The Charlie Kirk Show - The Baffling Barrier Blocking the Big Beautiful Bill

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here live from the Bitcoin.com studio.

00:00:04.000 Who is the parliamentarian?

00:00:05.000 One of the most powerful people in Washington, D.C. We introduce you to Elizabeth McDonough.

00:00:11.000 That's right, Elizabeth McDonough.

00:00:14.000 She runs a lot in D.C. and you're going to learn how a singular Senate staffer has extraordinary power.

00:00:21.000 We then have Josh Hammer that joins the show as we talk about the fallout of the Israel-Iran war and President Trump's pursuit of peace.

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00:01:47.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

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00:02:45.000 There is a major story that is bubbling up, and I've had my eyes on this for the last couple of weeks, and I've been waiting for a time to explain it.

00:02:52.000 Now, a lot of people are getting fired up online about this, and it is the anger is partially justified, but not totally.

00:02:59.000 And we need to kind of just take a step back and make sure that we do not get too intense too early in a way that might not actually be rooted in facts or substance.

00:03:11.000 But there is some truth to it.

00:03:13.000 We got to get the facts.

00:03:14.000 That's what our show does.

00:03:15.000 We explore the facts.

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00:03:18.000 So as you know, President Trump's big, beautiful bill is working its way through Congress.

00:03:23.000 This very difficult process of getting people like Susan Collins and Don Bacon and getting all the moderate Republicans to agree on spending cuts and border security and just all the different elements of this process have been exhausting.

00:03:42.000 We're finally getting to a place of completion where we have to find out whether or not the components of the bill are allowed to remain.

00:03:51.000 What do you mean by that?

00:03:53.000 So remember, this is a reconciliation bill.

00:03:56.000 So when a bill is a reconciliation bill, it has a very precise technical meaning.

00:04:04.000 It literally means that you are reconciling the budgets of two different fiscal years.

00:04:11.000 And so a reconciliation bill, because you are reconciling two different budgets from two different years, does not require 60 votes.

00:04:21.000 Said more bluntly, you can bypass the filibuster.

00:04:25.000 The filibuster, of course, requires 60 votes to then get to quorum and then get to a vote on the specific piece of legislation.

00:04:34.000 So for example, if they wanted to go pass a bill right now, Congress, on something that was non-reconciliation, it would require 60 votes.

00:04:44.000 Now, all of this is just Senate rules.

00:04:45.000 They could change the rules at any time.

00:04:47.000 The Senate was intended to actually become a majoritarian body.

00:04:52.000 Thomas Jefferson actually always wanted it to be a majoritarian body.

00:04:56.000 On the other side, though, the fact that we had the filibuster stopped a lot of the totally insane stuff that Joe Biden wanted to do during his administration.

00:05:05.000 And so we shouldn't be too quick to throw out the filibuster.

00:05:08.000 So in front of us now is an opportunity to pass President Trump's hallmark agenda bill, the big beautiful bill.

00:05:15.000 Border funding, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, Trump tax cuts, drill, baby, drill.

00:05:20.000 All of this has to fit as a budgetary financial reconciliation provision.

00:05:30.000 So certain things in the bill that might not be germane to budgetary measures will be thrown out of the bill because then it does not pass the filibuster reconciliation test.

00:05:44.000 Now, this is very important.

00:05:45.000 It's called the bird rule.

00:05:46.000 So you have to pass what is called the bird bath.

00:05:49.000 You have to pass the bird bath.

00:05:52.000 But here's where things get a little murky and they get awfully confusing and where people are getting fired up, partially, rightfully so, which is that, well, who decides?

00:06:02.000 Is there a committee?

00:06:03.000 Is there like a Supreme Court of the U.S. Senate?

00:06:06.000 Is there a bipartisan panel?

00:06:08.000 Are there people that have been there for quite some time?

00:06:10.000 Who is the umpire?

00:06:11.000 Who is the referee?

00:06:12.000 Who is the final decision maker of what is germane to a reconciliation bill and what is not?

00:06:20.000 Now, we went through this entire reconciliation process.

00:06:23.000 The highest profile reconciliation fight was when.

00:06:28.000 Anybody?

00:06:29.000 2009, actually, the Affordable Care Act, when Obama wanted to pass Obamacare.

00:06:36.000 A lesser appreciated memory was when Obama wanted to pass this monstrosity of a health care bill and he needed 60 votes.

00:06:44.000 And he had 60 votes until the lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, died.

