The Charlie Kirk Show - July 15, 2025


The Debate Heard Around the World


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 22 minutes

Words per Minute

196.79608

Word Count

16,216

Sentence Count

1,273

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

68


Summary

Dave Smith and Josh Hammer debate whether or not we should support Israel during the upcoming 12 Day War between Israel and Iran, and why we should not send aid to Israel. Recorded in Tampa, FL at Turning Point USA, a conference sponsored by Noble Gold Investments.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's Charlie Kirk here live from the Bitcoin.com studio.
00:00:04.000 A debate heard around the world.
00:00:06.000 Dave Smith vs.
00:00:07.000 Josh Hammer that I moderate about Israel.
00:00:10.000 We talk about the AIPAC.
00:00:12.000 We talk about foreign influence on October 7th.
00:00:15.000 We talk about the brain rot of anti-Semitism.
00:00:18.000 I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation.
00:00:20.000 Email me freedom at charliekirk.com who you think won and how you think I did moderate it.
00:00:25.000 Get involved with Turning Point USA Today at tpusa.com.
00:00:28.000 Buckle up everybody here, but we get to go.
00:00:30.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:31.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
00:00:33.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:37.000 Charlie Kirk is running the White House, buddy.
00:00:40.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:41.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:42.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
00:00:44.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, turning toward USA.
00:00:50.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:00:59.000 That's why we are here.
00:01:03.000 Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
00:01:13.000 Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:19.000 That is noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:21.000 It's where I buy all of my gold.
00:01:23.000 Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:28.000 Our last bit of programming here is going to be a debate.
00:01:31.000 As many of you guys know, I speak a lot about this on college campuses.
00:01:35.000 I get so many questions about this topic on college campuses.
00:01:38.000 Some of my best memories ever have been going to Israel, traveling to Israel, seeing where Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus walked on water, spoke in the Garden of Gethsemane, gave the sermon on Mount Beatitudes, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Hebron.
00:01:50.000 And some of my greatest experiences have been in the Holy Land and defending Israel.
00:01:55.000 But as you know, this is a very hot topic on campus and increasingly a hot topic in conservative circles.
00:02:02.000 And I thought, hey, let's lean into that disagreement.
00:02:05.000 Let's lean into that debate.
00:02:07.000 Let's have two people that don't agree on this topic that are some of the best defenders of the position when it comes to Israel, when it comes to the 12-day war, when it comes to whether or not we should be supporting or sending aid to Israel.
00:02:21.000 Because we as conservatives, we want to have this debate.
00:02:23.000 We don't want to just all of a sudden say, oh, you're not allowed to say that.
00:02:26.000 No.
00:02:26.000 We want to foster an environment where we get to the truth.
00:02:30.000 We want to find the best ideas and have the best ideas win.
00:02:34.000 And so we are thrilled to have two men, and they know what they're talking about.
00:02:39.000 I'm going to be moderating this.
00:02:40.000 We're going to make sure that this remains mostly peaceful.
00:02:44.000 So give it up for Josh Hammer and Dave Smith, everybody.
00:02:49.000 So Josh and Dave, welcome to Turning Point USA.
00:02:52.000 Welcome to Tampa.
00:02:53.000 And give it up for both these men again.
00:02:58.000 So we have a clock here.
00:02:59.000 We can blow through that if this is going well and respectful and spirited.
00:03:03.000 I first wanted to start by introducing both these men.
00:03:06.000 Josh Hammer, Newsweek, Josh Hammer Show.
00:03:09.000 Josh is a very passionate and eloquent defender of Israel and also is a great friend and someone that we talk about a lot of other issues as well.
00:03:18.000 So Josh, welcome.
00:03:19.000 Great to have you.
00:03:19.000 Great to be here, Charlie.
00:03:20.000 Also, Dave Smith.
00:03:22.000 Dave is comedian.
00:03:25.000 A lot of fans of yours here in the audience, Dave, and also a libertarian.
00:03:30.000 And we're not going to talk much about that.
00:03:32.000 But we were talking about how much we agreed backstage on certain things.
00:03:35.000 And Dave means a lot that you made work here.
00:03:38.000 You took an awful flight to get here from halfway across the country.
00:03:42.000 And so, Dave, you could plug your stuff as well because I don't know the name of your show and stuff.
00:03:47.000 But I want to start with this.
00:03:47.000 I want to start with opening statements, if you will.
00:03:49.000 There are three big things that I want to cover.
00:03:51.000 And we just did a focus group with some of our students here earlier.
00:03:55.000 The three big things we want to cover.
00:03:56.000 We want to cover the 12-day war between Israel and Iran.
00:03:59.000 What do we think of that?
00:04:00.000 Good, bad?
00:04:00.000 How did Trump handle it?
00:04:01.000 Number two, we want to talk about the appeared, the fake, or the real amount of Israeli influence in American politics, from AIPAC to how congressmen are involved and kind of have our discussion and debate.
00:04:14.000 And then finally, it's one thing to be against stuff, everybody.
00:04:17.000 You can always, you know, I don't like this, I don't like that.
00:04:20.000 I want both of these men to present what their solution is, their proposition of what they are proposing.
00:04:27.000 So with that, though, Dave, I thought it would be helpful.
00:04:29.000 This is your first turning point event.
00:04:30.000 Some people aren't familiar with your work.
00:04:32.000 Introduce yourself, make an introductory statement, and the floor is yours, my friend.
00:04:37.000 Well, thank you very much, and thank you guys for having me.
00:04:40.000 Yeah, as Charlie mentioned, I took a flight here.
00:04:47.000 Oh, so I'm going on no sleep.
00:04:48.000 So if Josh wins, it doesn't count.
00:04:52.000 But I'm a stand-up comedian, and I'm also a libertarian.
00:04:56.000 I'm really a follower of the greatest congressman who's ever lived, who is Dr. Ron Paul, who is turning 90 years old.
00:05:05.000 Happy birthday to him.
00:05:07.000 And as far as, look, I would say I think that American foreign policy for my entire life has been insane and like criminally insane.
00:05:18.000 We've launched war after war.
00:05:20.000 We've talked about peace through strength the whole time, but all we've gotten is permanent militarism and forever wars against countries that pose no threat to us.
00:05:30.000 And a huge part of the reason why we've embarked on this is because the neoconservatives hijacked our foreign policy and they were in power after 9-11.
00:05:38.000 And the neoconservatives, as everybody who's followed it knows, were joined at the hip with the Likud Party.
00:05:44.000 That's just a fact.
00:05:45.000 They all admitted in their own words.
00:05:47.000 And you can go back and you can read the Clean Break memo.
00:05:50.000 You can read the companion piece, Coping with Crumbling States.
00:05:54.000 This was written by David Wormser and Richard Pearl.
00:05:58.000 And they laid out their plan.
00:05:59.000 Now, their plan was that to help Israel, the Clean Break is a break from the peace process, a break from Oslo, which was designed to give the Palestinians their own state.
00:06:10.000 And these neoconservative geniuses decided that instead of the Israelis making peace with the Palestinians, they could just have the U.S. overthrow all of the surrounding governments that were giving Israel a hard time.
00:06:22.000 And this is where four-star general Wesley Clark says that he saw the plans right after 9-11 to overthrow seven countries In the next five years.
