The Charlie Kirk Show - Prince Andrew Arrested + Child Social Media Ban?

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00:01:09.000 All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show, February 19th, 2026.

00:01:13.000 Blake, I woke up this morning and I was like, woohoo!

00:01:17.000 Prince Andrew's been arrested.

00:01:18.000 This is going to be great.

00:01:19.000 We're going to get him on all the pedophilia stuff.

00:01:21.000 It's a bad day for Andrews.

00:01:23.000 Hopefully, only one Andrew.

00:01:25.000 Let's, you know.

00:01:27.000 A trend is a trend.

00:01:30.000 Let's hope it's a good day for this, Andrew, and a bad day for Prince Andrew.

00:01:30.000 Well, okay.

00:01:34.000 So I thought that we were fine.

00:01:36.000 I thought we were going to finally blow the doors open on this whole Epstein thing. 0.93

00:01:39.000 I mean, literally, it's the first thing I looked at on my phone.

00:01:41.000 My eyes are blurry.

00:01:42.000 I'm just waking up.

00:01:44.000 And unfortunately, it has nothing to do with anything, you know, of sex trafficking of minors or any of the innuendo or the salacious stuff.

00:01:54.000 It looks like Prince Andrew was arrested for forwarding documents, this according to the BBC, in 2010 related to his work as, I guess, let's see here.

00:02:08.000 British trade envoy.

00:02:10.000 Yeah, as a British trade envoy, but they have a specific title for him: UK Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.

00:02:18.000 So it looks like in 2010, he sent over documents to, he forwarded them over to Jeffrey Epstein.

00:02:27.000 Documents that he obtained in his official duties as a trade envoy that included some investment opportunities in gold and uranium, and that's what they got him on.

00:02:40.000 It's misconduct in a public office.

00:02:42.000 Now, it's very, it feels a lot like the famous Al Capone thing where he was involved in murders and bootlegging and every manner of crime, extortion, racketeering, and they got him because he didn't pay income tax on his illegal gains.

00:02:57.000 And there's a lot of allegations against.

00:03:01.000 Prince Andrew of various levels of salaciousness, and he's been arrested for forwarding the email that is linked in the New York Times.

00:03:09.000 Right up.

00:03:10.000 This is literally the text of the email that is linked in the New York Times.

00:03:14.000 It is just a forward of an email he received from his assistant, Amit Patel.

00:03:19.000 Sir, please find attached the visit reports for Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen in relation to your recent visit to Southeast Asia.

00:03:28.000 Thank you, Amit.

00:03:29.000 So he forwards those over to Jeffrey Epstein.

00:03:31.000 Apparently, they included, like I said, gold and uranium investment opportunities.

00:03:35.000 Essentially, insider trading, which on the one hand does sort of, I think, shed a little light on how Epstein would make his money.

00:03:44.000 Yes.

00:03:44.000 He had inside sources.

00:03:46.000 It's essentially insider trading at this point.

00:03:48.000 If you get advanced intel on official head of state visits or heads of state, but official government agencies in this case, visiting foreign countries, getting intel on possible investments.

00:04:02.000 Okay.

00:04:02.000 So that's what it is.

00:04:03.000 King Charles, so the brother of Prince Andrew, has released a statement.

00:04:07.000 He says, I have learned with the deepest concern the news about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, which is a very interesting title, and there is a backstory to why he's not called Prince Andrew or His Royal Highness.

00:04:18.000 He's going to explain that.

00:04:20.000 Stripped his titles.

00:04:21.000 But he calls him Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, and suspicion of misconduct in public office.

00:04:26.000 What now follows is the full, fair, and proper process by which this issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities.

00:04:34.000 In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support.

00:04:37.000 And cooperation.

00:04:38.000 Let me state clearly the law must take its course.

00:04:41.000 As this process continues, it would not be right for me to comment further on this matter.

00:04:45.000 Meanwhile, my family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all.

00:04:49.000 Charles R. All right.

00:04:51.000 So this was then followed by all of these headlines.

00:04:55.000 Throw up 525 from the Daily Mail, which is known to be a bit.

00:05:00.000 What's the right word for the Daily Mail?

00:05:02.000 The Daily Mail is the best publication in the English language.

