00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000All right, welcome to this special Saturday coverage live stream of the United States military, along with Israel forces, striking Iran.
00:02:23.000The United States and Israel launched coordinated major military strikes on Iran today with U.S. operation named Epic Fury.
00:02:31.000And Israel, which is called Roaring Lion, President Donald Trump announced major combat operations are underway aimed at destroying Iran's missile industry, navy, and nuclear capabilities while preventing it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
00:02:45.000Strikes targeted Iranian leadership, including apparent attempts on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khami Khameni and the president, the armed forces heads, nuclear sites, missile facilities, and other regime military assets across multiple cities, including, of course, Tehran.
00:03:04.000Trump publicly urged Iranians to rise up in his speech to take over your government and seize their freedom, framing the action as an opportunity for regime change against the wicked radical dictatorship.
00:03:16.000And said, in fact, he said that this was a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
00:03:22.000And obviously, that's in response to the massive wave of protests that rose up, at which point the regime then killed tens of thousands of its own citizens to quell.
00:03:32.000Iran then retaliated with a large wave of ballistic missiles and drones targeting Israel, with intercepts reported over areas like Haifa and Jerusalem and multiple U.S. military bases assets in the region.
00:03:46.000Iranian strikes hit U.S. facilities, including Al-Udayd Air Base in Qatar, bases in Kuwait, Al-Dafra in the UAE, the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, and other places in the Gulf.
00:03:59.000Explosions and air defense activations were reported in UAE, Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, with civilian impacts, including a reported Israeli strike on a girls' school in southern Iran.
00:04:11.000This is not, as far as I'm aware, has been confirmed.
00:04:15.000That's per Iranian state media, so take it with a grain of salt.
00:04:19.000But obviously, that's a negative, if true.
00:04:22.000The conflict marks a massive, massive escalation with ongoing operations expected over several days.
00:04:29.000UN Security Council emergency meetings called, and global reactions ranging from calls for restraint to fears of broader regional war breaking out.
00:05:23.000Don't believe everything is true, especially if it's an account you're not familiar with.
00:05:28.000Hopefully, if it's coming from a major news outlet, it's going to be more reliable, but even they can be fooled, as we've learned in past U.S. military interventions.
00:05:40.000So we're watching everything, but really, unless the United States government itself is confirming something, be prepared for things to shift rapidly.
00:05:50.000So far, there have been no reports of American casualties, but the president did warn in his remarks last night, which we're cutting up right now.
00:06:03.000This is not like the strikes last summer, where it seems we struck their nuclear base, and then Iran was ready to sort of do this KFABE, shoot missiles so they can show their honor, but they weren't really trying to hit anything.
00:06:19.000Yes, this time, our stated intent is to bring down the regime of Iran, and we can reasonably expect them to shoot at us for real this time.
00:06:31.000And we're going to see how effective they are.
00:06:33.000On the positive side, I will note that our first strikes went at around in the middle of the day.
00:06:40.000And so, based on that, I would guess Iran does not have a strong ability to defend themselves.
00:06:47.000And we can hope that they don't have a terribly good ability, strong ability to hit us either.
00:06:51.000So, the two waves of attack, one from the Israeli side, one from the U.S., the U.S. is going after military installations.
00:06:59.000They're going after, including like naval yards.
00:07:02.000They're trying to take out the military and the anti-air capacity of the Iranians.
00:07:08.000They look to have been remarkably effective, actually.
00:07:12.000The Israelis, we're told, are going after the head of the snake.
00:07:16.000So they're hitting military officials.
00:07:20.000It does appear that this has been a remarkably effective first volley by the United States and Israel forces, the joint operation.
00:07:32.000Air defenses are holding up in Israel, which is one indication that the missile capabilities of the Iranians have been taken out fairly successfully.
00:07:43.000They are obviously still able to shoot missiles out.
00:07:47.000However, at this point, what we can tell is that the first wave of attacks and strikes by the U.S. have been successful.
00:07:56.000Let's go ahead and play a clip from POTUS.
00:07:59.000This was late last night in the wee hours.
00:08:02.000This is when he made the announcement to the nation that the strike had commenced, 252.
00:08:08.000A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.
00:08:17.000Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.
00:08:32.000Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.
00:08:41.000For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries.
00:08:57.000It's been mass terror, and we're not going to put up with it any longer.
00:09:03.000So, you know, I, calling around this morning, you know, it became very clear to me, you know, that I would say there is extreme concern that Iran had reinitiated its nuclear ambitions.
00:09:22.000And the president referred to that in his remarks.
00:09:28.000So there's two different sort of things we need to analyze here.
00:09:32.000There is the political analysis and the military analysis.
00:09:36.000From a military standpoint, we pray for all of our troops.
00:10:08.000That was actually a bigger concern for many in the military of Israel.
00:10:15.000So there's a military consideration and then there's a political consideration.
00:10:19.000The political consideration, we have to just be honest that there is a sense that this was not sold to the American public sufficiently.
00:10:30.000Perhaps there will be an opportunity on the back end of this.
00:10:34.000If there is concerns about the weapon capability or the bomb capability, the nuclear capability of the Iranians that we are not aware of, then perhaps we'll hear about that on the back end.
00:10:47.000Obviously, you want to avoid a situation if, you know, for example, what happened in Iraq where we were told that they were developing weapons of mass destruction only to find out that those reports were untrue or fabricated.
00:11:00.000So I'm sure they're being very, very cautious with how they're communicating that.
00:12:04.000It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular, my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon.
00:13:32.000I remember on multiple occasions, he told me something along the lines of, listen, the world is a very dark place without American military leadership.
00:13:42.000Didn't mean he was in favor of foreign adventurism or regime change wars because he wasn't.
00:14:14.000But if there was additional information that we are not privy to that would have, in their minds, necessitated an urgent, aggressive attack if they felt the diplomacy avenue had been exhausted, if they were getting dragged around, if they were getting played for fools, then President Trump would act.
00:14:36.000And we always knew that that would be the case.
00:14:37.000Thinking on it, I would think, frankly, how he engaged with the strikes in Iran last summer, which is I know he did not really favor involvement there.
00:14:59.000I think he would have been lobbying against these strikes, but it is as you say.
00:15:05.000I think if he were arguing against it to the administration and they went with it anyway, he would allow himself to consider they may know something I don't, or the president, he reached this conclusion for a reason.
00:15:19.000Ultimately, we do elect the president to make those life or death calls.
00:15:24.000And we have a history of presidents who have run on a platform of avoiding wars and then they have chosen to initiate them after taking office because they believe the situation has changed or the intelligence has changed.
00:15:39.000And I think that is the attitude Charlie would have, that the decision has been made.
00:15:44.000Now, we have to hope the president has a good plan, has a good strategy, has a way to make this work out the best for America.
00:15:52.000And that is what he would pray for right now.
00:15:55.000I think, you know, I'll never forget the hit that he did with Jesse Waters where, you know, you could tell Charlie in his own mind was hoping that it wasn't going to happen.
00:16:06.000But ultimately, he said, at this point, you have to trust Trump.
00:16:13.000This is why you elect leaders to make difficult decisions, even when they are politically unpopular.
00:16:18.000You have to sort of trust that the providence of God is leading us.
00:16:22.000You have to pray for our leaders to make wise decisions, even when you feel like you would have been, you would have made a different decision.
00:16:31.000Ultimately, we do not have all the facts, and we have to watch.
00:16:35.000Now, I will say that this was the largest buildup of U.S. troops since the Gulf War in, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, if you will.
00:16:45.000This is the largest buildup of troops that we've seen.
00:16:48.000So I was always under the impression that something was going to happen.
00:16:54.000And I will say, from initial indications, this seems to have been very well thought out.
00:17:00.000We are also finding out that the U.S. is using a new form of one-way drones that have not been used before.
00:17:08.000So they're using those in the interior of Iran, which they're kamikaze drones.
00:17:13.000Apparently, that's not been something that we've used in the past.
00:17:15.000We're using them now, and they've proven extraordinarily effective.
00:17:33.000To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces, and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in the alternative, face certain death.
00:20:42.000So they are reacting, I think, as you might, it might be surprising, but actually, when you know the history of the region, Iran is no friend of a lot of those countries.
00:20:51.000As a matter of fact, Iran has been a bully.
00:20:53.000It's the number one state sponsor of terror.
00:20:55.000And it's an irrational actor at times.
00:20:58.000I'm not saying it's fully irrational, but it has been sowing chaos through the region, killing Americans.
00:21:04.000The president is right about that, that they have been killing Americans through their proxies in the region for decades.
00:21:11.000And, you know, here's a picture of the Board of Peace, which we need to get names of these folks because I think that's important.
00:21:20.000259, this is the Board of Peace that President Trump has put together.
00:21:24.000Well, it'll be interesting to see who on that board of peace has our back in this moment.
00:21:29.000And so far, Iran has misplayed its hand by hitting a lot of people, other Arab nations in the region, even if they're going after U.S. bases.
00:21:40.000As one U.S. official said after the strike that landed in Saudi, they said that they made a huge mistake.
00:21:48.000So now Saudi is getting in the fight and striking back.
00:21:52.000Yeah, it does seem, again, this is why this is different from past ones.
00:21:58.000It seems, to use a pro-wrestling term, there was some K-fabe about our past conflicts with Iran where we'd bomb something and they would shoot a missile into the desert.