00:06:50.000 There was a special election in Massachusetts on the sole reason as a referendum.

00:06:56.000 And Massachusetts elected a Republican senator by the name of Scott Brown to actually reject the 60-vote threshold.

00:07:04.000 We in kind of conservative folklore forget this moment.

00:07:07.000 I was at freshman and high school, and I remember it intimately, where Obamacare was put on a referendum, and Scott Brown became a U.S. senator from Massachusetts as a Republican, and Ted Kennedy passed away. 0.99

00:07:21.000 By the way, Ted Kennedy was a scum. 0.99

00:07:23.000 He's a bad guy, a bad ombre, no good whatsoever. 1.00

00:07:27.000 Different topic for a different time.

00:07:29.000 So basically then, Obama had to change some of the wording because 60 went down to 59 because he did not have the votes to be able to pass the filibuster.

00:07:40.000 And by the way, there were a lot of what they call blue dog Democrats that basically offered themselves as sacrificial lambs.

00:07:49.000 Dashel would be one of them.

00:07:50.000 I think he was from Blake State of South Dakota.

00:07:53.000 There were a ton of these guys that basically offered themselves up and they have not elected Democrats in these states ever since.

00:07:58.000 That was the turning point.

00:08:00.000 So then who decides?

00:08:01.000 So that was the fight back in 2009, 2010, and Obamacare actually became less radical and less pernicious because of the birdbath.

00:08:10.000 Well, who decides?

00:08:11.000 Well, it is a singular person that holds all the cards.

00:08:15.000 It's a singular person that decides whether something is in the bill or something is not in the bill.

00:08:20.000 She is becoming the most powerful person in Washington, D.C., and her name is Elizabeth McDonough.

00:08:28.000 Now, Elizabeth McDonough, to her credit, was actually very helpful under Joe Biden.

00:08:32.000 Elizabeth McDonough removed a lot of the total and complete insanity that people like AOC and Elizabeth Warren wanted to fit into reconciliation bills. 1.00

00:08:42.000 However, Elizabeth McDonough right now, she holds almost all the cards, sort of.

00:08:49.000 So she holds the cards because Jon Thune has given her the cards.

00:08:52.000 And Jon Thune wants to allow this process to play out.

00:08:56.000 And the reason why this is bubbling up to a fever pitch, and trust me, I get it.

00:09:00.000 But it's my job to tell you when to get angry and also to explain things away and say, let's hold some of our fire to see if we can't figure this out.

00:09:08.000 And one of the reasons why people are losing it this morning is that she removed a provision from the Big Beautiful Bill that would have saved us hundreds of billions of dollars saying illegals cannot get Medicaid. 0.59

00:09:21.000 Now, is that a final ruling?

00:09:23.000 Is that a final gut punch?

00:09:26.000 No, actually.

00:09:28.000 Here's where I just encourage you to take a deep breath and to allow somewhat of this process to play out.

00:09:34.000 They can reword things and go back to her.

00:09:37.000 Now, this is such a broken process that this is a series of broken meetings.

00:09:41.000 And here is the kicker.

00:09:43.000 Here is where you are being led towards anger without all of the story.

00:09:50.000 These are the Democrats that are leaking that she's blocking this.

00:09:54.000 The process is still underway.

00:09:56.000 I talk to top-level folks on the Senate.

00:09:58.000 I also talk to the people in the office of the president of the Senate.

00:10:04.000 If you don't know who the president of the Senate is, you should do your civics lesson.

00:10:07.000 It's not Jon Thune.

00:10:08.000 And people in that whole kind of community are saying, just allow this to play out a little bit because it's the Democrats that are actually leaking while they're going back and forth with Ms. McDonough.

00:10:19.000 This is an ongoing process where they say, okay, can we word it this way?

00:10:22.000 Can we do it this way?

00:10:23.000 And she says yes or no.

00:10:24.000 Now, look, I think this is a little bit of a goofy, kind of unsustainable model that one person, one staffer, she's literally a staffer.

00:10:34.000 She was not even Senate confirmed.

00:10:36.000 She was not elected.

00:10:37.000 She's not like, it's like this weird kind of, she's not like a new branch of government.

00:10:42.000 It's a little bit too much power for a staffer.

00:10:46.000 I think it should be at least a committee that you could have votes and you could have different members.

00:10:50.000 There's got to be a better process than just like one staffer that obviously could be very influenced.

