The Charlie Kirk Show - Regime Change in Iran Livestream

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00:01:09.000 All right, welcome to this special Saturday coverage live stream of the United States military, along with Israel forces, striking Iran.

00:01:20.000 We knew this was a potential.

00:01:23.000 We actually sort of warned about it all week long.

00:01:25.000 We weren't sure when or if even.

00:01:28.000 Last we heard is that the president was not confirmed either way.

00:01:32.000 Well, now we know.

00:01:34.000 He has authorized military strikes in the heart of Iran.

00:01:39.000 We've seen strikes all over, actually, including the Ayatollah's residents.

00:01:44.000 There are reports that he may be dead.

00:01:48.000 He may believe he is.

00:01:50.000 I don't think it's confirmed yet, but he certainly hasn't done any dramatic appearances proving he's alive.

00:01:55.000 Well, and you also have to assume that they have pre-recorded videos of him.

00:01:59.000 So if you see those, stay frosty.

00:02:01.000 As Jack Pesobic always says, always wait for the confirmation.

00:02:05.000 But yes, we are seeing preliminary indications that he could, in fact, be dead, along with other top leaders of the IRGC.

00:02:14.000 And it remains unclear, though.

00:02:16.000 It's the fog of war.

00:02:17.000 So the first casualty of war, as they say, is the truth. 0.94

00:02:21.000 So we have to just say what we know.

00:02:22.000 And this is what we know.

00:02:23.000 The United States and Israel launched coordinated major military strikes on Iran today with U.S. operation named Epic Fury.

00:02:31.000 And 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.

00:02:45.000 Strikes 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.

00:03:04.000 Trump 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. 0.66

00:03:16.000 And said, in fact, he said that this was a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

00:03:22.000 And 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.

00:03:32.000 Iran 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.

00:03:46.000 Iranian 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.

00:03:59.000 Explosions 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.

00:04:11.000 This is not, as far as I'm aware, has been confirmed.

00:04:15.000 That's per Iranian state media, so take it with a grain of salt.

00:04:19.000 But obviously, that's a negative, if true.

00:04:22.000 The conflict marks a massive, massive escalation with ongoing operations expected over several days.

00:04:29.000 UN Security Council emergency meetings called, and global reactions ranging from calls for restraint to fears of broader regional war breaking out.

00:04:36.000 This is nothing new.

00:04:37.000 This happens just about every time.

00:04:40.000 And yeah, we are still waiting for confirmed reports of Iranians' top officials, whether or not they survived or are dead.

00:04:49.000 And howdy, everyone.

00:04:51.000 And that is how it's going to be today.

00:04:53.000 I would say if you're online looking for updates on X or YouTube, be ready for, you know, the fog of war has been replaced by a fog of BS.

00:05:04.000 Nowadays, you have, obviously, a lot of people are propaganda actors, and now we're in the age of AI.

00:05:11.000 So you could see a video, and that video is fake.

00:05:14.000 You could see a lot of, you'll see a lot of reports that this has happened, that a missile has struck this place or that place.

00:05:21.000 You have to be careful.

00:05:23.000 Don't believe everything is true, especially if it's an account you're not familiar with.

00:05:28.000 Hopefully, 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.

00:05:40.000 So we're watching everything, but really, unless the United States government itself is confirming something, be prepared for things to shift rapidly.

00:05:50.000 So 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.

00:06:00.000 He did warn that that might happen.

00:06:03.000 This 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.

00:06:18.000 They went wide on this.

00:06:19.000 Yes, 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. 0.94

00:06:31.000 And we're going to see how effective they are.

00:06:33.000 On the positive side, I will note that our first strikes went at around in the middle of the day.

00:06:40.000 And so, based on that, I would guess Iran does not have a strong ability to defend themselves.

00:06:47.000 And we can hope that they don't have a terribly good ability, strong ability to hit us either.

00:06:51.000 So, the two waves of attack, one from the Israeli side, one from the U.S., the U.S. is going after military installations.

00:06:59.000 They're going after, including like naval yards.

00:07:02.000 They're trying to take out the military and the anti-air capacity of the Iranians. 1.00

00:07:08.000 They look to have been remarkably effective, actually.

00:07:12.000 The Israelis, we're told, are going after the head of the snake.

00:07:16.000 So they're hitting military officials.

00:07:18.000 So it's sort of a divide and conquer.

00:07:20.000 It does appear that this has been a remarkably effective first volley by the United States and Israel forces, the joint operation.

00:07:32.000 Air defenses are holding up in Israel, which is one indication that the missile capabilities of the Iranians have been taken out fairly successfully. 1.00

00:07:43.000 They are obviously still able to shoot missiles out.

00:07:47.000 However, at this point, what we can tell is that the first wave of attacks and strikes by the U.S. have been successful.

00:07:56.000 Let's go ahead and play a clip from POTUS.

00:07:59.000 This was late last night in the wee hours.

00:08:02.000 This is when he made the announcement to the nation that the strike had commenced, 252.

00:08:08.000 A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.

00:08:17.000 Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people. 1.00

00:08:32.000 Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.

00:08:41.000 For 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. 0.99

00:08:57.000 It's been mass terror, and we're not going to put up with it any longer.

00:09:03.000 So, 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.

00:09:22.000 And the president referred to that in his remarks.

00:09:28.000 So there's two different sort of things we need to analyze here.

00:09:32.000 There is the political analysis and the military analysis.

00:09:36.000 From a military standpoint, we pray for all of our troops.

00:09:38.000 We pray for peace.

00:09:39.000 We pray that there would be zero American casualties.

00:09:42.000 Although, as you said, Blake, the president has alluded that that could happen.

00:09:47.000 The missile capabilities, especially, of the Iranians are advanced. 1.00

00:09:53.000 And one of the reasons that Israel throughout the years has wanted to take out Iran, we talk a lot about nuclear. 0.77

00:09:59.000 They were very concerned about their interballistic continental missiles, right?

00:10:06.000 The intercontinental ballistic missiles.

00:10:08.000 That was actually a bigger concern for many in the military of Israel.

00:10:15.000 So there's a military consideration and then there's a political consideration.

00:10:19.000 The political consideration, we have to just be honest that there is a sense that this was not sold to the American public sufficiently.

00:10:30.000 Perhaps there will be an opportunity on the back end of this.

00:10:34.000 If 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.

00:10:47.000 Obviously, 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.

00:11:00.000 So I'm sure they're being very, very cautious with how they're communicating that.

00:11:04.000 However, one thing is very clear.

00:11:06.000 There was a dramatic, urgent concern that there could be weapons that were being developed imminently.

00:11:15.000 And I don't know what that means.

00:11:17.000 We're going to have to wait and find out and hear, but that is one thing that we need to keep our eyes on.

00:11:23.000 And obviously, if you have thoughts, send us messages.

00:11:26.000 We're on Rumble right now.

00:11:28.000 We're live there.

00:11:29.000 If you send us messages, we're happy to read them.

00:11:32.000 We want to get a sense of how the base feels about everything that's unfolding because we're here for you.

00:11:40.000 That's why we're live.

00:11:42.000 So we have a lot of just messages, you know, praying for our nation, praying for our military, many prayer emojis, of course.

00:11:50.000 And we will keep monitoring that.

00:11:54.000 Referencing the nuclear stuff, as you said, the president did directly mention that in his remarks as well.

00:12:02.000 253.

00:12:02.000 Let's play that.

00:12:04.000 It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular, my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon.

00:12:15.000 I'll say it again.

00:12:16.000 They can never have a nuclear weapon.

00:12:20.000 That is why in Operation Midnight Hammer last June, we obliterated the regime's nuclear program at Fordeau, Natance, and Isfahan. 0.75

00:12:32.000 After that attack, we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons.

00:12:39.000 And we sought repeatedly to make a deal.

00:12:43.000 We tried.

00:12:44.000 They've rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions.

00:12:50.000 And we can't take it anymore.

00:12:52.000 Yeah.

00:12:53.000 And I mean, so the other thing I would say here is I'm seeing a lot of people on the internet reference clips from Charlie.

00:13:04.000 And this is something I was very aware of.

00:13:06.000 It's a dynamic I'm sure you were aware of as well, Blake.

00:13:09.000 But, you know, I've been called by multiple members of the press trying to get our reaction.

00:13:15.000 What would Charlie think?

00:13:16.000 What would, you know, here's what I know.

00:13:19.000 Charlie was by instinct and by default against regime change wars.

00:13:25.000 He just was.

00:13:25.000 There's no getting around that.

00:13:28.000 There's no truth other than that.

00:13:30.000 But Charlie was also a realist.

00:13:32.000 I remember on multiple occasions, he told me something along the lines of, listen, the world is a very dark place without American military leadership.

00:13:42.000 Didn't mean he was in favor of foreign adventurism or regime change wars because he wasn't.

00:13:49.000 But he was also a realist.

00:13:51.000 And President Trump had earned his respect.

00:13:54.000 President Trump had earned a big long leash, not an unlimited one, but a very long one to make tough decisions.

00:14:03.000 As Charlie used to say, this is why we elected him, to make tough decisions.

00:14:08.000 Now, I am not saying that I think that this war has been properly sold to the American public.

00:14:13.000 I don't think it has been.

00:14:14.000 But 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.

00:14:36.000 And we always knew that that would be the case.

00:14:37.000 Thinking 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.

00:14:47.000 He did not like escalation.

00:14:49.000 The idea of striking Iran did fill him with some foreboding.

00:14:53.000 I think in the lead up to this war, this is purely a guess on this part.

00:14:57.000 Charlie is not here, unfortunately.

00:14:59.000 I think he would have been lobbying against these strikes, but it is as you say.

00:15:05.000 I 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.

00:15:19.000 Ultimately, we do elect the president to make those life or death calls.

00:15:24.000 And 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.

00:15:39.000 And I think that is the attitude Charlie would have, that the decision has been made.

00:15:44.000 Now, 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.

00:15:52.000 And that is what he would pray for right now.

00:15:54.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:15:55.000 I 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.

00:16:06.000 But ultimately, he said, at this point, you have to trust Trump.

00:16:09.000 And I don't mean the meme.

00:16:11.000 I don't mean the cliche.

00:16:13.000 This is why you elect leaders to make difficult decisions, even when they are politically unpopular.

00:16:18.000 You have to sort of trust that the providence of God is leading us.

00:16:22.000 You 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.

00:16:31.000 Ultimately, we do not have all the facts, and we have to watch.

00:16:35.000 Now, 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.

00:16:45.000 This is the largest buildup of troops that we've seen.

00:16:48.000 So I was always under the impression that something was going to happen.

00:16:54.000 And I will say, from initial indications, this seems to have been very well thought out.

00:17:00.000 We are also finding out that the U.S. is using a new form of one-way drones that have not been used before.

00:17:08.000 So they're using those in the interior of Iran, which they're kamikaze drones. 1.00

00:17:13.000 Apparently, that's not been something that we've used in the past.

00:17:15.000 We're using them now, and they've proven extraordinarily effective.

00:17:19.000 War has changed.

00:17:20.000 War has changed.

00:17:23.000 This was another warning from President Trump to the IRGC to lay down your arms or face death.

00:17:32.000 256.

00:17:33.000 To 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. 0.96

00:17:50.000 So lay down your arms.

00:17:52.000 You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death.

00:17:59.000 Lay down your arms. 0.66

00:18:00.000 All right, so getting reports on this bombing of the school where 50 school children are reportedly.

00:18:10.000 We should explain that one.

00:18:12.000 Yeah, so there's a report.

00:18:13.000 Iran is claiming that an elementary school was struck and that several dozen students are dead.

00:18:20.000 That is their claim.

00:18:22.000 I would, again, as I opened at the top of the show, all claims are subject to revision, and some things will just be made up.

00:18:31.000 Some things will just be lies.

00:18:32.000 I highly doubt our government would intentionally strike an elementary school.

00:18:37.000 So there's a possibility.