00:06:31.000 And what was the last country on that list?
00:06:33.000 It was Iran.
00:06:35.000 Okay?
00:06:35.000 This is a big part of what the whole conflict is about.
00:06:39.000 Now, the neoconservatives, neoconservative has kind of become like a pejorative for war hawks these days.
00:06:44.000 And don't get me wrong, I support that.
00:06:47.000 I keep calling them neocons.
00:06:49.000 But the actual neoconservatives, the self-identified neoconservatives, aren't really in power anymore.
00:06:55.000 But Benjamin Netanyahu is still in power in Israel.
00:06:58.000 And the Likud Party is still pushing for this.
00:07:00.000 Very quickly, I'll try to not go too long here.
00:07:03.000 Okay.
00:07:04.000 They actually did focus group testing back in the 90s before the first Gulf War in Iraq.
00:07:10.000 And you know, Americans weren't really moved by we have to reinstall the king of Kuwait, but they were moved by the nuclear threat.
00:07:19.000 Now, if you go read Coping with Crumbling States or the Clean Break memo in the 90s when the neocons admitted they wanted to overthrow Saddam Hussein, they never said it was because he had nuclear weapons.
00:07:28.000 They said he was a problem for Israel in the region.
00:07:31.000 They only made up that lie after 9-11 because they knew that's what would sell you, or maybe not you, you're too young, but sell your moms and dads on going and fighting this war.
00:07:41.000 And by the way, when they talked about wanting to overthrow Iran, it was the same thing.
00:07:45.000 Never had nothing to do with a nuclear threat.
00:07:47.000 That's just the thing they use now as the excuse.
00:07:50.000 So yes, there is tremendous influence by Israel in our government.
00:07:54.000 That doesn't mean I'm subscribing to some crazy conspiracy or telling you to hate Jewish people.
00:07:58.000 I'm Jewish.
00:07:59.000 I'm just saying they have influence.
00:08:01.000 They've used it in a very negative way.
00:08:02.000 And we should reject this insane foreign policy and embrace the foreign policy that Dr. Ron Paul advocated, which is the foreign policy of the founding fathers.
00:08:11.000 Stay out of entangling alliances, stay out of unnecessary wars, be friends with the world, and trade with the world.
00:08:17.000 That's the key to prosperity.
00:08:19.000 Thank you, Dave.
00:08:21.000 Josh.
00:08:23.000 Opening statement.
00:08:24.000 Feel free to respond and then we'll proceed as we go.
00:08:27.000 So I thought it was about three and a half, four minutes, so same amount of time.
00:08:30.000 All right, so it's really great to be here.
00:08:31.000 Thank you, Charlie, for having me.
00:08:32.000 Thank you, Turning Point, for having me back.
00:08:34.000 It's really wonderful to be at this amazing conference.
00:08:36.000 You know, Dave joked that he didn't get any sleep last night.
00:08:38.000 Today's actually also a fast day on the Jewish calendar.
00:08:40.000 I'm not eating or even drinking water.
00:08:42.000 So we're all on the same page here.
00:08:44.000 We're all just totally screwed.
00:08:45.000 So you can kind of get off the same starting place there.
00:08:49.000 Look, there's a lot of substance to respond to.
00:08:52.000 I'll just really briefly do that and then talk about what I actually want to talk about in my opening remarks.
00:08:57.000 Dave mentioned this alleged coordination between the neoconservatives, which I presume he means Bush-era foreign policy, and the Likud Party.
00:09:05.000 I presume half of you probably don't even know what the Likud Party is.
00:09:07.000 It's referring to the Israeli right.
00:09:10.000 It's very instructive, and Dave always conveniently neglects to inform the audience of this, that the actual leader of the Israeli right back in 2002, a man by the name of Ariel Sharon, vehemently opposed the Bush administration going into Iraq.
00:09:21.000 So this whole notion that Israel is talking America into foreign wars is total nonsense.
00:09:27.000 Actually, in 2011, when the Obama administration toppled Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, it's actually well known that Libya actually sent secret diplomatic envoys to Israel trying to tell them to then talk to the United States and France to talk NATO off of that attack there.
00:09:43.000 So this whole narrative is totally backwards there.
00:09:45.000 But I want to kind of dumb things down a little bit here.
00:09:47.000 I see a lot of people wearing 47 hats.
00:09:49.000 I voted for President Trump multiple times.
00:09:51.000 I love our president.
00:09:52.000 You guys love our president, right?
00:09:53.000 You love President Trump?
00:09:54.000 Okay.
00:09:56.000 This is turning point freaking USA.
00:09:58.000 Charlie, God bless you.
00:09:59.000 You have built the largest MAGA grassroots army in the country.
00:10:02.000 Seriously, my friend, you deserve this.
00:10:04.000 You all are car carry members of it.
00:10:06.000 We here are part of that.
00:10:08.000 The good news is that while no one should be afraid of debate and this debate is a nice thing here, the MAGA movement is actually quite unified, believe it or not, all the talk to the contrary when it comes to these issues.
00:10:18.000 An overwhelming majority of self-identified MAGA Republicans support close U.S. Israel relations.
00:10:24.000 According to a CBS news poll, moreover, after the recent Operation Midnight Hammer B-2 bombers in Iran, 94%, 94% of self-identified MAGA Republicans supported President Trump's dropping those B-2 bombs on Ford Donatans and the other Irani facilities there.
00:10:42.000 This is a wildly, wildly popular policy there.
00:10:46.000 What did Dave Smith say about this?
00:10:48.000 He re-upped his now years-long crusade to call for Donald Trump's impeachment.
00:10:52.000 Y'all probably don't know that about Dave Smith, do you?
00:10:54.000 He's now called for Donald Trump to be impeached multiple times.
00:10:58.000 But Dave, you know, look, I mean, I don't like when people misquote me either.
00:11:01.000 You probably don't like when people misquote you.
00:11:02.000 So I actually have a little bit of a highlight reel here of Dave Smith's tweets over the years.
00:11:07.000 Dave Smith, March 19th, 2024.
00:11:10.000 Donald Trump is responsible for around 500,000 deaths in Yemen.
00:11:14.000 And between the weapons to Ukraine and the Abraham Accord's Jerusalem embassy, he is at least partially responsible for the two worst humanitarian crises in the world.
00:11:22.000 He's a war criminal who should spend his life in prison.
00:11:25.000 He is calling Donald Trump a war criminal who should spend his life in prison.
00:11:30.000 You should be living at that.
00:11:31.000 I am living at that as a Trump supporter.
00:11:33.000 Donald Trump, David Smith, June 16, 2025.
00:11:37.000 Trump allegedly had full prior knowledge of Israel's attacks and gave it his blessing while pretending to be negotiating with the Iranians as a cover.
00:11:44.000 If this is true, Trump is the most impotent b ⁇ of a leader imaginable.
00:11:48.000 He's calling our president the greatest president in my lifetime, an impotent b ⁇ .
00:11:54.000 Are you kidding me?
00:11:55.000 June 21st, 2025, Donald Trump is alleged to be able to lose someone who is an illegal war of aggression against Iran.
00:12:01.000 The risk of an absolute catastrophe is very high and the benefits are non-existent.