00:22:08.000We'd blow stuff up and they would, again, they'd just shoot missiles and they'd blow up a mile outside of one of our bases.
00:22:14.000This time, Iran realizes that we are going for the regime.
00:22:20.000They are more seriously aiming at everyone.
00:22:24.000And to the extent there's anything good about that, I think it will align the region that Iran is a rogue actor that needs to go down.
00:22:34.000I don't think the Saudi public is going to be happy that they're having missiles blow up in Riyadh.
00:22:38.000The Emiratis are not going to enjoy missiles blowing up in the middle of Dubai.
00:22:42.000Yeah, well, we just got some images here.
00:22:44.000This is an Iranian missile struck a five-star Fairmont, the Palm Hotel in Dubai.
00:22:52.000Some sources claim there were U.S. personnel at this hotel, but this gives you a sense of the damage that we are seeing if we can get some of this.
00:23:06.000Well, but nevertheless, this was an Iranian counter-strike that has now hit a five-star hotel in the Middle East.
00:23:17.000So, and by the way, there's images like this all over the internet right now of the Iranian counter-strikes and debris falling, as you said, Blake.
00:23:28.000Some of them getting shot out of the sky, but not completely.
00:23:30.000And then the debris falls near civilians.
00:23:35.000Again, I want to reiterate: the U.S. strikes were taking out the military installations.
00:23:43.000That seems to be the divide of responsibilities here while the Israelis were taking out personnel.
00:23:48.000You remember, I'm kind of reminded of those images where Israel struck those apartment complexes, and they didn't hit the seventh floor.
00:23:57.000They didn't hit the ninth floor, they hit the eighth floor to kill people.
00:24:02.000And so we know that they have very precise striking capability when it comes to locating certain personnel and then taking them out.
00:24:11.000We know that Mossad has infiltrated the Iranian regime at the deepest level.
00:24:17.000So they, with some likelihood, with some good likelihood, we can predict that a lot of Iranian top military brass, top government officials, their locations would have been known.
00:24:29.000And if they wanted to take them out, they very well could have.
00:24:32.000Now, we're still waiting on confirmation on the Ayatollah himself.
00:24:39.000That's sort of the big domino to fall.
00:24:41.000And then the question becomes, what happens if that happens?
00:24:44.000Will the Iran regime fold like a cheap suit?
00:25:55.000And we need to brace ourselves for that.
00:25:57.000The hope is that this is a days-long struggle, that we are successful, that the regime falls quickly, if that is the goal.
00:26:07.000Again, I'm not saying I'm pro-regime change.
00:26:09.000I'm saying now that we're here, what are the best outcomes?
00:26:13.000As a matter of fact, I am very much like Charlie, that I am against regime change inherently by instinct after everything that happened after 9-11.
00:26:23.000But we are here now, and this is why you elect a president.
00:26:27.000This is why you trust you have to, at some point, as a republic that is representative of a republic, you have to trust your elected leaders to do the right things, especially once you're in these types of situations.
00:26:38.000We can debate whether this was the right move to do or not at a later point.
00:28:19.000So he was able to properly thread the needle to get the U.S. involved without it escalating or extending into something prolonged.
00:28:29.000And if there's a similar arrangement here, I think we do see, I'll be frank, we see opposition to this from people who are on the right, who are in the president's space.
00:28:40.000If this is a short war, if this is a decisive war, if U.S. casualties are low or even, man, we could pray for this non-existent, then there will very rapidly be somewhat.
00:28:52.000Yeah, I mean, we have to brace ourselves for the fact that there probably are going to be some casualties.
00:29:19.000And I mentioned this on X, that I think the best success case for this conflict is if you take the attitude, Iran is the last really major foe of the United States in the Middle East.
00:29:34.000You have some terrorist groups in rural areas.
00:29:40.000But this is the last regime that could, you know, is making a serious bid for nuclear materials of any kind.
00:29:47.000And the thought is, if you can topple them, this can be, we've had a lot of wars in the Middle East in the last 40 years.
00:29:53.000This could be our last war in the Middle East.
00:29:56.000And if the president is able to come out of this and say, now we are able to dial back America's involvement here, we can send those troops home or send them to Asia to contain China.
00:30:33.000So here we got, this is the Board of Peace, by the way.
00:30:37.000This is the executive board, which is focused on diplomacy and investment.
00:30:42.000This is Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Jared Kushner, Steve Witcock, Tony Blair, Ajai Banga from the World Bank, World Bank president, Mark Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, Robert Gabriel, all this stuff.
00:30:55.000U.S., Israel, Saudi, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Argentina, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and there's some others, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Cambodia, El Salvador, Kosovo, Mongolia, Paraguay, Turkey.
00:31:14.000So when you look at that list and then you realize the region that we're fighting in, the Board of Peace has all of a sudden assumed a much larger consequence, which I think is fascinating.
00:31:30.000You sort of see maybe President Trump was lining up the political, the diplomatic backing to finally sort of excommunicate this evil from the region.
00:31:43.000And by the way, whether you're for or against this strike is irrelevant to the truth that Iran is an evil regime, at least the Ayatollah and the regime that runs Iran.
00:31:56.000We're not saying that about the people, but you do see that this board of peace could assume a larger consequence given the situation.
00:32:10.000I think you guys are doing a great job.
00:32:11.000But I agree with you, Andrew, that I do take a stance against regime change.
00:32:18.000But at the same time, I don't feel, I think we learned our lesson with the Venezuela thing and also the 12-day war, which is just that initial reports aren't always accurate.
00:32:30.000And this isn't the first time we've even heard claims that Khamenei is dead.
00:32:35.000And so anything from Khamene is dead to Republicans are going to lose the Senate because of this.
00:32:41.000All of that is kind of all over the place.
00:32:43.000And I think we need to wait a little bit.
00:32:46.000However, I will just add time and again, I've bet against the president when it comes to foreign entanglements like this.
00:32:55.000And time and again, I've been proven wrong.
00:32:58.000I even remember with Venezuela, I was texting Josh and a few other people.
00:33:02.000I was like, this is blah, And then in the coming days, I was like, wow, that was a crazy operation that we ran.
00:33:09.000And so I think this is something that we're going to see with Iran, but also with Charlie specifically, I mean, he saw young people, and I can relate to this, which is that young people have a different stance when it comes to foreign policy.
00:33:23.000And it's not that we, you know, don't want to be involved in any foreign issue.
00:33:29.000It's just that we kind of have a little bit of a fatigue with it.
00:33:32.000I mean, from the time I was born, so believe it or not, I was born in 2001.
00:33:39.000But from the time I was born, 9-11 to today, there has literally been a conflict in the Middle East.
00:33:46.000And also, I mean, when you take it into account, like there's been a conflict regarding Israel from the time I was born to today.
00:33:55.000And so as a young person, you're seeing, you know, this increase in your ability to probably never be able to own a home, never be able to afford a family.
00:34:04.000You know, the dating market's shrinking.
00:34:06.000The average home purchase is 40 years of age.
00:34:09.000And everything is like kind of betting against young people.
00:34:12.000And so when they see something like this, their initial reaction is, why do I care about that?
00:34:23.000I remember with Charlie feeling a lot of consternation behind the scenes, wondering what the heck was going on, only to be proven wrong again and again.
00:34:31.000Now, none of that is to say that this is politically popular.
00:34:35.000But I do believe that President Trump, and I've been convinced that he has our best interest at heart, whether or not it's always the political winner that we want it to be.
00:34:50.000So yeah, I've been up running on Real America's Voice, doing some work there from about eight in the morning, woke up early, saw the news like everyone else.
00:35:00.000Look, you know, over human events, we've been reporting all week that it looked as though these strikes were imminent.
00:35:06.000We saw all the indications and warnings.
00:35:08.000The fifth fleet pulling out of Bahrain, they knew Bahrain was going to be one of the earliest targets in any retaliatory strikes from Iran.
00:35:16.000And indeed, just in the last couple of minutes, we're hearing that Iran's response actually was able to take out, it looks like one of their kamikaze drones, these Shahed 136 drones, was able to take out a radar installation, direct hit on a radar installation on the Bahrain naval base there.
00:35:32.000So again, real questions about Iran's ability to penetrate U.S. electronic defenses, air defenses, et cetera.
00:35:39.000But so we saw the ships pulling out as a huge indication of that.
00:35:44.000Obviously, the United States Navy reflecting all the way back to the lessons of Pearl Harbor and knowing that when you're getting in these hostilities, obviously a different situation, but the vulnerability of ships at port.
00:35:57.000Then, you know, we just saw the sheer amount of material being moved over to the Middle East.
00:36:02.000And the indications we were also getting out of the White House was that it looks like it looks like things were about to pop off.
00:36:07.000So we were putting up strike packages on things that we could see the United States do, whether or not it's going to be infrastructure, regime infrastructure, whether it's going to be military-only targets, whether or not we're going to target economic infrastructure, oil pipelines, oil refineries, that type of thing hit Iran where it hurts in the wallet, whether or not the strike packages will include that.
00:36:27.000What we've seen so far is it seems the United States is targeting IRGC facilities, specifically those at Chabahar, Bandar Abbas, these naval facilities, of course, because everyone knows that Iran's most dangerous course of action is their ability to either mine or blockade the Strait of Hormuz.
