The Charlie Kirk Show - An Olympic Triumph and Mexican Mayhem

00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.

00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.

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00:01:09.000 All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:12.000 What a weekend it is.

00:01:14.000 It's so hyped.

00:01:15.000 I know it would be.

00:01:15.000 It's February 23rd, 2026.

00:01:18.000 Apparently, there's a blizzard going on on the East Coast, not here in Phoenix, but we'll find out.

00:01:23.000 State of Union is tomorrow, and I'm planning on traveling there if the flights allow.

00:01:27.000 If not, you'll see me here tomorrow.

00:01:29.000 But what a weekend for American sports and Olympic.

00:01:34.000 We were debating whether or not the men's team winning U.S. gold or gold for the U.S. against Canada was a top 10 American sports moment.

00:01:43.000 And I think it is.

00:01:44.000 I kind of feel like it has to be.

00:01:46.000 It's not as big as the miracle on ice for a few reasons, but it comes close and it sort of captures the spirit of it.

00:01:55.000 You think I saw a good take that was in 1980, we defeated Soviet communism, and this time we defeated basically the 2026 version of Soviet communism, which is basically hyper gay. 1.00

00:02:10.000 Hyper wokeism.

00:02:11.000 Canadian wokeism.

00:02:13.000 That's what Canada's gone all in on being.

00:02:15.000 I would venture to guess that Canadian wokeism is as large an existential threat, if not bigger, to our way of life and to the survival of Western civilization as Soviet communism. 0.67

00:02:25.000 Survival, quite literally, given their love of assisted suicide.

00:02:28.000 Yes.

00:02:29.000 Euthanasia, the euthanasia country. 0.74

00:02:31.000 But it was a beautiful moment.

00:02:33.000 I would just, let's just go through some of these clips because a new star has been born, Jack Hughes.

00:02:40.000 And this was the clip that when I was busy with family yesterday, so I was only like half checked in.

00:02:45.000 And this clip came across the wire immediately.

00:02:48.000 And I was just filled with patriotism at Jack Hughes and the way he handled this moment.

00:02:54.000 235.

00:02:55.000 This is all about our country right now.

00:02:58.000 I love the USA.

00:02:59.000 I love my teammates.

00:03:01.000 It's unbelievable.

00:03:02.000 The USA Hockey Brotherhood is so strong.

00:03:05.000 And we have so much support from X players.

00:03:08.000 I'm so proud to be American today.

00:03:10.000 So proud to be American today.

00:03:12.000 He said, you know, that's a great Canadian team over there, but this is American hockey.

00:03:16.000 We did this for the country.

00:03:18.000 And it was just like, we've seen so many bad clips and bad interviews from this Olympics from woke athletes, skaters that can't win gold and that fall.

00:03:28.000 Sorry, ruined against you.

00:03:30.000 Was happy you fell.

00:03:31.000 Sorry, just how I feel.

00:03:32.000 But then we saw so many good stories, right?

00:03:35.000 Like Alyssa Liu, who may be a liberal, maybe woke, but she didn't disrespect us on the national stage. 1.00

00:03:40.000 And for that, we salute her and she won gold.

00:03:43.000 And then you get this moment.

00:03:44.000 It was just, and by the way, we had more medals, more gold medals than we'd had since 2002 at the Salt Lake City game.

00:03:51.000 We had the most medals we'd ever had.

00:03:54.000 I think before we move on to anything else, we should actually get the moment itself, which is they're going to be a little bit more.

00:03:59.000 Yeah, let's do it.

00:03:59.000 Score the golden goal.

00:04:01.000 So, just context for those who didn't watch the game, it was very tight the whole game.

00:04:05.000 It was one to one.

00:04:07.000 I would say, actually, clearly, Canada is the stronger team.

00:04:10.000 Yeah, more shots were going to be.

00:04:11.000 We had way more shots on goal.

00:04:12.000 We had some really great ones.

00:04:14.000 There was a Canadian player who misses a wide open shot at, I don't know, five feet away if that.

00:04:19.000 There was another one where it would have gone in and it just freak deflected off the goalie's stick.

00:04:25.000 The goalie was why we went.

00:04:27.000 And the goalie was amazing.

00:04:28.000 And then I'm told this is the clip.

00:04:30.000 This is in overtime.

00:04:31.000 Sudden death.

00:04:32.000 That's one of the best things about hockey.

00:04:34.000 Pure sudden death when you get into the finale.

00:04:37.000 And I'm told, let's show two.

00:04:39.000 Oh, it's only B.

00:04:40.000 It's only 244.

00:04:42.000 It's only the 243, but we only have it as B-roll, unfortunately.

00:04:45.000 That's fine.

00:04:46.000 Throw it up.

00:04:46.000 Yeah, throw it up.

00:04:47.000 We'll narrate.

00:04:49.000 And he's taking it down.

00:04:50.000 They have it three on three in overtime.