00:18:38.000 Didn't happen at all.

00:18:40.000 Accidental strike.

00:18:41.000 Iran might have launched one of their missiles and it didn't go well and it landed inside their own country.

00:18:48.000 All of those things are possibilities.

00:18:50.000 But people are going to run with whatever narrative they want for political reasons in the days to come.

00:18:55.000 Yeah.

00:18:56.000 And listen, I'm seeing a tweet from Cernovich saying the Mullahs did it to blame the U.S.

00:19:00.000 We don't know that either, technically.

00:19:03.000 But we'll find out.

00:19:04.000 I mean, again, the fog of war is completely set in.

00:19:08.000 So do not jump to conclusions here.

00:19:11.000 That's the main thing.

00:19:12.000 But they're trying to, it's clear that if this is an op, they're trying to make Trump look like a child murderer.

00:19:19.000 And this is, you know, very, very early grain of salt time.

00:19:25.000 Huge.

00:19:25.000 Anything from the Iranian state media, by the way, they do this with Hamas.

00:19:30.000 You know, Hamas's state media claims all these casualties.

00:19:33.000 None of this is confirmed, but people parrot it anyways and they quote it as the official number.

00:19:38.000 All right.

00:19:38.000 So, again, two different lines of analysis that we need to consider this entire stream.

00:19:44.000 One is political, one is militarily.

00:19:47.000 From a military standpoint, it looks like Iran sprayed and prayed, hitting U.S. bases even in Saudi Arabia. 0.70

00:19:54.000 Saudi Arabia then responded saying that it will get in the fight with us.

00:19:58.000 So, there is a difference sometimes between Arabs and Muslims.

00:20:01.000 Look at the board of peace that President Trump has put together.

00:20:04.000 It was interesting because a lot of people looked at that board of peace and said, this isn't like the old boards of peace.

00:20:09.000 This isn't like the UN.

00:20:11.000 You get Tony Blair.

00:20:12.000 You've got a couple sort of old mainstays, Western Alliance partners, but a lot of that was Turkish.

00:20:17.000 It was UAE.

00:20:18.000 It was Qatari.

00:20:19.000 It was Saudis. 0.73

00:20:21.000 So that's looking fairly prescient right now as we're involved in this Iranian strike.

00:20:27.000 So interestingly enough, we have a lot of support from that region of the world.

00:20:33.000 And guess what?

00:20:34.000 The Iranians have been a thorn in a lot of the Middle Eastern country sides for a long time. 1.00

00:20:41.000 All right.

00:20:42.000 So 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.

00:20:51.000 As a matter of fact, Iran has been a bully. 1.00

00:20:53.000 It's the number one state sponsor of terror.

00:20:55.000 And it's an irrational actor at times.

00:20:58.000 I'm not saying it's fully irrational, but it has been sowing chaos through the region, killing Americans.

00:21:04.000 The president is right about that, that they have been killing Americans through their proxies in the region for decades. 0.99

00:21:11.000 And, 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.

00:21:20.000 259, this is the Board of Peace that President Trump has put together.

00:21:24.000 Well, it'll be interesting to see who on that board of peace has our back in this moment.

00:21:29.000 And 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.

00:21:40.000 As one U.S. official said after the strike that landed in Saudi, they said that they made a huge mistake.

00:21:46.000 They made a huge mistake doing that.

00:21:48.000 So now Saudi is getting in the fight and striking back. 0.98

00:21:52.000 Yeah, it does seem, again, this is why this is different from past ones.

00:21:58.000 It 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. 0.92

00:22:08.000 We'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.

00:22:14.000 This time, Iran realizes that we are going for the regime. 0.88

00:22:20.000 They are more seriously aiming at everyone.

00:22:24.000 And 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. 0.99

00:22:34.000 I don't think the Saudi public is going to be happy that they're having missiles blow up in Riyadh.

00:22:38.000 The Emiratis are not going to enjoy missiles blowing up in the middle of Dubai.

00:22:42.000 Yeah, well, we just got some images here.

00:22:44.000 This is an Iranian missile struck a five-star Fairmont, the Palm Hotel in Dubai.

00:22:51.000 We'll get these images up.

00:22:52.000 Some 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.

00:23:01.000 Yeah, look at this.

00:23:02.000 It looks like it might be just a piece of debris.

00:23:04.000 Like, it's not a big fire.

00:23:06.000 Well, but nevertheless, this was an Iranian counter-strike that has now hit a five-star hotel in the Middle East.

00:23:17.000 So, 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.

00:23:28.000 Some of them getting shot out of the sky, but not completely.

00:23:30.000 And then the debris falls near civilians.

00:23:33.000 These videos are all over the place.

00:23:35.000 Again, I want to reiterate: the U.S. strikes were taking out the military installations.

00:23:43.000 That seems to be the divide of responsibilities here while the Israelis were taking out personnel.

00:23:48.000 You remember, I'm kind of reminded of those images where Israel struck those apartment complexes, and they didn't hit the seventh floor. 0.64

00:23:57.000 They didn't hit the ninth floor, they hit the eighth floor to kill people.

00:24:02.000 And so we know that they have very precise striking capability when it comes to locating certain personnel and then taking them out.

00:24:11.000 We know that Mossad has infiltrated the Iranian regime at the deepest level.

00:24:17.000 So 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.

00:24:29.000 And if they wanted to take them out, they very well could have.

00:24:32.000 Now, we're still waiting on confirmation on the Ayatollah himself.

00:24:39.000 That's sort of the big domino to fall.

00:24:41.000 And then the question becomes, what happens if that happens?

00:24:44.000 Will the Iran regime fold like a cheap suit? 0.63

00:24:48.000 You get the head of the snake.

00:24:49.000 Does the rest of the apparatus and the regime fall?

00:24:54.000 Is there enough popular goodwill within Iran to overthrow the regime?

00:25:00.000 Will the IRGC continue fighting?

00:25:03.000 Will it attempt to push back and reestablish control?

00:25:09.000 The answer is we'll see.

00:25:11.000 These things take longer than a couple hours, which I know is frustrating in the age of TikToks and such.

00:25:18.000 Everything moves faster, and wars move faster as well, but they still take days, weeks, sometimes months.

00:25:26.000 And we'll see what unfolds here.

00:25:28.000 And by the way, I called a number of, let's just say, D.C. folks, members of Congress, that sort of thing.

00:25:34.000 The hope seems to be, and the early indication seems to be, let's start with the hope.

00:25:39.000 The hope is that this is a quick operation that, let's say, lasts days, not weeks.

00:25:46.000 But it very well could last weeks.

00:25:49.000 And that would be, I think, politically and militarily a bad outcome.

00:25:54.000 But it could.

00:25:55.000 And we need to brace ourselves for that.

00:25:57.000 The hope is that this is a days-long struggle, that we are successful, that the regime falls quickly, if that is the goal.

00:26:07.000 Again, I'm not saying I'm pro-regime change.

00:26:09.000 I'm saying now that we're here, what are the best outcomes?

00:26:13.000 As 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.

00:26:23.000 But we are here now, and this is why you elect a president.

00:26:27.000 This 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.

00:26:38.000 We can debate whether this was the right move to do or not at a later point.

00:26:43.000 Certainly it is politically fraught.

00:26:46.000 But at this point, we have to pray that it is successful and that the best outcomes happen.

00:26:51.000 And so far, we're not sure.

00:26:54.000 But that is the hope in D.C.

00:26:56.000 The hope in D.C. is that this is quick.

00:26:57.000 I will tell you that.

00:26:59.000 Let's look at what some people are saying in the chat.

00:27:03.000 We do want to see what the base thinks about this.

00:27:08.000 These people want all of us dead.

00:27:09.000 They consider us infidels.

00:27:11.000 If you don't understand that, you don't understand the people of Iran.

00:27:15.000 Well, that's interesting because I think part of the optimistic case for this is that the Iranian regime is unpopular.

00:27:21.000 They did have a major uprising a month ago.

00:27:25.000 It has not been, it is certainly not a government that has made its people wealthier or better off.

00:27:30.000 So I think there is a lot of sentiment in favor of toppling them.

00:27:34.000 But it's also true that sometimes the quickest way to bolster support for a crappy government is to have bombs falling on your country.

00:27:42.000 So we will see what unfolds in that dimension.

00:27:50.000 I support the United States from Dylan.

00:27:55.000 Sunshine Kim says, people have jumped to conclusions with everything Trump has done, and he was proven right each time.

00:28:02.000 So that is what we are hoping for.

00:28:04.000 We saw that with the strike last summer.

00:28:07.000 We'll be frank.

00:28:08.000 Charlie was very wary of that.

00:28:09.000 I was very wary of that.

00:28:10.000 I think all of us were.

00:28:12.000 But in the end, the strike was successful.

00:28:15.000 There were no casualties.

00:28:16.000 There was no serious retaliation.

00:28:19.000 So he was able to properly thread the needle to get the U.S. involved without it escalating or extending into something prolonged.

00:28:29.000 And 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.

00:28:38.000 But success justifies itself.

00:28:40.000 If 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.

00:28:52.000 Yeah, I mean, we have to brace ourselves for the fact that there probably are going to be some casualties.

00:28:55.000 Probably hopefully not dead.

00:28:57.000 Casualties, remember, is sort of an all-inclusive expression that could mean injured and dead.

00:29:03.000 Let's hope that we lose no lives.

00:29:06.000 But I think it would be naive to anticipate that we don't have some casualties in some form.

00:29:11.000 So be happy says, dear God, please protect our troops, then get them out of the Middle East. 1.00

00:29:18.000 That was my initial thought.

00:29:19.000 And 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. 0.68

00:29:34.000 You have some terrorist groups in rural areas.

00:29:38.000 You have tinpot types.

00:29:40.000 But this is the last regime that could, you know, is making a serious bid for nuclear materials of any kind.

00:29:47.000 And 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.

00:29:53.000 This could be our last war in the Middle East. 0.53

00:29:56.000 And 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. 0.79

00:30:07.000 Yep.

00:30:07.000 And we're done with the Middle East other than, you know, we have a few allies there.

00:30:12.000 We're buds with them.

00:30:13.000 They're our strategic friends.

00:30:14.000 And if he can say, I use the Abraham Accords to make it so everyone's no longer at war with Israel.

00:30:19.000 And I use this to make it so Iran is settled business after 45 years of their nonsense. 1.00

00:30:24.000 It's done.

00:30:26.000 We're disengaging.

00:30:27.000 I think that is a winning message if he's able to sell that message.

00:30:30.000 Yeah, so yeah, come on in.

00:30:33.000 So here we got, this is the Board of Peace, by the way.

00:30:37.000 This is the executive board, which is focused on diplomacy and investment.

00:30:42.000 This 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.

00:30:53.000 All right, so here's the countries.

00:30:55.000 U.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.

00:31:14.000 So 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.

00:31:30.000 You sort of see maybe President Trump was lining up the political, the diplomatic backing to finally sort of excommunicate this evil from the region.

00:31:43.000 And 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. 0.88

00:31:56.000 We're not saying that about the people, but you do see that this board of peace could assume a larger consequence given the situation.

00:32:02.000 Hey, Mikey, welcome.

00:32:03.000 Mikey just drove in, wanted to join in.

00:32:05.000 How's it going?

00:32:07.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:32:08.000 I mean, I was watching the stream.

00:32:10.000 I think you guys are doing a great job.

00:32:11.000 But I agree with you, Andrew, that I do take a stance against regime change.

00:32:18.000 But 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.

00:32:30.000 And this isn't the first time we've even heard claims that Khamenei is dead.

00:32:35.000 And so anything from Khamene is dead to Republicans are going to lose the Senate because of this.

00:32:41.000 All of that is kind of all over the place.

00:32:43.000 And I think we need to wait a little bit.

00:32:46.000 However, I will just add time and again, I've bet against the president when it comes to foreign entanglements like this.

00:32:55.000 And time and again, I've been proven wrong.