00:12:07.000 Dave Smith, June 21st.
00:12:09.000 Dead wrong.
00:12:10.000 This notion that World War III would start, not a single American casualty.
00:12:13.000 We should be celebrating that.
00:12:15.000 Donald Trump fulfilled multiple.
00:12:17.000 He fulfilled multiple campaign promises.
00:12:20.000 The escalator speech in 2015 at Trump Tower, he literally said, I'm not going to let Iran get a nuclear weapon.
00:12:25.000 And guess what?
00:12:26.000 I also, he said, I oppose a neoconservative foreign policy.
00:12:29.000 He did both of those things with Iran.
00:12:32.000 He deprived the Irani regime of nuclear weapon while not losing a single American sailor, soldier, Marine while depriving them of nuclear weapons.
00:12:38.000 And finally, trial end on this.
00:12:40.000 Dave Smith, July 8th, 2025, in the last month, Donald Trump has launched a war of aggression on behalf of a foreign government, exploded the debt, announced that he's continuing the Biden policy of Army Ukraine and cover up a giant child rape operation.
00:12:52.000 So according to my interlocutor, Donald Trump is not just engaging in wars on behalf of a foreign government, he is also covering up the world's giant pedophilic Child sex trafficking ring, allegedly, I presume, on behalf of a foreign government as well.
00:13:03.000 So I'm disgusted, frankly, that this man is on stage, but I'll end it at that.
00:13:06.000 Okay, well, got it.
00:13:09.000 So you can see peace is hard.
00:13:14.000 I'm trying to keep the peace.
00:13:15.000 Now, Dave, I want to give you an opportunity, about four minutes, to respond to that.
00:13:20.000 But also, I do want to, now that we had the opening salvos and the Tomahawk missiles launched, let's respond as you see fit.
00:13:27.000 No, and then bring us to the 12-day war.
00:13:29.000 Because that let's stay focused on that.
00:13:31.000 We can.
00:13:32.000 Well, the thing, Charlie.
00:13:32.000 Defend yourself, Charlie.
00:13:34.000 Well, the thing is, Charlie, as you may have noticed, and some of you may have seen some of my other debates, every single time I come up here to debate issues, and they come up here to debate me and my character.
00:13:44.000 It's all they have every single time.
00:13:47.000 Because they can't actually take on any of the arguments, and so the most pathetic, low-hanging fruit of, you guys like Trump, this guy said bad things about Trump.
00:13:56.000 Listen, guys, I'm a free American.
00:13:58.000 I supported Donald Trump in this last election.
00:14:01.000 Yes, he did just actively cover up a giant child rapist ring, and I'm going to criticize him for that.
00:14:07.000 Okay?
00:14:08.000 And I'm sorry, after all these years of us right-wingers saying, protect the children, come on, that's bad for your soul if you don't.
00:14:15.000 You speak up about that.
00:14:17.000 It's horrible what he's doing.
00:14:18.000 And, you know, as far as the actual substance of what Josh said here, which there really wasn't much, but I already pointed this out the last time we debated.
00:14:25.000 His topic about how Sharon was against the war in Iraq is total nonsense.
00:14:30.000 Sharon's envoy initially opposed it when he found out that Bush was going to invade Iraq, not because he didn't want Saddam Hussein to be overthrown, but because he wanted regime change in Iran first.
00:14:42.000 And then when the George W. Bush administration assured him that Iran would come next, they got on board with it and they started pumping out all types of propaganda about how Saddam Hussein's nuclear secret sites that didn't exist.
00:14:54.000 And Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, that year in 2002, came to Congress and testified under a congressional testimony that anybody can go watch and advocated not that the U.S. let Israel do it, but that the U.S. overthrow Saddam Hussein.
00:15:15.000 I believe his words were, I guarantee that peace will spread through the region.
00:15:20.000 And he also advocated that we overthrow Muammar Gaddafi and the mullahs in Iran.
00:15:25.000 So that's just, you're just wrong about it.
00:15:27.000 That's not true.
00:15:28.000 And yes, have I been critical of Donald Trump when I think he gets things wrong?
00:15:33.000 Yeah.
00:15:33.000 I mean, I think that's what we should do.
00:15:35.000 This is America.
00:15:37.000 You criticize the government when they get things wrong.
00:15:40.000 And so I'm not going to be war criminal.
00:15:42.000 What else do you want to do?
00:15:42.000 Josh, one sec, Josh.
00:15:44.000 I got to keep the peace here.
00:15:45.000 Dave, about a minute-ish.
00:15:47.000 Two minutes.
00:15:47.000 No, I'm taking the right time.
00:15:48.000 I'm just.
00:15:49.000 Look, as far as the 12-day war thing goes.
00:15:52.000 Yeah, sure.
00:15:53.000 As far as the 12-day war goes, I mean, look, I'll be honest.
00:15:56.000 Donald Trump, it might be the greatest thing he's ever done in his life that at the end of the 12-day war, after the Iranian response was as weak as it was and they gave us advanced warning, so there were no American casualties, he started pushing for a ceasefire.
00:16:11.000 And that was great that he did that.
00:16:13.000 But the point is that the war never needed to be launched to begin with.
00:16:17.000 Iran did not have nuclear weapons.
00:16:19.000 Iran, according to all of the intelligence, including our director of national intelligence, until a day after Israel bombed them and she changed her mind.
00:16:31.000 Go read the annual threat assessment from earlier this year.
00:16:34.000 Iran had not made the political decision to acquire a nuclear weapon, and they were in negotiations with Donald Trump at the time to bring their enrichment down.
00:16:43.000 There was just no need other than the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu wants that regime overthrown.
00:16:48.000 Josh, feel free to respond.
00:16:49.000 Thank you.
00:16:49.000 Yeah, I'd be curious if Dave Smith also believes in the tooth ferrier and pink unicorns.
00:16:54.000 I mean, what lie does Dave Smith not believe, frankly?
00:16:57.000 Look, the recent 12-day war is literally the encapsulation of the Trump doctrine of foreign policy.
00:17:04.000 Donald Trump ran against neoconservatism.
00:17:07.000 He is not a neoconservative.
00:17:09.000 That's good because neoconservatism is actually really, really bad.
00:17:12.000 I actually have a whole chapter in my book, Israel and Civilization, talking about how bad neoconservatism is.
00:17:18.000 It's chapter seven.
00:17:18.000 If you haven't read, you should go ahead and pick up a copy.
00:17:20.000 So it's really good that Donald Trump opposes moralistic nation-building boondoggles.
00:17:25.000 Guess what?
00:17:25.000 Donald Trump is also not and never has been since day one.
00:17:29.000 He's never been a hardcore isolationist.
00:17:32.000 He is a foreign policy nationalist and realist.
00:17:35.000 We would say that he is a Jacksonian.
00:17:37.000 He is in the mold of Andrew Jackson, one of his favorite presidents of all time, because he believes in generally following the very wise advice of George Washington in his farewell address that you should beware of foreign entanglements.
00:17:49.000 But when you are attacked, you are going to punch back three times as hard.
00:17:53.000 How many times has Trump said that in a debate there?
00:17:55.000 When he's punched, he's going to punch back really, really, really hard.