00:10:56.000 But right now, Elizabeth McDonough holds a lot of the cards in this process.

00:11:01.000 And by holding the cards, she is the recipient of a lot of anger from the base.

00:11:06.000 Now, how do we get rid of her? 0.99

00:11:07.000 If she continues her nonsense and it just gets out of control, Jon Thune can remove her. 0.92

00:11:12.000 And you could get a new parliamentarian, but then she becomes a martyr and you might get an even worse one in return.

00:11:17.000 All that to say, she's incredibly powerful.

00:11:19.000 We don't know how it's going to turn out.

00:11:22.000 In fact, the future of our agenda might be with her.

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00:12:28.000 So the parliamentarian has a lot of power right now.

00:12:32.000 But just remember, back when this was under Joe Biden, in March of 2021, 24 Democrat members of Congress wrote a letter to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris requesting that Harris overrule the Senate parliamentarian, raising the national minimum wage.

00:12:44.000 Ultimately, Harris ruled in accordance with the parliamentarian and removed the provision.

00:12:49.000 So J.D. Vance can overturn it once it gets to the floor, but this really is a Jon Thune thing, and Jon Thune's got to work through this.

00:12:56.000 This is all on Senator Thune.

00:12:58.000 If there is no Reasoning with her on stuff that obviously is financial.

00:13:02.000 For example, there is no reason whatsoever that no Medicaid funding for illegals should not be in this bill.

00:13:08.000 Just figure out the right way to word it.

00:13:10.000 Period.

00:13:11.000 End of story.

00:13:12.000 That is 100% a budgetary measure without question.

00:13:16.000 And that would save us hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:13:18.000 If you can't get no Medicaid funding for illegals, figure out how to word it in a way that can pass the parliamentarian threshold. 0.51

00:13:28.000 But let's be honest, this is way too much power for one person in D.C. This is structurally a problem.

00:13:34.000 And if you were to fire the parliamentarian, the question is who do you replace it with?

00:13:38.000 And understand, that would send shockwaves throughout the Senate.

00:13:41.000 I know a lot of us in the grassroots have very little respect for this stuff, but the senators there, they think the Senate is like this wonderful thing and it's very regal and great.

00:13:50.000 They think so highly of themselves.

00:13:53.000 And they look at the upper chamber as being the thoughtful and philosophical chamber that really deep thinking happens.

00:14:06.000 But look, we shouldn't put that off the table if it gets to it.

00:14:08.000 If Elizabeth McDonough gets in the way of President Trump's agenda, then we can change the rules.

00:14:13.000 There are many measures that we can get to at this point.

00:14:17.000 My biggest, my biggest concern is why is this even program have one person that's able to get in the way of what we obviously want to do and what we should be able to do?

00:14:29.000 She did not win seven swing states.

00:14:31.000 She did not win a popular vote majority.

00:14:33.000 And she's a staffer. 1.00

00:14:34.000 She's not like Senate confirmed.

00:14:36.000 She's not a judge. 1.00

00:14:36.000 She's not from the, she's not Article 3. 1.00

00:14:39.000 It's really kind of a creation.

00:14:40.000 Let's put this up on screen.

00:14:41.000 It's very important history.

00:14:43.000 So the office of the parliamentarian does have, of course, constitutional roots.

00:14:48.000 Article 1, Section 5 says each House may determine the rules of its proceedings.

00:14:52.000 The office of the parliamentarian were created in the House in 1927 and in the Senate in 1935.

00:14:58.000 The parliamentarian answers questions from the presiding officer about the wording of motions and about precedents related to motions or actions.

00:15:06.000 The current parliamentarian, as mentioned, is Elizabeth McDonough.

00:15:09.000 She's been in office since 2012.

00:15:10.000 Harry Reid put her there, which should make us have a little bit of pause.

00:15:14.000 And by then, Senate Majority Leader, opponent by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

00:15:18.000 The budget reconciliation process is only supposed to include provisions that, according to the Congressional Research Service, quote, would change laws related to direct spending, revenue, or the debt limit.

00:15:29.000 Hold on.

00:15:29.000 So spending, revenue, or debt limit, no Medicaid for illegals is absolutely spending or revenue.

00:15:37.000 Now, she's an officer appointed by the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, and they're generally preserved across parties to maintain harmony in the Senate, but they have been removed before.

00:15:48.000 And so we should not dismiss that as something.

