The Charlie Kirk Show - February 06, 2025


"No President Has Been a Better Friend to Israel" — A Timely Interview with Governor Mike Huckabee


Episode Stats


Length

36 minutes

Words per minute

174.81583

Word count

6,407

Sentence count

552

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Former Governor Mike Huckabee is the new U.S. Ambassador to Israel. In this exclusive interview, Mike talks about his path to becoming the new ambassador, how he got the job, and why he decided to run for President Trump.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, time to the Charlie Kirk Show exclusive interview with the ambassador-designate to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
00:00:06.000 Israel is in the news with President Trump's announcement on Gaza, and we have him here in studio exclusive on the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:14.000 Become a member today, members.charliekirk.com, to get special benefits, including to listen to every episode advertiser-free.
00:00:21.000 That is members.charliekirk.com.
00:00:24.000 members.charliekirk.com You can email me, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com That is tpusa.com Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:37.000 Here we go.
00:00:38.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:40.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:42.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:45.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:49.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:50.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:51.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
00:00:53.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:08.000 That's why we are here.
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00:01:36.000 My guest today, Governor Mike Huckabee, I want to talk about your new mission.
00:01:41.000 You and I were talking before the cameras started rolling.
00:01:44.000 I said, this is one of the few government jobs where I look at.
00:01:47.000 I said, one day I would want that.
00:01:49.000 I imagine you felt similarly.
00:01:51.000 Walk us through it.
00:01:53.000 You weren't actively pushing the president for this.
00:01:55.000 No.
00:01:56.000 He chose you.
00:01:57.000 Walk us through how you came to learn that he wanted you to be U.S. ambassador to Israel.
00:02:02.000 Well, I had not talked to him about it.
00:02:04.000 I had not asked him about it.
00:02:05.000 I had not lobbied for it.
00:02:07.000 Because quite frankly, Charlie, I'm...
00:02:08.000 Kind of living a good life, you know, and I was happy with what I was doing.
00:02:12.000 I love the private sector.
00:02:13.000 Spent my time in government.
00:02:14.000 I had no interest at all in babysitting some bloated bureaucracy in D.C. That meant nothing to me.
00:02:22.000 But Israel, and it's deeply personal because I first went to Israel in July of 1973. I was a month away from my 18th birthday.
00:02:31.000 This was two months before the Yom Kippur War, 52 years ago, in fact.
00:02:36.000 So that's a long time.
00:02:38.000 And I fell in love with Israel.
00:02:39.000 And it was a very different country 52 years ago because it was a struggling little democracy trying to get its footing.
00:02:45.000 It had just been through wars in 48, 56, 67. It was about to go through another one in 73, two months from when I was there.
00:02:54.000 But there was something about Israel, and a lot of it is because of a spiritual connection.
00:03:00.000 I can't deny that...
00:03:02.000 There was something overwhelming about it.
00:03:04.000 But I started taking people there in groups in 1981, taking tens of thousands of people.
00:03:09.000 I went several times a year, most years.
00:03:12.000 Probably been almost 100 times to Israel.
00:03:16.000 I've known Benjamin Netanyahu for over 30 years.
00:03:19.000 We've been friends for a long time, you know.
00:03:22.000 I know a lot of the people there.
00:03:24.000 But, you know, it hadn't occurred to me that I would be the ambassador.
00:03:28.000 So I'm sitting at my desk.
00:03:29.000 It's just a few days after the election.
00:03:32.000 And I was supposed to be on a hunting trip, pheasant hunting in South Dakota, and I really wanted to go.
00:03:37.000 I think I know which trip that was.
00:03:38.000 I bet you do.
00:03:39.000 I was supposed to be there.
00:03:39.000 That was the Outriders thing?
00:03:40.000 That was the Outriders thing.
00:03:42.000 Foster Fries Legacy, and it was going to be great.
00:03:44.000 I was so excited about it.
00:03:45.000 I had to deny it.
00:03:47.000 Did you have to turn it down?
00:03:48.000 Well, I was flying to Palm Beach to go help out.
00:03:51.000 Yep, with the transition.
00:03:53.000 So the weekend before, in fact, like two days before, something just said, You don't have time.
00:03:59.000 You've got too much to do.
00:04:01.000 And I did.
00:04:01.000 And part of it was, you know, the daily television show and the weekly television show and the newsletter.
00:04:06.000 I'm doing all this stuff.
00:04:07.000 So I stayed back.
00:04:09.000 I'm sitting at my desk on Tuesday.
00:04:10.000 Supposed to be in South Dakota.
00:04:12.000 Would have been out hunting.
00:04:13.000 I never answer the phone if I don't know who's calling.