00:36:47.000And in fact, they only need to appear to mine the Strait of Hormuz to be able to shut down really the entire global right.
00:36:58.000So the Strait of Hormuz is in the Gulf.
00:37:00.000The Houthis were on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula there in the Red Sea.
00:37:04.000And so Iran, with their very tight border, if you look at that choke point at the mouth of the Gulf of the Persian Gulf, they have the ability just to just completely shut that down with mine.
00:37:16.000So yes, very similar to what the Houthis were doing in their choke point, the Strait of Babel Mendeb at the mouth of the Red Sea.
00:37:23.000So this real ability to constrain global shipping and global oil markets.
00:37:32.000You know, thinking that something like this was going to be coming.
00:37:35.000But what I'm also hearing out of the White House is that, look, expect strikes to be days, not hours.
00:37:41.000This is not going to be a one and done thing like Operation Midnight Hammer.
00:37:46.000President Trump, of course, in his overnight address to the nation, of course, we're going to see whether or not he has another address to the nation.
00:37:52.000But he said that this is about the regime.
00:37:55.000This is about conducting an air campaign, hurting the regime.
00:37:58.000And he wants the people to rise up and have the people flood the streets, as we saw weeks ago, but really wants them to try to take over the regime.
00:38:09.000And so what we're going to see, I think, here is we're going to see salvos of alternating attack, pause and assess, attack, pause, and assess.
00:38:19.000So wait to see the battle damage assessment, see what has been hit, what the capabilities are of those strikes, what the regime does, whether or not they want to sue for peace, whether or not you see a regime crack and they want to come to a deal on the nuclear programs President Trump has talked about, or perhaps an actual regime collapse, in which case, obviously something that Charlie and we're here on the Charlie Kirk stream.
00:38:42.000So of course, we all remember what Charlie said about those regime change scenarios back in June.
00:38:48.000You really don't know what is going to come after.
00:38:51.000And I'm sure we have all the clips and it's all been going viral right now.
00:38:55.000And people are pulling up the old tweets of Charlie where he spoke about this and warned about the dangers inherent and risks inherent in a regime change scenario.
00:39:04.000That being said, as we look forward, I don't think this is going to be over anytime soon.
00:39:09.000And of course, we want to see what Iran does in response.
00:39:12.000Know Iran has also looks like they've conducted strikes not only on U.S. bases like Bahrain, as I pointed out, but also in Jebel Ali.
00:39:22.000And it looks as though that port, one of the major ports on the Sunni-Arab side of the Gulf, that's the whole Gulf split, the Shia Iranians, the Persians versus the Sunni Arabs.
00:39:33.000So Jebel Ali, that huge port there in Dubai, looks like they did target it.
00:39:37.000There was a strike, an interception of that strike.
00:39:40.000So it didn't land all the way, but it does look like some of the debris and this video is going around now.
00:39:45.000It looks like it's been confirmed, have hit one of the four-star hotels in Dubai.
00:39:49.000Of course, Dubai, what do they call it?
00:40:43.000Even quicker recap, of course, is last night.
00:40:46.000I think it was about midnight Phoenix time, 2 a.m. 2 a.m. Easter.
00:40:49.000So it's interesting, it's broad daylight in Iran when this happened.
00:40:53.000We were used to, past strikes have been convenient for stream timing because it's happened in the evening, in the afternoon here because it's nighttime over there.
00:41:03.000But they launched strikes on Iran in broad daylight.
00:41:06.000It was already Saturday in the middle of the day there.
00:42:40.000What is the administration hoping to achieve here?
00:42:43.000Yeah, I think the president is pretty clear that the objective of this goal is to basically knock down Iran's defenses and leadership to a point where the Iranian people can overthrow them and take over the government without Americans having to put boots on the ground, without having to have a significant invasion like we did with Iraq or other regime change moments, Afghanistan.
00:43:06.000It is an air superiority mission that is designed to degrade the leadership, the military capabilities, and eventually open the door for the Iranian people themselves to overthrow the government.
00:43:18.000I'm sure the CIA has been working on an overthrow plan for some time with groups like the MEK or the National Council for Resistance of Iran.
00:43:26.000I wouldn't be surprised if at some point you see some of the Kurdish special forces come in from the West.
00:43:31.000The West is pretty fortified now, but that time that will be degraded.
00:43:35.000And the goal is for us to just soften it up enough that the Iranian people can go in, make their own regime change, make their own democratically elected government, and get over this 47-year era of tyranny.
00:43:47.000Now, that's going to take time, particularly when you're doing aerial only.
00:43:51.000Last time it took about 12 days to just simply soften up the air defenses so we can run some stealth bombers through and take out the nuclear facilities.
00:43:59.000This is going to be probably a more complex project, although Iran was pretty degraded.
00:44:04.000It's also low on resources, low on money, low on oil, low on energy, low on food.
00:44:09.000So it may crack sooner, or the Mullahs may at some point, though it's not been their tendency, say, we've had enough.
00:44:37.000John, so yeah, this does seem to be a regime change operation.
00:44:41.000I don't think there's any way around it.
00:44:44.000Have you heard any rumors or reporting that, I mean, we saw JD Vance basically allude to the fact earlier this last week that they were developing, there was indication that they were developing nuclear capabilities again, that that would become underway.
00:45:00.000Is there any indication from you, like of a dirty bomb or some other piece of intel that maybe hasn't been made public yet that could have increased the urgency to strike?
00:45:11.000Yeah, I think there's a couple things that we do know for sure.
00:45:13.000We do know from, and I have confirmed this with my own resources, that Iran was pressing China for some hypersonic missiles to get them shipped in the next few weeks so that they would have the ability to take out our ship fleet.
00:45:26.000Those hypersonics are so fast they can evade even American defenses sometimes.
00:45:30.000And that's something that China's been very good at.
00:45:33.000Those conversations, which U.S. intelligence intercepted and monitored, was a primary reason.
00:45:39.000You got a lot of big assets in the water there, and you don't want a hypersonic to create a loss of life or a loss of capability for the United States.
00:45:48.000The second reason is there is some indication they're rebuilding.
00:45:52.000They're trying to get to some of the uranium that's buried beneath the rubble that we created last summer.
00:45:58.000That could lead to a dirty bomb, though, quite frankly, it'd be easier for them to create a dirty bomb by just getting some medical waste in Europe somewhere than trying to extract it from the ground.
00:46:07.000But we do see some early signs that Iran was trying to reconstitute some elements of their uranium enrichment and weaponization program.
00:47:05.000Minutes till our rav uh join, but here, here's my sort of psychological you know, I I have no other proof other than i've watched the president closely for a decade here.
00:47:16.000But yeah, you know the attempted assassinations on his life which have been confirmed.
00:47:22.000There are potential sleeper sills cells in the United States.
00:47:26.000He's also, I think, convinced that Iran has tried to meddle in the elections.
00:47:30.000If you, if you combine these things with just the open threats that Iran has made throughout the years, if you combine these things with you know the fact that they have killed Americans, that they are a state sponsor of terror.
00:47:41.000He's shown throughout the years, whether it was the taking out Solemani, the Ford Oh Strikes, that he's shown an increased willingness to strike Iran.
00:47:51.000It seems to be where he believes there is a important uh, you know, I would say mandate for the American people.
00:47:59.000Uh, especially in that, in that country.
00:48:06.000He said i'd give you a chance, give you a chance, give me a chance to negotiate at some point.
00:48:10.000Not serious, we're just finishing this.
00:48:11.00047 years, a menace society, Iran has been all across the western world, even on our own soil, I think Donald Trump just reached the fill-up point.
00:48:19.000We're done, and uh, he's going to make the capability for the Iranian people to be able to overthrow their government if they so choose.
00:48:28.000Yeah so, and this is seven hours ago on TRUE Social president Trump posted, Iran tried to interfere in the 2020 2024 elections to stop Trump and now faces renewed war with the United States.
00:48:43.000John Solomon uh, so he retruthed uh, retruth that so uh for, for our rav audience, john and Jaggo, to first to John and then to Jack uh, just again, let's recap where we're at right now.
00:48:58.000It john, you, you confirmed just a minute ago with us.
00:49:01.000This appears to be a regime change military operation in Iran.
00:49:07.000Yeah, and again, the idea is that we're not going to uh change the regime.
00:49:11.000We're going to make it possible for the Iranian people, if they so choose, to do that.
00:49:15.000It's not our goal to go in and get the Mullahs out, but we will soften up the ground, we will soften up the military capabilities.
00:49:21.000We will inflict significant damage until the Iranian government, the Iranian forces, can't attack its own people strong enough, and that gives a chance for the Iranian people to decide if they want to, on their own, throw out the Mullahs.
00:50:08.000U.s is looking at, you know infrastructure, military sites, naval sites, uh radar defense missile sites Israel, Israel is going after the head of the snake operations, going for top officials, maybe the Ayatollah Himself.
00:50:29.000U.S. intelligence does not have confirmation one way or the other.
00:50:33.000There are some reports the U.S. have received that some top Republican Guard commanders were killed at these military sites, possibly a defense official.
00:50:42.000No word yet on Khomeini, though it is clear that Israel picked Khomeini's many known locations during the strike.
00:50:48.000So Israel, clearly, their weapons were clearly targeted at the Supreme Leader.