00:32:58.000 I even remember with Venezuela, I was texting Josh and a few other people.

00:33:02.000 I was like, this is blah, And then in the coming days, I was like, wow, that was a crazy operation that we ran.

00:33:09.000 And 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.

00:33:23.000 And it's not that we, you know, don't want to be involved in any foreign issue.

00:33:29.000 It's just that we kind of have a little bit of a fatigue with it.

00:33:32.000 I mean, from the time I was born, so believe it or not, I was born in 2001.

00:33:37.000 Pretty crazy.

00:33:39.000 But from the time I was born, 9-11 to today, there has literally been a conflict in the Middle East.

00:33:46.000 And 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.

00:33:55.000 And 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.

00:34:04.000 You know, the dating market's shrinking.

00:34:06.000 The average home purchase is 40 years of age.

00:34:09.000 And everything is like kind of betting against young people.

00:34:12.000 And so when they see something like this, their initial reaction is, why do I care about that?

00:34:17.000 Why do I want to do that?

00:34:18.000 Why do I want to be involved?

00:34:19.000 But to your point, you bet against President Trump.

00:34:21.000 We've bet against President Trump.

00:34:23.000 I 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.

00:34:31.000 Now, none of that is to say that this is politically popular.

00:34:33.000 So that's a whole other analysis.

00:34:35.000 But 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.

00:34:45.000 We have Jack Posobiec joining us now.

00:34:48.000 Jack, what do you make of this?

00:34:49.000 Hola.

00:34:50.000 So 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.

00:35:00.000 Look, you know, over human events, we've been reporting all week that it looked as though these strikes were imminent.

00:35:06.000 We saw all the indications and warnings.

00:35:08.000 The fifth fleet pulling out of Bahrain, they knew Bahrain was going to be one of the earliest targets in any retaliatory strikes from Iran.

00:35:16.000 And 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.

00:35:32.000 So again, real questions about Iran's ability to penetrate U.S. electronic defenses, air defenses, et cetera.

00:35:39.000 But so we saw the ships pulling out as a huge indication of that.

00:35:44.000 Obviously, 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.

00:35:57.000 Then, you know, we just saw the sheer amount of material being moved over to the Middle East.

00:36:02.000 And 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.

00:36:07.000 So 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.

00:36:27.000 What 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. 0.76

00:36:47.000 And in fact, they only need to appear to mine the Strait of Hormuz to be able to shut down really the entire global right. 0.68

00:36:56.000 Well, similar to the Houthis, right? 0.97

00:36:58.000 So the Strait of Hormuz is in the Gulf.

00:37:00.000 The Houthis were on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula there in the Red Sea.

00:37:04.000 And 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. 0.67

00:37:16.000 So 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.

00:37:23.000 So this real ability to constrain global shipping and global oil markets.

00:37:29.000 I'm glad I filled up yesterday.

00:37:31.000 You know what I mean?

00:37:32.000 You know, thinking that something like this was going to be coming.

00:37:35.000 But what I'm also hearing out of the White House is that, look, expect strikes to be days, not hours.

00:37:41.000 This is not going to be a one and done thing like Operation Midnight Hammer.

00:37:46.000 President 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.

00:37:52.000 But he said that this is about the regime.

00:37:55.000 This is about conducting an air campaign, hurting the regime.

00:37:58.000 And 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.

00:38:07.000 He's called for this.

00:38:09.000 And 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.

00:38:19.000 So 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.

00:38:42.000 So of course, we all remember what Charlie said about those regime change scenarios back in June.

00:38:48.000 You really don't know what is going to come after.

00:38:51.000 And I'm sure we have all the clips and it's all been going viral right now.

00:38:55.000 And 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.

00:39:04.000 That being said, as we look forward, I don't think this is going to be over anytime soon.

00:39:09.000 And of course, we want to see what Iran does in response.

00:39:12.000 Know 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.

00:39:20.000 That's the port of Dubai.

00:39:22.000 And 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. 0.78

00:39:33.000 So Jebel Ali, that huge port there in Dubai, looks like they did target it.

00:39:37.000 There was a strike, an interception of that strike.

00:39:40.000 So it didn't land all the way, but it does look like some of the debris and this video is going around now.

00:39:45.000 It looks like it's been confirmed, have hit one of the four-star hotels in Dubai.

00:39:49.000 Of course, Dubai, what do they call it?

00:39:51.000 The Pearl of the Gulf.

00:39:52.000 And so real questions as to the economic fallout from all of this as it remains to be seen.

00:39:59.000 But President Trump out there stalwart and saying that he wants to see this through.

00:40:04.000 But again, from what we're seeing so far, air, naval combat powers, no boots on the ground.

00:40:10.000 But it wouldn't surprise me if we see some commando raids, IDF, potentially even U.S. special forces.

00:40:15.000 We don't know just yet.

00:40:17.000 Similar to the Maduro raid, obviously we saw a Medal of Honor recipient there at the State of the Union with Erica a couple of days ago.

00:40:23.000 So whether or not U.S. special forces are involved, all of that will come out in the coming days and weeks.

00:40:29.000 All right.

00:40:30.000 We got a donation message from Sandra.

00:40:32.000 Thank you very much.

00:40:33.000 And she says, I joined late.

00:40:35.000 Can you give us a quick recap of what happened?

00:40:38.000 Well, fortunately, the recap is going.

00:40:40.000 Yeah, well, he basically did.

00:40:43.000 Even quicker recap, of course, is last night.

00:40:46.000 I think it was about midnight Phoenix time, 2 a.m. 2 a.m. Easter.

00:40:49.000 So it's interesting, it's broad daylight in Iran when this happened.

00:40:53.000 We 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.

00:41:03.000 But they launched strikes on Iran in broad daylight.

00:41:06.000 It was already Saturday in the middle of the day there.

00:41:09.000 And that's basically where we're at.

00:41:12.000 We're waiting to see what the ramifications of those strikes are.

00:41:15.000 Maybe we killed the Supreme Leader.

00:41:17.000 Maybe we didn't.

00:41:18.000 We are possibly have done assassination strikes on several other leaders.

00:41:22.000 In response, Iran has shot missiles all across the Middle East.

00:41:27.000 Some of them appear to have caused damage, but we don't know what casualties, if any, there are.

00:41:31.000 And we are waiting to see what happens next.

00:41:34.000 Conflicts like this take days or weeks.

00:41:36.000 They don't happen in hours.

00:41:39.000 Can I just add to all of this as like an umbrella statement?

00:41:43.000 Just there's so many claims that you're going to see online right now in just breaking minutes.

00:41:49.000 People are going to say that the Supreme Leader is dead.

00:41:52.000 And I'm sure other people are going to say that B.B. Netanyahu is dead.

00:41:54.000 And this leader has been killed.

00:41:55.000 And that leader has been killed.

00:41:57.000 Just take everything with a grain of salt.

00:41:58.000 Understand we are in the fog of war.

00:42:01.000 Truth is the first casualty in war.

00:42:04.000 So stay frosty when it comes to all of this until any of these claims until things are actually confirmed.

00:42:12.000 Do not just take everything at face value.

00:42:15.000 I totally agree.

00:42:16.000 We actually have John Solomon who's calling in.

00:42:19.000 John, welcome to the stream.

00:42:22.000 You've got Blake, Mikey, Jack, myself.

00:42:26.000 Yeah, please give us, just, you know, we got an email in, or I guess it was a comment asking for a recap.

00:42:34.000 Give us your assessment of what this strike is about, what the goals are, the military mission.

00:42:40.000 What is the win?

00:42:40.000 What is the administration hoping to achieve here?

00:42:43.000 Yeah, 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.

00:43:06.000 It 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. 0.85

00:43:18.000 I'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.

00:43:26.000 I wouldn't be surprised if at some point you see some of the Kurdish special forces come in from the West.

00:43:31.000 The West is pretty fortified now, but that time that will be degraded.

00:43:35.000 And 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. 0.84

00:43:47.000 Now, that's going to take time, particularly when you're doing aerial only.

00:43:51.000 Last 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.

00:43:59.000 This is going to be probably a more complex project, although Iran was pretty degraded.

00:44:04.000 It's also low on resources, low on money, low on oil, low on energy, low on food.

00:44:09.000 So it may crack sooner, or the Mullahs may at some point, though it's not been their tendency, say, we've had enough. 0.70

00:44:16.000 We'll tap out.

00:44:17.000 And so I think those are two options that the U.S. intelligence committee will be looking at.

00:44:20.000 Is there a moment where the Iranians tap out because China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba can't help them?

00:44:27.000 And if not, I think we just keep degrading to the point of where an aground invasion by Iranians leads to leadership change. 1.00

00:44:35.000 That's the goal here.

00:44:36.000 The president's very clear.

00:44:37.000 John, so yeah, this does seem to be a regime change operation.

00:44:41.000 I don't think there's any way around it.

00:44:44.000 Have 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.

00:45:00.000 Is 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?

00:45:11.000 Yeah, I think there's a couple things that we do know for sure.

00:45:13.000 We 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.

00:45:26.000 Those hypersonics are so fast they can evade even American defenses sometimes.

00:45:30.000 And that's something that China's been very good at.

00:45:33.000 Those conversations, which U.S. intelligence intercepted and monitored, was a primary reason.

00:45:38.000 You want to protect your fleet.

00:45:39.000 You 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.

00:45:47.000 So that was the primary reason.

00:45:48.000 The second reason is there is some indication they're rebuilding.

00:45:52.000 They're trying to get to some of the uranium that's buried beneath the rubble that we created last summer.

00:45:58.000 That 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. 0.84

00:46:07.000 But we do see some early signs that Iran was trying to reconstitute some elements of their uranium enrichment and weaponization program.

00:46:19.000 But they're pretty far back.

00:46:20.000 They've lost a lot of capability from those strikes last summer.

00:46:23.000 But both options are there.

00:46:25.000 The third option to keep an eye on is just sleeper cells anywhere in the world here in America.

00:46:29.000 There's always been a concern of Hezbollah on our own soil. 0.90

00:46:32.000 Europe, always clear evidence that Hezbollah has been on our soil. 0.95

00:46:36.000 Remember, the Iranians just sent someone and was working on a plot to kill Trump in 2024 on our U.S. soil. 0.90

00:46:43.000 They previously tried to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador at a Washington, D.C. restaurant.

00:46:48.000 So non-traditional warfare is probably a third option of what they're looking at.

00:46:52.000 Yeah, so that's what's interesting about this whole thing, John.

00:46:55.000 And we're about to be taken by Real America's voice in about three minutes.

00:46:59.000 John, I don't know what your schedule is like.

00:47:01.000 I can stand for about 110 minutes.

00:47:02.000 Yeah, 10, 15 minutes.

00:47:03.000 I got to go back in.

00:47:05.000 Minutes 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.

00:47:16.000 But yeah, you know the attempted assassinations on his life which have been confirmed.

00:47:22.000 There are potential sleeper sills cells in the United States.

00:47:26.000 He's also, I think, convinced that Iran has tried to meddle in the elections.

00:47:30.000 If 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. 0.62

00:47:41.000 He'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. 0.60

00:47:51.000 It seems to be where he believes there is a important uh, you know, I would say mandate for the American people.

00:47:59.000 Uh, especially in that, in that country.

00:48:02.000 Uh, 30 seconds, John.

00:48:04.000 Yeah, I think you're right.

00:48:05.000 I think the enough's enough.

00:48:06.000 He said i'd give you a chance, give you a chance, give me a chance to negotiate at some point.

00:48:10.000 Not serious, we're just finishing this.

00:48:11.000 47 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. 1.00

00:48:19.000 We'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.

00:48:25.000 That's, that's where he's at.

00:48:26.000 I think that's a pretty clear read.

00:48:28.000 Yeah 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.

00:48:39.000 And that's a.

00:48:40.000 That's a headline from JUST THE NEWS.

00:48:42.000 JUST THE NEWS.