00:04:52.000 Flex it over to Joe Hughes back in the net.

00:04:55.000 It's great.

00:04:56.000 I really love the Canadian announcer.

00:04:58.000 He's very crestfallen.

00:04:59.000 Yeah, of course.

00:05:00.000 Well, you know what's great, though, is that Jack Hughes had actually got a high-stick penalty against him, loses a couple teeth, so he's all bloody.

00:05:07.000 His mouth's just, and then he goes on to score the winning goal.

00:05:10.000 And his brother's on the team.

00:05:12.000 Another little known fact here, his mom was actually a coach for the women's team that also won gold.

00:05:18.000 Oh, it's amazing.

00:05:19.000 So the Hughes family won three gold medals from this Olympics, which is just phenomenal.

00:05:24.000 Several family affairs because I think we also had the Kachuk brothers, Matthew and Brady.

00:05:29.000 I think they were on the team as well.

00:05:31.000 So we have some great clips.

00:05:33.000 In fact, speaking of him getting his teeth mangled, Jack Hughes had that to say after the game, 239.

00:05:40.000 I'm lucky I'm from the best country in the world, and we got great dentists there, too.

00:05:44.000 So I'm lucky I'm American, and they're going to fix me right up. 0.95

00:05:48.000 It's just so good.

00:05:50.000 Anyways, so this was just one of the proudest moments.

00:05:54.000 And then I want to address because it's just so annoying.

00:05:59.000 Well, actually, one other good note here first.

00:06:02.000 So one of the players, Johnny Godreaux, was killed in a drunk driving accident in 2024, and they welcomed his kids out for the group picture.

00:06:14.000 And I'm going to be really honest.

00:06:15.000 I got emotional watching this because they honored the widow, they honored the children, and my heart was instantly thinking about Erica and Charlie and their kids.

00:06:26.000 And it was a beautiful, I think we have an image of this.

00:06:28.000 If you guys can throw it up there, it was just a wonderful happened.

00:06:31.000 It actually kind of became a mainstream news story.

00:06:33.000 I think JD Vance said something about it at the time.

00:06:36.000 It was during the election season.

00:06:38.000 Yeah.

00:06:39.000 Super popular player.

00:06:41.000 They called him Mr. Hockey, I think they weren't going to be able to do it.

00:06:43.000 Yeah, Mr. Hockey, Johnny Hockey.

00:06:44.000 Huge ambassador for the game.

00:06:46.000 And then just he and his brother were killed by a drunk driver, which never should have happened.

00:06:50.000 Traditional all-out.

00:06:51.000 But they honored his kids.

00:06:54.000 They brought him out for the picture.

00:06:55.000 It was actually his son, Johnny Jr.'s birthday.

00:06:59.000 It was the 298th birthday of George Washington.

00:07:03.000 And it's obviously America 250.

00:07:05.000 So there was just, I mean, we were going to win, guys.

00:07:08.000 There was no chance of us.

00:07:09.000 That's how I look at it.

00:07:11.000 But honestly, just a beautiful, beautiful, touching moment.

00:07:14.000 And then on to the annoying part.

00:07:16.000 So Kash Patel.

00:07:18.000 And I don't know, Blake might feel differently than this.

00:07:20.000 I understand both sides here, but Kash Patel is over there, apparently on other official business, doing OPSEC.

00:07:27.000 He's got meetings.

00:07:28.000 It's planned well in advance, according to his team.

00:07:31.000 But he's a hockey player, and he's a huge hockey fan.

00:07:35.000 They invite him down into the locker room afterwards, and he's, I mean, he's living it up.

00:07:41.000 It's like the best moment.

00:07:42.000 And by the way, we were all Kash Patel in that moment.

00:07:45.000 I was feeling complete joy and pride for our nation.

00:07:50.000 And so Cash is back there.

00:07:51.000 He's drinking a beer.

00:07:53.000 And here's my thing.

00:07:54.000 So people, the left especially is outraged at this.

00:07:57.000 Some people on the right are outraged about it.

00:07:59.000 They don't think he's doing enough good.

00:08:00.000 Well, listen, like, the crime rate and the murder rate is at the lowest it's been.

00:08:03.000 There are wins on the board.

00:08:04.000 I get it.

00:08:05.000 You want more.

00:08:06.000 We all want more.

00:08:07.000 But Cash in this moment was just like one of us.

00:08:10.000 He was just an American celebrating an amazing, amazing victory.

00:08:14.000 And here's my take.

00:08:16.000 Those guys invited him to be with them.

00:08:19.000 They loved it.

00:08:19.000 Look at them.

00:08:20.000 They're all jumping up and down.

00:08:21.000 They called him down.

00:08:22.000 And if it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

00:08:25.000 And I have no problem with it.

00:08:26.000 Let them celebrate the way they want to celebrate.

00:08:30.000 It's weird for an FBI director to be doing that.

00:08:32.000 I agree.