00:15:50.000 If she keeps on acting in a way where there is no negotiation, then we got to get rid of her. 0.93

00:15:56.000 Robert Dove was a parliamentarian picked by Republicans and got fired when Democrats took over and then came back when Republicans took power again, but then got fired by Republican Trent Lott.

00:16:07.000 So these kind of fights have happened.

00:16:10.000 But let's be honest.

00:16:11.000 The fact that she's in the news means we have a little bit of a problem.

00:16:14.000 We just got to be honest with ourselves.

00:16:16.000 We should not know her name.

00:16:18.000 You should not know her name.

00:16:20.000 We should not be dedicating precious time on our program to Elizabeth McDonough.

00:16:25.000 Illegals getting Medicaid is a red line.

00:16:27.000 That cannot be allowed.

00:16:28.000 Figure it out.

00:16:29.000 If she gets in the way of illegals getting Medicaid, then we're going to have to ratchet this up a little bit.

00:16:34.000 But I want to just make sure we are being fair.

00:16:37.000 This is not a final ruling.

00:16:41.000 This is not a complete judgment.

00:16:44.000 Let me read from you from a top, top source, a text message I was texting.

00:16:48.000 The Democrats are leaking.

00:16:50.000 This is the best source that we can have, better than anyone on cable news, trust me.

00:16:54.000 The Democrats are leaking about what the parliamentarian has done.

00:16:57.000 A lot of it is either out of context or will be dealt with through very minor language changes.

00:17:06.000 There is a version of the Medicaid stuff that will be passable, but the Democrats are leaking this to try to F us politically.

00:17:14.000 Okay?

00:17:15.000 That's a top-tier source here.

00:17:17.000 But we're making you aware of this growing situation.

00:17:20.000 But let me just repeat this.

00:17:22.000 Quote, the Democrats are leaking about what the parliamentarian has done, but a lot of it is either out of context.

00:17:29.000 Oh, the Democrats would never lie, and the Democrats would never leak.

00:17:32.000 By the way, that's why the Democrats were not briefed on Operation Midnight Hammer, because they would have leaked it.

00:17:37.000 And quote, a lot of it will be dealt with through very minor language changes.

00:17:42.000 This is a game and a game of spin, and it's largely a propaganda war.

00:17:47.000 But we got to keep our eyes on her.

00:17:48.000 If she stands in the way of us getting rid of Medicaid for illegals, dramatic action is necessary. 0.92

00:17:57.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:18:59.000 Now I'm fired up.

00:19:00.000 I got this.

00:19:01.000 I got briefed on this yesterday.

00:19:03.000 This is like the disgusting thing in the U.S. Senate.

00:19:06.000 I got to read this tweet.

00:19:07.000 And this is just from one of our top supporters at Turning Point.

00:19:10.000 You would say, they say, Charlie, if this continues, we're going to go out of business with this.

00:19:14.000 This is the little nonsense of the U.S. Senate.

00:19:16.000 Buried on page 306 in the Senate finance text of the One Big Bitty Future Bills, a carve-out for big multinationals to pocket taxpayer dollars for their Chinese suppliers by grandfathering existing contracts.

00:19:27.000 Big auto companies, General Motors in particular, is Pushing for this.

00:19:30.000 This provision will send hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer dollars to companies affiliated with the CCP, literally, through 2030, at the expense of American manufacturers that were just getting a break from their anti-competitive behavior thanks to President Trump's America First trade policy.

00:19:44.000 This is literally being pushed by GM, Biden's BFF, Mary Barra, and her buddies at the Chinese battery company.

00:19:52.000 And by the way, I know the Republican senators that are carrying the water on this.

00:19:55.000 I'm not saying their names yet.

00:19:56.000 They better fix this.

00:19:57.000 But this stuff drives me crazy.

00:19:59.000 All of a sudden, we have this big, beautiful bill.

00:20:00.000 It's America First.

00:20:01.000 Trump's agenda is going.

00:20:02.000 And these Republican senators are putting in carve-outs that are going to help Chinese battery companies.

00:20:07.000 Like, what is that?

00:20:08.000 Joining us now is Josh Hammer.

00:20:10.000 Josh is awesome.

00:20:10.000 Josh, I'm pleased that you are back in America.

00:20:12.000 Is your family okay?

00:20:14.000 Inform our audience of the unbelievable journey you had to go through because of the Iranian missile attacks.

00:20:19.000 Yeah, Charlie, I think last time I checked in with you, it was less than 24 hours after the IDF operations inside Iran began.