00:17:59.000 What happened in the 12-day war was you had a close ally, Israel, that through their wonderful control of the skies and they're taking out the missile launchers and the IRGC command there, essentially paved a very clean runway through that and their neutralizing Hezbollah last year in 2024 that then allowed the United States to come in with the B-2 bombers and the death blow.
00:18:20.000 It was a perfect alley you.
00:18:21.000 For you basketball fans, it was kind of like Kobe Bryan tossing it to Shaquille O'Neal back in the way.
00:18:25.000 It was a perfect tag team operation to neutralize and set back by many years the threat of a regime that, whether or not we care to admit it, has actually been at war with the United States at least since the 1983 Beirut, Lebanon, Hezbollah barracks bombings that slaughtered 241 Marines, arguably since the 1979 hostage crisis as well.
00:18:44.000 Again, Donald Trump fulfilled multiple campaign promises.
00:18:47.000 He set back the nuclear program.
00:18:49.000 Not a single American soldier, sailor, or Marine died.
00:18:53.000 It was a brilliant, brilliant move of statesmanship, a fantastical move.
00:18:57.000 Frankly, it's a borderline Mount Rushmore worthy accomplishment, I would say.
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00:20:05.000 So here's what I'm going to do.
00:20:06.000 I'm going to insert myself because I don't want us to talk past each other because these conversations have a tendency to do that.
00:20:11.000 So I'm going to ask both of you a critical question that both of you guys already launched.
00:20:15.000 Josh, to you first.
00:20:16.000 Dave's contention, and Dave, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that the nuclear program was not a threat, correct?
00:20:22.000 That it was an intel push.
00:20:24.000 Would you even say that?
00:20:27.000 I'm strongmanning your argument, steel manning it.
00:20:29.000 Josh, what do you have to say to that, to the veracity of the claim that there was an imminent threat of Iran getting a nuclear bomb?
00:20:36.000 That is a core point of Dave's argument.
00:20:38.000 Then, Dave, I'm going to throw back an equally difficult question for you.
00:20:41.000 Josh.
00:20:42.000 Okay, so I profess agnosticism as to the imminent nature, Charlie, because I have not seen the reports.
00:20:46.000 Neither have you, neither has Dave.
00:20:48.000 Literally, no one in this room has actually seen the reports.
00:20:50.000 So I do not know literally what the exactly imminent nature of the threat was.
00:20:55.000 It would be impossible for me to say I'm not going to bullshit you and pretend like I know because I simply don't know.
00:21:00.000 What I can say is the following.
00:21:01.000 Iran has transparently and obviously been trying to acquire a nuclear weapon for two and a half, three decades.
00:21:07.000 We know this for approximately one to two million different reasons.
00:21:11.000 Among them that we can point to is that the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Administration, which is essentially the nuclear watchdog for the United Nations, they have been sounding the alarm about this and they have said very loudly and clearly that Iran has blocked their inspectors from going to inspect their enriched uranium and that they have concluded over recent years especially,
00:21:32.000 including recent months, that Iran is enriching uranium at a much quicker rate and to a much higher percentage and rate of enrichment than any civilian program would ever justify.
00:21:42.000 By the way, the notion that Iran even needs a civilian program in the first place, I think, is kind of bonkers.
00:21:46.000 It's one of the most petroleum, oil, and gas-rich countries in the world.
00:21:49.000 So that's kind of a bit of a red herring in and of itself.
00:21:52.000 But we know from a million different international organizations that they have been doing this.
00:21:55.000 And Charlie, more to the point, again, you know, Dave likes to say, oh, they just chant death to America, which they do.
00:22:00.000 They literally chant it every single day in their Potemkin parliament.
00:22:03.000 But they actually do act on it.
00:22:05.000 They killed hundreds and hundreds of American soldiers on the roadside of Fallujah, Al-Ambar province, during Iraq with Qasem Sulaimani-supplied IEDs.
00:22:13.000 They have killed Americans going back to the 241 Marines in Beirut, Lebanon.
00:22:17.000 By the way, the Hezbollah jihadists who organized that operation to slaughter those Marines in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983 was a man by the name of Fuad Shakur.
00:22:27.000 The U.S. State Department had a $5 million bounty on his head following the 1983 slaughter of the Marines there in Beirut.
00:22:35.000 He went alive for 41 years.
00:22:36.000 You know who killed him last year?
00:22:38.000 The IDF.
00:22:39.000 Israel took out this guy that the State Department had a $5 million bounty on for 41 years for killing 241 of our boys back in 1983 in Beirut.
00:22:47.000 So I'm going to now ask, really tough follow-up for you.
00:22:52.000 You do not want Iran to get a nuclear weapon.
00:22:54.000 Bad.
00:22:55.000 If it ever took, if it required U.S. troops on the ground, would that be worth Iran not getting a nuclear weapon?
00:23:02.000 Charlie, with respect, I reject the premise.
00:23:04.000 I simply do not think it does, actually.
00:23:06.000 I know.
00:23:06.000 It's a hypothetical, but it's worth thinking about.
00:23:09.000 Okay.
00:23:09.000 Dave, I got to ask you tough questions now.
00:23:12.000 Yeah, but I want to respond to some of this stuff.
00:23:16.000 You will.
00:23:16.000 Hold on.
00:23:18.000 I don't want us to talk past each other or else we're going to spend all this time on prime ministers in 2002 that the audience doesn't know about.
00:23:24.000 No, but if he's making claims about something that's just a problem.
00:23:28.000 I want to just ask a very simple question.
00:23:30.000 From your perspective, because I just asked the tough one to Josh, is are you okay, or do you think we should do anything to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb?
00:23:41.000 Anything, sure.
00:23:42.000 Yeah, there's lots of things I think we should do.
00:23:44.000 Is military action ever justified?
00:23:47.000 Well, again, this is a, yes, there are times when military action is justified, but if you're saying what we could do to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, what we were doing, Donald Trump was in negotiations with them, and I think he should have continued those.
00:23:58.000 And the truth is that the big problem with the JCPOA that Obama got us into was that there were sunset provisions.
00:24:06.000 They opened up a whole new inspections regime.
00:24:09.000 It is not true that the IAEA is saying that Iran was about to get a nuclear weapon.
00:24:13.000 Anybody you want, it's published online.
00:24:15.000 You can go read the conclusion of their last report where they explicitly said Iran does not have nuclear weapons and is not trying to develop them.
00:24:22.000 They are enriching it 60%, and they were in negotiations to maybe bring that down.
00:24:26.000 But you know, when you bring up the fact of the Marines getting killed in 1983, it's actually an interesting, Ronald Reagan, who was president at the time, he wrote about this in his memoir.
00:24:37.000 Now, if you know what Ronald Reagan did was he pulled out after that.
00:24:40.000 He turned tail and run.
00:24:41.000 And he said in his memoir, he said, I underestimated the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics.
00:24:49.000 And we never should have gotten involved in that.
00:24:51.000 Now, if you want to say that Iran backed them, okay, couple years after that, Charlie, there was a scandal in the Reagan administration.
00:24:58.000 It was the something contra, Iran contra.
00:25:01.000 That's right.
00:25:01.000 Ronald Reagan was selling weapons to the Iranians a couple years after this happened.
00:25:07.000 So to come back now, 40 plus years later, and use that as the excuse why we got to go to war with Iran.