00:04:17.000 You know, if it's not my directory and I don't recognize it, I figure if it's important, they'll leave a message.
00:04:23.000 Something told me, take this call.
00:04:26.000 Now, I've got...
00:04:27.000 President Trump's number, so if it had been his phone, it would have shown up.
00:04:32.000 But it was a different phone, a number I did not recognize.
00:04:34.000 But something said, take the call.
00:04:36.000 And I did, and it was Donald Trump on the line.
00:04:40.000 And you know, you've been around him enough to know, he's not like a Southerner who spends 12 minutes engaging into the conversation.
00:04:46.000 Hey Mike, how would you like to be my ambassador to Israel?
00:04:49.000 No, it's not even how would you like, it's...
00:04:51.000 Hey, I want you to be ambassador to Israel.
00:04:53.000 You're going to go.
00:04:55.000 You're going to love it.
00:04:56.000 It's going to be a great job.
00:04:57.000 You're going to do it.
00:04:58.000 I love it.
00:04:59.000 That's how he does it, as you well know.
00:05:00.000 Within 10 seconds.
00:05:01.000 Yeah.
00:05:01.000 And it's like, there's no saying, can I think about it overnight?
00:05:06.000 Can I call my wife?
00:05:08.000 And so about the best thing I could do is say, now when is this going to be made public?
00:05:13.000 He said, well, you'll have a little time to let your family know.
00:05:16.000 30 minutes later, it's breaking on Fox News, but that's fine.
00:05:20.000 The beautiful thing is, is that, Charlie, it is the only thing that he would have asked me to do that I just had what I call an Isaiah moment.
00:05:30.000 Here am I, Lord.
00:05:31.000 Send me.
00:05:32.000 And that's how it was.
00:05:34.000 Tainani in Hebrew is the term.
00:05:36.000 Yeah, that's right.
00:05:37.000 I mean, it was just, let's do it.
00:05:39.000 So he calls you, you're kind of thrown into this, and it's a very, very high-stakes ambassadorship just by default.
00:05:48.000 By definitionally, given all of the regional actors and the malevolence, but especially right now, given the high stakes post-October 7th, I'm sure you've had a fair amount of time to think and reflect on America's role and its representing American interests in Israel.
00:06:05.000 Have you been to Israel since that phone call?
00:06:07.000 Twice.
00:06:08.000 No, not since the phone call.
00:06:10.000 Twice since October 7th.
00:06:12.000 Great.
00:06:12.000 So tell me how that has been.
00:06:14.000 Gut-wrenching.
00:06:15.000 I've never been through anything quite like it.
00:06:18.000 I've talked repeatedly to families who were there, some of whom had family members murdered.
00:06:26.000 Dealt with a lot of hostage families, talked with them, spent time with them.
00:06:29.000 I have dealt with IDF soldiers who have been in the heart of battle in Gaza, as well as up on the Lebanese border in Hezbollah.
00:06:36.000 I've been to both theaters of the war.
00:06:39.000 And it's just hard for people to understand, and most Americans do not fully grasp, What Hamas did on October the 7th, how vicious, how savage, how absolutely uncivilized their massacre of innocent civilians really turned out to be.
00:06:57.000 And I just don't want anyone to ever say, well, yeah, they did some bad things, they came over and they killed some people, but, you know, you can make peace with them and work something.
00:07:07.000 No, you cannot.
00:07:09.000 Hamas is not a government. 0.84
00:07:12.000 They're not a legitimate organization of anything other than savages.
00:07:16.000 And they've delighted in what they did to the point that the reason we know what they did is because they wore helmets with GoPro cameras, videotaped their slaughter of babies and women, and then celebrated it, openly celebrated it.
00:07:34.000 And when they sent the word back into Gaza, there was dancing in the streets and celebration over it.
00:07:39.000 You don't...
00:07:41.000 You don't forget that.
00:07:42.000 You just can't.
00:07:43.000 So the president has been very clear that Hamas cannot govern Gaza again, and I appreciate that. 1.00
00:07:52.000 His election certainly has broken open getting some of the hostages back, but the fact that it's taken over 480 days to move that needle is just heartbreaking.
00:08:04.000 Are there still people that are still being held hostage?
00:08:06.000 Oh, yeah.
00:08:06.000 Americans as well.
00:08:09.000 40 or 50, but how many of those are alive, we don't know.
00:08:11.000 That's the bad part.
00:08:13.000 And the price that's being exacted to get those hostages out, if it's a regular hostage, it's 30 Palestinians out of the prisons.
00:08:22.000 If it's an IDF soldier, it's 50. Now, I want you to think about this.
00:08:26.000 These are innocent hostages.
00:08:28.000 They were going to a music festival.
00:08:30.000 They were sleeping in their beds, and they've been held captive for 480 days.