00:48:43.000 John 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.

00:48:58.000 It john, you, you confirmed just a minute ago with us.

00:49:01.000 This appears to be a regime change military operation in Iran.

00:49:06.000 Please your thoughts.

00:49:07.000 Yeah, and again, the idea is that we're not going to uh change the regime.

00:49:11.000 We're going to make it possible for the Iranian people, if they so choose, to do that.

00:49:15.000 It'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. 0.87

00:49:21.000 We 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. 0.87

00:49:34.000 That is the objective.

00:49:35.000 That's clearly what the president said.

00:49:37.000 Let us do this and then, when the bombs stop, go overthrow your government, take control of your government.

00:49:41.000 Your freedom is at hand.

00:49:43.000 That's what he said in the early hours of the morning.

00:49:45.000 So that's what this is, we are creating the capability for the Iranian people to overthrow their government. 0.71

00:49:51.000 We won't overthrow the government ourselves.

00:49:53.000 We won't go in and get sodom, like we did in 2002, or throw out the Taliban. 0.98

00:49:57.000 Yeah john, you know there's conflicting reports, that about uh the ayatollah himself being uh killed in these strikes.

00:50:06.000 The way I understand it is that the?

00:50:08.000 U.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. 0.58

00:50:22.000 Do we have any confirmation?

00:50:24.000 Do we know?

00:50:25.000 Are you seeing indications, early indications, one way or the other?

00:50:28.000 We do not.

00:50:29.000 U.S. intelligence does not have confirmation one way or the other.

00:50:33.000 There are some reports the U.S. have received that some top Republican Guard commanders were killed at these military sites, possibly a defense official.

00:50:42.000 No word yet on Khomeini, though it is clear that Israel picked Khomeini's many known locations during the strike.

00:50:48.000 So Israel, clearly, their weapons were clearly targeted at the Supreme Leader.

00:50:52.000 Whether they hit him or not, I don't know.

00:50:54.000 There was a very important event that occurred on Monday.

00:50:56.000 It didn't get a lot of news.

00:50:57.000 We covered it.

00:50:58.000 But 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.

00:51:09.000 And that was very eye-opening to the U.S. government, U.S. intelligence, because Iranian forces weren't able to protect that facility.

00:51:16.000 And it was pretty clear that Khomeini must not have been there, right?

00:51:19.000 That they had a lower fossil level.

00:51:21.000 So 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.

00:51:31.000 But 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.

00:51:43.000 And it was a sign that the world is caving in on the mullahs, that their military capabilities are diminishing. 0.99

00:51:48.000 And I think that just added to the paradigm of intelligence that they evaluated before they launched this morning strikes.

00:51:54.000 John Solomon, just the news.

00:51:56.000 Thank you so much, John.

00:51:58.000 Great to be with you guys.

00:51:58.000 We appreciate it.

00:52:00.000 Absolutely.

00:52:02.000 John, great analysis.

00:52:04.000 Jack, your thoughts.

00:52:07.000 Well, look, John is absolutely correct.

00:52:10.000 You 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.

00:52:18.000 I 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. 0.68

00:52:37.000 And, 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.

00:52:48.000 So, you know, really just holding our fire when it comes to that, keeping our powder dry.

00:52:54.000 We're staying frosty.

00:52:56.000 But at the same time, we need to understand, I think, and the American people want to hear what are the goals here?

00:53:03.000 What's happened on the ground?

00:53:05.000 What is the status of the regime?

00:53:09.000 And are we seeing it have the effect?

00:53:12.000 Are protesters flooding the streets?

00:53:14.000 Are they coming out again?

00:53:15.000 But, 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.

00:53:26.000 And 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?

00:53:37.000 Again, these, you know, it's risky.

00:53:39.000 It is always risky to try to attempt regime change at all, let alone with the air power alone.

00:53:45.000 It's something that where the track record is mixed.

00:53:47.000 It's a very mixed track record of these things.

00:53:50.000 There's certainly no confirmation.

00:53:51.000 And as Charlie himself always said, that you take out the Ayatollah, you have no idea what is going to come next. 0.97

00:53:59.000 You could have these resistance groups launch, as John was saying, you know, there are some who have militias as well.

00:54:06.000 You could see a civil war scenario break out and a total regime collapse that turns into a quagmire.

00:54:12.000 And then, of course, for U.S. forces in the region, look, you know, that's why they pulled out of Bahrain.

00:54:17.000 That's why they pulled out of other areas because they know Iran has many ways to take this worldwide. 1.00

00:54:24.000 And 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.

00:54:34.000 If they go into full survival mode, they are going to pull out the stops.

00:54:38.000 Anything 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.

00:54:46.000 Jack, the ripple effect of this, what does this mean for countries like China, who got like 5% of their oil from Venezuela?

00:54:54.000 They get a majority of their oil from, I think it's like 20% of their oil from Iran.

00:54:59.000 What does this mean for the CCP?

00:55:01.000 What does this mean for other countries that are directly involved with the Iranian regime?

00:55:05.000 Well, I mean, in the near term, you know, it's hard to say, right?

00:55:08.000 It all sort of depends on how this shakes out.

00:55:10.000 Clearly, if this goes on for several days, you're going to see an oil shock.

00:55:14.000 Probably Monday, you're going to see that with an oil spike.

00:55:18.000 If there is, and keep in mind, with that straight of Hormuz, the IRGC doesn't even need to actually mine it. 0.53

00:55:23.000 They 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.

00:55:40.000 They'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.

00:55:46.000 There's, of course, a joke in the joke in the United States Navy that every ship can be a minesweeper once.

00:55:51.000 So, you know, it depends to see who's going to go first.

00:55:54.000 Do you send some barge or some kind of drone thing up there?

00:55:56.000 But that being said, that's going to lead to those oil shocks.

00:56:01.000 If 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.

00:56:21.000 However, I would caution against that because the Iranian regime is not, it's not the same as the Venezuelan regime.

00:56:28.000 It'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.

00:56:37.000 You also have the IRGC, you have the civilian government.

00:56:40.000 So again, any one of those is going to play a role in any regime collapse that comes out.

00:56:46.000 Also, real questions as to whether or not Russia gets involved here.

00:56:51.000 Although 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.

00:57:02.000 I would be very surprised if Russia gets involved here.

00:57:05.000 I wouldn't rule it out, but I would assess that seeing Russian involvement, the likelihood at this point is low.

00:57:12.000 So 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.

00:57:26.000 Again, we don't know about the Ayatollah himself, but that's something.

00:57:30.000 UKPM Kirstarmer has said that their forces are active and British planes are in the sky today as part of the coordinated regional defense operation.

00:57:41.000 And 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.

00:57:55.000 Let's go ahead and just for the sake of Charlie's voice getting in here, because everybody's invoking what Charlie had said.

00:58:04.000 And I think that can be a little frustrating when you're on this side of it.

00:58:08.000 And 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.

00:58:16.000 Some of the presentations of his voice on social media are one-sided.

00:58:21.000 Let's just put it that way.

00:58:22.000 Let's go to 238.

00:58:23.000 This is Charlie explaining Trump's unpredictability as the point.

00:58:28.000 238.

00:58:29.000 This is why how President Trump is handling it is perfect.

00:58:32.000 You do not know what President Trump is going to do.

00:58:34.000 And let me kind of cue you in on something.

00:58:37.000 The unpredictability is the point.

00:58:41.000 The fact that I don't know and you don't know and Iran doesn't know is the greatest power he could possibly exercise over these maniacs. 0.75

00:58:55.000 The fact the U.S. military could blow Tehran to smithereens and he's saying, get out of Tehran now, that's power. 0.68

00:59:04.000 And President Trump means it when he says it.

00:59:07.000 And President Donald Trump is balancing all of these things.

00:59:11.000 And he and only he is positioned to be able to solve this problem.

00:59:17.000 He has earned our trust.

00:59:19.000 We should continue to give it to him.

00:59:21.000 But we have he weighed in on Iran many times because we've had many Iran things.

00:59:27.000 And 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.

00:59:55.000 I'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.

01:00:07.000 Would you agree Blake like, oh you know, this is just for military minds.

01:00:10.000 Actually no, you're a U.S. Citizen.

01:00:11.000 You deserve a right to understand it.

01:00:13.000 You're a stakeholder.

01:00:14.000 This is your government.

01:00:15.000 Yeah 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.

01:00:25.000 A few other guests lined up throughout the hour.

01:00:27.000 But what?

01:00:28.000 What we will say is, my blunt assessment is that this war was not sold sufficiently to the U.S. Public.

01:00:35.000 I have no problem saying that it's.

01:00:38.000 I think that's just, that's our conclusion.

01:00:40.000 Okay, but on the this all, this morning I was making phone calls, I was reaching out to people.

01:00:46.000 There 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.

01:01:02.000 I 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. 0.81

01:01:20.000 I 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.

01:01:33.000 We find out that wasn't true.

01:01:35.000 And then it became a larger scandal because of that.

01:01:38.000 So I don't think they want to sell the war per se on Iran having a dirty bomb or getting hypersonic missiles from China.

01:01:47.000 What they want to do is say they are not allowed.

01:01:49.000 The Iranian regime is not allowed to have nuclear capabilities.

01:01:53.000 They want to develop these things.

01:01:55.000 We can't let them.

01:01:56.000 It's time for the people of Iran to rise up.

01:01:58.000 I think those are the two safest points of action.

01:02:02.000 I think we can also say is that President Trump was sick of getting messed with on the negotiating table.

01:02:10.000 His patience wore thin.

01:02:12.000 So everybody hold your calm.

01:02:14.000 I would say this is why we need to allow the process to play out and not rush to judgment.

01:02:21.000 I will tell you, everybody on the internet that is claiming what Charlie would have thought or said, Charlie would not rush to judgment.

01:02:29.000 Charlie would have been, I think, instinctively against a regime change war.

01:02:33.000 That is very clear.

01:02:34.000 But 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.

01:02:48.000 So that's what I'd say.

01:02:49.000 Jack, am I misstating the facts?

01:02:51.000 No, I don't think you're misstating it at all.

01:02:53.000 And 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.

01:03:06.000 He 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.

01:03:13.000 We don't want to see a ground invasion.

01:03:14.000 Gen 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. 0.58

01:03:37.000 We 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.

01:03:53.000 We 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.

01:04:12.000 You could see a regime change or excuse me, a regime collapse scenario.

01:04:16.000 You could see a quagmire.

01:04:17.000 You could see a civil war.

01:04:18.000 You could see regional actors come in, non-state actors.

01:04:21.000 This is the Middle East after all.

01:04:22.000 It is rife with terrorist groups.

01:04:24.000 That's kind of the whole idea.

01:04:25.000 So 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. 0.81

01:04:49.000 And 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.

01:04:57.000 They want to see arrests for Epstein.

01:04:59.000 They want to see deportations.

01:05:00.000 They want to see economic relief.

01:05:02.000 They want to see a focus on domestic policy.

01:05:04.000 That's particularly where Gen Z is. 0.94

01:05:07.000 And 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.

01:05:15.000 Mikey, Gen Z.

01:05:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:05:17.000 I don't want a black pill, but I'm going to wait.

01:05:20.000 I'm going to wait.

01:05:21.000 I'm going to have patience.

01:05:22.000 But you said it earlier, which is great.

01:05:25.000 I mean, even people in D.C., our friends in D.C. right now, they don't want this to drag on.

01:05:31.000 And again, back to the 12-day war, we thought that that was going to drag on to another endless war, and it ended in 12 days.

01:05:39.000 The K-Fabe, the K-Fabe. 0.96

01:05:40.000 Yeah, and even our friends in D.C., I mean, I got this this morning.

01:05:44.000 It's success looks like limited strikes, focused on denying nuclear capability.

01:05:50.000 No ground troops, no invasion, no forever war from this.

01:05:54.000 And then also, just a reminder that Iran has historically armed terrorists time and again.