00:25:13.000 I mean, just think about how crazy this is.
00:25:15.000 And the stuff he said about the roadside bombs in Iraq is just not true.
00:25:18.000 It's been debunked.
00:25:19.000 It's more war propaganda that's been debunked.
00:25:22.000 I highly recommend anyone can read the book Enough Already.
00:25:25.000 Josh.
00:25:26.000 One second.
00:25:26.000 I highly recommend people read the book Enough Already.
00:25:29.000 It is the best book that's been written about the terror wars by Scott Horton.
00:25:33.000 He has all the footnotes in there.
00:25:35.000 You can go through it yourself.
00:25:36.000 It's completely debunked.
00:25:38.000 Those roadside bombs were built by Shiites in Iraq.
00:25:42.000 Now, some of them did have relationships with Iran, but the majority of Iraq is Shiite.
00:25:47.000 So yes, we invaded the next door country, and we got into some fights with the Shiite groups there.
00:25:51.000 But to say that's a reason why we now have to invade Iran or we have to bomb them or something?
00:25:56.000 It just doesn't make any sense.
00:25:57.000 So one or two really quick crisp follow-ups, and then we'll do this.
00:26:01.000 Both sides need to get under good cross-examination.
00:26:04.000 Do you think it would be bad if Iran got a nuclear bomb?
00:26:07.000 Yes, I think it's bad if I can't do that.
00:26:08.000 And I think we can all agree on that.
00:26:10.000 That is a moral agreement.
00:26:11.000 I don't think anybody should be allowed to have nuclear weapons secretly.
00:26:15.000 Right.
00:26:16.000 And so.
00:26:16.000 How about that?
00:26:17.000 I will ask Josh about that, because that's a not-so-subtle dig at Israel.
00:26:22.000 Hold on, are you suggesting that Israel has nuclear weapons?
00:26:24.000 I don't know, actually.
00:26:24.000 I probably do.
00:26:25.000 Yeah, you do.
00:26:26.000 I don't know the intelligence.
00:26:27.000 I'm not that of DNI, but I mean, they probably do.
00:26:30.000 But let me ask you, Dave, now another question.
00:26:34.000 What is your now, let's just say, criticism?
00:26:37.000 No U.S. troops were killed.
00:26:38.000 It required no U.S. troops on the ground.
00:26:40.000 There was no war.
00:26:41.000 It lasted 12 days.
00:26:43.000 Fordot was pretty eliminated.
00:26:45.000 And even the Iranians say it.
00:26:46.000 So looking at it now, 12 days later, what is your problem with what seems to be a masterclass in 12 days, in, out, no problem, no U.S. troops?
00:26:57.000 We've kind of moved on.
00:26:59.000 What would your problem with that be?
00:27:01.000 You know, I think, and I do think there's something really sick and poisoning about this, is that our country has become so addicted to war that if we launch a war and you go, well, hey, it wasn't a complete catastrophe.
00:27:14.000 I mean, a million people didn't die in this one, like in Iraq.
00:27:17.000 Or hundreds of thousands didn't die in this one, like in Afghanistan or Libya or Syria.
00:27:22.000 It's like, okay, look, people died in this war, okay?
00:27:24.000 There were both Iranian civilians and Israeli civilians who died in this war.
00:27:28.000 It was a terrible fit for them and their families.
00:27:31.000 This was a catastrophe.
00:27:32.000 And my point is that the war never needed to be launched to begin with.
00:27:36.000 But there's no reason why we even have to be enemies with Iran.
00:27:49.000 This is Israel's problem.
00:27:51.000 We don't need to be involved in this.
00:27:53.000 Sorry, we got our own issues here.
00:27:56.000 And look, again, I'll give Donald Trump credit that, okay, it didn't turn into a catastrophe.
00:28:03.000 He took the off-ramp when he had the chance.
00:28:05.000 But look, a lot of that was out of Donald Trump's control.
00:28:08.000 The risk of this war, like a lot of people love to, like Josh likes to read my tweets when I was saying this could turn into a catastrophe.
00:28:15.000 Because you were dead wrong.
00:28:16.000 He looks stupid.
00:28:17.000 Josh, Josh.
00:28:21.000 Don't say that.
00:28:21.000 Hold on.
00:28:22.000 No, no.
00:28:22.000 Let's de-escalate the situation.
00:28:23.000 No, no, no, accurately, what Josh is saying is the lowest IQ argument that anyone can make.
00:28:29.000 I'm warning, I was warning that there's a risk of a catastrophe.
00:28:33.000 And he's saying you're stupid because there wasn't a catastrophe.
00:28:36.000 This is on the level of playing Russian roulette.
00:28:38.000 And if the bullet doesn't go off, you go, see, dummy, you were warning that could go bad.
00:28:43.000 That doesn't prove anything.
00:28:45.000 Listen, for all you guys, you talking about how big and bad the Iranians are and what a scary threat they are, what if they hadn't given us advance notice?
00:28:54.000 What if Iran was actually as suicidal as people like Josh pretend they are?
00:28:58.000 And what if their response had killed a few hundred Americans in the region, which by all military assessments, they are capable of doing?
00:29:06.000 What would Donald Trump have had to do then, Charlie?
00:29:08.000 Was he, what would he?
00:29:10.000 I'm the moderator.
00:29:11.000 No, no, no.
00:29:11.000 Okay, sorry.
00:29:12.000 Like, come on, Dave.
00:29:13.000 It was a rhetorical question.
00:29:14.000 I know, but both sides are getting tough questions here.
00:29:17.000 The point is, Donald Trump would have had to respond even harder.
00:29:21.000 And then he would have to have a hard time.
00:29:24.000 Let's give Josh a chance to respond first.
00:29:26.000 But hold on.
00:29:27.000 It's a counterfactual.
00:29:28.000 One second.
00:29:29.000 You hadn't have had breakfast this morning.
00:29:31.000 When people talk over each other, they don't like listening to that.
00:29:34.000 So that's why I'm here.
00:29:34.000 Josh, I want you to respond to that.
00:29:37.000 But to Dave's point, do you think Israel has a secret nuclear program?
00:29:41.000 And is that a problem?
00:29:42.000 Yeah, I think it's not particularly disputed that Israel has a nuclear program.
00:29:46.000 We know exactly where it is based.
00:29:49.000 This is not a particularly hidden thing there.
00:29:51.000 I mean, it's so well known, in fact, Charlie, that I don't know exactly why it's officially a secret.
00:29:56.000 Unofficially, it's not much of a secret.
00:29:57.000 I'm non-Israeli.
00:29:58.000 I have no idea why the exact policy is the way it is.
00:30:01.000 I don't particularly have a program with it.
00:30:03.000 As I said, it's one of the world's worst kept secrets.
00:30:04.000 It kind of just is what it is.
00:30:06.000 But more generally speaking, I don't understand why we're going so far down this rabbit hole of would have, could have, should have.
00:30:12.000 The people, look, let's say something very simple here.
00:30:14.000 The people who said that Donald Trump's involvement in the 37-hour operation of the B-2 bombers flying from Missouri to Iran and back with not a single shot fired at our boys, by the way, as I said, that was partially due to the fact that the IDF had so neutralized the Iranian Air Force and their defenses there.