00:08:33.000 But guess what?

00:08:34.000 It's weird, you know, that President Trump sends out truths the way he does.

00:08:37.000 It's weird.

00:08:38.000 A lot of things are abnormal.

00:08:39.000 It's weird that Gavin Newsom is trying to relate to black people by saying he has a low SAT.

00:08:44.000 All I would say is if James Comey in 20, when he was FBI director or any, or if Merrick Garland had been at an Olympic game in 2022 and was jumping around like that, I disagree.

00:09:01.000 I disagree.

00:09:01.000 Hard pass.

00:09:02.000 Hard disagree.

00:09:04.000 James Comey is not a hockey player.

00:09:06.000 Kash Patel is a hockey player.

00:09:07.000 Big, huge hockey fan.

00:09:08.000 He was there.

00:09:09.000 He FaceTimed the president.

00:09:10.000 They got invited to the State of the Union.

00:09:12.000 It was a beautiful moment.

00:09:13.000 I think, listen, to all the haters out there, it must be a miserable existence.

00:09:18.000 Like constantly being upset all the time.

00:09:20.000 This is a beautiful win, beautiful for the country.

00:09:22.000 Let them celebrate.

00:09:23.000 The guys loved it.

00:09:24.000 They're patriots.

00:09:25.000 They handled themselves well, made the nation proud.

00:09:27.000 I want to tell you one, or actually want to play for you one clip from Charlie about the Olympics.

00:09:32.000 Charlie loved the Olympics.

00:09:33.000 Often when the Olympics were on, we were just constantly talking about it.

00:09:36.000 And we've tried to do him justice and talk about the Olympics as they've been going on.

00:09:42.000 This is a great clip, 327.

00:09:44.000 The moment you put on the Team USA jersey, it is about duty, responsibility, obligation to the nation, and victory.

00:09:52.000 And he goes on to talk about one clip that the audio syncing was kind of off, so we didn't play it.

00:09:57.000 But he was saying, this is peaceful geopolitical combat.

00:10:01.000 That's why you have USA on your jersey.

00:10:03.000 And I love that.

00:10:04.000 It's a really great way to frame everything that's going on.

00:10:07.000 Yeah, although I really, I want, I wish we had him to get his take on like the Eileen Goo thing, for an example.

00:10:13.000 Peaceful geopolitical combat between countries, all of whose athletes just grew up in the United States.

00:10:18.000 Well, yeah.

00:10:19.000 I mean, it's unfortunate because she's very talented and grew up skiing in Tahoe.

00:10:23.000 And she took the money.

00:10:25.000 $20 million for Eileen Goo every year.

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00:13:03.000 All right.

00:13:04.000 There is more international news that we have to get to, but basically, all hell broke loose in Mexico.

00:13:11.000 Here's the deal: they killed a massive kingpin.

00:13:14.000 And of all the cartels, his name is El Mencho.

00:13:19.000 But of all the cartels, it was the Cartel Jalisco New Generation or Nuevo Heneración or whatever.

00:13:25.000 So the CJ NG cartel, which is a mouthful. 0.97

00:13:30.000 I feel like there's a new cartel every year.

00:13:32.000 This cartel has existed with basic impunity in Mexico for years.

00:13:38.000 And I thought this was really important because this morning, President Trump is honoring the angel families.

00:13:43.000 He's bringing up the mother of the mother of Lake and Riley, who was killed at the hands of an illegal immigrant. 0.95

00:13:52.000 And here, meanwhile, we've got this whole fight going on in Washington where they're trying to defund DHS, which is the agency that keeps us safe, which under, you know, ICE is under.

00:14:03.000 Listen, you could make an argument that DHS shouldn't have been consolidated into one agency.

00:14:09.000 It's just, they're trying to defund the organization that is on the front line of making it so a U.S. city does not look like Puerto Vallarta.

00:14:17.000 Yes.

00:14:17.000 They are trying to defund the agency that keeps every one of those cartel members, which, if you watch those clips, they have assault weapons, they have armored vehicles, they have heavy explosives.

00:14:29.000 That is what happens when you have a full-blown cartel narco-state operating with impunity.

00:14:35.000 And that is not, there's nothing about destiny that keeps America from being like that.

00:14:41.000 We are not like that because we have different people, different laws, different values.

00:14:45.000 And if you change the situation, if we are just Mexico, we'll have the same thing. 0.50

00:14:50.000 Borders are where bad ideas, bad policy, bad governance end, and good ideas, good governance, and good policy begins.

00:14:59.000 If we have the courage of our own sovereignty, if we have the courage of our own convictions, and we are proud to be Americans and say our ideas are better.

00:15:08.000 Our foundation is better.

00:15:09.000 I'm not saying Mexicans are bad people.

00:15:12.000 Some, I suppose, are good people, as President Trump once said.

00:15:16.000 But the point is, our country and our civilization is more successful for a reason.