01:06:00.000 Number one state sponsor.

01:06:02.000 Yeah, of course.

01:06:03.000 And 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? 0.69

01:06:16.000 You know, that all kind of trickles down.

01:06:19.000 But, I mean, as a Gen Zer, I don't, like, a lot of us just don't care. 0.51

01:06:23.000 Like, we don't care.

01:06:25.000 Why do we want to see that?

01:06:26.000 Why do we want to be involved in this?

01:06:28.000 It 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.

01:06:42.000 Well, Russia was. 0.88

01:06:43.000 Well, but even Russia didn't do things.

01:06:46.000 Iran literally took American hostages, over 100 of them, for over a year.

01:06:52.000 And 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.

01:07:09.000 Carter was thrown out of office over this.

01:07:11.000 Yes.

01:07:11.000 And it was a huge psychological shock that a foreign country would just torment dozens of Americans taken hostage in this way.

01:07:21.000 And we felt powerless to do anything about it.

01:07:23.000 There was an attempted rescue mission.

01:07:25.000 It failed.

01:07:26.000 And in that time, Iran.

01:07:28.000 So if you lived through that, it's very relatable to see Iran as this very severe, permanent United States enemy. 0.99

01:07:36.000 And I think that psychologically shaped a lot of people.

01:07:38.000 But 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. 0.98

01:07:46.000 But 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. 0.86

01:07:56.000 Well said.

01:07:58.000 So we're going to have Alex Marlow join us in just a moment, and then we're going to have Mike Davis.

01:08:04.000 I'm going to throw up this image.

01:08:06.000 Actually, it's, you know, John Fetterman keeps surprising, but throw up 281.

01:08:12.000 There's a whole conversation.

01:08:14.000 You know, Axios has this article.

01:08:16.000 Democrats demand war powers vote after U.S. strikes Iran.

01:08:20.000 John Fetterman responds, committed Democrat here.

01:08:22.000 I'm a hard no.

01:08:23.000 My vote is Operation Epic Fury.

01:08:25.000 So we're going to have Mike Davis walk us through the legalities of the strike because this will constantly come into focus.

01:08:33.000 And I want to throw in a billion grains of salt here.

01:08:36.000 So endless grains of salt.

01:08:38.000 But 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.

01:08:48.000 Again, unconfirmed, unconfirmed, unconfirmed, that Supreme Leader is out.

01:08:54.000 Unconfirmed, thousand grains of salt.

01:08:56.000 But as we sort of piece together these data points, it's an interesting one to hear.

01:09:01.000 So we're obviously very much looking at that, and we will confirm when we can.

01:09:07.000 But that's one indication.

01:09:08.000 Very, very interesting that I'm getting.

01:09:10.000 Since we're waiting on Alex Marlow, we have a very good clip featuring him where he was speaking with Charlie about this conflict.

01:09:18.000 And 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.

01:09:36.000 Let's play 249. 0.98

01:09:38.000 I think that we need to also differentiate for everyone keeping score online where they say, oh, my goodness, Donald Trump started a new war.

01:09:46.000 It is very conceivable that if he bombs those two cities, that is not a new war.

01:09:49.000 Now, Iran could retaliate, and then what happens after that, but I trust President Trump 100% in this moment.

01:09:55.000 He's a man made for this moment.

01:09:57.000 Understanding he's been through all this.

01:09:59.000 He took out Soleimani.

01:10:00.000 He took out ISIS.

01:10:01.000 He is able to navigate this.

01:10:03.000 So 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.

01:10:13.000 Go into Afghanistan, drop thousands of troops there.

01:10:17.000 What does victory look like?

01:10:18.000 We don't know.

01:10:19.000 Go into Iraq, overthrow its government.

01:10:21.000 Over 100,000 U.S. troops there, thousands of them killed there for ages.

01:10:25.000 When do we get out?

01:10:26.000 What's victory look like?

01:10:28.000 We don't know.

01:10:29.000 We do have confidence that President Trump will have a clearer sense of what does he hope to get out of this?

01:10:35.000 What are the limits of how far he will go on this?

01:10:39.000 And he's repeatedly demonstrated ability on that front.

01:10:43.000 And 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.

01:10:51.000 So I agree.

01:10:52.000 Sorry, I'm just trying to – A lot is going on, folks.

01:10:55.000 Yeah, a lot of information incoming here.

01:10:57.000 And it looks like we're going to have, let's see, Rich Barrett is going to join us.

01:11:04.000 We're going to talk about the political side of this with him connecting via phone in just a few minutes.

01:11:11.000 We also have Mike Davis coming on, talking about the legality of it.

01:11:16.000 We also have Alex Marlowe, editor-in-chief of Breitbart, joining any moment now.

01:11:21.000 So, you know, let's just, we want all voices here.

01:11:25.000 We don't want to drown out the folks that don't want this.

01:11:30.000 We don't want to hype it up as if it's a good thing.

01:11:32.000 The truth is, we just simply don't know.

01:11:35.000 One 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.

01:11:43.000 Whether or not Charlie was in favor of such operations, that's very clear.

01:11:49.000 He didn't like regime change.

01:11:51.000 That being said, he was willing to take each different action on its own merits.

01:11:58.000 He did, you know, regime change as an instinct, bad.

01:12:01.000 Okay, fine.

01:12:02.000 But Charlie was willing to take each individual operation on its own merits.

01:12:07.000 That's very, very clear from all the time I spent with Charlie.

01:12:12.000 So we have to do the same.

01:12:14.000 Jack, are you hearing?

01:12:16.000 I think, oh, we lost Jack for a second.

01:12:19.000 Hold on here.

01:12:21.000 We have Alex Marlowe just told me he's in the queue.

01:12:24.000 So let's go ahead and try and log him on.

01:12:26.000 And we have Rich Barris also joining.

01:12:28.000 We are here on Real America's Voice as well, streaming everywhere.

01:12:32.000 Thanks, everybody, for joining.

01:12:33.000 Lots of incoming.

01:12:36.000 So, yep.

01:12:38.000 So we get another confirmation.

01:12:40.000 Iran is telling the Revolutionary Guard tells ships passage through the Strait of Hormuz is not allowed.

01:12:46.000 EU naval mission officials say.

01:12:48.000 So the EU is confirming that the Strait of Hormuz is being closed by Iran.

01:12:52.000 Whether or not that will hold, how long that will hold is yet to be determined.

01:12:59.000 So we have that from Reuters.

01:13:00.000 Iran's, again, Iran's revolutionary guards tell ships passage through the Strait of Hormuz, not allowed, EU naval mission officials say.

01:13:08.000 Well, the EU will just allow Iran to do whatever it wants. 0.89

01:13:11.000 So the EU is like, oh, I guess we can't do that.

01:13:14.000 I haven't had.

01:13:15.000 It is very funny.

01:13:16.000 I saw today.

01:13:17.000 Alex is joining us.

01:13:17.000 Oh, right.

01:13:18.000 We saw there was a French politician who's a member of a pro-EU party.

01:13:23.000 And that Van der Leyen person who heads of the European Commission did some statement upset about this.

01:13:29.000 And the French politician just said, basically, shut up.

01:13:33.000 You guys are really annoying.

01:13:35.000 Because they're always a sad little.

01:13:41.000 Alex Marlow, welcome to our special Saturday stream here, reacting to American strikes against Iran as well as with Israeli forces as well.

01:13:51.000 I think there's multiple ways you can analyze what's going on here, Alex.

01:13:56.000 One is from a purely political stance.

01:13:58.000 One is from a military perspective.

01:14:01.000 Taking the military side, obviously we pray for our troops.

01:14:05.000 We pray for everybody's safety.

01:14:07.000 We pray for zero casualties.

01:14:08.000 All of those things.

01:14:09.000 It seems to have been extremely effective strikes just based on Iran's failure to retaliate.

01:14:16.000 But, and we're still waiting on confirmation on who's still alive, who's dead.

01:14:21.000 Take it to the political side, though, Alex, which, you know, what do you make of the political fallout of a strike like this?

01:14:29.000 Yeah, these are all great ways to frame it up.

01:14:31.000 And first of all, credit for you guys for getting on the stream.

01:14:34.000 I know it's what Charlie would have wanted.

01:14:35.000 So I don't love speaking for Charlie, but I can tell you that.

01:14:38.000 So great job.

01:14:39.000 I know his audience wants to hear what's going on.

01:14:42.000 Yeah, I got quite a bit of insight because I spent some time with the president this week and we did talk about this.

01:14:46.000 It was off record, so I'll try to speak in broad terms about it.

01:14:50.000 But the political stuff here, just to start there, I don't see huge upside for the president, even with a successful strike.

01:14:58.000 It seems like one of these endeavors where even if he nails it, I don't know if he picks up new voters from that.

01:15:05.000 But if he fails, of course, it'll be a defining thing.

01:15:08.000 It'll complicate the midterms.

01:15:09.000 It'll complicate 2028.

01:15:11.000 So it's a bold move, but he knows this.

01:15:13.000 He's a smart person.

01:15:14.000 So he must have felt highly confident that this thing was going to be successful.

01:15:18.000 And he was sick of dealing with Iran's negotiating tactics, which are very tough and very unreasonable.

01:15:23.000 And they demand crazy stuff.

01:15:25.000 They never back off an inch, even though they're very, very weak right now.

01:15:29.000 So that seems like where it comes from politically is I don't even know if he nails it, if he picks up any support.

01:15:35.000 But 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.

01:15:44.000 And then if they're successful, they all of a sudden get on board.

01:15:47.000 It's kind of like people remembering they were at Woodstock when they weren't, that sort of thing.

01:15:50.000 So he thinks that a lot of people didn't like, for example, the Maduro raid.

01:15:54.000 And then now everyone kind of likes it.

01:15:56.000 And so he has that data point in his head.

01:15:59.000 And he thinks there's a lot of unfinished business with Iran.

01:16:02.000 And he thinks they've been incredibly weak since Solomani's killing in the first administration.

01:16:07.000 So we got that going.

01:16:09.000 And I feel like this is one where the early evidence suggests it has been an early success for President Trump.

01:16:17.000 But the key thing here, he was crucial about emphasizing this point.

01:16:22.000 He is not going to tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

01:16:25.000 And 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.

01:16:32.000 He 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. 0.86

01:16:44.000 Their air defenses, as you can tell from today, basically non-existent.

01:16:48.000 They are incredibly weak, and they are not backing down at all.

01:16:51.000 So if the Ayatollahs wanted to stay in power, they needed to commit flat out, we will not have nukes.

01:16:56.000 And they didn't come remotely close to that.

01:16:59.000 And clearly, nothing changed in the last 48 hours of negotiations.

01:17:03.000 Yeah, and by the way, people need to understand this.

01:17:06.000 President Trump has been remarkably consistent on one thing with Iran.

01:17:10.000 They cannot have nuclear capabilities.

01:17:13.000 And I said it earlier, Alex, and I think it's worth stating again.

01:17:16.000 You know, I was calling around.

01:17:18.000 There 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.

01:17:47.000 And 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.

01:17:55.000 Something in the calculus changed.

01:17:58.000 And I would presume that they wouldn't want to go public with that to sell the war because of the WMD fiasco. 0.82

01:18:04.000 We all remember.

01:18:06.000 But something happened here.

01:18:08.000 And 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.

01:18:19.000 Yeah.

01:18:20.000 Alex, go ahead.

01:18:21.000 Yeah.

01:18:21.000 Sure.

01:18:22.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:18:23.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:18:23.000 So 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.

01:18:35.000 It 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.

01:18:43.000 I think he probably some other desires as well.

01:18:46.000 But it was interesting because I was going to follow up with him when I was talking about this.

01:18:50.000 I was going to ask him, well, what about making sure they release all these political prisoners?

01:18:54.000 What about them becoming Democratic?

01:18:55.000 What about them having a free press?

01:18:56.000 Can we press them and stuff like that?