00:30:34.000 So the fact that he was able to accomplish that so amazingly there, we should have seen that coming because it was actually pretty easily foreseeable.
00:30:42.000 And the people who did not see that coming are the people who have lost credibility to comment, frankly, on these affairs.
00:30:47.000 People who warned about thousands and thousands and thousands of dead American lives who said that China and Russia would swoop in and that this would be World War III.
00:30:54.000 Well, you know what?
00:30:55.000 God bless you all because you apparently survived World War III.
00:30:57.000 It was the shortest World War III of all of our lifetimes.
00:31:01.000 Hi, Dave.
00:31:01.000 Dave, I restrained.
00:31:02.000 So what are you?
00:31:02.000 Dave, I restrain Josh.
00:31:04.000 Josh, keep going.
00:31:05.000 Again, this is the Donald Trump foreign policy doctrine in action.
00:31:08.000 It is quick surgical strikes.
00:31:10.000 Roger Stone was talking about it earlier.
00:31:12.000 It's exactly right.
00:31:13.000 He is not a neocon.
00:31:14.000 Neoconservatism, bad.
00:31:16.000 Isolationism, also naive and stupid.
00:31:18.000 Donald Trump agrees with both those things.
00:31:20.000 The nationalist, realist, MAGA, America-first approach to foreign policy is to have strong nationalist allies that are generally capable of securing and patrolling their own regions in a way that redounds not merely to the Allies' national interests, but also to the American national interests.
00:31:37.000 That is exactly what Israel has been doing for 40, 50 years as they have taken out Islamist and Sharia supremacist thugs in Gaza, in Yemen, Hezbollah.
00:31:45.000 I mentioned Fuad Shakur, the Hezbollah jihadi who killed 241 Marines in Beirut, Lebanon, 1983.
00:31:50.000 There's a million examples there.
00:31:52.000 That is the definition of an America-first ally.
00:31:54.000 And what has happened in the 12-day war is an encapsulation of the America-first Trump doctrine that in this case, this tag team between the U.S. and Israel against the mutual threat of Iran inaction.
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00:33:01.000 Okay, so I want to now move because it's important, but it's connected.
00:33:04.000 So I think we have on full display a difference of opinion on the 12-day war.
00:33:08.000 Now let's go to the next one.
00:33:09.000 It's inferred in both of these points, but you only get to answer as yes or no one at a time.
00:33:13.000 Is Israel an ally of the United States?
00:33:15.000 Yes, of course.
00:33:16.000 No.
00:33:17.000 Okay, so now we have disagreement.
00:33:18.000 We're going to now figure that out.
00:33:20.000 And then I want to then indicate it in that is, is Israel influencing American politics?
00:33:27.000 So I'm going to start with Josh, and then we'll go back to Dave.
00:33:29.000 You say Israel is an ally.
00:33:31.000 Spend a minute on that and then address how some people have concerns that Israel is influencing the U.S. government.
00:33:38.000 And then I'll allow Dave to have some time.
00:33:40.000 Josh?
00:33:40.000 All right.
00:33:41.000 There's multiple reasons why Israel is an ally.
00:33:44.000 First and foremost, I think most people in this room are believers of some stripe, right?
00:33:49.000 I am Jewish.
00:33:50.000 Most of you are probably Christians, and God bless you for that.
00:33:53.000 If you have any attachment whatsoever to the holy sites, if you have any attachment whatsoever to this narrow strip of land between the river and the sea, as the Hamas propagandists call it, then you're going to have some reason to care about this particular sliver of land.
00:34:08.000 That's point number one.
00:34:08.000 Let's just kind of get it out there.
00:34:10.000 Especially if you understand that we in Western civilization are fundamentally at war with barbarism, barbarism being best represented by the Islamists and Sharia supremacists.
00:34:20.000 When you understand that Western civilization really just is the Bible, there is a special calling to have an ally with a certain part of the Middle East.
00:34:28.000 That's point one.
00:34:29.000 Point two is just the Islamist deterrent point, Charlie, which is that America has faced jihadism time and time again, going back for 40, 50 years.
00:34:38.000 9-11, obviously the most tragic example.
00:34:40.000 We just saw it again on the streets of Bourbon Street in New Orleans on January 1st, just a few months ago, there.
00:34:44.000 If you care about deterring Islamism from conquering Western civilization, a point that you have very astutely been talking about a lot recently on your TV hits on social media, a very, very important point.
00:34:53.000 If you care about defending Western civilization from the barbarians, you absolutely have to place a special premium on this particular relationship.
00:35:01.000 And then third is that if you actually care as I do, you know, paradoxically, I actually care a lot about China.
00:35:08.000 In fact, I think that America's by far number one biggest threat this century is China.
00:35:12.000 If you care about effectuating this broader pivot to the Indo-Pacific, as American foreign policy people have been talking about for 20, 30 years now, you have to have some way of stabilizing the Middle East.
00:35:22.000 The way to do that is not to just adopt the stupid and asinine Barack Obama foreign policy of appeasing America's enemies.
00:35:30.000 The way to do that is to embolden your allies.
00:35:33.000 Again, that is the Trump doctrine.
00:35:35.000 So we didn't get to the second part of the question.
00:35:37.000 So do you want to just start on the ally and then we'll do you can incorporate both, Dave.
00:35:40.000 He had two answers in a row, so take three to four minutes.
00:35:43.000 Well, look, this idea that the great battle of our time is us versus the Islamists, us versus these barbarians, you know, that's really the problem here in the United States of America.
00:35:54.000 Lebanon, that's what you got to worry about.
00:35:56.000 Listen, I think everyone here, all you guys should know this at this point.
00:36:01.000 Our problem in America is the deep state of the United States of America, okay?
00:36:07.000 They're the ones.
00:36:08.000 They're the ones who framed Donald Trump for treason.
00:36:12.000 His own intelligence agencies framed the sitting U.S. president.
00:36:15.000 And you know what that deep state wants, by the way?
00:36:18.000 Permanent war.
00:36:19.000 That's what they always want.
00:36:20.000 That's how they and their friends make their money.
00:36:22.000 And so all of this talk is just so ridiculous, man.
00:36:25.000 I mean, this talk about how, like, if you care about the holy sites in Israel, like, okay, sure.
00:36:31.000 Obviously, Christians and Jews and Muslims have a connection to that land.
00:36:37.000 But that doesn't mean we have to bomb Iran for Israel.
00:36:42.000 That doesn't.
00:36:44.000 Well, we just bombed Iran.
00:36:45.000 That was the first topic.
00:36:47.000 Okay.
00:36:48.000 Okay.
00:36:48.000 Anyway, it doesn't mean that we have to support Israel slaughtering people in Gaza.
00:36:54.000 None of that has anything to do with the holy sites.
00:36:56.000 And in fact, a lot of sites get destroyed when there's bombs flying.
00:37:00.000 But listen, the real problem for America, if you want to even talk about like the Islam taking over America or taking over Europe, well, how did that happen?
00:37:11.000 That happened because we completely destabilized the region, fighting war after war after war that did nothing but slaughter hundreds of thousands of people.
00:37:19.000 And then our Western governments had the most insane open immigration policy that was basically suicidal.
00:37:26.000 We're doing this to ourselves.
00:37:28.000 We're $37 trillion in debt, and we're looking for another enemy to go fight.