00:50:52.000Whether they hit him or not, I don't know.
00:50:54.000There was a very important event that occurred on Monday.
00:50:58.000But the resistance group, MEK, which is one of the possible successor governments here, they launched an attack on Khomeini's palace and they got to inflict substantial damage.
00:51:09.000And that was very eye-opening to the U.S. government, U.S. intelligence, because Iranian forces weren't able to protect that facility.
00:51:16.000And it was pretty clear that Khomeini must not have been there, right?
00:51:21.000So that gave us some inclination that Khomeini had left one of his known refuges and then moved somewhere else in the country, much like he did before the nuclear strikes of the 12-day war last summer.
00:51:31.000But the second part of that was they realized that Iranian forces are depleted, that they couldn't even resist a ragtag team of resistance fighters who aren't nearly as well armed as the IRGC.
00:51:43.000And it was a sign that the world is caving in on the mullahs, that their military capabilities are diminishing.
00:51:48.000And I think that just added to the paradigm of intelligence that they evaluated before they launched this morning strikes.
00:52:07.000Well, look, John is absolutely correct.
00:52:10.000You know, we're not going to be sure just yet whether or not leadership was taken out in terms of the regime leadership, the Ayatollah.
00:52:18.000I mean, look, when two aircraft carriers are sent over like that, when you see that much American air power, naval power, naval combat power brought to bear in the Gulf, it doesn't surprise me at all, or wouldn't surprise me at all if the IRGC moved him to a hardened site, one of Iran's extensive underground bunker systems.
00:52:37.000And, you know, so it really becomes that spy versus spy kind of question of whether or not they knew where he was, when they went to take him out, whether or not he was using decoys, all this sorts of things.
00:52:48.000So, you know, really just holding our fire when it comes to that, keeping our powder dry.
00:53:15.000But, you know, big questions for the protesters, of course, because they faced severe crackdowns when they came out a couple of weeks ago from the IRGC, from members of the regime.
00:53:26.000And so that's going to be this real scenario of, you know, are we going to get another, are we going to get a 1979 in reverse or are we going to get a Tiananmen square?
00:53:51.000And as Charlie himself always said, that you take out the Ayatollah, you have no idea what is going to come next.
00:53:59.000You could have these resistance groups launch, as John was saying, you know, there are some who have militias as well.
00:54:06.000You could see a civil war scenario break out and a total regime collapse that turns into a quagmire.
00:54:12.000And then, of course, for U.S. forces in the region, look, you know, that's why they pulled out of Bahrain.
00:54:17.000That's why they pulled out of other areas because they know Iran has many ways to take this worldwide.
00:54:24.000And certainly, by the way, certainly, if the regime does feel that they are in survival mode, and there's no question in my mind that it seems like Israel, and you heard from the president, are directly targeting the regime.
00:54:34.000If they go into full survival mode, they are going to pull out the stops.
00:54:38.000Anything they can do, whether you're talking sleeper cells within the United States, within Europe, whether you're talking straight to Hormuz, everything is going to be on the table.
00:54:46.000Jack, the ripple effect of this, what does this mean for countries like China, who got like 5% of their oil from Venezuela?
00:54:54.000They get a majority of their oil from, I think it's like 20% of their oil from Iran.
00:55:01.000What does this mean for other countries that are directly involved with the Iranian regime?
00:55:05.000Well, I mean, in the near term, you know, it's hard to say, right?
00:55:08.000It all sort of depends on how this shakes out.
00:55:10.000Clearly, if this goes on for several days, you're going to see an oil shock.
00:55:14.000Probably Monday, you're going to see that with an oil spike.
00:55:18.000If there is, and keep in mind, with that straight of Hormuz, the IRGC doesn't even need to actually mine it.
00:55:23.000They could have a couple of freighters go out there and just drop empty barrels in the water, but if that's enough to look like mines, there's nobody that's going to be sending these massive oil tankers that are filled with $100 million worth of their supply to go through there.
00:55:40.000They're not going to take that chance if they think Iran has actually put mines in the water, whether they're real mines or not.
00:55:46.000There's, of course, a joke in the joke in the United States Navy that every ship can be a minesweeper once.
00:55:51.000So, you know, it depends to see who's going to go first.
00:55:54.000Do you send some barge or some kind of drone thing up there?
00:55:56.000But that being said, that's going to lead to those oil shocks.
00:56:01.000If there is a, you know, a regime change scenario, like take Venezuela, for example, where the United States was able to find a more reliable partner after Maduro, one who is willing to send oil to the United States as well as continue those shipments to China, but then under U.S. auspices, that could be another scenario that plays out.
00:56:21.000However, I would caution against that because the Iranian regime is not, it's not the same as the Venezuelan regime.
00:56:28.000It's a regime where you have the Ayatollah on the religious side, you have mullahs on the religious side, but then you also have, it's very split, it's very mixed in terms of its government.
00:56:37.000You also have the IRGC, you have the civilian government.
00:56:40.000So again, any one of those is going to play a role in any regime collapse that comes out.
00:56:46.000Also, real questions as to whether or not Russia gets involved here.
00:56:51.000Although my assessment would be that because Russia is so bogged down in Ukraine right now, also we didn't see Russia get involved when Assad looked like he was on his last legs up there in Syria about a year ago.
00:57:02.000I would be very surprised if Russia gets involved here.
00:57:05.000I wouldn't rule it out, but I would assess that seeing Russian involvement, the likelihood at this point is low.
00:57:12.000So just as a recap here, Iran's defense minister Amir Naza Zadeh and Revolutionary Guard Commander Mohammed Pakpur are reportedly have been killed in Israeli strikes.
00:57:26.000Again, we don't know about the Ayatollah himself, but that's something.
00:57:30.000UKPM Kirstarmer has said that their forces are active and British planes are in the sky today as part of the coordinated regional defense operation.
00:57:41.000And as you said, Jack, Iran has moved to close the Strait of Hormuz with ships reportedly receiving VHS, a VHF transmission from Iran's Revolutionary Guard warning no ship is allowed to pass the Strait of Hormuz.
00:57:55.000Let's go ahead and just for the sake of Charlie's voice getting in here, because everybody's invoking what Charlie had said.
00:58:04.000And I think that can be a little frustrating when you're on this side of it.
00:58:08.000And Jack and Mikey, Blake, you can all attest because we were involved behind the scenes with Charlie, understood the way he was strategically thinking about things.
00:58:16.000Some of the presentations of his voice on social media are one-sided.
00:59:21.000But we have he weighed in on Iran many times because we've had many Iran things.
00:59:27.000And so, as we've discussed, one of the struggles with this conflict is I think it's going to catch it's it catches some people off guard that it's happening at all if they're not big news followers and they haven't fully sold yet why this is necessary why this is essential why this is for America's core interests I think they still can and if it's a big success it will be easier but they have to make that case and Charlie commented on that let's play clip 250.
00:59:55.000I'm by no means a military expert, but here's, my rule when it comes to all military things is, if you, as an American citizen, can't understand it, then they have not a good done a good enough job explaining it, because that stuff's actually not as complicated.
01:00:07.000Would you agree Blake like, oh you know, this is just for military minds.
01:00:15.000Yeah well, and and we started off the show before we joined Rav, and it's worth reiterating here for the real America's Voice audience, by the way, we have Alex Marlow joining us in just a moment.
01:00:25.000A few other guests lined up throughout the hour.
01:00:40.000Okay, but on the this all, this morning I was making phone calls, I was reaching out to people.
01:00:46.000There is legitimate concern within certain circles of DC that John Solomon confirmed this that maybe it was a dirty bomb, maybe they were reaching out to the CCP for hypersonic missiles, but there was an urgent move.
01:01:02.000I think Iran knew that the time was running out and if we find that out on the back end and they do use that to sell this and the urgency of this strike, I do think that would be helpful and they should make that point if they can confirm it.
01:01:20.000I I do think there's reticence in making those points ahead of time because of what happened with the weapons of mass destruction debacle in Iraq, where we were sold a war based on the fact that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.
01:02:34.000But he also would have understood the fact that President Trump is stuck between a series of very difficult decisions and that this is why we work so hard to get him elected is to make these types of difficult decisions.
01:02:51.000No, I don't think you're misstating it at all.
01:02:53.000And look, we all know that Charlie gave his all to prevent a ground invasion of Iran last year, that he's on record for doing this.
01:03:06.000He traveled to the White House, went to speak to the president in the Oval Office about this, and said, we do not want to see boots on the ground.
01:03:13.000We don't want to see a ground invasion.
01:03:14.000Gen Z, who, and everybody knows Charlie spent four hours a day going on campus talking to Gen Z. That's how he knows exactly what Gen Z thinks about this, that Gen Z support would totally collapse for the coalition in terms of a ground invasion and pushing for a full-on regime change war where it was unilateral from the United States.
01:03:37.000We don't know exactly what Charlie would have said in this scenario where you're seeing air, you're seeing Navy, but you're not seeing that boots on the ground piece where President Trump is calling for the Iranian people to be the ones that are the forcing function to push out the regime.
01:03:53.000We also know that Charlie was very forceful when he talked about the idea of endless war, prolonged war, forever war, and just the idea in general that anyone can come up here and tell you that you know what's going to come after the Ayatollah collapsing, that the Ayatollah is going to leave and suddenly, you know, it's all going to be horseshoes and rainbows.