00:20:25.000 We were over in Israel at that time, and it was a Friday afternoon.

00:20:29.000 The Jewish Sabbath was about to come in over in Israel.

00:20:31.000 And we kind of just, everyone knew that the Iranians were going to start their missile launches during the Jewish Sabbath. 0.99

00:20:36.000 Sure enough, that's exactly what happened.

00:20:38.000 I literally had to interrupt my Shabbat to Friday evening prayers to take my wife and daughter to run down to the bombshell after this happened on and off over the next few days.

00:20:48.000 And Charlie, you know, this has kind of evaded American media.

00:20:50.000 So the media is properly covering all of the astonishing tactical operational success that the IDF and Mossad had, especially in those first few hours of the war inside Iran.

00:21:00.000 But unfortunately, the Israeli air defense was letting too many missiles through.

00:21:04.000 To be clear, they were intercepting most of them, but too many were getting through.

00:21:07.000 And after a few days, it did start to get a little dicey.

00:21:10.000 And there was a neighboring town near where we were staying that the Israeli media tragically was reporting that two people who even went to the bomb shelter, they actually died from a direct ballistic missile blast.

00:21:21.000 Because Charlie, let's understand here that these bomb shelters over there, they're built primarily with these Hamas rockets and mortars in mind, not necessarily these 2,000-mile hypersonic ballistic missiles.

00:21:31.000 So I decided that I basically had to get the heck out of here.

00:21:34.000 So I did a little research.

00:21:35.000 I came across this program.

00:21:36.000 I live in Florida.

00:21:37.000 I came across a program that our governor, Ron DeSantis, had Florida team up with, a rescue evacuation organization called Gray Bull Rescue.

00:21:44.000 I was put in touch with a state sender from Florida, a wonderful man named Jay Collins.

00:21:48.000 And he was our point of contact to basically get us home.

00:21:51.000 So it was a three and a half day journey.

00:21:52.000 It took a very long time.

00:21:53.000 We took a bus to the Jordanian-Israeli border.

00:21:57.000 The border was total chaos, total zoo.

00:21:58.000 A lot of people were trying to get across that border.

00:22:00.000 Spent the night in Amman, Jordan, flew from Jordan to Cyprus, which is like a hub for a lot of people fleeing.

00:22:06.000 Did a night in Cyprus, then flew on a DeSantis chart flight from Cyprus to Tampa.

00:22:11.000 DeSantis was actually waiting for us there.

00:22:13.000 We did a whole press conference.

00:22:14.000 He actually asked me to join him.

00:22:15.000 I was coming off of a 13-hour flight, no sleep.

00:22:17.000 So I did the best I could at 5.30 in the morning.

00:22:19.000 Hopefully it came out okay.

00:22:21.000 It was quite an ordeal, to put it mildly, but most importantly, Charlie, I am home.

00:22:24.000 My family is home.

00:22:24.000 We are all safe.

00:22:25.000 Praise be to God.

00:22:26.000 I mean, and how old is your daughter?

00:22:28.000 Six months.

00:22:29.000 That's tough, man.

00:22:30.000 I mean, that's really tough.

00:22:32.000 Can you just remind our audience a little bit?

00:22:34.000 And then I want to get into some more of the just the psychological toll.

00:22:37.000 I mean, every night you go into bunkers.

00:22:39.000 No one's getting sleep.

00:22:40.000 It's terror on the children.

00:22:42.000 I think part of it is the terror on the children, too.

00:22:44.000 I mean, I know what it's like if my daughter or son's night sleep is interrupted at night.

00:22:49.000 It's a disaster, right?

00:22:50.000 It becomes a total calamity.

00:22:52.000 But that's part of what Iran wanted to try and invoke upon the people of Israel.

00:22:57.000 Am I correct?

00:22:58.000 Totally correct.

00:22:59.000 So, you know, the crazy thing, Charlie, so our daughter, her name is Esther.

00:23:03.000 I actually dedicated my book, Israel and Civilization, to my daughter Esther.

00:23:06.000 Anyone who knows anything about the book of Esther in the Bible knows that it is a story that takes place in Persia, in ancient Iran and Persia.

00:23:13.000 So it was actually literally on our daughter's six-month birthday on June 13, 2025, that the Persians started launching rockets at us.

00:23:21.000 It kind of had almost like a biblical kind of divine element to it as well.

00:23:26.000 But I guess I will say this.