00:15:22.000 And we cannot allow those cartel factions and forces to cross over the border and infect our country, which they did under President Joe Biden.

00:15:31.000 There are currently cartel members existing in all 50 states.

00:15:34.000 This isn't just like a border region thing.

00:15:36.000 This is all across the country.

00:15:38.000 And I have a theory on this: why we saw this.

00:15:40.000 Now, El Mencho was taken out by the Mexican military, but it was done in coordination with U.S. intelligence.

00:15:48.000 So we were providing intel about where this guy was.

00:15:52.000 It was also very interesting that he died in transit.

00:15:55.000 So there was a shootout and him along with two others, so three of them died in transit.

00:16:01.000 I think they made a very, I think they made a conscious decision to make sure that he was not able to exist alive because then he would have been a target for an assault on the prison he was at.

00:16:11.000 I think they killed him in air.

00:16:12.000 That's what I think, or at least refused to resuscitate him.

00:16:15.000 But whatever, that's speculation.

00:16:17.000 I also think that they chose to do this after a year of President Trump's deportation efforts, getting some of these bad ombres out.

00:16:25.000 Because you got to get these cartel factions that exist within the United States at least cowed.

00:16:30.000 You have to put them on the defense, right?

00:16:32.000 And so this is what's interesting.

00:16:34.000 President Trump's policies are making their life a living hell.

00:16:37.000 Let's go to 258.

00:16:38.000 This was from September 2025.

00:16:40.000 CNN interviewed one of them and asked them this.

00:16:43.000 258.

00:16:44.000 Think what President Trump has been doing has been making your job tougher?

00:16:48.000 Oh, yeah.

00:16:50.000 Yes.

00:16:51.000 But it's becoming more difficult, you think?

00:16:53.000 Yeah.

00:16:54.000 And President Trump is on record stating the case very plainly.

00:16:57.000 254.

00:16:58.000 We are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels.

00:17:04.000 The cartels are running Mexico.

00:17:06.000 It's very, very sad to watch and see what's happened to that country.

00:17:09.000 But the cartels are running and they're killing 250,000, 300,000 people in our country every single year.

00:17:16.000 The drugs, it's horrible.

00:17:17.000 It's devastated families.

00:17:19.000 You know, you lose a child or a parent.

00:17:21.000 I mean, parents are dying too with drugs.

00:17:24.000 So Cartel Jalisco, New Generation, was famous for a couple of things, still are.

00:17:29.000 They have armored vehicles.

00:17:30.000 They have rocket launchers.

00:17:31.000 I mean, this is a complete paramilitary organization.

00:17:35.000 And they just decided, hey, you're going to kill our leader.

00:17:37.000 We're going to make your life a living hell all over the country.

00:17:39.000 They're famous for fentanyl, cocaine.

00:17:42.000 They're also famous for things like fraud with timeshares.

00:17:47.000 So actually, the Treasury Department just sanctioned a Mexican timeshare company that was part of which was run by this cartel.

00:17:57.000 They're famous for ripping off senior citizens that are vacationing there, American senior citizens. 1.00

00:18:02.000 And then, of course, smuggling of humans.

00:18:06.000 So this is a really nasty cartel that was a essentially, they lifted up this El Mencho as their preeminent leader, right?

00:18:16.000 It was a cult of personality.

00:18:17.000 So for them to lose this guy would be extraordinarily destabilizing.

00:18:21.000 So that's my theory.

00:18:22.000 My theory is that the Mexican government, the President Trump has been putting the screws to the Mexican government to get them to act.

00:18:28.000 They finally did it after a year with our help and involvement.

00:18:34.000 All right.

00:18:34.000 Without further ado, Steve Dace, host of the Steve Dace show on Blaze TV.

00:18:39.000 Welcome back to the show, my friend.

00:18:41.000 It's good to have you.

00:18:42.000 Good to see you, too.

00:18:43.000 Doing all doing great.

00:18:43.000 How are you?

00:18:45.000 So, Steve, you had this great tweet, and you were talking, I mean, we can put it up on screen if you want.

00:18:52.000 It's a little bit long, 3.13.

00:18:54.000 So I just want to pull some threads from here.

00:18:57.000 You're saying you're a child of the 80s.

00:18:59.000 You detest Iran. 0.97

00:19:00.000 You cheer, you know, if you woke up and if we woke up this morning and Mossad took them out, basically.

00:19:07.000 However, we were told that they were taken care of, that this was already done.

00:19:10.000 And now we're gearing up for another invasion here, it looks like.

00:19:14.000 Could be more kinetic activity.

00:19:16.000 And you start to, I felt like you were channeling your inner Charlie, where you're saying we hate the brain rot of anti-Semitism, but like for a moment, put yourself in their shoes and try and understand where they're coming from.

00:19:30.000 Try and make sense of their counter theories and this, all of the, I thought you put it beautifully.

00:19:36.000 So please check out this tweet from Steve.