00:05:06.000 Okay.

00:05:07.000 But they are somewhat.

00:05:09.000 They rush to judgment.

00:05:11.000 They are sensationalist in the best way.

00:05:13.000 They've covered Ilhan Omar, the incest story, her cheating on her husband.

00:05:18.000 They get photos of everything.

00:05:19.000 So here's the way it works a little inside baseball for you watching at home, because I've dealt with these scoundrels a lot.

00:05:25.000 You're talking about me?

00:05:26.000 No.

00:05:29.000 That's the next segment.

00:05:30.000 They basically put these headlines into multiple, they feed it out onto the internet and they have ABCDE testing.

00:05:38.000 And sometimes they use AI to create the biggest clickbait.

00:05:41.000 They want to know what you're going to click on.

00:05:43.000 So that's what Daily Mail does.

00:05:44.000 That's their whole thing.

00:05:45.000 You will get a headline that has nothing to do with the body of the article, but they learned through actual cause and effect, watching what you will click on, what gets the most clickbait.

00:05:57.000 That is the whole game over Daily Mail.

00:06:00.000 What headline can get you to click on it?

00:06:02.000 So what do they go about?

00:06:03.000 And they use AI.

00:06:04.000 So they go Trump faces furious Epstein backlash after Andrew detained.

00:06:09.000 We have zero arrest.

00:06:10.000 All right.

00:06:11.000 So now you've got Thomas Massey, you've got Marjorie Taylor Greene, and a lot of others out on social media saying, well, they got Prince Andrew.

00:06:11.000 So this is.

00:06:20.000 Why haven't you done anything, Pam Bondi and Donald Trump?

00:06:22.000 And so that is the case.

00:06:24.000 But here's the crux.

00:06:27.000 The assumption is the same assumption I made this morning that they were going to get that Andrew got arrested on pedophilia, on sex trafficking minors, something like this.

00:06:36.000 That's not at all the case.

00:06:37.000 He got arrested on a process charge for forwarding a document to Jeffrey Epstein in 2010 related to his official government.

00:06:45.000 Kind of maybe alleged insider trading 16 years ago.

00:06:48.000 Correct.

00:06:49.000 Well, so technically, official misconduct is what it is, which is a British offense.

00:06:52.000 But I'm going to, you know, it's going to annoy a lot of people, but I've got to push back on this.

00:06:58.000 Like, as I like to.

00:06:59.000 I like to read Michael Tracy on X because he gives a lot of pushback and he points out, I think it's worth remembering.

00:07:06.000 First of all, this is Britain.

00:07:07.000 Britain's the sort of country where you get arrested for saying things people don't like on social media about migrants.

00:07:13.000 It is a country that has a quite 1984 esque willingness to gin up charges for political reasons.

00:07:20.000 And so, yes, like Prince Andrew looks very bad because he was a big associate of Jeffrey Epstein, and that's gross. 0.83

00:07:25.000 And he probably did it because he wanted to sleep with young women.

00:07:29.000 But at the same time, the main allegations against him came from.

00:07:29.000 Yeah.

00:07:32.000 Virginia Guffrey, which, as our guest the other week said, Jay Beecher.

00:07:36.000 Yeah, Jay Beecher. 1.00

00:07:37.000 She's serial fabulous. 1.00

00:07:39.000 She lied about a lot of people. 0.99

00:07:40.000 She's the one, Virginia Guffrey, for our audience's sake, is alleged to have been the one that created this aura, this narrative about her list. 0.88

00:07:48.000 She did the narrative.

00:07:50.000 Blank male list. 1.00

00:07:51.000 To the extent underage women were recruited, she played a central role in that and encouraged them to lie to get.

00:07:56.000 There's a lot of negative stuff there.

00:07:57.000 So she's the source of a lot of these allegations.

00:08:00.000 His alleged relationship with her is the basis for this.

00:08:03.000 And yet, in the UK, Where they met, like she actually was of legal age, according to British laws.

00:08:11.000 Yeah.

00:08:11.000 And that is what drove this.

00:08:12.000 And so they are bringing this case because of big allegations.

00:08:17.000 But I think it's worth remembering what the origin of this is.

00:08:20.000 And then we go back to what the president himself said last summer.