01:04:12.000You could see a regime change or excuse me, a regime collapse scenario.
01:04:25.000So the sense that this is going to lead to some kind of immediate, you know, immediate victory for the Iranian people is actually a much, unfortunately, for, you know, I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I'm just saying that given the track record in this region, we should be very, very wary of anyone telling us that everything is going to be perfect in the wake of this.
01:04:49.000And I think that Charlie understood that and also understood where Gen Z was coming from in terms of their wariness because they don't want to see more war.
01:05:07.000And Charlie always did his best to be that voice to the administration and to the world so that folks would be able to understand that scenario.
01:06:03.000And so when it comes to, you know, terrorist groups like even the Houthis, right, that are attacking American ships, what if they got their hands on nuclear weapons because of Iran or a dirty bomb because of Iran or hypersonic missiles because of Iran?
01:06:16.000You know, that all kind of trickles down.
01:06:19.000But, I mean, as a Gen Zer, I don't, like, a lot of us just don't care.
01:06:26.000Why do we want to be involved in this?
01:06:28.000It is worth remembering the divide because when you think even this even predates me, of course, and I'm kind of old, that Iran was basically public enemy number one in the 1980s.
01:06:43.000Well, but even Russia didn't do things.
01:06:46.000Iran literally took American hostages, over 100 of them, for over a year.
01:06:52.000And young people won't understand what it was like that every night on television, the evening news, which was a thing people watched then, it would come on and they would say, it has been 228 days that Americans have been held hostage in Iran every single day.
01:07:09.000Carter was thrown out of office over this.
01:07:28.000So if you lived through that, it's very relatable to see Iran as this very severe, permanent United States enemy.
01:07:36.000And I think that psychologically shaped a lot of people.
01:07:38.000But as you say, if you're Gen Z, you've mostly lived through the era of just Iran is perpetually a country we might go to war with.
01:07:46.000But you don't have that shock memory of that time Iran actually did a hugely, you know, a hugely harmful thing to a large number of Americans.
01:08:38.000But as we await for confirmation of the fate of the Ayatollah himself, Khomeini, you know, I'm getting one more little sort of unconfirmed report.
01:08:48.000Again, unconfirmed, unconfirmed, unconfirmed, that Supreme Leader is out.
01:09:08.000Very, very interesting that I'm getting.
01:09:10.000Since we're waiting on Alex Marlow, we have a very good clip featuring him where he was speaking with Charlie about this conflict.
01:09:18.000And it's a good statement of Charlie's attitude, which I know a lot of people are interested how he would respond to this, which was that he has his personal biases, his personal beliefs, but he has also, as an American citizen, a tendency to place trust in President Trump, which is why he supported him.
01:09:38.000I think that we need to also differentiate for everyone keeping score online where they say, oh, my goodness, Donald Trump started a new war.
01:09:46.000It is very conceivable that if he bombs those two cities, that is not a new war.
01:09:49.000Now, Iran could retaliate, and then what happens after that, but I trust President Trump 100% in this moment.
01:10:03.000So that's the hope I think we're all having is that we lived through the Bush administration, for example, which had a very open-ended approach to wars.
01:10:13.000Go into Afghanistan, drop thousands of troops there.
01:10:29.000We do have confidence that President Trump will have a clearer sense of what does he hope to get out of this?
01:10:35.000What are the limits of how far he will go on this?
01:10:39.000And he's repeatedly demonstrated ability on that front.
01:10:43.000And so we are hopeful, we are prayerful that this will be another case of that, even though this is a bigger intervention than we've seen in the past.
01:10:52.000Sorry, I'm just trying to – A lot is going on, folks.
01:10:55.000Yeah, a lot of information incoming here.
01:10:57.000And it looks like we're going to have, let's see, Rich Barrett is going to join us.
01:11:04.000We're going to talk about the political side of this with him connecting via phone in just a few minutes.
01:11:11.000We also have Mike Davis coming on, talking about the legality of it.
01:11:16.000We also have Alex Marlowe, editor-in-chief of Breitbart, joining any moment now.
01:11:21.000So, you know, let's just, we want all voices here.
01:11:25.000We don't want to drown out the folks that don't want this.
01:11:30.000We don't want to hype it up as if it's a good thing.
01:11:32.000The truth is, we just simply don't know.
01:11:35.000One thing we do know is that Charlie worked his butt off to get President Trump elected because he trusted him to handle these types of decisions.
01:11:43.000Whether or not Charlie was in favor of such operations, that's very clear.
01:13:41.000Alex Marlow, welcome to our special Saturday stream here, reacting to American strikes against Iran as well as with Israeli forces as well.
01:13:51.000I think there's multiple ways you can analyze what's going on here, Alex.
01:13:56.000One is from a purely political stance.
01:15:25.000They never back off an inch, even though they're very, very weak right now.
01:15:29.000So that seems like where it comes from politically is I don't even know if he nails it, if he picks up any support.
01:15:35.000But his perspective, from what I'm able to glean from my conversations with him, is that people tend to be very negative when things happen initially.
01:15:44.000And then if they're successful, they all of a sudden get on board.
01:15:47.000It's kind of like people remembering they were at Woodstock when they weren't, that sort of thing.
01:15:50.000So he thinks that a lot of people didn't like, for example, the Maduro raid.
01:15:54.000And then now everyone kind of likes it.
01:15:56.000And so he has that data point in his head.
01:15:59.000And he thinks there's a lot of unfinished business with Iran.
01:16:02.000And he thinks they've been incredibly weak since Solomani's killing in the first administration.
01:16:09.000And I feel like this is one where the early evidence suggests it has been an early success for President Trump.
01:16:17.000But the key thing here, he was crucial about emphasizing this point.
01:16:22.000He is not going to tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon.
01:16:25.000And nothing in their rhetoric, and we follow Iranian state media very closely, Bright Britt News, nothing in their rhetoric backed off of that at all.
01:16:32.000He was 100% no hold barred, full steam ahead from the Iranian regime, even after the devastating attacks of a couple of months ago, where their nuclear program was pretty much wiped out.
01:16:44.000Their air defenses, as you can tell from today, basically non-existent.
01:16:48.000They are incredibly weak, and they are not backing down at all.
01:16:51.000So if the Ayatollahs wanted to stay in power, they needed to commit flat out, we will not have nukes.
01:16:56.000And they didn't come remotely close to that.
01:16:59.000And clearly, nothing changed in the last 48 hours of negotiations.
01:17:03.000Yeah, and by the way, people need to understand this.
01:17:06.000President Trump has been remarkably consistent on one thing with Iran.
01:17:10.000They cannot have nuclear capabilities.
01:17:13.000And I said it earlier, Alex, and I think it's worth stating again.
01:17:18.000There seems to be, listen, I would put this in the unconfirmed category, but there seems to be a serious concern on the part of a lot of people that are as ardently anti-war as we are, and as Charlie was within the leadership of our own government, ardently anti-war, that the urgency to commit to this strike at this moment escalated quickly.
01:17:47.000And I don't know if that was a dirty bomb or as John Solomon said before you joined that there was concern of hypersonic missiles.
01:18:08.000And I think Iran understood that their time was ticking and they were trying to make pretty serious moves to, you know, as a deterrent, or maybe they were serious about using it against us.
01:18:23.000So I have no information on that, but I will tell you from my time with the president, and you could see the steady buildup around Iran of American military personnel and our fleet.
01:18:35.000It felt like this was going to happen unless Iran said, as Trump put it, the magic words, we're not going to have a nuclear weapon.
01:18:43.000I think he probably some other desires as well.
01:18:46.000But it was interesting because I was going to follow up with him when I was talking about this.
01:18:50.000I was going to ask him, well, what about making sure they release all these political prisoners?
01:20:01.000I think we, I was going to say, you brought up, Alex, the political angle of this.
01:20:06.000We have Rich Barris, but I didn't want to cut you off.
01:20:09.000Let's jump to Barris in a sec, but I want to address something because a lot of people inevitably, a lot of people cared about what Charlie thought about these things.
01:21:01.000That said, he also always did have trust with the president and he would look for the bright side of things.
01:21:07.000And he was an American patriot, so he would pray for our success once that began.
01:21:13.000And I just want to say that to offer perspective on how I think he would have felt about this.
01:21:19.000And that's not to use Charlie as a shield.
01:21:22.000That is not to use, say, everything just revolves around him because he's not with us anymore.
01:21:27.000But I know people, all of us are feeling the lack of Charlie in a moment like this because he was a natural leader of the movement.
01:21:35.000Well, I think that's also like as soon as all this broke out, you saw that social media immediately went to go find Charlie because he still is, even in death, like the leading voice on a matter like this.
01:21:49.000No, I was just going to say, and it makes me upset, though, because for these people that didn't actually know Charlie, like you said, in private, he would be not happy with this situation.
01:22:08.000And so it's really irritating for me to see so many people on social media have the opposite reaction, to use his voice to actually cause chaos, to actually cause fear of the situation, to actually cause hatred of President Trump in this whole ordeal when actually that's not what he would want.
01:22:25.000Well, and one of the Charlie, Charlie resisted ideological fervor or these like the drums of war.
01:22:32.000He was really good about that because he hated war.
01:23:18.000Look, I mean, well, first of all, we're a little bit in ahistorical waters.