01:18:58.000 And you could tell it was pretty singular.

01:18:59.000 It was they need to commit to no nukes ever.

01:19:02.000 And their rhetoric is they want enrichment to 60%.

01:19:05.000 There's nothing else they're going to do with that.

01:19:07.000 That's not for, you know, medical RD for 60%.

01:19:11.000 If they're pursuing that and you're doing it in Trump's face, Trump hates when you get in his face.

01:19:15.000 Remember when Maduro started dancing in the street and then Trump went and he got him.

01:19:18.000 He went and took him out.

01:19:19.000 That's one of the things with Trump you don't do.

01:19:21.000 And Iran was relentless about not backing down, continuing to have rhetoric as if they're very strong.

01:19:26.000 They're very weak politically.

01:19:28.000 And there's no real clear opposition, which is a big complication.

01:19:31.000 We could talk about that for hours.

01:19:32.000 But the regime was weak within Iran.

01:19:36.000 They're weak from the air.

01:19:38.000 And Trump is not liking the way they're behaving.

01:19:40.000 So that's where it comes from.

01:19:41.000 And I don't know if any of the calculus really did change.

01:19:44.000 Iran is just very tough negotiators. 0.98

01:19:46.000 They're smart people.

01:19:47.000 And they thought they, I think they kind of dared Trump to do it.

01:19:50.000 They got, I mean, they got away with this posture for literally decades doing the same thing for decades and getting the same result.

01:19:58.000 You get used to it.

01:19:59.000 You think it's going to work.

01:20:01.000 I think we, I was going to say, you brought up, Alex, the political angle of this.

01:20:06.000 We have Rich Barris, but I didn't want to cut you off.

01:20:09.000 Let'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.

01:20:16.000 They looked to him.

01:20:17.000 They trusted his judgment.

01:20:18.000 And we're seeing a lot of people repost.

01:20:20.000 We've showed several Charlie clips.

01:20:22.000 They're also posting tweets of his.

01:20:24.000 And some of them are very straightforward.

01:20:26.000 There's one he made last summer when Lindsey Graham was calling for regime change.

01:20:30.000 And Charlie said, regime change will cause a civil war.

01:20:34.000 It would be insane.

01:20:35.000 It could kill hundreds of thousands of people.

01:20:37.000 It could start another Muslim refugee crisis. 1.00

01:20:40.000 That's what he said at the time about a regime change war.

01:20:42.000 And I think we should be frank.

01:20:44.000 Throughout, if Charlie was with us, I believe throughout the lead up to this conflict, he would have had those same concerns.

01:20:50.000 He would have been warning the president about the downsides.

01:20:53.000 He would have been warning other members of the administration about the downsides.

01:20:56.000 He would be worried.

01:20:59.000 We were in those check chains.

01:21:00.000 We would have seen it.

01:21:01.000 That said, he also always did have trust with the president and he would look for the bright side of things.

01:21:07.000 And he was an American patriot, so he would pray for our success once that began.

01:21:13.000 And I just want to say that to offer perspective on how I think he would have felt about this.

01:21:19.000 And that's not to use Charlie as a shield.

01:21:22.000 That is not to use, say, everything just revolves around him because he's not with us anymore.

01:21:27.000 But 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.

01:21:35.000 Well, 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.

01:21:48.000 Sorry, go ahead.

01:21:49.000 No, 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.

01:21:59.000 And he would express his thoughts.

01:22:01.000 You would oftentimes see him talk about on the show.

01:22:03.000 But then as soon as this would happen, he would have trust in the president.

01:22:06.000 He would try to calm people down.

01:22:08.000 And 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.

01:22:25.000 Well, and one of the Charlie, Charlie resisted ideological fervor or these like the drums of war.

01:22:32.000 He was really good about that because he hated war.

01:22:37.000 But he trusted the president.

01:22:38.000 That's certainly true.

01:22:39.000 I think we've established those points.

01:22:40.000 But politically, there's no, there's, I think, less ambiguity to help us unpack that.

01:22:45.000 Rich Barris, are you still on the line with us?

01:22:49.000 I'm here, brother.

01:22:50.000 All right, brother.

01:22:51.000 Hey, so.

01:22:51.000 Can you hear me?

01:22:52.000 Yeah, I can hear you.

01:22:53.000 So you're on with Alex Marlowe, Mikey McCoy, Blake Neff, and myself.

01:22:58.000 So welcome to the show.

01:23:00.000 Rich, you know, I kind of know, if I know you at all, Rich, I know kind of some of what you might say here.

01:23:08.000 But, you know, break it down.

01:23:10.000 I mean, how bad could this be?

01:23:13.000 But also help us paint the best case scenario.

01:23:17.000 Okay.

01:23:18.000 Look, I mean, well, first of all, we're a little bit in ahistorical waters.

01:23:23.000 Like, we're in uncharted waters because we've never had something to compare this to, right?

01:23:28.000 You 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.

01:23:35.000 Listen, Americans do not follow the minutiae of policy like this.

01:23:39.000 Donald Trump was the anti-war president.

01:23:41.000 He rose to prominence and took out two massive political dynasties, largely on the no new wars promise.

01:23:49.000 That is what every average American voter will tell you.

01:23:52.000 They'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.

01:24:00.000 And this was, and the administration knows this was, a deeply, deeply unpopular action.

01:24:05.000 The last one that we handed to them before we got out of the field was 70% opposed.

01:24:10.000 That includes a majority of Republicans.

01:24:13.000 So like, I would love to gauge out and say this will cost this much.

01:24:18.000 But the truth is, we've never been here before.

01:24:20.000 Presidents have sold military actions to the public.

01:24:24.000 They've done their best to drum up support for it before they did, you know, took any action, but they did not do this.

01:24:32.000 So there's no, look, my knee-jerk reaction, guys, and I'm not saying this to be negative or positive.

01:24:39.000 I mean, my job is a pollster, right?

01:24:41.000 Is that there's really, there's no upside here.

01:24:43.000 I 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.

01:24:52.000 You know, that Maduro wasn't popular, then they snatched him and he got more popular.

01:24:57.000 Maduro polled more popular than this.

01:25:00.000 And the fact is that Maduro is just a grab.

01:25:04.000 It's not, you know, a regime.

01:25:05.000 There's more of a symbol to a regime change war in the Middle East when it comes to Donald Trump.

01:25:11.000 Like that specifically was his shtick.

01:25:14.000 And if you, you know, I just feel like that's a bit of a generational disconnect.

01:25:19.000 If 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.

01:25:30.000 You 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.

01:25:45.000 So 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.

01:25:53.000 It was just like, no more, no more.

01:25:57.000 We have needs at home.

01:25:58.000 And I don't know how you get around that.

01:26:00.000 I mean, even a successful mission, which I don't know what successful mission is.

01:26:04.000 I mean, regime change is never an overnight thing.

01:26:08.000 There are always unintended consequences and bad political headlines that plague you, you know, time and time again.

01:26:14.000 Even 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.

01:26:26.000 Yeah, no, I hear you, Rich.

01:26:28.000 I wanted to get your voice in because I think it's important.

01:26:32.000 Jack has rejoined the show, Jack Posobiec.

01:26:37.000 Did you catch what Rich just said?

01:26:38.000 I'd love to get your input on that.

01:26:41.000 Well, I mean, I've heard Rich in general, you know, his stuff.

01:26:44.000 I'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.

01:26:56.000 And I think the longer it goes, the more political ramifications are.

01:27:02.000 I think that's basically it.

01:27:04.000 And if President Trump does indeed mean to see this all the way through to full regime change, that could be longer.

01:27:12.000 That could be a lot longer than one weekend.

01:27:14.000 It's certainly going to be longer than one round of strikes.

01:27:17.000 But we could be looking potentially at weeks of operations within Iran.

01:27:23.000 Yeah, 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.

01:27:32.000 And we have to be honest about the fact that Iran is a much bigger country, a stronger country.

01:27:37.000 Yeah, there's weaknesses politically, militarily.

01:27:40.000 I think the regime is probably at its weakest point, as Alex mentioned, that it's been in a long time.

01:27:46.000 But it's still Iran. 0.77

01:27:47.000 We're talking 80 million plus people, a lot of internal division and factions, different regional geographical differences.

01:27:56.000 Alex Marlow, final thoughts to you, my friend.

01:27:59.000 Thank you for making the time on a Saturday.

01:28:01.000 Yeah, we have my pleasure.

01:28:02.000 No, I think Jack and Rich touched on really important stuff.

01:28:06.000 One of the hangoffs for me is what is next.

01:28:09.000 And it is a very factionalized country.

01:28:12.000 And I think Trump, again, is probably drafting off of what happened with Maduro is it wasn't really a regime change war.

01:28:19.000 They just took out one bad guy.

01:28:20.000 And it seems like things are moving in a positive direction.

01:28:23.000 I think Trump understands leadership.

01:28:25.000 And 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. 1.00

01:28:33.000 And so I don't think he's got a lot of confidence in reinstalling the Shah. 0.99

01:28:35.000 I don't think that's going to be a popular thing.

01:28:37.000 But I think the litmus test will be, are there boots on the ground?

01:28:41.000 I 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.

01:28:48.000 I think a lot of people are going to tolerate this from a political standpoint.

01:28:52.000 Again, 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.

01:29:05.000 Stuff ages very well.

01:29:06.000 But 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.

01:29:14.000 And I do think that's the sort of thing that Charlie certainly didn't like.

01:29:17.000 Yeah.

01:29:18.000 Yeah, I think that's right.

01:29:21.000 Rich, you have done analysis on, you know, kind of the polling of the president.

01:29:27.000 And listen, there's other considerations besides polling that in a moment like this, you have to take into account.

01:29:33.000 But 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.

01:29:42.000 We just had that bump.

01:29:43.000 I texted you privately, Rich.

01:29:45.000 You said he was going to get a bump from the state of the union.

01:29:47.000 Does this complicate that bump?

01:29:49.000 Yeah, it does.

01:29:50.000 And this is something I warned.

01:29:52.000 And I mean, I don't have a problem saying this out loud.

01:29:54.000 This is something I, you know, I warned them about.

01:29:56.000 You had a great moment during the State of the Union.

01:29:59.000 This is something we can really build on.

01:30:01.000 Let's take this momentum now and show the American people that we've refocused on their needs.

01:30:08.000 And, 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.

01:30:17.000 It completely drowns out all of the positive that you refocused and built on.

01:30:23.000 That's just the way American voters work.

01:30:26.000 And 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.

01:30:35.000 Joe Biden rounded up more political prisoners than Vladimir Putin.

01:30:39.000 They want to pack the court.

01:30:41.000 They want to add states.

01:30:42.000 They want to dismantle our entire system.

01:30:44.000 And we ran on this concept that, you know, Democrats were an existential threat to this country.

01:30:49.000 What their ideology stands for, the political violence behind it, they are the threat to average Americans.

01:30:56.000 They're the threat to the unfairness in the economy.

01:30:59.000 And 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.

01:31:10.000 And if you believe both things are true, then this was not wise.

01:31:14.000 End of story.

01:31:15.000 You 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.

01:31:26.000 You 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?

01:31:40.000 Why 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?

01:31:52.000 Weakening 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.

01:32:01.000 It really is.

01:32:03.000 But hold on, I got a cup half full.

01:32:05.000 I'm not going to rewind in my head.

01:32:07.000 Yeah, I got a cup half full of reaction to something that Rich said, which is that I think Trump is aware of this stuff.

01:32:12.000 I 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.

01:32:20.000 So 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.

01:32:26.000 And this is going to be, we took out a terrorist regime that is funding terror all around the world from getting nuclear weapons.

01:32:32.000 And that will be the post-it note talking point.

01:32:35.000 I have no evidence that that's going to be how it's going to turn out.

01:32:38.000 Maybe it won't.

01:32:39.000 And I'm very cautious that it won't.

01:32:42.000 But I feel like that's clearly what he was thinking when he made this move.

