Talked to him several times [about this]. You know, Charlie and I met back in 2020 when I was running for Senate, and he actually helped me get elected. And he was a very positive person. Loved this country. But he really loved young people.
You know what? He and I talked a lot about education. Talk a lot about education. And that was one thing he and I had in common. That’s one reason we talked a lot. And he said, ‘Coach, we’ve got to do something for the young people.’ I said, ‘Well, for 40 years, I’ve been around young people. I’ll help you as much as possible, but you relate to them. You relate to them very well.’ So, we kinda had two different paths. I was through education and coaching. And Charlie obviously was somebody that was in in [the] realm of being 30 years old and could really relate [to young people]. But I really liked what he did and he took it on himself to go out and say, ‘You know, I want to debate young people. I want to get people in front of me and whether I convince them or not, whether I’m right or wrong, I want people to hear how people are talking, how people are thinking.’ We don’t do enough of that in politics. We don’t do enough at all.
So, Charlie and I went through a lot of interviews together. I was on his show quite a bit. Matter of fact, I think the last interview was August 25th, just a few weeks before he was assassinated. Yeah. It was a tough time for all of us. […]
You know, President Trump called me back in June or so and he said, ‘Coach, I want you and Charlie Kirk—you know each other well—I want you to be on the board at the Air Force Academy. We’re having problems. We’re having problems with leadership. We’re having problems with DEI—we’re just having problems. And that’s one area of our country that we need leaders.’ You know, Charlie was smart. He understood leaders—he really understood them. And he said, […] ‘Coach, we need leaders. We don’t need followers in this institution.’ He was exactly right. We made a lot of progress just in the few months that we were on it together. But now we’re gonna continue to fight. We’re gonna fight for what he knew was right and what I knew was right, but we got to fight for not just our Air Force Academy, but for all institutions, all higher education, all high schools.
Speaking of leaders, Charlie was supposed to be here tonight. Tonight, we had made this date—he and I and the organization back in July—and I was supposed to introduce him. And, so, Charlie’s here with us. He’s here with us in spirit. We’re gonna take his legacy on, but it’s gonna be hard to uphold everything that he knew because he was so smart. […]
You know, the one thing about Charlie, he was waking up millions of young people at a time. He was waking them up because he was telling the truth.
And you know what? He lost his life for it. He lost his life because he was telling the truth. He was never afraid of it. But he knew that he was in harm’s way at times, but he lost his life because he went out there for all of us and for all of you because he was telling the truth.
The most important thing that Charlie had going for him in his life was his faith. I mean, there wasn’t a time that went by [when] he didn’t talk about his kids when I talked with him and his wife, but also his faith. He was a true evangelist. He really studied the Bible. He thought it was the ultimate source of truth. […]
Unfortunately, this deranged, Leftist coward, and I’m gonna call him that, he was afraid Charlie’s message was becoming real. Charlie was waking up millions of people when they shot him. But the thing that happened, and I think as you see tonight, people woke up when this happened. […]
The next thing that Charlie would talk to you about was marriage. He talked to a lot of young people. If you’ve ever watched his videos, now, just make sure that you look at the three things he talks about. Marriage and family are the two most important after faith. He really loved his kids. And he would often tell people he said, ‘Listen, if you’re gonna be happy in life, get married and have a family.’ That’s what you’re here for. The person you marry […] is gonna be the biggest decision of your life. Don’t waste your time just dating around. Look for that one certain person. Because that certain person is the most important decision and it’s gonna make your life better and it’s gonna make that person better that you’re gonna marry. You’re gonna have a long-lasting relationship—and he preached that.
If faith is the foundation of this country, and he talked about faith a lot of the time, family is the cornerstone of that. Children should be taught to take responsibility for their lives, and be accountable. I’ve said this often when I was coaching—the only thing this country owes you—and Charlie would tell you this also because I kinda ingrained it in him—the only thing this country owes you is an opportunity.
This is the greatest country on the face of the earth, folks, the greatest country. But it doesn’t offer you a job. It doesn’t offer you money. It offers you an opportunity to do the best that you possibly can do. […] And once you young people get out and you start working a job, just remember this one thing.