00:08:23.000 A lot of people are going to be getting tarred and hit for things that are running ahead of what the facts are or where there's nothing proven.

00:08:32.000 And we're kind of seeing this here where they're just, they're howling, Where are the arrests?

00:08:36.000 What were the arrests before?

00:08:37.000 The come up for Prince Andrew is that he was. 0.99

00:08:39.000 A dirty, you know, dirty old man, dirty old man, and uh, you know, he showed some really poor judgment. 0.95

00:08:46.000 What's funny, also, though, is this clip from 2015 of President Trump has surfaced now, which I think is just fantastic. 0.98

00:08:53.000 Once again, Trump just has this knack of coming out unscathed.

00:08:57.000 524.

00:08:58.000 You raised the question of Jeffrey Epstein in your remarks about in the QA.

00:09:02.000 I think he's got a problem.

00:09:03.000 I don't think the problem will be, I don't know, but that island was uh, really a cesspool.

00:09:07.000 There's no question about it.

00:09:08.000 Just ask Prince Andrew, he'll tell you about it.

00:09:13.000 Just ask Riz Andrew.

00:09:15.000 That's 2015.

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00:10:26.000 This is what's interesting about the Prince Andrew thing.

00:10:28.000 So the news hits.

00:10:31.000 Everybody jumps on Trump because, you know, there has been no arrest over here.

00:10:37.000 But what's interesting and different, I would say, about the Prince Andrew situation is two thoughts I want you to keep in your head at the same time.

00:10:44.000 We have to be sophisticated consumers of information.

00:10:49.000 First thought none of this would happen if Pam Bondi had not released these documents in the first place.

00:10:56.000 So there's one.

00:10:57.000 The only reason this is happening is because the UK officials have access to documents that were released by the US Department of Justice.

00:11:06.000 So that's the thing you need to think of first.

00:11:09.000 Secondly, we had Mike Davis on earlier this week, and he assured us that there are ongoing investigations into co conspirators.

00:11:19.000 Les Wexner was labeled as a co conspirator in these documents.

00:11:25.000 And who knows who else is being investigated?

00:11:28.000 My money is on Reed Hoffman.

00:11:30.000 Reed Hoffman has lied repeatedly about his associations with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:11:36.000 He has funded some of the most.

00:11:39.000 Nefarious, sinister attempts of lawfare to get Trump over and over and over again.

00:11:45.000 Reed Hoffman is a marked man, in my opinion, by the Department of Justice.

00:11:50.000 And thirdly, think of this Prince Andrew is no longer Prince Andrew.

00:11:55.000 He's no longer His Royal Highness.

00:11:57.000 We call him that out of sort of a vestige of the royal past.

00:12:01.000 But in 2022, in January, Queen Elizabeth II stripped him of the use of his style, His Royal Highness.

00:12:09.000 HRH in any official capacity, all of his military titles and royal patronages were returned to the Queen, effectively removed from him.

00:12:18.000 This included honorary military appointments such as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, other UK titles like Honorary Air Commodore of the Royal Air Force, various overseas honorary Colonel and Chief roles, royal patronages, his charity affiliations.

00:12:32.000 And then in 2025, so just last year, his brother, King Charles, removed the title Prince.

00:12:40.000 And that included Duke of York, Earl of Iverness, and Baron Kelly Lay.

00:12:47.000 So all of these have been removed from him.

00:12:50.000 And that was in October 17th.

00:12:52.000 And then again, like I said, on October 30th, they officially removed the titular dignity of Prince.

00:12:58.000 And that is why he will now forever be known as Andrew Mountboulton Windsor.

00:13:04.000 So they have been on this Prince Andrew train for a long time, but it's the first arrest of a British royal.

00:13:11.000 Basically, in living memory or in recent modern history.

00:13:14.000 I think I saw somewhere where they said it was the first ever, and all I can remember is that they once beheaded a king.

00:13:19.000 I was going to say, I saw that talking point as well.

00:13:22.000 And yeah, it's like, okay.

00:13:24.000 But at least in modern history, this is the first race. 0.99

00:13:27.000 I think it would be a very big.