00:19:38.000 He put it much more eloquently than I have just now.

00:19:40.000 But break it down your big idea here, Steve, and why you're trying, why you felt it was important that you put this out.

00:19:46.000 Well, I mean, some of this is exactly what Charlie and I texted each other last June, the night that we bombed Iran the first time. 0.70

00:19:53.000 And generationally, I'm going to be way more jingoistic about let's make Iran, the Iranian regime, assume room temperature. 0.98

00:20:01.000 But I also understand the tension.

00:20:03.000 I have a son-in-law that's enlisted right now.

00:20:07.000 He was told by his unit two years ago that if Joe Biden won, they were all just going to go over to Syria for two years for reasons.

00:20:15.000 And so I'm very sensitive.

00:20:17.000 I mean, that was basically it for reasons.

00:20:20.000 And so I'm sensitive to this in that.

00:20:22.000 What is the point of what we are doing here?

00:20:25.000 And have we explained it?

00:20:27.000 And hey, listen, I was the guy on the main stage that y'all put up against the Groypers. 1.00

00:20:32.000 All right.

00:20:32.000 So, I mean, I think everybody knows where I stand on that entire debate.

00:20:36.000 But I talked to a lot of those young men, Andrew and Blake, after that talk.

00:20:41.000 And a lot of them, frankly, are just driven to the likes of Fuentes on a couple of impulses.

00:20:46.000 Number one, they don't want to be another generation of wimpy dudes.

00:20:49.000 They don't want to grow up and be Mike Pence with a perpetual furrowed brow and wearing sweater vests in July and Hawaiian shirts in January.

00:20:56.000 They don't want to be that guy.

00:20:56.000 That's part of it.

00:20:58.000 And we skipped kind of a generation of masculine modeling and leadership. 0.66

00:21:01.000 So they're kind of searching.

00:21:03.000 And somebody like Fuentes kind of steps into that void and gives them an aberrant, I would say, demonic inversion of that.

00:21:09.000 But the other is they have a lot of questions that I think we as the older generation have to answer.

00:21:14.000 Questions like, why is it harder than ever to find a wife?

00:21:18.000 Why is it harder than ever when you have one to find a house and to buy one?

00:21:21.000 We have the highest median age home buyer in American history right now, 41 years old.

00:21:26.000 All right.

00:21:28.000 Why, you know, am I losing jobs in universities, even if I want to go become a gay race communist, or in the workplace to over 20 million foreigners that were imported over the last four years under Joe Biden?

00:21:39.000 And I just think when we tell everybody last June that we obliterated Iran's nuclear capability, and then we're being told a mere eight months later that, nope, it's back and now it requires the largest asset deployment of our military since the invasion of Iraq. 0.95

00:21:54.000 I just think we need to step back and understand some of the reasons why our young men are contemplating going into some of the dark recesses of the abyss that they are because we have lacked answers and substantive answers to some of these dilemmas.

00:22:09.000 Why is it we're fighting harder for we're fighting harder on the borders of Iran right now than we are in Minneapolis?

00:22:15.000 And I think that's a valid question.

00:22:16.000 And if the older generation such as myself and the boomers that are ahead of me, if we don't have good answers, then at that point, it doesn't matter how many algorithms ban the likes of Afuentes. 1.00

00:22:25.000 People, young men are going to go searching for people like that as sources that might come up with aberrant alternative theories like the tail wags the dog and it's really the Jews and the Israelis that are really in control of the world. 0.95

00:22:37.000 Well, when we don't offer them any prevailing theory of any common sense, don't be surprised when they go looking for alternatives.

00:22:42.000 Yeah, especially with this Iran buildup.

00:22:45.000 As you say, we saw the strike last summer.

00:22:48.000 We were told it was effective.

00:22:51.000 And I really feel the buildup with Iran right now, it's almost happened on the back page of the papers, if anyone even reads papers anymore.

00:23:00.000 I don't feel there's been much discussion of it.

00:23:03.000 You compare with the Iraq war 20 years ago, which I do remember.

00:23:06.000 There was a very long buildup to it.

00:23:08.000 Whatever, it was a big mistake, but there was a very strong and aggressive case made for the war on several grounds.

00:23:17.000 Similarly, we had a pretty strong motive for going into Afghanistan.

00:23:20.000 I do feel like a lot of Americans, if we were to suddenly be doing a regime change, large-scale war with Iran tomorrow, one, I think a lot of people who are paying less attention would just be shocked that it's happening in the first place because they would not have noticed the buildup.

00:23:34.000 And they would struggle to articulate, why are we doing this now?

00:23:40.000 There was the uprising there, but that at this point was almost a couple months ago.

00:23:44.000 And then there was the nuclear stuff, but it seems like if there was a rational reason to do it, it would have happened last summer.

00:23:51.000 And it's going to be difficult, I think, for if this happens, for the administration to sell it.