[Have a strong] work ethic and work very hard at it—you want to achieve something and you wanna get better at whatever job you’re doing. But as long as you’re alive and you’re working, also work on your personal development. Grow yourself. Grow yourself to Christ. Grow yourself to your family. Make yourself better every day. That success, if you’re [focused on] trying to be successful and trying to make money and do all those things, it will hinder you. Don’t worry about all that. If you worry about personal development and […] work ethic, success will find you. I promise you that. While you’re in school, it’s your job to better yourself. While you’re working a job, it’s your job to better yourself. The only person, Charlie would tell you this, the only person ultimately responsible for your success or your failure is you. Nobody else. Don’t count on anybody else.
You know, these are the lessons I learned from my parents, but unfortunately, parents are few and far between nowadays. It’s unfortunate. That is killing our country folks. A lot of people grow up with two parents, and I used to tell a lot of the groups I talk to this—if you’re born in this country, you hit the lottery because this is the best country on the face of the earth—bar none, okay? If you were born in this country with two parents, you hit the lottery again, which is almost impossible. Thank you, parents. […]
[Many of] the kids I coached [unfortunately had] one or no parent [in the home], and it’s getting worse. We need to make that go the other direction. That was one of the things that Charlie was working on is keeping people together. Children who grew up without a father in the home are twice as likely to suffer behavioral and mental health problems. Think about that. So, to the young man who are here tonight, please step up, save our country. Kids need fathers at home. Your job is to run the household. Your job is teach knowledge and truth to your kids. We need fathers in the homes. When men fail […] to step up into the role that God has given them, our society suffers. And folks, our society is in bad, bad trouble. We don’t have enough fathers and mothers that stay together to raise their kids to make this country the country that it used to be. And that’s one of the keys that Charlie always pushed. We need families. We need a tight marriage. And we need kids that are gonna learn from their parents.
So, we’ve talked a little bit about truth. In the few more minutes I have here, here’s a few hard truths that Charlie and I kinda got together as we were talking about doing shows. […] But here’s a few truths. And I’m gonna tell you the truth, and they’re not fun to listen to.
Our country’s dead broke folks. I used to be a football coach. Now they call me a ‘politician’ and I’m embarrassed. We are, as of last Tuesday, we’re $38 trillion dollars in debt. $38 trillion. Do you know how much a trillion dollars is? A trillion dollars is $100 dollar bills stacked three feet high from here to Atlanta, Georgia. That’s a lot of money and we’re 38 of them in debt. You know who owes that bill? You do. You owe that bill because it’s gonna be your next generation that’s gonna have to take care of it. And folks, that ain’t fake money. That is real-life American money. You know, I’m not an economics professor, but I’ve learned one or two things about budgets in my lifetime. You know, the U.S. government brings in $5 trillion dollars a year. That’s how much tax money that comes to Washington, D.C.—$5 trillion. We spend $7 trillion dollars a year in Washington, D.C. Now I’m not real good at math, but I know that doesn’t equal out very well, okay? If we bring in $5 trillion and we spend $7 [trillion], that means $2 trillion dollars of your money that you’re gonna have to make up one day. That’s unsustainable. We can’t keep that up.
I used to own a small business and […] if you spend money like that, you’re either gonna go to jail or you’re gonna go bankrupt. Well, we’re bankrupt. Some people go to jail too, by the way. You know, if we keep this up, I want you to think about this. If you keep this up, I’m talking to the young people now, […] taxes are gonna be so high, you’re gonna have to pay 70-80% percent of your paycheck just to pay off our national debt. That’s gonna leave you 20% or 30% to raise a family. It’s impossible to do it. That’s the reason we have to get control of our debt. It’s impossible that we continue this pathway. You know what it’s called? It’s called socialism. We’re turning into a socialist country. But you know what? That’s the Democrats’ plan. Charlie would tell you that.