00:13:29.000 It would be very unfortunate if one of the world's oldest monarchies and one of its last really big monarchies were to fall over something like this, which it very much might.

00:13:42.000 There's a.

00:13:43.000 There is a Republican movement in the UK to abolish it and just retire the royal family.

00:13:48.000 I think it's definitely a movement in other countries.

00:13:52.000 You know, a very funny thing is one of the biggest supports of the British royal family is not who you think, it's the Canadian left.

00:14:00.000 Left wingers in Canada like the British royal family because they hate America.

00:14:05.000 And so they see having a royal family as something that makes Canada not America.

00:14:09.000 It's like a Justin Poole.

00:14:11.000 Like when King Charles visited, made his first visit after becoming king, Justin Trudeau went all out for it.

00:14:17.000 He was a big fan of it.

00:14:18.000 But it is a distinguished group.

00:14:20.000 I think it's easy for us to dump on it.

00:14:22.000 I mean, we're America, we're a republic, we don't have kings, we shouldn't have kings.

00:14:25.000 But as conservatives, we do respect and honor traditions, old things.

00:14:30.000 We realize they have value that's not always obvious.

00:14:33.000 And I think there is a real value in the fact that there has been a king or queen of England in London for over a thousand years, that they are the descendants of those people who were there during the Blitz, who were there when Napoleon might have invaded, who were there when the Armada was sailing for England.

00:14:53.000 Same line of people.

00:14:55.000 Well, and listen, I'm a big fan of the British royals.

00:14:58.000 I think Western civilization needs institutions that stand up and.

00:15:04.000 That helped guide the West back to a sense of its tradition, of its identity.

00:15:10.000 But listen, there are things happening in the background at the DOJ that we just need to keep our eyes on.

00:15:17.000 And we need to sort of say, listen, the wheels of justice turn slowly sometimes, but they are happening.

00:15:23.000 Okay.

00:15:24.000 And again, I would mention the name Reed Hoffman.

00:15:27.000 You've seen this just this morning that Bill Gates has dropped out of a speaking engagement due to increased scrutiny over the Epstein files.

00:15:33.000 Kathy Rumler has stepped down at Goldman Sachs.

00:15:38.000 Because of her connections to Jeffrey Epstein.

00:15:41.000 It was worth mentioning that she was Obama's longest serving White House counsel.

00:15:45.000 So the DOJ's release of these documents, obviously spurned on by Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey, who have attempted to weaponize the release of these documents for their own political ends.

00:15:59.000 It remains unclear what their ultimate intentions are here.

00:16:03.000 But the whole point is that there is a very large faction of people that want to use these documents to get Trump.

00:16:10.000 All right.

00:16:10.000 Time and time again, as we saw in that 2015 document or the video, Trump comes out looking pretty darn good.

00:16:18.000 He looks amazing, actually.

00:16:20.000 But it's, you know, I think we should, again, be careful and talk around this.

00:16:20.000 Yes.

00:16:23.000 Like, yes, Bill Gates has stepped away from things, and Bill Gates should feel embarrassed.

00:16:27.000 He was very clearly close with an individual who, regardless of what other crimes he committed, was a gross figure.

00:16:34.000 It was just, it's ugly that he was so close with him.

00:16:36.000 And we should feel that same way with Reid and a bunch of others, that they felt no shame about endlessly associating with a guy who.

00:16:43.000 Basically, clearly, his life revolved around fighting with teenagers.

00:16:46.000 And many of them lied about this.

00:16:47.000 But it's not, frankly, it's not illegal to lie about who you're friends with.

00:16:50.000 It's illegal to lie under oath to law enforcement, but we don't know if he did.

00:16:54.000 So we should remember that for a lot of people, this has become a political cause out of proportion to what is actually proven, what is actually provable.

00:17:05.000 And yeah, more might be coming, but we should remember that there is a lot of, we've been through a few rounds of lawfare in our time.

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00:18:27.000 Alan Bukhari, Foundation for Freedom Online.

00:18:30.000 You've known him on this show for a number of years.

00:18:33.000 He's come back and used to be with Breitbart covering all their digital stuff.

00:18:36.000 Now he's with Foundation for Freedom Online and Mike Ben's over at the good people there.

00:18:40.000 So, Alan, we want to bring you in.