00:23:55.000 And I hope they've practiced what they would say.

00:23:57.000 Don't disagree with any of that.

00:23:59.000 And I think the key for the Trump administration, what Trump understood because of the years he's done business dealings in that part of the world, what he understood is that Muslim and Arab are not necessarily the same thing.

00:24:12.000 And for decades, going back to as long as you two guys have been alive, the so-called Palestinian question was the vexing conundrum of Middle East peace.

00:24:21.000 And administrations post-Reagan, from Bush to Obama to Clinton, all were attempting how much land should we give up?

00:24:28.000 How much autonomy to give the PLO and the Palestinians on and on and on.

00:24:31.000 And what Trump recognized is there's a lot of leaders in places like Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Egypt that actually could care less about the so-called Palestinian question.

00:24:40.000 They're no great fans of Israel, but they're not necessarily fans of forever and perpetual war either.

00:24:44.000 And they'd like to start lining some of their pockets and be wealthy too.

00:24:47.000 And I think he set that tone in Riyadh with one of the greatest foreign policy speeches I've seen in my lifetime, maybe the greatest foreign policy speech I've seen by a president post 9-11.

00:24:56.000 And I think that set the tone for his success and why at the end of his first administration, we were beginning to see normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, for example.

00:25:05.000 Right now, there's over 2,000 Jews working full-time in Saudi Arabia.

00:25:08.000 That would have been unheard of a decade ago.

00:25:10.000 And you can put a lot of that on the success of this administration.

00:25:13.000 And Iran is a seamless garment here. 0.97

00:25:16.000 The Saudis hate Iran for different reasons, but every bit as much as the Israelis do. 0.91

00:25:22.000 And so there's a common foe and a common enemy here.

00:25:25.000 And yet, despite that, here's the thing that I think is the most troubling to me.

00:25:29.000 Who reigns in place of the Ayatollahs, right? 0.99

00:25:32.000 Listen, I want these guys to assume room temperature post-haste, right?

00:25:37.000 But we're talking about a nation now of tens of millions of people, has its own, has two different standing armies, okay?

00:25:43.000 It has the Revolutionary Guard that's loyal to the Ayatollah's, its own national army, who so far has not stepped in and defended their protesters.

00:25:51.000 So we don't know if there's an al-Sisi kind of a figure within that military.

00:25:55.000 We don't even have, you know, again, I'm a little older than you guys.

00:25:58.000 Who's the Boris Yeltsin kind of half-drunk, but at least somewhat stable, you know, resistance figure?

00:26:03.000 We don't have that, let alone a full statesman like Alek Walesa.

00:26:07.000 Maybe this Reza Pavlavi, who's been living the lap of luxury his entire life in exile. 0.61

00:26:12.000 Maybe there's the common Iranian that was getting gunned down in the streets would just love to have that aristocracy back. 1.00

00:26:17.000 I don't pretend to know, but Blake, these questions are some of the things that I think you have to answer for the American people.

00:26:23.000 What's the plan of succession here?

00:26:27.000 Hi, folks.

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00:27:26.000 Steve, I love, love this tweet and wanted to talk about it with you because it, again, I just felt completely Charlie-esque.

00:27:34.000 And one thing that we have the privilege of doing at Turning Point in our work on campus is we get to meet a lot of these young people.

00:27:41.000 We bring them on the show.

00:27:42.000 And I think, you know, if you could sum up Charlie's kind of the Charlie doctrine, if you will, it was, you know, why are we nation building abroad?

00:27:50.000 We need to be nation-building here at home.

00:27:52.000 We have all these kids.

00:27:54.000 To your point about all this immigration, you know, I was just traveling this weekend with my family.

00:27:58.000 I couldn't get over how many foreigners were around. 1.00

00:28:01.000 Mostly Hispanics, but there were other nations involved.

00:28:03.000 I mean, it was like half and half.

00:28:04.000 It was like half Americans, half foreigners.

00:28:06.000 And you extrapolate that to the workplace.

00:28:09.000 You extrapolate that to where they learn.

00:28:11.000 You extrapolate that when they go get an ID at the DMV.

00:28:14.000 You extrapolate that across the board, and they feel like they live in a nation that has betrayed them, that has basically let in the third world at their own expense and given them all kinds of kickbacks, all kinds of privileges and advantages at their expense. 0.98

00:28:29.000 And then they look at the news and we're about to bomb Iran again. 0.88

00:28:32.000 And I think there is this cognitive dissonance that starts to sort of creep in.

00:28:36.000 And as you point out in your tweet, they start looking for other explanations.

00:28:39.000 They don't care what the Constitution says when they're looking at that kind of a formula.

00:28:44.000 They stop caring about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the beauty of our founding documents and our founding creeds.

00:28:51.000 They don't care.

00:28:52.000 They're just looking at their life and saying, I can't do it like my parents did it because of these structural issues.