01:23:23.000Like, we're in uncharted waters because we've never had something to compare this to, right?
01:23:28.000You had a president, and I hear what other people are saying about, you know, he was consistent that Iran could never have a nuclear bomb.
01:23:35.000Listen, Americans do not follow the minutiae of policy like this.
01:23:39.000Donald Trump was the anti-war president.
01:23:41.000He rose to prominence and took out two massive political dynasties, largely on the no new wars promise.
01:23:49.000That is what every average American voter will tell you.
01:23:52.000They're not going to tell you about some like, you know, comment he made on a campaign stop somewhere about Iran not getting a nuclear weapon.
01:24:00.000And this was, and the administration knows this was, a deeply, deeply unpopular action.
01:24:05.000The last one that we handed to them before we got out of the field was 70% opposed.
01:24:10.000That includes a majority of Republicans.
01:24:13.000So like, I would love to gauge out and say this will cost this much.
01:24:18.000But the truth is, we've never been here before.
01:24:20.000Presidents have sold military actions to the public.
01:24:24.000They've done their best to drum up support for it before they did, you know, took any action, but they did not do this.
01:24:32.000So there's no, look, my knee-jerk reaction, guys, and I'm not saying this to be negative or positive.
01:24:41.000Is that there's really, there's no upside here.
01:24:43.000I know, I heard what was said before, too, about the administration and their mindset, because obviously I was talking to people myself in the last couple of weeks about this.
01:24:52.000You know, that Maduro wasn't popular, then they snatched him and he got more popular.
01:25:05.000There's more of a symbol to a regime change war in the Middle East when it comes to Donald Trump.
01:25:11.000Like that specifically was his shtick.
01:25:14.000And if you, you know, I just feel like that's a bit of a generational disconnect.
01:25:19.000If you're still thinking that, you know, there's a rally around the flag effect in this country and, you know, a positive outcome is going to elicit more support, you're kind of missing, you're missing the plot.
01:25:30.000You know, the plot is that everybody who's under age 55, 50 years old in this country feels that no matter who they vote for, all they get is more focus on the Middle East and more wars and a government that doesn't pay any attention to them and their needs.
01:25:45.000So the out, you know, the opposition to this conflict was less about the specifics of it or whether, you know, we're doing good or we're doing bad.
01:25:58.000And I don't know how you get around that.
01:26:00.000I mean, even a successful mission, which I don't know what successful mission is.
01:26:04.000I mean, regime change is never an overnight thing.
01:26:08.000There are always unintended consequences and bad political headlines that plague you, you know, time and time again.
01:26:14.000Even if there was, though, quote, a success, it doesn't negate why they, you know, it doesn't negate the fact that voters oppose this and they opposed it for a reason.
01:26:41.000Well, I mean, I've heard Rich in general, you know, his stuff.
01:26:44.000I've had to source call just some, you know, and really, you know, look, there are real questions, I think, as to what, as to how long this plays out.
01:26:56.000And I think the longer it goes, the more political ramifications are.
01:27:04.000And if President Trump does indeed mean to see this all the way through to full regime change, that could be longer.
01:27:12.000That could be a lot longer than one weekend.
01:27:14.000It's certainly going to be longer than one round of strikes.
01:27:17.000But we could be looking potentially at weeks of operations within Iran.
01:27:23.000Yeah, I mean, I think this, you know, sort of one of these things that we pray it's a days, not weeks situation, but it certainly could be more drawn out.
01:27:32.000And we have to be honest about the fact that Iran is a much bigger country, a stronger country.
01:28:25.000And I don't think that he feels as though whatever is going to fill the void is going to be as threatening to the Western way of life as the Aitollas are.
01:28:33.000And so I don't think he's got a lot of confidence in reinstalling the Shah.
01:28:35.000I don't think that's going to be a popular thing.
01:28:37.000But I think the litmus test will be, are there boots on the ground?
01:28:41.000I think once American boots are actually on the ground and this is no longer an aerial campaign, I think that's when you're going to start losing a lot of people.
01:28:48.000I think a lot of people are going to tolerate this from a political standpoint.
01:28:52.000Again, I don't know who he's going to be adding politically on this, but if he's able to take out some bad guys, neutralize some threats, do it from the air in just the spirit of going in, kicking ass, and getting out the way he's done in the past.
01:29:06.000But if there's boots on the ground and the regime change becomes America doing it hands-on, I think that is going to be very, very deeply unpopular.
01:29:14.000And I do think that's the sort of thing that Charlie certainly didn't like.
01:29:21.000Rich, you have done analysis on, you know, kind of the polling of the president.
01:29:27.000And listen, there's other considerations besides polling that in a moment like this, you have to take into account.
01:29:33.000But you, you're, I remember that graph you came out with, Rich, that it was basically Iran and Epstein, and the president still hasn't recovered.
01:29:52.000And I mean, I don't have a problem saying this out loud.
01:29:54.000This is something I, you know, I warned them about.
01:29:56.000You had a great moment during the State of the Union.
01:29:59.000This is something we can really build on.
01:30:01.000Let's take this momentum now and show the American people that we've refocused on their needs.
01:30:08.000And, you know, I mean, guys, this is something I said yesterday, too, because, you know, no one's going to remember a great moment during the State of the Union when something like this happens.
01:30:17.000It completely drowns out all of the positive that you refocused and built on.
01:30:23.000That's just the way American voters work.
01:30:26.000And let me just put it like this: look, if you feel we just won an election in 24, guys, you know, with the president was being persecuted.
01:30:35.000Joe Biden rounded up more political prisoners than Vladimir Putin.
01:30:42.000They want to dismantle our entire system.
01:30:44.000And we ran on this concept that, you know, Democrats were an existential threat to this country.
01:30:49.000What their ideology stands for, the political violence behind it, they are the threat to average Americans.
01:30:56.000They're the threat to the unfairness in the economy.
01:30:59.000And if you know taking an action like this has basically no upside and will just do nothing but shave, it doesn't matter if it's 2%, 10%, it weakens the coalition.
01:31:10.000And if you believe both things are true, then this was not wise.
01:31:15.000You know, the primary objective must be to preserve the integrity of the coalition, because if Democrats take this government back over in November, the presidency is effectively over.
01:31:26.000You know, we're going to, why would, why would anybody, and I don't use this term lightly, why would you waste the first two years of your peak presidency when the president has the most opportunity to get real change done?
01:31:40.000Why would you waste both years now on other people's problems instead of showing the American people that you cared about their problem and what their problems and what you were elected to do as your primary focus?
01:31:52.000Weakening this coalition, which could have been a 30-year governing coalition like the Roosevelt coalition, is an unbelievable thing as a political guy to watch.
01:32:07.000Yeah, I got a cup half full of reaction to something that Rich said, which is that I think Trump is aware of this stuff.
01:32:12.000I think he understands that if he blows the midterms, we're doing impeachments, we're doing non-stop investigations, we're doing non-stop lawfier, his presidency is ruined.
01:32:20.000So it shows you he's got a very high degree of confidence that there's not going to be a ground war and that he is, this is going to age well.
01:32:26.000And this is going to be, we took out a terrorist regime that is funding terror all around the world from getting nuclear weapons.
01:32:32.000And that will be the post-it note talking point.
01:32:35.000I have no evidence that that's going to be how it's going to turn out.
01:32:42.000But I feel like that's clearly what he was thinking when he made this move.
01:32:45.000And so, hopefully, the information he's got, which is that they were just so weak, so vulnerable, particularly from our very capable air forces, to go in and do some real damage quickly.
01:32:55.000So, hopefully, that's all this is, and this is not a pro-long regime change thing.
01:33:25.000It's basically saying, you know, nobody's sufficiently explained how this benefits American citizens and on it goes.
01:33:32.000He says, and he brings up a, I think, a very good point, but I want to address it.
01:33:38.000We hear about the dangers of a nuclear Iran, but that's odd because we were told that Iran's nuclear capabilities had already been set back decades.
01:33:47.000We hear that this war will be over quickly and easily because Iran is powerless, which I hope and pray is the case, and maybe it will be.
01:33:53.000But that's odd too, because if Iran is such a paper tiger, then how are they in danger, a danger to us in the first place?
01:33:59.000It seems hard to argue both that Iran is an existential threat to the United States and that we can topple them in 20 minutes with no casualties or negative downstream effects.
01:34:08.000So I think those are very logical statements by Matt.
01:34:13.000But if some of the rumors that I'm hearing about concerns about either a dirty bomb or hypersonic missiles from China, that they were trying to initiate some sort of connection with the CCP there, even a weak Iranian regime, if properly motivated, if they understand that their time is running out quickly, then they could be extremely dangerous.
01:34:37.000Even if we took out Fordo and some of the other nuclear sites, they could be dangerous extremely quickly and even weakened.
01:34:48.000And you know, a dog backed into a corner could bite you.
01:34:57.000I don't know if that's the same thing.
01:34:58.000Yeah, can I actually, yeah, Andrew, can I address that?
01:35:03.000Because I think Matt is probably summarizing what the consensus is right now.
01:35:09.000I mean, we're already in the field right now.
01:35:11.000We're already talking to voters about this.
01:35:13.000You know, they woke up to this this morning, so we'll take them some time to process.