00:18:42.000 Welcome back.

00:18:43.000 We want to bring you in because there is this, they're calling it a bellwether case in Los Angeles Superior Court.

00:18:51.000 And it involves a young woman.

00:18:53.000 And I guess, you know, a lot of families are out there, a lot of families are linking hands outside of the courthouse, and they are alleging that social media.

00:19:02.000 Is destroying their lives, getting them addicted, that it's engineered to be addictive and that it's causing suicidal ideation, it's causing depression, and that they say that it has been intentionally designed this way.

00:19:14.000 Alan, break down the court case here.

00:19:18.000 What's being alleged?

00:19:19.000 What are the defenses?

00:19:20.000 Give us the 30,000 foot view.

00:19:22.000 Well, look, obviously social media is addictive in a way.

00:19:26.000 And there have been complaints about addictive media for a long time.

00:19:29.000 Before social media, there were similar complaints about TV and how that was ruining people's health.

00:19:35.000 But I must say, this framing that social media could be a health hazard is quite dangerous.

00:19:41.000 And asking social media to be less addictive is asking them to make their product less effective.

00:19:47.000 They're an information product.

00:19:48.000 And the big winner at the end of the day, if that happens, is going to be legacy media.

00:19:53.000 So, you always have to look at who stands to benefit from this framing of social media as a health hazard.

00:19:59.000 It's other information services, especially the media companies that have been displaced by social media.

00:20:05.000 Now, social media addictiveness is a real problem, and there are major concerns, genuine concerns about the effect on children.

00:20:13.000 But when you have to pay attention to who's latching onto this cause, it's often progressive governments like the UK that are committed to online censorship, not because they care about children.

00:20:25.000 The UK government is embroiled in a scandal right now because one of their top appointees, Peter Mandelson, the former US ambassador, was connected to Jeffrey Epstein.

00:20:37.000 But what they see in this agenda, in this narrative about addictiveness and the harm that social media can cause to children, a potential Trojan horse for what they actually want, which is political censorship, which is punishing social media companies that don't.

00:20:56.000 Ban who they don't like, that don't ban their political opponents.

00:21:02.000 If you look around the world, governments are latching onto any excuse they can find.

00:21:06.000 The EU is launching a probe into X over allegations about grok being used to generate deepfakes.

00:21:14.000 The UK has done the same thing.

00:21:15.000 They even tried to team up with Australia and Canada to ban X over that issue.

00:21:20.000 And why they're going after X?

00:21:21.000 Because that's where all their political opponents are, that's where their narratives are being challenged.

00:21:25.000 So when we think about the addictiveness issue, we have to think not just about the issue itself, but who's championing the cause.

00:21:31.000 And what the second order effects are going to be of designating social media a public health hazard.

00:21:37.000 It will make it much easier to regulate and much easier to regulate those algorithms that the establishment are really quite afraid of because those algorithms are how citizen journalists can challenge mainstream media narratives.

00:21:50.000 Well, Alam, you're definitely right.

00:21:51.000 It's very clear the British government, the German government, the French government want excuses to ban X, to find X, and presumably other social media outlets that they are out of their control.

00:22:03.000 I think it's also clearly the case that a lot of these apps are designed to be addictive in a way that clearly is damaging young children's health.

00:22:13.000 I think the rise of Facebook, Instagram, and other social media is clearly correlated with young, especially teenage women's mental well being, going off a cliff.

00:22:24.000 We can see that with the rise of the smartphone.

00:22:26.000 And it strikes me that there must be some things that could be legally relevant here that don't put you in danger of widespread censorship.

00:22:34.000 I think one of the most obvious is just.

00:22:36.000 Doom scrolling, the infinite scroll that a lot of these apps use, that clearly seems to be linked to addictive behavior.

00:22:42.000 And I don't see how banning that would immediately imperil speech.

00:22:46.000 And I just go back to you're almost certainly familiar with this the famous Sean Parker comment all the way back in 2017, where he basically just got on a stage and said, We engineered the app to give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because if someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever, and it would get you in a feedback loop and you would be hooked on it.

00:23:09.000 Apparently, we have that.

00:23:10.000 Oh, we do.