00:23:27.000 So we kind of got lucky insofar as, yes, it was horrible.

00:23:30.000 We moved bedrooms.

00:23:32.000 So we were very lucky.

00:23:33.000 We're staying in a house that had a spare bedroom on the basement level next to the bomb shelter.

00:23:37.000 So we actually slept in this room adjacent to the bomb shelter so that when the sirens and the phone goes off at three in the morning there, you can literally just drop everything you're doing and rush next door.

00:23:45.000 Not fun, by the way.

00:23:46.000 I mean, 90 seconds, two minutes to just drop whatever you're doing, put on your glasses if you wear contacts like me and just get to the bomb shelter ASAP.

00:23:53.000 But we got lucky insofar as I think it was easier to have a six-month-old Charlie than if we had like a five or six year old.

00:24:00.000 And sure enough, there actually were some families on our evacuation mission.

00:24:03.000 There were 300 of us who got on those buses towards the Jordanian border on the first state of Florida evacuation mission.

00:24:10.000 There are these two wonderful, beautiful families from Texas, Christian families there who were visiting the Christian holy sites in Israel.

00:24:16.000 And these two families had these beautiful children, you know, three, four, five, six, seven.

00:24:20.000 And I watched the parents just trying to keep these kids entertained, like literally entertained on the bus to the hotel, the airport, to this.

00:24:26.000 And I kind of said to my wife, you know, like we have a six-month-old and that's not easy there, but it could also be a lot tougher as well.

00:24:33.000 Oh, I mean, I mean, I have a near three-year-old.

00:24:35.000 I can't imagine what like a full, all your energy would just be on making sure your two or three-year-old is entertained.

00:24:45.000 So, Josh, praise the Lord that you're okay and your family's okay.

00:24:49.000 So, now that the war is over, just kind of give us your take on what President Trump was able to accomplish, what this means for the Western world.

00:25:01.000 And if you would have told most people two weeks ago, Iran would have no nuclear weapon, there would be no U.S. troops killed, there'd be no U.S. troops on the ground, there would be no permanent war, there would be no even talks of war in Congress, and that we kind of are moving on in a new cycle.

00:25:16.000 I mean, that would be an incomprehensible accomplishment.

00:25:19.000 I just want everyone to look at this from a two-week window.

00:25:21.000 Two weeks ago was when Israel launched the first strikes against Iran, two weeks ago.

00:25:26.000 And now it's kind of a memory and it's being forgotten.

00:25:29.000 It's unbelievable.

00:25:30.000 Josh Hammer.

00:25:32.000 Yeah, Charlie, very well said.

00:25:33.000 This is one of the most astonishing victories from any president of the United States in my entire lifetime.

00:25:38.000 Full stop.

00:25:39.000 I mean, hard stop.

00:25:40.000 End of story.

00:25:41.000 I mean, this is incredible legacy-defining stuff.

00:25:45.000 Charlie, you and I are roughly around the same age.

00:25:48.000 I'm a few years older.

00:25:49.000 I think I'm 36.

00:25:49.000 But for my entire adult lifetime, my entire adult lifetime, the Iranian nuclear program has been one of those thorny, recurring, ongoing debates.

00:25:57.000 It's been this hovering sort of Damocles Over the Middle East, over the United States, over Western civilization. 0.65

00:26:03.000 What do we do?

00:26:04.000 What do we not do?

00:26:05.000 Do we reach a deal like Barack Obama did in 2015?

00:26:07.000 Do we try to just bomb them?

00:26:10.000 Is there going to be a forever war, regime change war? 0.80

00:26:12.000 Are we just going to let it sit and let them get nuclear?

00:26:14.000 It's been in the debate for literally as long as I've been following politics.

00:26:17.000 Donald Trump, in roughly 37 hours, from those B-2s taken off of Missouri, going to Iran, dropping the 14 bunker busters, those Tomahawk missiles from the nuclear submarine, and then returning home, in 37 hours, without a single shot being fired on a B-2, he has single-handedly changed the face of the region and arguably the world.

00:26:37.000 He has neutralized the single current deadliest threat, not just the people of the Middle East, but potentially to the people of Europe, because Iran has ballistic missiles that can go a thousand miles as well. 0.76

00:26:48.000 And they've been working very hard on ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles as well, that God forbid could potentially reach the Americas, the Western hemisphere.

00:26:55.000 They're not there yet, but they've certainly been working on it there.