01:32:45.000 And 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.

01:32:55.000 So, hopefully, that's all this is, and this is not a pro-long regime change thing.

01:32:59.000 Yeah, I mean, I pray for that.

01:33:01.000 Yeah, that's the best case scenario, Andrew, which you asked me about before.

01:33:06.000 I echo that 100%.

01:33:08.000 Absolutely.

01:33:08.000 I pray for that.

01:33:09.000 And I want to address something here because, again, these are just my sources, but it's also John Solomon.

01:33:16.000 I think Jack has been hearing similar things.

01:33:18.000 You know, here's a post by Matt Walsh.

01:33:21.000 And, you know, Matt Walsh, it's a very lengthy post.

01:33:23.000 I think it's a very sober post.

01:33:25.000 It's basically saying, you know, nobody's sufficiently explained how this benefits American citizens and on it goes.

01:33:32.000 He says, and he brings up a, I think, a very good point, but I want to address it.

01:33:38.000 We 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.

01:33:47.000 We 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. 1.00

01:33:53.000 But 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? 1.00

01:33:59.000 It 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. 0.97

01:34:08.000 So I think those are very logical statements by Matt.

01:34:13.000 But 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.

01:34:37.000 Even if we took out Fordo and some of the other nuclear sites, they could be dangerous extremely quickly and even weakened.

01:34:48.000 And you know, a dog backed into a corner could bite you.

01:34:51.000 All right.

01:34:52.000 So I don't necessarily think that these things have to be mutually exclusive.

01:34:56.000 Somebody was chiming in.

01:34:57.000 I don't know if that's the same thing.

01:34:58.000 Yeah, can I actually, yeah, Andrew, can I address that?

01:35:03.000 Because I think Matt is probably summarizing what the consensus is right now.

01:35:09.000 I mean, we're already in the field right now.

01:35:11.000 We're already talking to voters about this.

01:35:13.000 You know, they woke up to this this morning, so we'll take them some time to process.

01:35:18.000 But 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.

01:35:31.000 Wait a minute, wait a minute.

01:35:32.000 The Fordeaux plant, the other two sites, this was supposed to, you just told us six months ago that we completely decimated their nuclear capability.

01:35:41.000 Like, this is not going to be lost on people.

01:35:44.000 And it was, it is the case.

01:35:46.000 It is the job of the president to make that case.

01:35:49.000 And he didn't.

01:35:51.000 And that is a massive problem.

01:35:53.000 George Bush, when they lied, but George Herbert Walker Bush, babies at an incubator, you know, he threw, he drove support before he took action.

01:36:02.000 It was unsupported at first.

01:36:04.000 He drove it to 80% before he launched the Gulf War.

01:36:07.000 Even Grenada had almost, yeah, I think it was actually 79, 80%.

01:36:12.000 They took time to build their case, to make their case to the American public.

01:36:17.000 And this time, Americans are feeling slighted.

01:36:21.000 There's no other way to put it.

01:36:23.000 You didn't even bother.

01:36:25.000 Yeah.

01:36:26.000 No, I agree with you, Rich.

01:36:28.000 Yeah, I agree with you that I think this has not been sold to the American public, and there is going to be a political fallout.

01:36:34.000 The question is, how long will that hangover last?

01:36:37.000 Rich, thank you for calling in.

01:36:40.000 Rich Barris, big data poll.

01:36:43.000 Really important analysis there.

01:36:46.000 We're going to do a little line change here, Rich.

01:36:49.000 So I appreciate you calling in real quick.

01:36:53.000 Hey, Jack, you've got some new reporting on the line of succession that apparently we were aware of should Khomeini be taken out.

01:37:02.000 Well, of course, and this still remains to be an assessment, but this is in line with what I've been reporting over at Human Events.

01:37:08.000 This coming from Reuters.

01:37:10.000 They'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.

01:37:26.000 It goes on to say that in the run-up, that is more than likely that the IRGC would take over.

01:37:32.000 These assessments were produced over the last two weeks, really asking that question.

01:37:37.000 What would happen?

01:37:38.000 What could happen if a U.S. military operation or U.S. and Israeli operation would trigger regime change in the Islamic Republic?

01:37:45.000 Now, obviously, as President Trump has called for, that is the goal of the operation.

01:37:50.000 This is the, of course, the IRGC being the elite military force whose purpose is to protect the Shiite Muslim clerical rule in Iran.

01:37:59.000 Could not conclude the scenario with any certainty, but most likely that it would be elements of the IRGC that takes over.

01:38:07.000 And 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.

01:38:32.000 Yeah, I think that's important.

01:38:33.000 Basically, one kill is not going to topple the regime.

01:38:38.000 I think that's a fair assessment here.

01:38:40.000 I would say that's not Venezuela.

01:38:41.000 Yeah, this isn't Venezuela, but there have been other kills.

01:38:45.000 And so as confirmations come in, we'll keep an eye out for that.

01:38:49.000 Mike Davis, Article 3 Project, is joining us now.

01:38:52.000 We have this story, these rumblings up on Capitol Hill.

01:38:57.000 And I want to make sure we throw to it because we've seen Fetterman is chiming in.

01:39:03.000 281 here.

01:39:04.000 Throw it up, please. 0.97

01:39:05.000 Axios, Democrats demand war powers vote after the U.S. strikes Iran.

01:39:10.000 Mike Davis, explain to us the legality of these strikes and what's the jockeying that's about to take place on Capitol Hill.

01:39:19.000 Yeah, under Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war.

01:39:26.000 Under 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.

01:39:48.000 Back 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.

01:40:08.000 Presidents since then have interpreted that broadly.

01:40:13.000 Back in 1973, over President Nixon's veto, Congress passed the War Powers Act.

01:40:21.000 No president, Democrat or Republican, has ever complied with the War Powers Act of 1973.

01:40:30.000 Every president since 1973 has said that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional.

01:40:38.000 If 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.

01:40:54.000 If 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.

01:41:04.000 So that would basically hamstring the president.

01:41:06.000 So you're saying that since the passage of the War Powers Act, 1973, every president has basically defied it.

01:41:16.000 Yeah, Blake.

01:41:16.000 Yes.

01:41:20.000 We like to, our presidents like to do things.

01:41:22.000 Yes.

01:41:24.000 I mean, I don't see how it's even functional, though, actually, right?

01:41:27.000 Because you have to move quickly.

01:41:30.000 You do, but I think we should reflect on this fact that for most of this Republic's history, we did rely on the motions of the Congress.

01:41:42.000 We declaring war.

01:41:44.000 We declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor.

01:41:47.000 We declared war on Germany in World War I.

01:41:49.000 We declared war on Spain before going to seize Puerto Rico.

01:41:54.000 And I think you would, ideally, you would want Congress to sign off on an intervention of this magnitude.

01:42:03.000 And for that matter, in Iraq, we did sign off on that use of military force before we went in.

01:42:08.000 And 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.

01:42:19.000 Yeah, so Mike, reflecting on that, obviously any activity is more legitimate when you have the backing of Congress.

01:42:27.000 It's good politically.

01:42:28.000 It's probably good culturally.

01:42:30.000 Explain 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.

01:42:42.000 Well, we haven't had a declaration of war by Congress since World War II.

01:42:46.000 And there are serious implications for Americans' civil liberties when you have a declaration of war.

01:42:46.000 Correct.

01:42:53.000 The 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.

01:43:04.000 So 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.

01:43:15.000 It means that our liberties are more at risk.

01:43:19.000 With the War Powers Act of 1973, again, passed by Congress, they overrode President Nixon's veto.

01:43:26.000 They 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.

01:43:35.000 No president has followed it.

01:43:38.000 I would say this about this current bombing of Iran. 0.85

01:43:43.000 I 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.

01:43:58.000 That 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.

01:44:17.000 Yeah.

01:44:18.000 Great analysis there, Mike.

01:44:19.000 I appreciate you.

01:44:20.000 I 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.

01:44:31.000 So this is really important context.

01:44:33.000 Thank you, Mike Davis.

01:44:33.000 We needed it.

01:44:35.000 You 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.

01:44:45.000 And 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.

01:44:55.000 And if Rich was here, I'd ask him what the polling is on that.

01:44:58.000 But it's one of these things where they're so deeply unserious as a party that they pretty much check out.

01:45:03.000 And so that's why, of course, we don't want the president breaking the law.

01:45:07.000 But what's he going to do?

01:45:08.000 He's going to call up.

01:45:10.000 They did, apparently, according to sources that I have, they did speak to the gang of eight.

01:45:14.000 So that includes four Democrats, or at least three of them.

01:45:17.000 They got on the phone from what I'm told ahead of time.

01:45:20.000 But you can't consult most of the people in that party and expect anything serious to happen.

01:45:24.000 It's just a waste of time.

01:45:25.000 And how do we know they're not going to leak stuff?

01:45:27.000 Remember, 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.

01:45:36.000 So there's so many people who try to undermine this president every turn.

01:45:40.000 We don't get to have nice things like everyone working together when we might go to war now.

01:45:45.000 And that's a deep shame.

01:45:47.000 Yeah, that's really well put, Alex.

01:45:50.000 So 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.

01:46:01.000 They 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.

01:46:12.000 The 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.

01:46:22.000 Obviously, thinking about the CCP, you made this point earlier, Mikey.

01:46:26.000 It will greater limit Russia to a regional power, and it will lose, which will lose an ally there.

01:46:33.000 It will remove an ally from North Korea. 0.72

01:46:36.000 It 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. 0.95

01:46:42.000 So there are knock-on downstream effects.

01:46:45.000 There's also implications for Taiwan and China, potentially.

01:46:50.000 So I do think that Trump is thinking strategically from an international standpoint.

01:46:56.000 I 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.

01:47:07.000 And China is trying to destroy our country with fentanyl.

01:47:10.000 And I'm sure that's part of Trump's calculus.

01:47:11.000 Again, I'm not trying to justify anything is particularly if this thing becomes a complicated ground war with regime change.

01:47:17.000 I'm not trying to do that.

01:47:18.000 But 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. 0.76

01:47:32.000 No, I think that's spot on.

01:47:35.000 All right, Jack Posobiec, please.

01:47:37.000 Yeah, 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.

01:47:47.000 You know, typically we don't see the Chinese get involved in these types of wars.

01:47:51.000 We typically see them be more circumspect when it comes to that.

01:47:54.000 But 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.

01:48:04.000 You could really see China get in and back potentially. 0.97

01:48:07.000 We were just talking about the scenario if the IRGC gets in.

01:48:09.000 You could see China come in and backstopping them very quickly because it's all about stability for those oil supplies.

01:48:15.000 China is even understanding of the issue with the Strait of Hormuz.

01:48:20.000 That's why they've been trying to build as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a pipeline across Pakistan and across Xinjiang.

01:48:27.000 That'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. 1.00

01:48:37.000 And so this is something that's very, very important for the Chinese.

01:48:41.000 They don't have the types of oil supplies that they, you know, that other countries do.

01:48:46.000 This is why, of course, they're building pipelines with Russia in Siberia.

01:48:50.000 So 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.

01:49:01.000 Yeah, 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. 0.53

01:49:08.000 And none of that is certain, but I wonder how much Russia could backfill if they lose an Iranian source of oil.

01:49:14.000 Blake, why don't you speak?

01:49:16.000 It's just not sufficient.

01:49:17.000 It's not.

01:49:18.000 Those pipelines aren't built yet.

01:49:20.000 Yeah, so there is a time delay there.

01:49:22.000 But you're kind of looking into some of these down knock-on effects, what this could mean for the Indo-Pacific, for example.

01:49:28.000 Yeah, 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? 0.87

01:49:42.000 We come to Venezuela kind of.

01:49:44.000 Something.

01:49:44.000 Or, you know, we've had so many troops, so many assets, so much attention on the Middle East for my entire adult life.

01:49:53.000 We 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.

01:50:06.000 And now we're back around to Iran where this all started.