00:23:11.000 Yeah, that's a mythical issue.

00:23:13.000 Yeah, let's go ahead and play that Sean Parker clip.

00:23:16.000 You know, if the thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them to really understand it, that thought process was all about how do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible.

00:23:35.000 And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.

00:23:45.000 And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you.

00:23:49.000 You know, more likes and comments.

00:23:51.000 It's a social validation feedback loop that it's like a, I mean, it's exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.

00:24:06.000 And I just, I think that we, you know, the inventors, creators, you know, and it's me, it's Mark, it's the, you know, Kevin Sisterman, Instagram, it's all of these people, understood this consciously.

00:24:23.000 And we did it anyway.

00:24:26.000 That's super.

00:24:27.000 I mean, that's very chilling actually to watch that they intentionally engineered their platforms.

00:24:32.000 To your point, they have a financial incentive to do so, Alan, to make their products as addictive as possible, to get you to spend as much time on those apps as possible.

00:24:43.000 But this is hurting kids.

00:24:45.000 So I guess the question I have a twofold question.

00:24:47.000 What are the broader implications if this lawsuit is successful?

00:24:49.000 They're calling it a bellwether.

00:24:51.000 I can only imagine this is going to, if it's successful, result in billions of financial losses for these platforms.

00:24:57.000 But secondly, Let's concede the point that we would like to see some guardrails on these apps.

00:25:03.000 What would be a positive outcome?

00:25:06.000 Well, I would always want to look at who's in charge of the regulations and who's in charge of the guardrails rather than what they necessarily are.

00:25:15.000 I think conservatives really have to get involved and take charge of the child safety agenda, much like Adam Kandayev did when he was campaigning for age verification laws.

00:25:24.000 He's now in the Trump administration at NTIA.

00:25:27.000 Because the problem is when you let progressives Take on the child safety agenda, they're just going to use it as a smokescreen for political censorship.

00:25:36.000 We've seen this so many times before.

00:25:38.000 And it's a genuinely difficult issue because social media apps are addictive and they're particularly addictive for kids when their brains are still developing.

00:25:48.000 But you look at what foreign governments are doing, like the UK, France, Spain, many other countries, they're simultaneously trying to ban social media for kids, just a blanket ban, while also trying to lower the voting age to 16.

00:26:01.000 So, what they want really, and you see the end goal here.

00:26:05.000 They want a voting demographic that's empowered to vote, but also doesn't have access to the social media platforms where mainstream pro government narratives might be challenged, where they might encounter information that the government and their allied NGOs and civil society organizations and mainstream media don't want to see.

00:26:26.000 So that is the real danger.

00:26:28.000 So, when we're trying to protect kids from addictive social media, we also have to think about how can we make sure they still have access to that independent media ecosystem that exists on social media.

00:26:40.000 And that governments around the world are working so hard to just completely shut down.

00:26:45.000 Because the same technology that makes social media addictive, that causes engagement, is the same technology that allows citizen journalists to go viral.

00:26:55.000 That is the technology that governments around the world are so afraid of.

00:26:59.000 The same technology that allows a random person to make a post, get millions of views, and share information that the media doesn't want to be shared, that NGOs don't want to see shared, that governments don't want to see shared.

00:27:12.000 So that's the balance you have to strike, and it's a very difficult balance to strike.

00:27:17.000 We have to be constantly aware of these organizations that have an agenda that they're not telling you about when they talk about addictiveness.

00:27:26.000 And particularly, I want to say this the left thinks drag queen story hour is appropriate for children.

00:27:35.000 They think gay pride parades are appropriate for children.

00:27:37.000 They think gender reassignment surgery is appropriate for children.

00:27:41.000 So we should not take any concerns coming from left wing progressives.

00:27:46.000 About the dangers of social media to children and child welfare, seriously.

00:27:50.000 They don't really care about that issue.

00:27:52.000 They care about political control.

00:27:53.000 They care about control of the internet and social media platforms.

00:27:57.000 And that is the danger here.

00:27:58.000 It's hugely tough.

00:28:00.000 I will say, if you look at what they auto feed to children on YouTube, if you make a new child's account, you definitely start worrying about more, possibly some need for regulation.

00:28:09.000 But thank you, Alam.