00:37:34.000 Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we've spent $20 trillion on empire and wars.
00:37:42.000 And you know what?
00:37:43.000 We can't tax enough money to pay for it.
00:37:46.000 We can't borrow enough money to pay for it.
00:37:48.000 So what do we do?
00:37:50.000 We print the money.
00:37:51.000 And now you guys are coming out into the world and you're wondering why you're six figures in debt from college and you're getting a job at DoorDash and the average house goes for 800 grand.
00:38:02.000 Because we've destroyed the currency chasing these monsters that were never any threat to our country.
00:38:08.000 So listen, one quick point.
00:38:11.000 Adolf Hitler and the Nazis couldn't bring down America.
00:38:15.000 Joseph Stalin and the commies couldn't bring down America.
00:38:18.000 The British Empire couldn't bring down America.
00:38:21.000 But you think the Hezbollah in Lebanon are a threat to us?
00:38:25.000 They're a problem for Israel to deal with.
00:38:28.000 Speak that to the families of the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983.
00:38:31.000 Seriously, say that to them.
00:38:34.000 Have you spoken to the families of the people who have been killed in 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon, the people who have been killed by those IEDs in Iraq that you're just casually dismissing?
00:38:43.000 Have you actually spoken to any of these families?
00:38:45.000 First of all, yes, I have.
00:38:46.000 The 9-11 families, any of them?
00:38:47.000 Yes, I have.
00:38:48.000 Are you aware of Iran's bombing bombing in 9-11?
00:38:51.000 Yeah, yeah, okay.
00:38:51.000 So you're just asking me questions over.
00:38:54.000 This is why I'm here.
00:38:58.000 So, Why don't we both just take a deep breath?
00:39:03.000 Because they want to see a debate where they can make their mind up.
00:39:06.000 They don't want to see interruptive stuff, okay?
00:39:09.000 That's why this is going to be a different type of discussion.
00:39:13.000 So, let me both steel man your both arguments so you have to answer to me, okay?
00:39:18.000 So, Josh, well, actually, to Dave first and then to Josh.
00:39:22.000 Josh is saying, what about all of the Islamist death that they're responsible for, Beirut bombings?
00:39:30.000 You mentioned the Shiite.
00:39:31.000 That's basically the essence of your argument, right, Josh?
00:39:34.000 By saying, did you talk to?
00:39:35.000 He's saying, why are you minimizing this?
00:39:38.000 That would be Josh's contention.
00:39:39.000 Is that fair, Josh?
00:39:40.000 And 9-11, there's Dave responded to that, and then I will throw it back to Josh.
00:39:45.000 Well, I certainly don't think I in any way minimized any of those deaths.
00:39:50.000 I've made the point that Ronald Reagan still sold weapons to Iran a couple years after that, and I made the point that those roadside weapons were built in Iraq by Shiites there.
00:40:00.000 That's not minimizing it.
00:40:01.000 This is a huge part of the reason why we never should have invaded Iraq to begin with, because we get our bravest young boys killed.
00:40:06.000 It's tens of thousands of them have committed suicide in the last few years, and that doesn't seem to stop anyone from wanting to pursue the next attack.
00:40:16.000 So the point is, right, that I think if we want to really understand this stuff, it's wise to look at what some of the motivating factors for the hatred against us is.
00:40:27.000 All you got to do is listen.
00:40:29.000 Yes, I have talked actually to families of people who have died in Iraq.
00:40:33.000 You know what?
00:40:33.000 Overwhelmingly, they're non-interventionist, anti-war people now.
00:40:37.000 In fact, did you know that in 2008 and in 2012, Dr. Ron Paul got more money from active duty military than all the other candidates combined, including Barack Obama, because the active duty military are actually the ones who are the most hardcore people.
00:40:55.000 So don't invoke them to try to sell another tolerance.
00:40:58.000 But Dave, I'm going to follow up with a tough question.
00:41:00.000 I want you to make the case, because I don't want to have you be able to get past this.
00:41:05.000 You say Israel is not an ally.
00:41:08.000 That is not an opinion that people hear a lot.
00:41:11.000 Why is that?
00:41:13.000 Look, all I'm saying is Israel has at every turn— I'm not talking about the people there.
00:41:22.000 And I'm specifically talking about Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party, who have been in control for most of this time, for most of my lifetime.
00:41:31.000 Yeah, and great, most of the 21st century.
00:41:33.000 And so when I say they have been constantly pushing America toward more aggressive policies, toward getting in more fights.
00:41:43.000 And just like I always say, if you went out to the bar every single night with your friend and every night your friend's trying to convince you to get into a fight and while you're beating a lot of people up, you're also taking a lot of wounds and you're going to jail and you're getting in trouble.
00:41:55.000 You got to stop hanging out with that friend.
00:41:58.000 And so I think that my position, I don't believe in wars of aggression and wars of choice.
00:42:07.000 I don't believe in sanctions.
00:42:08.000 I don't believe that we should be friends with Israel.
00:42:11.000 We should trade with Israel and have a good relationship with them.
00:42:14.000 But you know what?
00:42:14.000 I also don't believe in welfare and they shouldn't get another dime of U.S. taxpayer money and they should not, hold on.
00:42:23.000 Their lobby should register as a foreigner.
00:42:25.000 That's a good segue.
00:42:26.000 Finish that.
00:42:26.000 And they should stop blackmailing our politics.
00:42:28.000 Got it.
00:42:29.000 So back to Josh.
00:42:31.000 Back to Josh.
00:42:33.000 Dave had some uninterrupted time there.
00:42:34.000 Let's now address that because, you know, again, there's a text chain.
00:42:37.000 I have all the text to prove it.
00:42:39.000 Everyone knew where this debate was going, right, Dave?
00:42:41.000 There's been no surprises.
00:42:42.000 Josh, you knew that there are some concerns, and Dave mentioned it, such as I think you're saying APAC.
00:42:48.000 Is that correct?
00:42:49.000 Well, the broader Israel lobby, that's certainly part of it.
00:42:52.000 Can you address this, Josh?
00:42:53.000 Because this is a question people are confused about.
00:42:57.000 Take two to three minutes on this.
00:42:58.000 And then build out the ally Israel at the end of it.
00:43:01.000 But Josh, Dave is making a point I'd like you to respond to.
00:43:05.000 Okay, so first of all, I'm not a fan of AIPAC.
00:43:10.000 I donated once to APAC, $54, like a decade ago, and I basically got swindled into doing it.
00:43:15.000 So I'm not a fan of APAC.
00:43:17.000 But APAC is not this nefarious bogeyman that Dave Smith Peel make it out to be.
00:43:22.000 It stands for America-Israel Political Action Committee.
00:43:25.000 It is a group of Americans who place a premium on the U.S.-Israel relationship the same way that the NRA is a group of Americans who place a premium on the Second Amendment.
00:43:33.000 I do too.
00:43:34.000 I'm a concealed carry kind of guy myself.
00:43:36.000 Same way that there are any number of other lobby groups that support any number of other things.
00:43:39.000 By the way, there's also similar groups similar to APAC for American citizens who support U.S. relations with other foreign countries.
00:43:46.000 Funny how these other groups never get brought up in this debate.