01:35:18.000But these inconsistencies are very glaring to the point where even normies who aren't focused on politics like we all are 24-7 are constantly saying this in interviews.
01:35:32.000The Fordeaux plant, the other two sites, this was supposed to, you just told us six months ago that we completely decimated their nuclear capability.
01:35:41.000Like, this is not going to be lost on people.
01:35:53.000George Bush, when they lied, but George Herbert Walker Bush, babies at an incubator, you know, he threw, he drove support before he took action.
01:37:10.000They're saying that there's a CIA assessment that was presented to the president that prior to the Iran strikes, the CIA had assessed that even if Ayatollah Khomeini is killed, that he would be replaced by hardline IRGC elements.
01:37:26.000It goes on to say that in the run-up, that is more than likely that the IRGC would take over.
01:37:32.000These assessments were produced over the last two weeks, really asking that question.
01:37:38.000What could happen if a U.S. military operation or U.S. and Israeli operation would trigger regime change in the Islamic Republic?
01:37:45.000Now, obviously, as President Trump has called for, that is the goal of the operation.
01:37:50.000This is the, of course, the IRGC being the elite military force whose purpose is to protect the Shiite Muslim clerical rule in Iran.
01:37:59.000Could not conclude the scenario with any certainty, but most likely that it would be elements of the IRGC that takes over.
01:38:07.000And that, of course, coming out of Reuters, but a report written by the CIA, presumably Director Ratcliffe, who we know is down at Mar-a-Lago right now with the president, as well as Secretary Hegseth and other members of the national security team that are there at this sort of the winter situation room, if you will, there at Mar-a-Lago has presented to the president.
01:39:05.000Axios, Democrats demand war powers vote after the U.S. strikes Iran.
01:39:10.000Mike Davis, explain to us the legality of these strikes and what's the jockeying that's about to take place on Capitol Hill.
01:39:19.000Yeah, under Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war.
01:39:26.000Under Article 2 of the Constitution, the President of the United States as the Commander-in-Chief has the power to repel an imminent attack, to repel invasions of America, of the homeland, to repel attacks on American soldiers, service members, allies, interests.
01:39:48.000Back in 2001, the Congress passed a congressional authorization for the use of military force after 9-11 that permitted the president to go after terrorist attacks.
01:40:08.000Presidents since then have interpreted that broadly.
01:40:13.000Back in 1973, over President Nixon's veto, Congress passed the War Powers Act.
01:40:21.000No president, Democrat or Republican, has ever complied with the War Powers Act of 1973.
01:40:30.000Every president since 1973 has said that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional.
01:40:38.000If the president were to follow the War Powers Act, what would happen is that Congress would have up to 60 days to pass a joint resolution to tell the president that he is authorized to continue to use force.
01:40:54.000If they do not do that during that 60-day period, the president has up to 30 more days, 90 days total to withdraw those military forces.
01:41:04.000So that would basically hamstring the president.
01:41:06.000So you're saying that since the passage of the War Powers Act, 1973, every president has basically defied it.
01:41:44.000We declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor.
01:41:47.000We declared war on Germany in World War I.
01:41:49.000We declared war on Spain before going to seize Puerto Rico.
01:41:54.000And I think you would, ideally, you would want Congress to sign off on an intervention of this magnitude.
01:42:03.000And for that matter, in Iraq, we did sign off on that use of military force before we went in.
01:42:08.000And I don't think we want a country where we just passively accept the idea that any president can start any war of any duration without some sort of check on.
01:42:19.000Yeah, so Mike, reflecting on that, obviously any activity is more legitimate when you have the backing of Congress.
01:42:30.000Explain the difference of those war resolutions, you know, in World War II, for example, World War I, versus what was established in the apparently unconstitutional War Powers Act of 1973.
01:42:42.000Well, we haven't had a declaration of war by Congress since World War II.
01:42:46.000And there are serious implications for Americans' civil liberties when you have a declaration of war.
01:42:53.000The president has more authority to do things within the borders of the United States, including as it relates to American citizens' civil liberties when there's a declaration of war.
01:43:04.000So I think we have to be careful about going down the path of a declaration of war because it actually may have the opposite effect of what many people think, libertarians think in particular.
01:43:15.000It means that our liberties are more at risk.
01:43:19.000With the War Powers Act of 1973, again, passed by Congress, they overrode President Nixon's veto.
01:43:26.000They were trying to curb the president's war-making powers during the Cold War, because again, we haven't had a declaration of war since World War II.
01:43:38.000I would say this about this current bombing of Iran.
01:43:43.000I think the president has inherent power under Article II of the Constitution as commander-in-chief because you just had Iran's supreme leader, I think it was 10 days ago, put out a video saying that he is going to sink American warships.
01:43:58.000That is the president has the power and the duty under Article 2 to make sure that Iran does not sink American warships, and it's hard to sink American warships as Iran's supreme leader if your house is obliterated or you're dead.
01:44:20.000I think this is going to be a really much ink will be spilled, put it that way, over this fight in Washington about what Trump's abilities are in the next coming weeks.
01:44:35.000You know, guys, there's a legal issue which Mike addressed really well, but a lot of this is part of the problem here is that the Democrat Party is run by online activists on the internet.
01:44:45.000And this is a big risk of that: if they want to be included in big boy decisions, then they can't let their online radicals control the whole party because there probably isn't even most of their voter base.
01:44:55.000And if Rich was here, I'd ask him what the polling is on that.
01:44:58.000But it's one of these things where they're so deeply unserious as a party that they pretty much check out.
01:45:03.000And so that's why, of course, we don't want the president breaking the law.
01:45:25.000And how do we know they're not going to leak stuff?
01:45:27.000Remember, we're not that far removed from General Milley basically warning the Chinese if we're going to attack them or saying he would do that.
01:45:36.000So there's so many people who try to undermine this president every turn.
01:45:40.000We don't get to have nice things like everyone working together when we might go to war now.
01:45:50.000So I just got a note from one of my contacts in the military, and he basically said, you know, first, he wants to make this clear: Iran is not Persian, it is Persian, not Arab.
01:46:01.000They are Western friendly, more so than some of the some, I think, in our popular imagination that we think, and of course, he's talking about the actual people of Iran, not necessarily the regime.
01:46:12.000The falling of the mullahs in Iran will give an opportunity for Iran to become Western friendly, more so, and also join former allies in the Middle East to regulate oil away from bad actors and adversaries.
01:46:22.000Obviously, thinking about the CCP, you made this point earlier, Mikey.
01:46:26.000It will greater limit Russia to a regional power, and it will lose, which will lose an ally there.
01:46:33.000It will remove an ally from North Korea.
01:46:36.000It dams up the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative and will cause them to have a further play, pay global prices for energy they can't produce.
01:46:42.000So there are knock-on downstream effects.
01:46:45.000There's also implications for Taiwan and China, potentially.
01:46:50.000So I do think that Trump is thinking strategically from an international standpoint.
01:46:56.000I want to talk to China here, Andrew, if we can, because almost 90% of Iran's oil exports go to China and they get at a cut rate.
01:47:07.000And China is trying to destroy our country with fentanyl.
01:47:10.000And I'm sure that's part of Trump's calculus.
01:47:11.000Again, I'm not trying to justify anything is particularly if this thing becomes a complicated ground war with regime change.
01:47:18.000But I do want to add to the context that if they're giving the Communist Party of China cut rate oil at a steep discount, then that is going to be devastating to China, who is trying to murder Americans with fentanyl as we're having this conversation.
01:47:37.000Yeah, no, I was just going to say, you know, when it comes to China and their reliance on Iranian oil, that also could potentially up the anti-Ford.
01:47:47.000You know, typically we don't see the Chinese get involved in these types of wars.
01:47:51.000We typically see them be more circumspect when it comes to that.
01:47:54.000But at the same time, you certainly could see China getting in and supporting, similar to how they got behind the Taliban very quickly in the fall of Kabul.
01:48:04.000You could really see China get in and back potentially.
01:48:07.000We were just talking about the scenario if the IRGC gets in.
01:48:09.000You could see China come in and backstopping them very quickly because it's all about stability for those oil supplies.
01:48:15.000China is even understanding of the issue with the Strait of Hormuz.
01:48:20.000That's why they've been trying to build as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a pipeline across Pakistan and across Xinjiang.
01:48:27.000That's why the Uyghurs are so important to them in keeping the Uyghurs down because they want a pipeline directly to their Iranian supplies and Iranian oil supplies there in Persia.
01:48:37.000And so this is something that's very, very important for the Chinese.
01:48:41.000They don't have the types of oil supplies that they, you know, that other countries do.
01:48:46.000This is why, of course, they're building pipelines with Russia in Siberia.
01:48:50.000So you really could see as an X factor here, China getting involved, backing the IRGC the same way that they backed the Taliban in Afghanistan because it's just that much more important for them.
01:49:01.000Yeah, I wonder how much Russia can actually backfill what they're about to lose from Iran, assuming this plays out the way it looks, dude.
01:49:08.000And none of that is certain, but I wonder how much Russia could backfill if they lose an Iranian source of oil.
01:49:22.000But you're kind of looking into some of these down knock-on effects, what this could mean for the Indo-Pacific, for example.
01:49:28.000Yeah, I mean, the best, it's like I said earlier, the best argument for this conflict is if this, instead of being yet another Middle East war, is could this be the last Middle East war?