00:28:12.000 Mike Lindell and MyPillow employees want to thank you for your great support this past year, and they are looking to make 2026 the best year yet.

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00:29:13.000 We wanted to get to the latest on Iran.

00:29:16.000 President Trump is saying that he is going to make up his mind a final decision about a strike on Iran within the next 10 days.

00:29:23.000 But we are told that he has yet to make his final decision.

00:29:27.000 JD Vance is simultaneously warning Iran, saying this is deadly serious and they better come to the table. 0.98

00:29:36.000 So, this is ongoing conversations that are happening in Iran.

00:29:40.000 Meanwhile, President Trump is saying that he has yet to make up his mind.

00:29:44.000 This all echoes very clearly what we saw.

00:29:46.000 In the 12 day war, where Trump said, I'm going to make up my mind in the next two weeks.

00:29:50.000 I feel when I saw that headline, I'll decide within the next 10 days, my immediate thought was, he has already decided, frankly, because that's what he did last time.

00:29:58.000 And there's this element, you're going to decide within the next 10 days.

00:30:02.000 Well, okay, you reach day 10, and you kind of know if he's decided by then, if he hasn't struck a deal, and then you kind of regress back from there.

00:30:10.000 It's such a strange thing to announce.

00:30:12.000 It feels like a very Trumpian tactic.

00:30:16.000 It's saber rattling, it's sort of saying, listen, If past is prologue, you know what I chose to do that time.

00:30:22.000 I did strike.

00:30:23.000 And, you know, I'm serious about this strike.

00:30:25.000 Let's go ahead and play President Trump.

00:30:27.000 He spoke about Iran just this morning, 5 38.

00:30:30.000 Our country's like, nobody could have signed.

00:30:32.000 You would have had that threat.

00:30:34.000 Nobody could have had, you couldn't have had peace in the Middle East. 1.00

00:30:37.000 So now we may have to take it a step further or we may not.

00:30:40.000 Maybe we're going to make a deal.

00:30:42.000 You're going to be finding out over the next probably 10 days.

00:30:46.000 Or it could be even, you know, as you say, they remember what happened last time.

00:30:51.000 When they hear 10 days, Iran should be hearing the planes are literally taking off right now, and you have 12 hours to decide.

00:30:59.000 He continues 5 39.

00:31:01.000 Now is the time for Iran to join us on a path that will complete what we're doing. 0.93

00:31:08.000 And if they join us, that'll be great.

00:31:09.000 If they don't join us, that'll be great too.

00:31:12.000 But it'll be a very different path.

00:31:15.000 They cannot continue to threaten the stability of the entire region, and they must make a deal.

00:31:21.000 Or if that doesn't happen, I maybe can understand.

00:31:24.000 If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen, but bad things will happen.

00:31:30.000 All right.

00:31:30.000 So, again, this is very Trumpian.

00:31:32.000 If they don't join us, that'll be good, too.

00:31:34.000 So, here's things we know.

00:31:37.000 Let's separate fact from fiction here.

00:31:38.000 We know that there has been a very serious and significant buildup in recent days of military assets in the region.

00:31:45.000 This would include air and naval assets in the Middle East.

00:31:49.000 But insider sources in the White House have told multiple outlets that Trump is privately argued both for and against military action.

00:31:59.000 And he's polling advisors and allies on what the best course of action is.

00:32:03.000 Now, here's the insider scoop there are significant voices within the White House that are against military action, they're against foreign intervention, they stand firmly on the America First side, saying, We don't want to invade Iran, we do not want a kinetic military strike in Iran.

00:32:21.000 There are other voices that are very, very much chomping at the bit to do so.

00:32:26.000 They see this as the one opportunity with the uprising, the organic uprising of protesters in the streets, to take out the mullahs, as Sean Hannity would say.

00:32:37.000 The mullahs.

00:32:38.000 So, you've got competing factions within the White House.

00:32:41.000 You've got the Hawks and you've got the Doves.

00:32:44.000 It's like I said yesterday.

00:32:45.000 I think what could be tilting him is we have had several of these escalations over the past year.

00:32:51.000 Mostly, President Trump has pushed toward peace, but where they have done things, they did the strike on Iran.