00:26:57.000 And in one fell swoop, in one fell swoop, Donald Trump has done more to bring peace, stability, and security to the Middle East and to the United States.

00:27:06.000 Charlie, let's not forget the raison d'être, the entire purpose of the current regime in Iran is to eliminate what they refer to as the little said in Israel and the big Sayyid in the United States. 0.72

00:27:17.000 People can say, oh, why do they hate us?

00:27:19.000 It doesn't matter.

00:27:19.000 I'm telling you, it does not matter.

00:27:20.000 The fact is they literally do.

00:27:22.000 This regime started with a hostage crisis at the American embassy that ended the Jimmy Carter presidency.

00:27:27.000 They funded Hezbollah to murder 241 Marines in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983.

00:27:32.000 There was the Khaibar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.

00:27:35.000 All the Qasem Sulaimani supplied IEDs to murder our brave men and women in uniform in Iraq in the 2000s.

00:27:41.000 And on and on it goes.

00:27:43.000 This regime has a ton of American blood on its hands.

00:27:45.000 If you can accomplish at an infinitesimally low cost to deprive this genocidal, maniacal, anti-American regime of the world's deadliest weapons, why in the world would you not do that?

00:27:57.000 So praise be to God that Donald Trump did what he did.

00:28:00.000 It is a fantastic demonstration of American military prowess.

00:28:04.000 And most importantly, Charlie, it's also the Trump doctrine at work.

00:28:07.000 The Trump doctrine is neither neoconservative nor isolationist.

00:28:11.000 He is a nationalist realist Jacksonian is a term that gets battered out sometimes.

00:28:15.000 He is someone who is not looking to start wars, and this was not looking to start a war.

00:28:20.000 It actually was looking to try to end a war, to end the Iranian regime's four and a half decade-long war through the regime directly and their various proxies against America and America's allies.

00:28:30.000 It is a fantastic, unbelievable, historical display of statesmanship.

00:28:34.000 And I am proud that I voted for this man, frankly, in Don J. Trump.

00:28:38.000 Can you comment?

00:28:38.000 I mean, I was very outspoken against regime change.

00:28:42.000 I'm glad I was.

00:28:43.000 President Trump didn't want regime change.

00:28:45.000 But some of other vocal voices in the movement still were calling for regime change.

00:28:50.000 Why do you think President Trump played this correctly from an American standpoint?

00:28:54.000 Well, it's not the role of the United States to impose top-down regime change, Charlie.

00:28:58.000 I mean, look, we've learned this lesson before.

00:29:00.000 We've learned it in Iraq.

00:29:01.000 We've learned in Afghanistan.

00:29:02.000 It is a hubristic and arrogant act for a liberal Western society to try to dictate to a foreign nation who they should or should not have ruled them.

00:29:11.000 Now, having said that, Charlie, we should not hesitate to say that the current Iranian regime is evil. 1.00

00:29:15.000 Again, they chant death to America on a daily basis.

00:29:18.000 But the proper solution is for the Persian people, who are very smart, educated, historical people going back millennia, to ultimately one day, God willing, take matters into their own hands.

00:29:28.000 That is the proper remedy.

00:29:29.000 That's the proper solution for the Iranian quagmire. 1.00

00:29:31.000 It's not for the United States or any of our allies to go ahead and impose regime change top-down.

00:29:36.000 Well said.

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00:30:35.000 Josh, what do you make of the liberal narrative that President Trump and America's strikes on Ford were unsuccessful?

00:30:43.000 Josh Hammer.

00:30:45.000 Well, Charlie, I can answer that very simply, which is, you know, Donald Trump Pete said the line is that they've been obliterated.

00:30:51.000 Look, I have not been near in Ford.

00:30:54.000 I have not been able to say that it's literally been obliterated.

00:30:57.000 What I can tell you is this, that this leaker is full of, you know what? 0.99

00:31:00.000 This leaker is 1,000% full of crap there. 0.99

00:31:03.000 This has all the markings of a Natasha Bertrand operation. 0.99

00:31:06.000 That is the name of the reporter at Politico who was reporting about this leaker.

00:31:09.000 If that name sounds familiar, that's because it should.

00:31:12.000 She was the reporter back in 2020 who was first seeking to dismiss the New York Post's bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story as so-called Russian disinformation with Brennan and Clapper and that whole terrible list of 51 deep state spooks.

00:31:24.000 So we should be very skeptical for that reason.