01:49:44.000Or, you know, we've had so many troops, so many assets, so much attention on the Middle East for my entire adult life.
01:49:53.000We had the Gulf War, which turned into, you know, we bombed Iraq several times throughout Clinton's presidency, which then leads into Afghanistan, leads into Iraq, leads into Libya, leads into the ISIS war.
01:50:06.000And now we're back around to Iran where this all started.
01:50:09.000And even before I was born, we had the conflicts with Iran, with the hostages and other standoffs.
01:50:14.000It's been this huge focus of America for a long time.
01:50:17.000And what's driven so much frustration is we've gotten involved repeatedly.
01:50:20.000Thousands of Americans have died and won.
01:50:23.000There never seems to be super clear progress.
01:50:26.000And instead, it just seems to go on forever.
01:50:28.000And there's not clear upside for the United States through all of it.
01:50:32.000And if President Trump is able to overthrow this regime and then say all of the big threats to America are gone, we're expanding the Abraham Accords.
01:50:43.000We'll, you know, we'll stay friendly with all the countries involved.
01:50:45.000But now America is self-sufficient in oil.
01:50:47.000We're an oil exporter, which we never were throughout a lot of these conflicts in the past.
01:50:53.000And now we can take all this focus that we've had on the Middle East and we can focus on America, focus on China, focus on where our core strategic interests are.
01:51:02.000That is the best sell that he can make on this.
01:51:05.000And that's whether you think this war is a great idea or is a disastrous idea.
01:51:42.000And we could be wrong as time goes on, but President Trump time and again has been right on this.
01:51:48.000The 12-day war, everybody thought that this was going to go on forever.
01:51:51.000Venezuela, people thought it was a bad idea.
01:51:55.000And now this is the third time where President Trump could prove us all wrong again.
01:51:59.000However, I just want to say this is a sign to China.
01:52:03.000This is a sign to Russia that when President Trump warns of something, when President Trump says not to do something, and you do the opposite, he's coming in.
01:53:06.000I think he likes that for himself for historical context.
01:53:10.000So he must have obviously thought this was a really legitimate opportunity to take out a terrorist funding regime that's deeply tied to China and could do a lot of good here.
01:53:21.000So I am definitely going to wait it out before I have a full evaluation that I'm not going to light my hair on fire over this yet, particularly if we keep it aerial and we seem to see evidence of high-profile targets getting hit with precision, which it looks like that's what we're seeing initially.
01:53:38.000But as of now, I'll keep cautious optimism.
01:53:41.000The one thing that I want to respond to that's been a discussion is this question of what is his obligation to sell the war.
01:53:48.000And it's unfortunately, I feel like it's sort of a fruitless endeavor or a pointless endeavor for him to try to sell it to people because if he's talking about anything other than affordability right now, he's probably losing.
01:54:01.000And if he's talking about affordability, he's probably losing too.
01:54:03.000So it's one of these things where what is he supposed to say to get people on board?
01:54:09.000I think victory winning is its own ideology.
01:54:12.000And so if he can have success and then say, look at the great success in retrospect, that is, in my opinion, probably his best strategy.
01:54:19.000And I think that's why he can go out and sell this.
01:54:21.000This was noticeably absent from a state of the union.
01:54:24.000He had no Iran talk at all, which I thought was very telling.
01:54:27.000I thought that meant that he must be really knee-deep in the negotiations for it not to come up at all, which was, it was a striking omission, I thought.
01:54:36.000And it made me think something really might happen here unless these guys say they're going to give up nukes.
01:54:43.000And I feel like the salesmanship element is not something that I expect.
01:54:48.000It would be nice to get it, but I think there's just too much risk that a convincing sale could tick off China, which is not Trump's position.
01:54:56.000Remember, Trump never talks about China.
01:54:58.000Even when he's going up against China, he never says anything negative.
01:55:02.000He always says what a great guy Xi Jinping is.
01:55:20.000So victory is, again, its own ideology.
01:55:23.000If this thing holds and is successful and a lot of high-profile targets go down and we don't have boots on the ground and we're not micromanaging a regime change, then we're going to look back on this in a few weeks and we're going to say it was another W.
01:55:35.000But there's so many other scenarios that could present itself between now and then.
01:55:50.000Yeah, so there's been reports from early on regarding a school that was struck.
01:55:59.000And again, just when I see everything on Twitter, when I see things like this, you know, you really have to be careful with all of it because you just don't know what is real, what is a, you know, what is a false report, what's disinformation.
01:56:14.000I'll just say this is what the AP is reporting right now.
01:56:18.000It is saying that according to Iranian state TV, the death toll from a strike that hit a school in southern Iran has risen to 85 people.
01:56:27.000This is also being reported currently in New York Times, BBC, and PR, but those are also being based off of Iranian state reports.
01:56:35.000So, again, I would caution that with a grain of salt as to exactly what's going on there.
01:56:42.000Also seeing reports that this was a facility or this school was near an IRGC facility that's going back and forth.
01:56:48.000But again, I'm just reporting what they're reporting, which is based on Iranian state reports.
01:56:54.000But because this is so much being reported in the media, we're just telling you to keep abreast of it that that's what we're hearing.
01:57:02.000There's also questions as to, and just like I would say, you know, we saw this in Ukraine a lot, where there would be times where a missile or an interceptor or something that was in the path or nearby a certain facility was hit,
01:57:19.000that it may not have been that anyone was intentionally targeting that school, that hospital or something, but given the nature of air combat and missile warfare, that if you get a shootdown, if you get a deflection, if you get a misfire, if you get debris, all of these things, if you're shooting down a drone, for example, that the munitions could still be active.
01:57:41.000And it may be, unfortunately, you know, in many of these cases, that it hits an unintended target.
01:57:48.000And again, just, you know, blanket statement.
01:58:25.000Yeah, I mean, this is why Charlie's stances on these things were so appealing to young people is because we just kind of had a fatigue with it.
01:58:33.000But at the same time, having been under kind of the tutelage of Charlie, I learned oftentimes what was emotionally felt in private isn't always what needs to be said in public.
01:58:45.000Even though I am ultimately against regime change, President Trump has a record, and I'm not going to bet against the record.
01:58:52.000And I also think as a patriot, seeing America take a firm stance against enemies is something that ultimately I think all of us can agree on if it's done in the right way, if there's full transparency, if we understand why it matters to Americans.
01:59:11.000So mine is a half, a glass half full, let's wait and see approach.
01:59:16.000But ultimately, the images coming out of Iran, I really doubt this looks like a war for now.
01:59:44.000And so the irony is that young people here in the U.S. really don't care about foreign policy, but then young people in Iran are cheering President Trump's name and running out of their schools.
02:00:39.000A lot can happen before this day is out, before this weekend is out.
02:00:42.000We might all be back in this studio in a matter of hours if something major happens, if a U.S. ship is hit, if U.S. soldiers are lost, if there's major strikes, will hopefully be a place that you can turn to for honest perspective on this.
02:00:57.000And so looking ahead, we are hoping for the best, but we've been frank.
02:01:02.000The administration must make a strong case for this conflict to the American people at large and to its base.
02:01:53.000They want to hear from the man that they elected.
02:01:55.000That if this is the goal, they want to see a live speech from him from Mar-a-Lago or in the Oval Office, if that's possible, to be able to understand what's going on and what actions are going to be taken.
02:02:09.000Should we take this as a one-day event, a one-off event, or are we going to see more?
02:02:14.000When you've got that many American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, again, each aircraft carrier carries 5,000 American souls on it.
02:02:23.000So that's 10,000 just there sitting off the coast.
02:02:26.000And as these reports come out that Iran may have hypersonics, well, what does a hypersonic missile do?
02:02:49.000And he does, he's generally his best spokesperson and advocate.
02:02:53.000And everyone will pay attention if he does make a formal address because I feel like that'll get through the media filters, which is just completely sick what's going on on a lot of the networks.
02:03:02.000We're just trying to get every single person to not give him any benefit of the doubt, just to try to divide as much as possible.
02:03:12.000We're getting a lot of flooding of Iranian propaganda into American media that will be touted by our press in order to try to harm our war effort.
02:03:22.000It's not a war per se yet, and I hope it doesn't get to that point.
02:03:26.000He obviously had a high degree of confidence that aerial assaults would be effective in taking out some high-value targets.
02:03:32.000And I think creating perhaps a leadership vacuum in a country that's already very weak right now, both militarily and politically.
02:03:38.000And I think we all can acknowledge that it'd be nice if there was something else in there other than the Ayatollahs in leading Iran, which does have a lot of Western elements to it and is big supporters of China, as we've discussed multiple times now.
02:03:50.000So there's a lot of upside here if this works.
02:03:52.000The problem is, is that we all have so much scar tissue from things like this not working out.
02:03:58.000Not from President Trump, but from prior presidents.
02:04:00.000And even those of us who are the biggest Trump supporters imaginable have that in the back of their mind right now.
02:04:05.000So the more information that we can get, the better.
02:04:08.000And I'll just say for now, the president has decided to take action.
02:04:14.000He's shown us for over a decade that he doesn't do endless wars.
02:04:19.000So we have to trust and believe that that is the goal here as well, that this will be a precision strike and that it can be quick and surgical, that we don't have any U.S. casualties.
02:04:29.000That's the hope and that's the prayer.