00:32:57.000 It was limited.

00:32:57.000 It was successful.

00:32:58.000 They did the raid in Venezuela.

00:33:00.000 It was limited.

00:33:01.000 It was very successful.

00:33:02.000 And we had these reports that President Trump was asking for military operations that were limited in scope, limited in duration.

00:33:10.000 That had a very clear cut thing.

00:33:13.000 And so I think we agree Charlie did not want war with Iran.

00:33:17.000 We are very skeptical of that.

00:33:20.000 But what we have seen a pattern from the president is in comparison to prior administrations, he is very resistant to scope creep.

00:33:28.000 He's very resistant to open ended missions.

00:33:31.000 And so I think the president would be wise enough to say we don't want a bunch of troops occupying Iran, we don't want troops helicoptering into.

00:33:40.000 Trump is not going to telegraph his moves, though.

00:33:42.000 He won't.

00:33:43.000 What we can tell you is that based on the assets that have been moved into the region, it does not look like a ground force is part of the equation right now.

00:33:51.000 It would be naval and airstrikes.

00:33:52.000 What we are getting is we're getting the resources for a much larger air campaign than we've seen before.

00:33:59.000 They're sending all these F 22 fighters.

00:34:01.000 So that's a bunch of fighters who could shoot down every jet that goes into the sky that they could send out.

00:34:06.000 The F 35s. 0.93

00:34:07.000 Send in enough bombers that you could actually, you're not just striking nuclear plants.

00:34:11.000 You're hitting every military base, you're hitting every city.

00:34:15.000 And I presume if that happens, the intent would be you bomb them until the government agrees to leave power.

00:34:21.000 Now, can that be done if they are adamant about refusing to do so?

00:34:25.000 How long would it go on?

00:34:26.000 That is where it becomes a stickier question.

00:34:29.000 How many, how much resources are we willing to invest in toppling a government on the far side of the world?

00:34:34.000 And politically, if we do it, even if it's successful, will they make the case that this is a good use of America's time, that it's justified?

00:34:43.000 I feel, even in comparison to last summer, that might be the biggest challenge for the administration.

00:34:47.000 If we were to go to war with Iran tonight, I think most Americans would be asking what had prompted it.

00:34:55.000 Yeah.

00:34:56.000 So, this let's we'll sum it up here.

00:34:58.000 It is a political mess for the administration to go into the Middle East.

00:35:05.000 It is much trickier from a polling standpoint, from a grassroots support standpoint, than actions in Venezuela.

00:35:12.000 I understand the opportunity that has been presented by this popular uprising against the mullahs in Iran.

00:35:19.000 And I understand the just the carnage that the regime has exacted upon the population of Iran.

00:35:27.000 However, this is the Middle East.

00:35:28.000 Regime change is always messier than you anticipate.

00:35:32.000 And at some point, you have to ask the question why?

00:35:37.000 Why now?

00:35:38.000 Is it just because Lindsey Graham, Lady Graham, is, you know, Working his magic, his charms in the ear of the president, or what is the deeper incentive?

00:35:48.000 Now, the deeper incentive, President Trump will say, is to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon.

00:35:53.000 Well, then, if that is your incentive, then what's going on with the B2 strikes that happened last summer?

00:35:59.000 Were those effective or were those not effective?

00:36:00.000 Let's end.

00:36:02.000 You have to remember, for some people, they see this as maybe their last opportunity to get a regime change in Iran.

00:36:08.000 You always have to be wary of that.

00:36:09.000 Charlie had a lot of thoughts on this.

00:36:11.000 We talked about it a lot.

00:36:12.000 This is one of his tweets, 558.

00:36:15.000 This is back in 2019.

00:36:16.000 He said, I think that ground troops line is the key one.

00:36:36.000 And I think that would be a bright line for the president that I think he'll be wise enough not to talk about.

00:36:40.000 Yeah, I mean, I think most of us feel assured of that.

00:36:45.000 This is the largest buildup since 2003.

00:36:47.000 And so, I mean, the voters have all the polling says we're desperate for domestic reform and domestic focus.

00:36:55.000 I hope we can do that.

00:37:01.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 19, 2026

Prince Andrew Arrested + Child Social Media Ban?

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