00:08:36.000 And for each one of the innocent, Israel is being asked to give up 30 to 50 murderers.
00:08:42.000 Why is Israel doing that? 0.89
00:08:44.000 I think the pressure to get the hostages home is so intense that they feel like they have to get that done.
00:08:52.000 But in the agreement that they made with the ceasefire, it's very clear that Israel has every right to continue their military operation if in any way Hamas changes the deal, doesn't fulfill the deal, and ultimately the deal has to be, That they're never going to govern Gaza again. 0.80
00:09:11.000 And, you know, people talk about a Palestinian state, and I've said, well, we've had one.
00:09:16.000 It's called Gaza.
00:09:18.000 How did that turn out?
00:09:22.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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00:10:23.000 So it is a very high-stakes situation.
00:10:28.000 How do you view the role of the U.S. ambassador in the midst of all this?
00:10:33.000 I mean, an ambassador doesn't get to have his or her own.
00:10:37.000 You're carrying out those of the president.
00:10:39.000 So I have strong opinions.
00:10:41.000 Charlie is based on 52 years of my relationships there.
00:10:44.000 But as an ambassador, you know, it's not that I get to go and develop those and say, here's what I think.
00:10:51.000 You know, I'll take my orders from the president.
00:10:53.000 He was the only person elected November the 5th.
00:10:56.000 Nobody else was.
00:10:57.000 And it's something that some of the people in his first term never understood.
00:11:01.000 They thought that they had been elected to something, and they were going rogue on his policies.
00:11:06.000 So all of us who have been appointed by the president, and if we require Senate confirmation, as my position does, if the Senate confirms, then I do not go with, this is the Mike Huckabee policy.
00:11:19.000 It's the Donald Trump policy.
00:11:21.000 And I fully understand that.
00:11:22.000 But the biggest day-to-day job is to communicate American policy to Israel and to take Israeli policy to the U.S. president.
00:11:34.000 And broker that and to try to make sure that our longstanding commitment to our ally is delivered in the best way possible.
00:11:45.000 Here's the good news.
00:11:46.000 No president ever, none, have done as much for Israel and has been a better friend to Israel than President Trump.
00:11:55.000 There's no one that's even in second place.
00:11:58.000 And what he accomplished in his first term, against all odds, was remarkable.
00:12:03.000 With the culmination being the Abraham Accords. 0.97
00:12:06.000 Building upon that will be one of the major efforts and goals.
00:12:10.000 And quite frankly, I hope that when that happens, we properly name them the Trump Accords, which they should be named after him.
00:12:18.000 He may not get a Nobel Peace Prize for it because people who make those decisions may not like him.
00:12:25.000 But I'm going to tell you something.
00:12:26.000 If there ever was a human being that will have deserved...
00:12:32.000 That recognition, it's President Trump.
00:12:35.000 So the U.S.-Israel situation is very close to home because I visit college campuses.
00:12:41.000 As you know, there's a lot of hotbed of activity around this topic and rising Jew hatred and anti-Semitism.
00:12:48.000 For those in the audience, how would you make the case for Israel from an American standpoint?
00:12:54.000 Why should we continue this long-standing relationship?
00:12:57.000 As public opinion polls show, The view of aid to Israel is falling in popularity with the American people.
00:13:04.000 And it's disturbing to me.
00:13:05.000 But here are some reasons.
00:13:06.000 Number one, Israel reflects our own sense of governing.
00:13:11.000 It's a democracy.
00:13:12.000 People elect their leaders.
00:13:14.000 They can criticize their leaders.
00:13:15.000 They have free speech.
00:13:16.000 They have freedom of movement, freedom of vocation.
00:13:19.000 And they are a civil government that operates under a very strict law.
00:13:25.000 They are a law-abiding nation.
00:13:28.000 They're surrounded by dictatorships.
00:13:30.000 They're surrounded by totalitarian governments whose people do not have free speech, who cannot resist or disagree with the government, and who don't get to pick who leads them.
00:13:40.000 So that's part of it.
00:13:42.000 This is a nation, the only real, genuine democracy between Africa and the Pacific that we can really count on as being reflective of a government that mirrors our own.
00:13:54.000 It's also a government that shares with us military intelligence, technology, innovations.
00:14:01.000 Most people don't realize that if it weren't for the Israelis, they wouldn't have a cell phone. 1.00
00:14:04.000 You know, the whole idea of the SIM card, where did that come from?
00:14:07.000 Israel.
00:14:09.000 Some things may seem immaterial, like seedless watermelons and cherry tomatoes, but those are agricultural creations of Israel.
00:14:18.000 But the heart stent.
00:14:20.000 The camera that people swallow that lets the doctors look at their insides.