01:50:09.000 And even before I was born, we had the conflicts with Iran, with the hostages and other standoffs.

01:50:14.000 It's been this huge focus of America for a long time.

01:50:17.000 And what's driven so much frustration is we've gotten involved repeatedly.

01:50:20.000 Thousands of Americans have died and won.

01:50:23.000 There never seems to be super clear progress.

01:50:26.000 And instead, it just seems to go on forever.

01:50:28.000 And there's not clear upside for the United States through all of it.

01:50:32.000 And 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.

01:50:43.000 We'll, you know, we'll stay friendly with all the countries involved.

01:50:45.000 But now America is self-sufficient in oil.

01:50:47.000 We're an oil exporter, which we never were throughout a lot of these conflicts in the past.

01:50:53.000 And 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.

01:51:02.000 That is the best sell that he can make on this.

01:51:05.000 And that's whether you think this war is a great idea or is a disastrous idea.

01:51:09.000 The war is happening.

01:51:10.000 And so now we look forward.

01:51:13.000 I don't know.

01:51:14.000 Like, I could be wrong, you know, in the coming weeks or whatever, but this really doesn't, from early reporting, even look like a war.

01:51:23.000 I mean, it's day one.

01:51:25.000 It's day one.

01:51:26.000 And we could be wrong, but this doesn't look like a war.

01:51:28.000 This looks like strikes on regime.

01:51:32.000 But if you look back to Iraq, I mean, the images out of Baghdad during the start of the war, like that was very different.

01:51:39.000 That actually was a war.

01:51:41.000 This is very different.

01:51:42.000 And we could be wrong as time goes on, but President Trump time and again has been right on this.

01:51:48.000 The 12-day war, everybody thought that this was going to go on forever.

01:51:51.000 Venezuela, people thought it was a bad idea.

01:51:55.000 And now this is the third time where President Trump could prove us all wrong again.

01:51:59.000 However, I just want to say this is a sign to China.

01:52:03.000 This 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. 0.63

01:52:14.000 He will take action.

01:52:15.000 It's like that Marco Rubio great one-liner where he says, well, if you didn't know, now you know.

01:52:20.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:52:21.000 But he's done that a couple of times.

01:52:22.000 And I do think there is power in that, basically saying, you know, if you don't get in line, bad things are going to happen.

01:52:31.000 And then they actually happen.

01:52:32.000 I mean, that is a break from a lot of previous presidents.

01:52:37.000 It just is.

01:52:38.000 And I think it's going to have potentially positive impacts.

01:52:43.000 I think, Alex Marlow, thank you for making the time.

01:52:47.000 Final thoughts to you.

01:52:48.000 I think we should do a bit of a round the horn here.

01:52:50.000 What do you hope to see?

01:52:52.000 What do you expect to see?

01:52:54.000 And then we'll move to Jack.

01:52:56.000 And then yeah, I'm cautious about the fact that Trump's reputation as someone who does not start wars is in jeopardy at the moment.

01:53:05.000 And he wants that.

01:53:06.000 I think he likes that for himself for historical context.

01:53:10.000 So 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.

01:53:21.000 So 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.

01:53:36.000 This could go any sort of direction.

01:53:38.000 But as of now, I'll keep cautious optimism.

01:53:41.000 The 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.

01:53:48.000 And 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.

01:54:01.000 And if he's talking about affordability, he's probably losing too.

01:54:03.000 So it's one of these things where what is he supposed to say to get people on board?

01:54:08.000 And I don't know.

01:54:09.000 I think victory winning is its own ideology.

01:54:12.000 And 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.

01:54:19.000 And I think that's why he can go out and sell this.

01:54:21.000 This was noticeably absent from a state of the union.

01:54:24.000 He had no Iran talk at all, which I thought was very telling. 1.00

01:54:27.000 I 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.

01:54:36.000 And it made me think something really might happen here unless these guys say they're going to give up nukes.

01:54:40.000 That set a signal to me.

01:54:41.000 He was serious.

01:54:42.000 He was going to attack.

01:54:43.000 And I feel like the salesmanship element is not something that I expect.

01:54:48.000 It 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.

01:54:56.000 Remember, Trump never talks about China.

01:54:58.000 Even when he's going up against China, he never says anything negative.

01:55:02.000 He always says what a great guy Xi Jinping is.

01:55:04.000 That's all he ever says publicly.

01:55:05.000 That's the approach.

01:55:06.000 So you got to imagine that will continue, even if a lot of this does turn out to be about China in the end.

01:55:12.000 And I think he feels like the more information he gives, the more people misinterpret it, the more people twist it, the more people leak.

01:55:18.000 And it's a tough spot for him.

01:55:20.000 So victory is, again, its own ideology.

01:55:23.000 If 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. 0.55

01:55:35.000 But there's so many other scenarios that could present itself between now and then.

01:55:40.000 Great, great summation there, Alex.

01:55:42.000 Jack, we've got more intel coming in on this potential school that was hit.

01:55:49.000 Fill us in.

01:55:50.000 Yeah, so there's been reports from early on regarding a school that was struck.

01:55:59.000 And 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.

01:56:14.000 I'll just say this is what the AP is reporting right now.

01:56:18.000 It 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.

01:56:27.000 This is also being reported currently in New York Times, BBC, and PR, but those are also being based off of Iranian state reports.

01:56:35.000 So, again, I would caution that with a grain of salt as to exactly what's going on there.

01:56:42.000 Also seeing reports that this was a facility or this school was near an IRGC facility that's going back and forth.

01:56:48.000 But again, I'm just reporting what they're reporting, which is based on Iranian state reports.

01:56:54.000 But 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.

01:57:02.000 There'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,

01:57:19.000 that 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.

01:57:41.000 And it may be, unfortunately, you know, in many of these cases, that it hits an unintended target.

01:57:48.000 And again, just, you know, blanket statement.

01:57:51.000 I don't know.

01:57:51.000 I'm not confirming whether or not this happened.

01:57:53.000 We're just seeing those reports, but blanket statement that these are the things that happen when you go into war.

01:58:02.000 As they say, the enemy always gets a vote.

01:58:04.000 Mike Tyson is famous for saying everyone's got a plan so they get punched in the face.

01:58:08.000 And we are currently in the fog of war.

01:58:11.000 So that is, that's the brief as far as I can give it on that report right now.

01:58:15.000 Yeah.

01:58:16.000 Mikey, Mikey, then Blake, and then we're going to wrap.

01:58:19.000 Mikey, you're Gen Z, you were born in 2001.

01:58:23.000 You've only known war.

01:58:25.000 Yeah, 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.

01:58:33.000 But 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.

01:58:45.000 Even though I am ultimately against regime change, President Trump has a record, and I'm not going to bet against the record.

01:58:52.000 And 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.

01:59:11.000 So mine is a half, a glass half full, let's wait and see approach.

01:59:16.000 But ultimately, the images coming out of Iran, I really doubt this looks like a war for now.

01:59:21.000 And we could be wrong, right?

01:59:22.000 This is only day one.

01:59:25.000 Time will tell.

01:59:26.000 However, I think that these are Persian people.

01:59:32.000 They are ultimately pro-West.

01:59:34.000 And all you have to do is look at the reports of videos from young people in Iran right now.

01:59:40.000 Look at reports of in Iran right now.

01:59:44.000 And 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.

01:59:54.000 Well, for them, it's domestic policy.

01:59:56.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:59:57.000 So we'll wait and see.

01:59:59.000 But ultimately, I think we need to just trust President Trump and our friends in D.C. right now.

02:00:07.000 What I'll say is, if you polled me last summer, should we do regime change in Iran?

02:00:12.000 I would have said no.

02:00:13.000 If you polled me two weeks ago, should we do regime change in Iran?

02:00:17.000 I think I would say no.

02:00:19.000 But the president did make this decision to pursue this.

02:00:23.000 We are all American patriots.

02:00:25.000 We want the best for this country.

02:00:27.000 So we must hope that this goes as the president hopes it will, as the military hopes it will.

02:00:33.000 And we must support them in trying to achieve that.

02:00:38.000 A lot can happen.

02:00:39.000 A lot can happen before this day is out, before this weekend is out.

02:00:42.000 We 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.

02:00:57.000 And so looking ahead, we are hoping for the best, but we've been frank.

02:01:02.000 The administration must make a strong case for this conflict to the American people at large and to its base.

02:01:09.000 They did run as a peace ticket.

02:01:13.000 They made the case that President Trump is good at avoiding wars.

02:01:16.000 He was very proud that in his first administration, he did not begin any new ones.

02:01:21.000 That doesn't mean he never has to start one because sometimes that is the best call for the American people.

02:01:27.000 And if they can make that case, God bless them.

02:01:28.000 And we'll be praying for them to be able to do that.

02:01:31.000 And until then, we're playing a waiting game like everyone.

02:01:37.000 Yeah.

02:01:37.000 Jack, any final thoughts before we log off here?

02:01:41.000 Jack or Alex?

02:01:42.000 I concur with everyone.

02:01:44.000 I think that, look, I think the American people want to hear from the president.

02:01:48.000 I think the American people want to hear from the president live.

02:01:51.000 They want to know what's going on.

02:01:53.000 They want to hear from the man that they elected.

02:01:55.000 That 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.

02:02:09.000 Should we take this as a one-day event, a one-off event, or are we going to see more?

02:02:14.000 When you've got that many American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, again, each aircraft carrier carries 5,000 American souls on it.

02:02:23.000 So that's 10,000 just there sitting off the coast.

02:02:26.000 And as these reports come out that Iran may have hypersonics, well, what does a hypersonic missile do?

02:02:31.000 Those are carrier killers. 1.00

02:02:33.000 That's what they're designed for.

02:02:34.000 So with Americans in harm's way, everyone, of course, is praying for them.

02:02:38.000 We are praying for them.

02:02:39.000 And the American people are going to want to hear from the president.

02:02:43.000 There's no question.

02:02:44.000 Alex Marlow, final words?

02:02:46.000 Yeah, that's a great point from Jack.

02:02:48.000 I would love to see it.

02:02:49.000 And he does, he's generally his best spokesperson and advocate.

02:02:53.000 And 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.

02:03:02.000 We'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.

02:03:09.000 There's obviously complicated stuff.

02:03:11.000 War is very complicated.

02:03:12.000 We'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.

02:03:19.000 But it is a war effort.

02:03:22.000 It's not a war per se yet, and I hope it doesn't get to that point.

02:03:26.000 He obviously had a high degree of confidence that aerial assaults would be effective in taking out some high-value targets.

02:03:32.000 And I think creating perhaps a leadership vacuum in a country that's already very weak right now, both militarily and politically.

02:03:38.000 And 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.

02:03:50.000 So there's a lot of upside here if this works.

02:03:52.000 The problem is, is that we all have so much scar tissue from things like this not working out.

02:03:58.000 Not from President Trump, but from prior presidents.

02:04:00.000 And even those of us who are the biggest Trump supporters imaginable have that in the back of their mind right now.

02:04:05.000 So the more information that we can get, the better.

02:04:08.000 Yeah.

02:04:08.000 And I'll just say for now, the president has decided to take action.

02:04:14.000 He's shown us for over a decade that he doesn't do endless wars.

02:04:19.000 So 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.

02:04:29.000 That's the hope and that's the prayer.

02:04:31.000 And so we pray for our troops.

02:04:32.000 We pray for our leaders, President Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and on down.

02:04:37.000 And we will monitor the situation closely as the information comes on.

02:04:43.000 Monitoring the situation.

02:04:45.000 As the information comes online, we may be back here in the studio before you know it.

02:04:50.000 But until then, thank you everybody who joined the stream.

02:04:53.000 Thank you to Real America's Voice for taking it on their network, Alex Marlow, Jack Basovic, Mikey McCoy, Blake Neff, and myself.

02:05:00.000 We'll talk to you soon and pray for peace.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 28, 2026

Regime Change in Iran Livestream

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