00:28:58.000 Now, you could be of a Gen X or a boomer generation and say that they're just a bunch of whiners.

00:29:04.000 I'm telling you, a lot of these kids are amazing.

00:29:06.000 They're hard workers.

00:29:08.000 In a different generation, they would have been considered great patriots.

00:29:11.000 Structurally, though, there are issues in front of them that we have to acknowledge.

00:29:15.000 We have to be honest about.

00:29:16.000 So I loved your tweet.

00:29:17.000 And I want to get into this in the next segment, Steve.

00:29:19.000 But then you've got this Austin Tucker Metcalf kid that went into Mar-a-Lago with a gas can and a shotgun and gets himself killed because he's getting, he's, you know, on some Reddit channels or something on the Epstein files.

00:29:33.000 And so we've got to make sense of this.

00:29:35.000 We have to make sense of what's happening to our young people in this crazy media landscape that they're all kind of trying to exist in.

00:29:42.000 Throw up 329.

00:29:44.000 This is apparently this Austin Tucker Metcalf kid.

00:29:49.000 And TMZ got this tweet of his or his text message exchange.

00:29:53.000 He said, I don't know if you've read up on the Epstein files, but evil is real and unmistakable. 0.51

00:29:56.000 The best people like you and I can do is use what little influence we have, tell other people about what you hear about the Epstein files and what the government is doing about it.

00:30:04.000 Raise awareness.

00:30:06.000 So this is a guy that apparently is like traditionally been a conservative.

00:30:11.000 He's been proud about his Christian identity or his Christian faith.

00:30:15.000 And then he goes into Mar-a-Lago seemingly to set fire to it, shoot somebody, maybe assassinate the president.

00:30:23.000 Thinking back to our conversation in the last segment, what are you thinking about this story, Steve?

00:30:28.000 I think, first of all, it's brilliant to connect these two stories.

00:30:33.000 And I listen, as I get older, I'm getting that age.

00:30:36.000 I have to hire my oldest daughter to run some of my social media because I'm at the age now where I just don't want to learn anything new.

00:30:41.000 I'm good.

00:30:42.000 I'm good.

00:30:43.000 And we all hit that age, right?

00:30:45.000 And so next stop, Gran Torino, okay, and sour looks.

00:30:49.000 Okay.

00:30:50.000 And, you know, and I think the benefit that I have is I'm launching a 19-year-old son into manhood right now.

00:30:57.000 All right.

00:30:57.000 Just graduated high school, right?

00:30:59.000 Has two job interviews today.

00:31:02.000 He's got some real talent when it comes to writing and content creation.

00:31:07.000 But even when your old man's got connections, those are some of the toughest businesses to break into.

00:31:11.000 So, you know, he's got to start at the bottom, you know, like Mr. Miyagi says, send the flow kind of stuff, you know?

00:31:16.000 And so that has been helpful to me to hold off some of my, y'all are just lazy and soft, because I know what home he was raised in.

00:31:25.000 And being lazy and soft was not permitted in my home.

00:31:28.000 So that helps me to not immediately devolve to that sort of old man yells at cloud default setting.

00:31:36.000 Because I now hear the other side of the conversation.

00:31:39.000 I hear what him and his peer group, a lot of these are kids from good homes, Christian homes, went to Christian school, homeschooled, right?

00:31:45.000 And even they are feeling this tension, let alone the young men that maybe didn't have a good dad or any dad at all in the home to model anything to them at all.

00:31:52.000 This idea that for the very first time, it is very possible none of what we know as America or the American dream will be there for them at all.

00:32:01.000 And then at the same token, what occupies their time?

00:32:05.000 I mean, we had Law of the Jungle when I was growing up.

00:32:07.000 There were just certain things you could not say to another young man for fear that your parents could not afford the Orthodontist appointment.

00:32:13.000 Okay.

00:32:14.000 I mean, if you played football growing up as I did, you know what an Oklahoma drill was.

00:32:17.000 And that's where things came correct real quick about the stuff you were maybe running your mouth about in school.

00:32:23.000 Well, now on these devices, I jump on Snapchat, I jump on a Reddit form, and I just say a gamer forum, and I just say things I'd never say to somebody else's face because there's no instant recourse.

00:32:33.000 And so the level of venom and toxicity is way higher at the exact same time.

00:32:37.000 And so where does all that masculine energy go?

00:32:40.000 We have a real, real crisis here.

00:32:42.000 You know, to quote Barack Obama's former pastor, America's chickens are coming home to roosta.

00:32:48.000 We skipped a generation of masculine leadership and modeling in the home, in the pulpit, and in too much of our body politic and cultural institutions. 0.98

00:32:57.000 And so now the repercussions for that are here.

00:32:59.000 And this is why I said, you know, when I eulogize Charlie at Amfest, that for the mission, for his mission to reach the young men, to be confirmed and successful, is going to be determined now by the older men, the boomer men in their third act, the Gen X men like me entering your third act, how you finish your race, how you model on the back end what Charlie was urging these young men to do on the front end, because we should be the ones now that are living the best portion of our lives, living the blessing of getting married, having children, staying with our wives, making something of ourselves.