00:14:24.000 Some of the most amazing medical technologies were created in what some will call the startup nation, Israel.
00:14:31.000 They have more Nobel science prizes in Israel than any other country on earth.
00:14:37.000 And if you think about this tiny little sliver of land the size of New Jersey, and it's only 16 million people, the whole country, and yet their innovations in science and technology are stunning.
00:14:49.000 And they changed the world.
00:14:52.000 It is a small but mighty country that receives yet 90% of our attention, it seems, in the U.S. Why is that?
00:15:00.000 Why is there so much venom towards this small, like you say, a sliver the size of New Jersey?
00:15:07.000 It was hard for me to get my arms around why anti-Semitism exists and why people hate Jews. 0.97
00:15:12.000 I mean, you scratch your head.
00:15:14.000 But here's what really makes sense, because nothing else does.
00:15:17.000 It is irrational.
00:15:18.000 Anti-Semitism is as irrational a viewpoint as it could be.
00:15:22.000 Why would you hate a person because they're Jewish?
00:15:24.000 Do you hate a person because they're Methodist?
00:15:26.000 Do you hate a person because they're Episcopalian?
00:15:29.000 Yeah, you know.
00:15:31.000 Or do you hate a person because of their ethnicity, that they go back to Scandinavia or Africa?
00:15:37.000 Of course not.
00:15:38.000 We would say, well, that's bigotry.
00:15:40.000 Why do they hate Jews?
00:15:42.000 Here's why.
00:15:44.000 If you...
00:15:45.000 If you recognize that the Jewish people are unapologetically people of the book, people who believe that God gave them their land and their heritage and his law, then if you hate that law and you hate the idea that God really does exist and that we are to worship and obey him, then you hate the people who... 0.52
00:16:13.000 That's the only conclusion I can come to, Charlie.
00:16:16.000 Otherwise, it makes no sense.
00:16:17.000 So we're living in a world where people worship the created, not the creator.
00:16:21.000 So they're out there worshiping the trees and the plants.
00:16:25.000 Romans 1. Yeah, exactly.
00:16:26.000 It is a recitation of Romans chapter 1. So that mindset where people have elevated themselves to be their own gods.
00:16:34.000 In the Old Testament, in the time of the Judges, every man did what was right in his own eyes.
00:16:39.000 Look at what's going on.
00:16:40.000 We have people say there's 127 genders. 1.00
00:16:43.000 Where'd they get that?
00:16:43.000 Well, they didn't get it from God, who said there were two.
00:16:47.000 So if you take the whole body of Jewish thought, Jewish faith, Jewish tradition, it all goes back to there is a God, and here's what he said, and if we live according to his rules...
00:17:03.000 Life will be successful.
00:17:05.000 If we don't, if we rebel against him, life is chaotic.
00:17:08.000 That's what we see.
00:17:09.000 We see it all the time when I visit college campuses.
00:17:14.000 Young adults demonize the concept of free markets and think government is the solution to every problem.
00:17:19.000 How do we change this?
00:17:20.000 By teaching our kids the foundational principles to counter what they are taught in public school.
00:17:25.000 Parents want to teach their children about liberty, limited government, and free markets, but often wonder, where do I start?
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00:18:13.000 Young Christians are also increasingly either neutral or, I want to say anti, but indifferent towards Israel. 0.86
00:18:20.000 We could talk about why that is, or conjecture, but a better question is, why should biblically Christians care about Israel, which seems to be a rather simple answer.
00:18:33.000 You know, Genesis 12 says, and I'm a person in the book, Charlie.
00:18:37.000 Oh, bless you, bless me, right?
00:18:38.000 That's right, I'm a simple guy.
00:18:39.000 It says, if you bless Israel, you'll be blessed, and if you curse Israel, you're going to be cursed.
00:18:44.000 Now, there are a lot of people that don't believe the Scripture, or they don't believe that Old Testament passages still live for today, and that we can kind of pick and choose like we're going through the cafeteria line.
00:18:55.000 But for those of us who are what I would call Bible-centered believers, We don't have the option of picking and choosing.
00:19:03.000 We accept it because it's the Word of God.
00:19:06.000 So that's part of it.
00:19:07.000 But what troubles me is that many young people have been raised in churches that kind of gave them a soft shoe on the Bible.
00:19:15.000 They went to colleges and universities that told them that, yeah, these things were once important, but they're not anymore.
00:19:24.000 And there also have been universities where Middle East studies programs have been fully funded.
00:19:30.000 By Islamic nations who have spent billions of dollars brainwashing the little darlings whose parents sent them to college thinking they were going to learn some wonderful things about the world, but they basically turned into almost jihadists. 1.00
00:19:46.000 And they're out now marching in the streets carrying Hamas flags and saying from the river to the sea, and they have no idea what they're even talking about.