00:31:27.000 Charlie, the other reason that I think I feel very, very confident in saying that whether it's literal obliteration or setback years and years there, the other reason I'm very confident is because that's what the Israelis are saying too. 0.94

00:31:38.000 And a lot of people say, oh, you know, the U.S. should not trust what Israel says.

00:31:41.000 Fair enough.

00:31:41.000 Every country should do its own assessment.

00:31:43.000 But in this particular situation, in this particular situation, I think Israel's word is actually very important because the Iranian nuclear program is literally an existential threat to them. 0.76

00:31:52.000 So the fact that Israel agreed to this Trump-imposed ceasefire, ASAP, it's pretty much no questions asked.

00:31:58.000 That means that they are very satisfied that this existential threat hovering over them on a daily basis has been severely neutralized, if not quite gotten rid of in its entirety.

00:32:07.000 So I feel very good about the currency of the program.

00:32:09.000 Obviously, we will learn more in the days to come, but this has all the hallmarks of an anti-Trump deep state intelligence community leak.

00:32:15.000 Yes, I mean, and to your point, I mean, if Israel felt that they were threatened so much by the Iranian nuclear program, they were willing to launch preemptive strikes.

00:32:24.000 And then now they're saying that that threat is taken out, well, then that's actually probably the best verification because they Obviously, have the most interest and most invested in the lethality and the seriousness of the Iranian nuclear program. 0.69

00:32:39.000 Josh, final thought here: there's new polling to suggest that young people's view of Israel has gone down in the last couple of weeks, last couple of months.

00:32:48.000 There's a lot of work to do to try to educate the next generation about the pro-Israel cause.

00:32:54.000 Why do you think that is?

00:32:57.000 And what do you think can be done in the coming months or years to at least get young people to understand that Israel is a country surrounded by barbarians and a death cult, and that it's a much more complicated, nuanced position?

00:33:12.000 Josh.

00:33:13.000 Charlie, my best guess as to why the Israel position is currently becoming a little more unpopular with certain younger, especially Gen Z types above all, is that especially for those who grew up in a post-9-11 milieu, and to be clear, I was only 12 years old when 9-11 happened, I think that there is this conflation between U.S. support for Israel and the forever wars that constituted the failed regime change wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

00:33:36.000 But this is a flawed line of analysis for multiple reasons.

00:33:40.000 On the first hand, Charlie, there's this narrative that Israel talked George W. Bush into fighting Iraq.

00:33:45.000 And frankly, nothing can be further from the case.

00:33:47.000 In fact, both the president of Israel at the time in 2002, Shimon Peres, and the leader of the Israeli right, Ariel Sharon, literally both told George W. Bush, do not do this because you're going to topple this.

00:33:58.000 It's going to become an Iranian province overnight in Iraq there.

00:34:01.000 You're going to destabilize the region.

00:34:02.000 So that narrative has always been bunk.

00:34:04.000 But Charlie, there's a much more important argument here, which I advance in my book, Israel and Civilization.

00:34:09.000 I have a whole chapter on this, which I think is imperative for young Americans, young conservatives, young Christians to understand that Israel serves the American national interest in this region by oftentimes doing our dirty work for us. 0.94

00:34:21.000 When it comes to pruning the jihadist excesses of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Qatayib, Hezbollah, all the Houthis, all the various proxies of the Iranian regime, to doing tremendous damage to the Iranian regime itself in the first few days of the 12-day war, therefore making it so that these B-2 bombers could go in with the Iranian missile defense, with the Iranian radar completely obliterated there, with not a single shot fired there.

00:34:46.000 I mean, Charlie, what Israel and the U.S. just did to neutralize the Iranian nuclear program, I'm a sports fan, it's essentially equivalent to an alley-oop of sorts.

00:34:53.000 I mean, I think back to the old early 2000s, Kobe Bryant to Shaquille O'Neal.

00:34:56.000 It's basically an alley oop.

00:34:57.000 It is a tag team operation to neutralize a hegemonic threat from a regime that chants not just death to Israel, but death to America as well.

00:35:05.000 All of this, by the way, is in service of trying to stabilize the Middle East and therefore kind of make it easier for America to pivot to China, which is our big threat. 0.80

00:35:12.000 Check out the Josh Hammers show.

00:35:13.000 Josh, thanks so much.

00:35:15.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:35:16.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:35:19.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:35:20.000 God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - June 26, 2025

The Baffling Barrier Blocking the Big Beautiful Bill

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