00:33:29.000 We need to model that finish and finish well.

00:33:32.000 Otherwise, I fear what's going to happen collectively to this generation of young men for sure.

00:33:37.000 Yeah, and on top of that, this is another version, another manifestation of what we actually saw in Minneapolis, where the Alex Pretties, the Renee Goods, the people who are getting whipped up by that line that this is a fascist takeover, that we're on the brink of a Nazi dictatorship, and mentally imbalanced people are pushed over the edge by that sort of rhetoric. 0.68

00:34:03.000 And that's also what we're seeing with this Mar-a-Lago gunman, that he's getting told, oh, there's a pedophile cabal running America.

00:34:10.000 And there are people running with that narrative who know that it is a severe exaggeration, who know that it is not the real, that's not reality, but they also know it will whip up people like that to go too far, especially because at the same time, we have a real case of burgeoning, call it assassination culture in America where people are just overtly in favor of talking about murdering politicians, murdering leaders.

00:34:36.000 We have clips like this.

00:34:37.000 In fact, let's play one of them.

00:34:38.000 This is 338.

00:34:40.000 I don't think it would take that many of them having something happen before maybe they started to fall in line is all I'm saying.

00:34:49.000 You know, just like three, maybe.

00:34:53.000 Publicly.

00:34:55.000 Yeah, but this, by the way, that's one of like a dozen clips that our team has pulled.

00:35:00.000 And the comments are all like, yeah, you're not dreaming big enough.

00:35:02.000 We need to kill more.

00:35:04.000 And what's interesting about this, and Steve, we've got about two minutes left here, is that this has been coming from the left to the right.

00:35:10.000 I mean, this is why we make such a big deal about this, because it killed our friend.

00:35:15.000 But this kid seems to fit in a different sort of paradigm here.

00:35:20.000 Well, just like we saw, there was a pattern as I was coming of age politically where postmodernism infested the left.

00:35:28.000 And then like a swarm of locusts, once it had corrupted that entire crop and consumed it, it then started seeping into some of the right as well.

00:35:36.000 We're now seeing this with nihilism.

00:35:39.000 All right.

00:35:39.000 So nihilism in and of itself is a fundamentally demonic ideology.

00:35:43.000 Right.

00:35:44.000 But again, I mean, most demonic ideologies behave in the marketplace of ideas like locusts.

00:35:49.000 And locusts are never satiated.

00:35:51.000 They just consume until the crop is gone and then just find the new crop.

00:35:55.000 And that's kind of how this works out ideologically.

00:35:58.000 And so we're now starting to see some of this blackpilling kind of nihilism emerge within our side, too, particularly amongst the cachet of our young men.

00:36:07.000 And the thing that we have to always remember about Marxist ideologies is everything they do say and think, everything is to accomplish two goals, more power and more control.

00:36:17.000 And so as Blake is pointing out, if cynically winking and nodding to some of these nihilistic elements, you know, it's okay to, how many eggs do you crack in order to make an omelet kind of a thing?

00:36:27.000 It's just collateral damage.

00:36:28.000 If it gives them the power and control they want, they'll go with it.

00:36:31.000 And the only thing that they won't be for is what won't give them the power and control that they want.

00:36:36.000 I think that's well said, Steve.

00:36:39.000 I really hope, and I think this is one of Charlie's enduring legacies.

00:36:43.000 I hope it endures, which is that, you know, if you see the polling, a lot of this nihilism seemed to be on the left.

00:36:52.000 The assassination culture, this Mangioneism was coming from the left. 0.98

00:36:56.000 And meanwhile, young men on the right wanted to get married.

00:36:59.000 They wanted to have families.

00:37:00.000 They wanted to have a good job.

00:37:02.000 I mean, we saw that at that NBC poll just before we lost Charlie.

00:37:05.000 And so I just hope that what you're waiving, you know, you're sounding the alarm here.

00:37:10.000 Charlie sounded the alarm about this nihilism creeping into the right.

00:37:14.000 We have to fight it.

00:37:15.000 We have to present an alternative.

00:37:17.000 We have to present a faith-based alternative, I believe, as well.

00:37:21.000 And I think your message is well made, Steve, that Gen X, boomers, older millennials, we have to present that alternative version of events, of reality.

00:37:33.000 And by the way, we have to make sure they can buy homes.

00:37:36.000 I mean, we have to be nation-building here at home.

00:37:38.000 I hope that message gets through.

00:37:40.000 Steve Days, thank you so much, my friend.

00:37:42.000 It's always a pleasure having you.

00:37:43.000 We'll see you again soon.

00:37:44.000 You bet, guys.

00:37:44.000 God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 23, 2026

An Olympic Triumph and Mexican Mayhem

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