00:19:54.000 And I've often said a trip to Israel, seeing it for themselves.
00:19:57.000 Don't take my word for it.
00:19:58.000 When I take people, and as I said a moment ago, I've taken tens of thousands of people.
00:20:03.000 I don't try to tell them what they think, how they ought to think about it.
00:20:07.000 I walk them through the land of the Bible, and I ask them, open your eyes, open your ears, absorb.
00:20:15.000 And go home and tell people what you saw.
00:20:17.000 I don't have to tell you what you saw.
00:20:19.000 You saw it for yourself.
00:20:21.000 Now, just simply accept that and share it with the world.
00:20:25.000 You said 53 years you've been going to Israel?
00:20:27.000 52. First trip is 73. So I imagine you have some fun stories.
00:20:34.000 Yeah.
00:20:35.000 Tell us one or two of your just, let's just say, deepest spiritual moments in Israel.
00:20:40.000 I mean, 52 years, that's an extraordinary amount of time to visit a country.
00:20:44.000 One of the most impactful moments that I had in Israel was when I had taken my children, and in particular, when Sarah was 11 years old.
00:20:53.000 She's now the governor of Arkansas. 1.00
00:20:55.000 She's doing a great job.
00:20:56.000 I think so, but I'm not objective.
00:20:57.000 I tell people I'm as objective about Sarah as governor as the New York Times is about Donald Trump, so there you go.
00:21:03.000 But I think she's doing great.
00:21:05.000 But a lot of what she is about really...
00:21:09.000 I was impacted by her experience when she was 11 years old.
00:21:14.000 I took my children there.
00:21:16.000 She was 11, very young, but I wanted her to go to Yad Vashem, which is really the center dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust victims.
00:21:24.000 And it is impactful.
00:21:26.000 It is very emotional.
00:21:28.000 It is graphic.
00:21:29.000 And frankly, back then, it was even far more graphic.
00:21:33.000 They kind of toned it down because so many Jewish people were traumatized.
00:21:38.000 By what they saw of what happened in the Holocaust.
00:21:41.000 But I took Sarah and I walked her through and her mother and I decided that if it got too emotional for her, too overwhelming, that I would take her out.
00:21:50.000 But I wanted her to see it.
00:21:51.000 I wanted her to understand what happens when people utterly reject God, they become their own God, and what is it that they are capable of doing to other human beings?
00:22:03.000 And up until October 7th, the Holocaust was the most... 0.96
00:22:07.000 Graphic way of an educated, enlightened people.
00:22:09.000 Let's not forget, these were not tribal people.
00:22:12.000 The Germans who created the Third Reich, who did this to Jewish people and to others as well, they were the most advanced, scientifically brilliant people on the planet, more than folks in the U.S. The great theologians of the world were in Germany. 0.82
00:22:34.000 This was not a depraved society, but they gave themselves over to depravity.
00:22:40.000 That's what we have to remember.
00:22:42.000 And what they did to the Jewish people and to people of infirmity and people who maybe had an ethnicity they didn't want to experience, it's so unthinkable.
00:22:53.000 Well, I took Sarah through there, and when we came to the end of Yad Vashem, having seen the pictures and just watched what happened, There was a guest book where you sign when you leave, and you put your name and address, and then there's a place for comments.
00:23:07.000 She had reached up in my pocket, took the pen from my pocket, and she wrote in her 11-year-old scrawl of a handwriting, her name and her address, and then she paused, and where it said for comments, I watched over her shoulder to see, what would she say?
00:23:24.000 Because I wanted to understand, did she get it?
00:23:27.000 Did this sink in?
00:23:29.000 And I'll never forget, Charlie, what she wrote.
00:23:32.000 Simple words.
00:23:33.000 Why didn't somebody do something?
00:23:37.000 She put the pen back in my pocket.
00:23:39.000 That's all she said.
00:23:40.000 Why didn't somebody do something?
00:23:43.000 It was inconceivable to her as an 11-year-old child that these atrocities could happen and that people would simply look the other way and pretend that it didn't matter.
00:23:55.000 That shaped her in a way that I watch almost every day as her tenure as governor goes forth, and I'm thinking that spine, that sense of courage, that sense of clearly delineating right versus wrong, I know where that came from.
00:24:13.000 And it happened in that day in Yad Vashem when she was 11 years old.
00:24:16.000 Can you speak to just some of the people you've brought to Israel?
00:24:20.000 And how you've seen it change them.
00:24:22.000 I'm sure you've brought skeptics who gave their life to the Lord in Israel.
00:24:25.000 Yes.
00:24:25.000 Do you have such stories you could share?
00:24:26.000 So many.