You saw what happened last night—we elected a mayor in New York City that is a pronounced and known socialist. I never thought I’d see it happen. But we’re spending more and more money. And you know what? It’s because the Democrats wanna spend it. We’re trying to cut back on the money. We’re trying to help you young people sustain a budget for the future. But the Democrats couldn’t care less. They wanna spend more and more money. I just don’t understand it. I don’t know whether they hate this country or they despise the Constitution, but they are running it into the ground. We cannot continue to do it. Here’s what’s happening. They want free health care. They want free housing. They want food stamps for everybody. Folks, to Democrats, [the] American dream [is] ‘oppressive.’ […] I heard Charlie talk about this many times. They’d rather see the American dream replaced by American dependence on big government. We can’t do it. […]
We have to put America first, which brings me to the second hard truth that Charlie talked about. […] We are kind people—America [offers] assistance to everybody. We send billions of dollars to all these other countries. But folks, we cannot allow open borders in this country like we’ve had the last four years. You know, our friend Charlie died with the word ‘freedom’ written right here on his chest. Freedom for this country. He understood that the freedoms we have in this country are under attack every day. And that’s the reason he was wearing that shirt. Under the Biden administration, tens of millions of people crossed our border illegally. We all knew it. We were trying to stop it, but we had no power. Thank God President Trump is trying to clean it up. But unfortunately, it’s gonna take a while and it’s gonna take a lot of money, and we’re still spending billions of dollars to clean this mess up that belong to you, your generation.
We’re a country of legal immigrants. We’re all immigrants or have ancestors that were immigrants. If you want to come in here, we want you here. But come here the right way. But I wanna say this. If you come here and chant ‘death to America,’ you refuse to go by our laws, you burn our flag and have no intentions of assimilating and doing things that we do in the culture of the United States of America—take your butt home.
Our next […] hard truth that Charlie and I used to talk about was identity politics. You know, the past few years, racism has been allowed to fester in this country—it’s called DEI. DEI is just discrimination under a different name, okay? I’m for merit. When I went into Jordan-Hare Stadium, if I didn’t play the best people that worked the hardest that could perform as a team and win games, I’d get fired. But today, in this country, in this country, we’re allowing DEI to overtake our institutions, our agencies, and it’s absolutely ruining our country. It cannot continue to happen. When I had players, I had black, I had white, I had red, I had Catholics, Protestants, rich, poor, middle class, it didn’t make any difference. But you know what? They played their tail off. Because they played as a team. They played and they knew if somebody made a mistake and somebody got on them from the other team, somebody [on their team] had their back. Folks, that’s what we got here. Somebody did something to one of our players, Charlie Kirk, we gotta have his back. We gotta have his back.
And as I wrap up here, I gotta bring this up. You know, some people […] might not like this. Folks, men are men and women are women. [applause] Thank you. I’ve had bills on the floor in the United States Senate that says ‘No more men in women sports,’ and the Democrats all have voted them down. God gave us a clear understanding. He created men and women with different strengths and different weaknesses. He never wanted them to be confrontational. He wouldn’t have wanted this. He wouldn’t want men in women sports. […] My first grandchild, Rosie Grace, is eight months old. And I’ll be damned if she’s gonna take a shower with a man when she’s in sports.
And one of the last things I want to talk about before we get on with the big program here is—look at this culture war we’re in. If you don’t think we have a war going on, look at Europe, folks. Europe is gone. It’s over. They’ve allowed immigration in their country, and these people aren’t assimilating. They’ve opened their borders to millions of people. And we want, you know, we want immigration, but it needs to be legal here. But over there, they’ve absolutely opened their borders. They call it ‘globalism.’ Crime is going through the roof. Their culture is at risk. And it’s something different than these people have ever seen.
The other thing is in Africa […]—Charlie and I talked about this quite often. 100,000 Christians have been slaughtered and 18,000 churches have been burned in Africa and Nigeria. 67,000 Christians have been murdered since 2000 by Radical Islamists. So, the bottom line is that Christianity is under attack. And we gotta stop it. Here’s the deal. You have to understand—the Mainstream Media, Hollywood, Liberal Elites—we know where they’re at. They hate Christianity. […]
And that’s the reason we have to fight for our faith and fight for Christ. It’s going to be your generation—and I’m telling you as a so-called ‘politician.’ Politicians aren’t gonna help you. It’s gonna be your generation that’s gonna get this mess straightened out.
Charlie worked with a lot of people to move the ball down the field to get this going. Look at all these people in here. This is going to continue. We need to follow Charlie’s example by pursuing knowledge in this country, make yourself smarter, do things on your own, personal development, engage in thorough debate, debate those people that disagree with you peacefully.
We’re in a fight, folks. We’re in a fight for our lives. I’m gonna fight. I want you to fight. We’re counting on you. All of you, educate yourself, work hard, get married, and have kids. If you do that, your generation will save this world, will save this country. We’re counting on you. Do the best you can.
But again, we’re behind you, we’re for you. [This is the] greatest country ever. War Eagle.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.
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