00:24:27.000 I've seen people who came having lost a spouse or a child within the year, and it was a point of closure.
00:24:35.000 And one of the things I've always been amazed by, and I'll tell the group when I get them there, somewhere along this trip, there's going to be a moment, and it'll be different for each one of you.
00:24:45.000 Maybe it's at the Jordan River.
00:24:46.000 Maybe it's at the Sea of Galilee.
00:24:48.000 Maybe it's at the Garden Tomb.
00:24:49.000 It might be at the Western Wall.
00:24:51.000 Maybe at Masada.
00:24:53.000 But somewhere on this trip, God is going to show up in your life, and He's going to get all over you, and it's going to be a transformational moment.
00:25:03.000 I don't know why He's going to show up when He does and what He's going to be telling you.
00:25:07.000 Just be prepared.
00:25:09.000 Charlie, I've never been disappointed to watch, but I've seen...
00:25:14.000 Widows who were dealing with the loss of their husband, and they just broke down in tears, and it was cleansing.
00:25:23.000 I've seen parents who had to deal with a drug-addicted child and estranged from a child, and they came to peace with that.
00:25:32.000 There's something about the land of Israel.
00:25:35.000 I mean, think about it.
00:25:36.000 This is where the Bible was written.
00:25:39.000 It's where...
00:25:40.000 The prophets.
00:25:41.000 That's where it happened.
00:25:42.000 It's where it happened.
00:25:43.000 I've said, if you go to Gettysburg, one important piece of history happened there.
00:25:47.000 A very important piece, but one thing happened in Gettysburg.
00:25:51.000 If you go to Jerusalem, everywhere your foot touches. 0.97
00:25:54.000 That's right.
00:25:54.000 There's 20 layers of biblical history, God history, that you're stepping on.
00:26:01.000 You can't exhaust it.
00:26:02.000 That's why when people would ask me, don't you get tired of going over there?
00:26:05.000 And I said, I learn something new every time.
00:26:07.000 I'm never exhausted.
00:26:08.000 I get on the plane to come home, and I'm thinking, when can I get back?
00:26:11.000 I feel the same.
00:26:12.000 It's addictive.
00:26:14.000 Best trip I ever made with Israel.
00:26:15.000 The second best trip I ever made with Israel.
00:26:18.000 I totally understand that.
00:26:19.000 I was there for the embassy opening.
00:26:21.000 I was too.
00:26:22.000 We were both there.
00:26:23.000 We didn't know each other as well back then, but it was quite a ceremony.
00:26:28.000 I wept, because I've been hearing this country talk about, we're going to move the embassy.
00:26:34.000 Every president, Democrat and Republican, promised we're going to move the embassy to Jerusalem.
00:26:38.000 We're going to acknowledge that Jerusalem is the eternal indigenous capital.
00:26:41.000 Congress passed it.
00:26:42.000 Yeah, Congress passed it, but they created an escape so that every president could always say, well, the timing is not right.
00:26:49.000 We'll wait.
00:26:50.000 Here's a great story about that.
00:26:52.000 My daughter was working at the White House as press secretary.
00:26:55.000 President Trump announced he was going to move the embassy.
00:26:58.000 Every world leader, and I mean every world leader, no exceptions, Begged him not to do it.
00:27:05.000 Everyone in the State Department begged him not to do it.
00:27:08.000 Most of his staff begged him not to do it.
00:27:11.000 Members of Congress who publicly said they wanted to move the embassy, oh, yeah, move the embassy, quietly and privately went to him and said, don't do it.
00:27:18.000 The world will blow up.
00:27:20.000 He did it anyway.
00:27:22.000 I was at the White House, had a moment to visit with him, just the two of us.
00:27:26.000 And so with no one else there, I just said, Mr. President, I'm curious.
00:27:30.000 Everyone tell you not to do it?
00:27:33.000 Your military people, diplomatic forces, everybody said, don't do it.
00:27:38.000 Why did you do it?
00:27:39.000 Charlie, I'll never forget what he said.
00:27:41.000 He just said, well, because I said I was going to do it, and it's the right thing to do.
00:27:47.000 It was at that moment I said, now that is an executive.
00:27:51.000 That is a leader.
00:27:52.000 That's the kind of person I want to be president of the United States.
00:27:55.000 No hand-wringing.
00:27:57.000 None of this, well, on one hand we have these, none of that.
00:28:01.000 It was...
00:28:02.000 I said I was going to do it, and it's the right thing to do.
00:28:05.000 And I said, that is my president.
00:28:10.000 With President Donald Trump now back in the White House, we're all excited about big changes ahead, which will make America great again.
00:28:18.000 But even with the defeat of their supporters last November, Big Pharma is still threatening to derail the Trump agenda, oppose Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s upcoming reforms, and they want to block competition and keep drug prices too high.
00:28:29.000 Big Pharma sets the price of drugs, and already this year, they raised the price on more than 575 of them.
00:28:35.000 Their anti-competitive practices block competition so they can keep prices high.
00:28:39.000 And they spend billions of dollars on ads pushing their high-priced brand-name drugs on working Americans. 0.65
00:28:44.000 But Big Pharma wants more.
00:28:46.000 Now they're urging Congress to undermine incentives in the private health care market that help American employers and families secure savings on prescription drugs.
00:28:54.000 conservatives for lower health care costs warns that big pharma is no friend to the trump agenda or the pocketbooks of the american people they opposed solutions to lower drug prices in the president trump's first term and they are after a huge money grab at the expense of everyone else now by seeking more government intervention in the private market go to pharma windfall.com
00:29:17.000 to learn more about how conservatives can stop big pharma prevent higher health care costs and protect pay for performance in our private health care market congress can stop big pharma and you can help Go to pharmawindfall.com today.
00:29:32.000 You going into this role, there are existential forces that want Israel to be eliminated from the face of the earth.
00:29:39.000 Iran being one of them, but not limited to them.
00:29:43.000 And so I really believe that in some ways your life's work is almost culminating in this role.
00:29:48.000 Do you feel that, that it has been almost a secret preparation for you for this?
00:29:53.000 Not something that you were intentionally striving for?
00:29:55.000 Yeah, it wasn't I fill out an application.
00:29:58.000 But quite frankly, since my childhood, I mean, I can now look back and see this pathway.
00:30:04.000 And I really feel like that it is a God thing.
00:30:07.000 I really do.
00:30:08.000 And my wife feels the same way.
00:30:10.000 Is she excited to take up the residence?
00:30:12.000 You know, she is.
00:30:13.000 And it is a big deal because at first, you know, she was a little shell-shocked and said, what am I going to do?
00:30:18.000 What am I going to wear?
00:30:19.000 Yeah, of course.
00:30:22.000 But, you know, I think both of us, we were stunned because we were not expecting.
00:30:26.000 It wasn't like we'd been lobbying for this and hoping for this.
00:30:29.000 Like most government positions.
00:30:31.000 Exactly.
00:30:32.000 It caught us off guard completely.
00:30:33.000 And it took us a few weeks to kind of get used to the idea we're going to be packing up and moving.
00:30:40.000 Halfway around the world and figuring out how to get our dogs over there, you know, the important things.
00:30:46.000 But then there was a moment at which it was very clear God just turned our hearts and set our hearts toward Jerusalem and toward this mission, and that's how we both see it.
00:30:57.000 We are being sent on a mission from our country that we love, from our president that we love, to a land that we have come to love and respect and appreciate.
00:31:07.000 And feel a biblical sense of place for.
00:31:11.000 So all of those things that have come together, and especially after these many visits of 52-plus years.
00:31:18.000 The last thing I want to talk about a little more broad is looking more at America and less about Israel.
00:31:24.000 You've seen a lot of elections.
00:31:26.000 You see a lot of ups and downs.
00:31:28.000 Your reaction of where we stand and what we've just lived through in this last calendar year?
00:31:32.000 We saved this country.
00:31:33.000 I mean, to be blunt, this nation...
00:31:36.000 Got its second breath.
00:31:39.000 I mean, I really look at what President Trump is doing in his first few days.
00:31:42.000 You know, presidents are spoken of in their first hundred days.
00:31:46.000 With him, it's his first 100 hours.
00:31:49.000 He's gotten more done in 100 hours of his first few moments than most presidents do in 100 days or, my gosh, for their entire four-year, eight-year term.
00:32:00.000 But here's what I think people are missing.
00:32:03.000 If President Trump had been re-elected in 2020, And I think he should have been, and perhaps he was.
00:32:09.000 I don't know.
00:32:10.000 But let's just say, had he been, the extraordinary pressure that had already been pushed on him, the nonsense of impeachments and criminal indictments and all of this stuff, it would have been a tough row to hoe for those second four years.
00:32:26.000 I think you're right.
00:32:27.000 Instead, he has four years for two things to happen.
00:32:31.000 One, What happens when completely unhinged liberals run the government?
00:32:37.000 Now you got it.
00:32:38.000 The people turn against it.
00:32:39.000 You see it.
00:32:40.000 These are people who did things that even sane Democrats looked at and said, that's crazy.
00:32:45.000 What do you mean that a boy, 18, can go into a girl's locker room, take his clothes off, and the girls are supposed to take theirs off in that same locker room and not feel like that's strange?
00:32:57.000 I mean, we were living in crazy times.
00:33:00.000 Inflation out of control and the government telling us, it's great.
00:33:02.000 The economy's good.
00:33:04.000 Just because you don't feel it doesn't mean it's wonderful.
00:33:06.000 And we were looking at this.
00:33:08.000 We see wars breaking out.
00:33:10.000 Russia invades Ukraine.
00:33:11.000 We have the Gaza situation. 0.89
00:33:14.000 None of which happened under Trump.
00:33:16.000 So two things.
00:33:18.000 One, in the dashboard, through the windshield, you see what happens when the government is turned over to the liberals.
00:33:25.000 And they have it all to themselves.
00:33:27.000 The second thing, President Trump has four years to plan, to envision, to develop the kind of government will turn this around and get America back on track.
00:33:37.000 And suddenly the America First concept of stopping the insanity of open borders, transgenderism, endless wars, schizophrenic foreign policy that one day says to Israel, we're with you 100% the next day, you better do it our way or we pull our support from you. 0.97
00:33:56.000 That kind of everything.
00:33:59.000 And he's able to stand and say, here's what we will do.
00:34:02.000 And it was leadership with conviction and with certainty.
00:34:06.000 The trumpet was blowing a certain sound.
00:34:09.000 What is your call to action and the people watching at home?
00:34:12.000 Pray for this president.
00:34:13.000 Pray for his safety.
00:34:15.000 I don't say that lightly.
00:34:16.000 We saw what almost happened in Butler, Pennsylvania.
00:34:19.000 Pray for his stamina, although I don't know that you have to.
00:34:22.000 I've never seen a man like him.
00:34:23.000 My gosh.
00:34:24.000 I want to say it's supernatural, but it's close.
00:34:28.000 People have no idea.
00:34:29.000 If they've never been around him, they can't get over it.
00:34:31.000 My daughter, she would sometimes say, Dad, he's wearing us all out.
00:34:35.000 We're half his age, a third of his age, and he's killing us.
00:34:37.000 He was up for 100 hours straight at the end of the election.
00:34:41.000 Yeah.
00:34:42.000 Straight.
00:34:43.000 Just unbelievable.
00:34:44.000 Making phone calls.
00:34:46.000 I have stories.
00:34:47.000 When I'm around him, I say, I need to...
00:34:49.000 Yeah.
00:34:49.000 And Charlie, I don't know of anyone other than Donald Trump who has the energy you do.
00:34:54.000 My gosh.
00:34:55.000 I have a lot of energy, and he runs circles around me.
00:34:58.000 Well, but you run a close second to Donald Trump, and yet it's unbelievable.
00:35:05.000 So I always say pray for the man, pray for our country, and pray that our members of Congress will have spine.
00:35:13.000 That they will stand with him and recognize this is a one-in-a-lifetime chance to get this country back on track.
00:35:19.000 And when I mean back on track, I don't mean becoming more Republican.
00:35:22.000 It's not that.
00:35:23.000 You know, Donald Trump has brought people who are Democrats.
00:35:26.000 He's brought people who have never voted for a Republican before.
00:35:29.000 He's really built an American agenda, not a Republican agenda.
00:35:34.000 When people say, well, he's not all that conservative, I say, you don't understand.
00:35:39.000 He's not an ideological president.
00:35:41.000 He's a pragmatic president.
00:35:43.000 And I said, if you look for him to be on the horizontal spectrum, left, right, and where on that spectrum, you're going to miss the whole thing.
00:35:50.000 Pragmatism in him means this.
00:35:53.000 He has two questions with which he approaches an issue.
00:35:58.000 Does it work, and will it be better?
00:36:01.000 That's it.
00:36:02.000 If somebody says, well, that may be kind of a liberal idea, doesn't matter to him.
00:36:05.000 Does it work, and will it make America better?
00:36:08.000 Those are the criteria.
00:36:09.000 That's pragmatic.
00:36:11.000 Governance.
00:36:12.000 That's what the American people want.
00:36:13.000 Governor, thank you so much.
00:36:14.000 Charlie, thank you.
00:36:16.000 Timeline?
00:36:16.000 Do you know yet?
00:36:18.000 I don't.
00:36:18.000 As soon as the Senate puts me through the grinder, I'm starting those meetings right away.
00:36:24.000 Thank you.
00:36:24.000 And I will come visit you.
00:36:26.000 Please do.
00:36:26.000 In Jerusalem.
00:36:27.000 Please do.
00:36:28.000 But let's not say next year in Jerusalem.
00:36:30.000 Let's say this year.
00:36:31.000 I was going to say this August in Jerusalem.
00:36:33.000 This year in Jerusalem.
00:36:34.000 Absolutely.
00:36:34.000 I love it.
00:36:34.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:36:36.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.