00:43:49.000 For instance, anyone who's been to Glendale, California, you probably heard folks in Anka.
00:43:53.000 That's the Armenian National Committee of America, a very loud, active group in Washington, D.C. Perhaps more nefariously, there is the NIAC, the National Iranian American Council.
00:44:02.000 It's funny how in these debates, when you talk about various American citizens who get involved to lobby or to express their political opinion as the First Amendment gives you the right to do, because they think that the U.S. national interest is served by allying with a certain country, it's funny, and perhaps a little worse than funny, how the whole registrar as a foreign agent talking point comes up only in one context, in one context only, which is AIPAC.
00:44:26.000 Look, the notion, Charlie, that AIPAC, which again, I'm not a fan of, I have literally...
00:44:33.000 Why are you not a fan of API?
00:44:34.000 Yeah, I'm not a fan of APAC for the reason that I'm just about to give, actually, which is that APAC exists.
00:44:39.000 Their raison d'etre, their entire purpose for existing, is to secure large-scale annual appropriations, currently about $3.8 billion annually, in U.S. aid to Israel.
00:44:50.000 I'm not a particularly big fan of foreign aid in general, and I've been arguing for literally a decade that the U.S. should wind down foreign aid to Israel in particular.
00:44:58.000 I think it actually is a bad idea for both countries.
00:45:02.000 Do we have agreement on that?
00:45:03.000 Yeah.
00:45:04.000 If you want to wind it down to zero tomorrow, we have agreement on that.
00:45:07.000 I can't do it tomorrow because.
00:45:08.000 I'd support one agreement.
00:45:09.000 So we have agreement on an end point?
00:45:11.000 Yes, sure.
00:45:11.000 Okay.
00:45:12.000 Keep going, Josh.
00:45:12.000 Yeah, so you obviously.
00:45:14.000 Yeah.
00:45:16.000 Oh, you guys are good people.
00:45:17.000 They just cheered for agreement.
00:45:18.000 I like this crowd.
00:45:19.000 That's the point.
00:45:20.000 We're not here just to hurl insults.
00:45:22.000 You could do that online.
00:45:23.000 This is here to actually have some sort of, we're a nation.
00:45:27.000 These are our fellow citizens.
00:45:28.000 We've got to figure this stuff out.
00:45:29.000 Josh, Keep going.
00:45:30.000 Yeah, so you obviously can't do it tomorrow because that would be to betray an ally in the middle of a hot war that would send a terrible signal to other allies, Saudis, Emiratis, you name it.
00:45:38.000 So you can't do it tomorrow.
00:45:39.000 But I do agree that you should have a game plan five, 10, 20 years, whatever it is.
00:45:43.000 I don't really care.
00:45:43.000 Honestly, get a game plan in place to phase out this aid.
00:45:46.000 It's not good for the United States.
00:45:48.000 It's crony capitalism, Eisenhower Defense Industrial Complex, Boeing North of Grumman.
00:45:52.000 All of that is totally true.
00:45:54.000 And then from Israel's perspective, it's also bad for them too because it makes them overly reliant.
00:45:58.000 It actually ends up undermining the entire notion of Zionism, the notion that the Jews should control their own right to their own existence in their own homeland undermines Zionism in the long run itself.
00:46:07.000 So it's actually bad for both countries.
00:46:09.000 But Charlie, this notion that AIPAC is this big, powerful lobby can be dispelled with literally one anecdote.
00:46:15.000 And I only need one anecdote to dispel this oft-repeated notion, which is the entire 2014 to 2015 Barack Obama-Iran nuclear debate.
00:46:23.000 The fact that the JCPOA, Barack Obama's joint comprehensive plan of action nuclear deal passed, is literally the singular data point that disproves the entire alleged existence of the nefarious Israel lobby that controls all politicians there.
00:46:37.000 They failed epically to get that pass.
00:46:40.000 But I do have a question, Charlie, for Dave there, which is...
00:46:44.000 Okay.
00:46:44.000 Well, Charlie, I would be very, very curious, based on Dave's recent tweets about Donald Trump doing XYZ things, whether it's covering up for a pedophile ring or engaging in foreign wars, all on behest of a foreign power, does Dave actually think that Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the entire Trump administration are literally bought off by the Jews?
00:47:02.000 Is that actually your honest stance?
00:47:04.000 Okay, so what Josh is asking.
00:47:07.000 Yeah, first of all.
00:47:09.000 Well, it's always, look, all of this, I mean, I threw a touch follow-up for you guys.
00:47:12.000 No, but I'm sorry, but just like everything you just said, like all of it, I just find to be like the cheapest debate tactics.
00:47:18.000 First off, I never said anyone's bought off by the Jews.
00:47:20.000 We're both Jewish, and that's a dirty little trick you play.
00:47:26.000 I'm talking about a foreign.
00:47:27.000 Yeah, I'm talking about a foreign government, and then you kind of imply.
00:47:31.000 And no, again, this is all just straw man.
00:47:34.000 This whole thing of like Dave saying APAC is this big, bad monster that controls everything, and therefore.
00:47:41.000 Hold on.
00:47:42.000 Therefore, if I have one data point of where a policy that APAC didn't want gets through, that disproves the whole narrative.
00:47:48.000 And then this distraction with talking about the Armenian lobby or this other, it's like, yeah, well, if we were having a discussion about that, maybe that would come up.
00:47:56.000 But we're talking about this.
00:47:57.000 And to compare APAC to the NRA, who, by the way, are kind of sellouts and don't go nearly far enough.
00:48:04.000 I'll write that.
00:48:05.000 Like, I'm a hardcore gun rights guy.
00:48:08.000 We got more agreement.
00:48:09.000 We love our guns, don't we, everybody?
00:48:11.000 Yeah.
00:48:13.000 Now, you know, the NRA guys who always go, the key is to enforce existing gun laws.
00:48:18.000 No, the key is to repeal every last one of the existing guns.
00:48:22.000 There should be one law, one law, the Second Amendment.
00:48:26.000 That's the law.
00:48:27.000 Okay, but all that.
00:48:28.000 No, it is totally different to have a group of Americans advocating for a constitutionally protected natural right for American citizens than to have a group of Americans advocating for a foreign government in conjunction with that foreign government.
00:48:44.000 That's a different thing.
00:48:45.000 And to even compare, let me finish, Josh.
00:48:47.000 And to even compare them is ridiculous.
00:48:49.000 And listen, by the way, I'll just say this.
00:48:51.000 Every single person in this room, you have to hate APAC.
00:48:55.000 You don't even have a choice.
00:48:56.000 You're here at Turning Point USA.
00:48:58.000 APAC contributes millions of dollars to woke progressive Democrats if they support Israel.
00:49:05.000 In other words, it's okay to destroy our country as long as that helps Israel.
00:49:10.000 So I'm sorry.
00:49:11.000 I don't know.
00:49:11.000 Turning point USA, this is my first time here.
00:49:14.000 Quick question.
00:49:15.000 Are we allowed to support groups that contribute millions of dollars to woke progressive Democrats?
00:49:20.000 Because I thought the answer was no.
00:49:25.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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00:50:27.000 So Josh, and then Dave, I'm going to have a tough follow-up for you, so take a drink of water.
00:50:31.000 Josh, what would you say to that?
00:50:34.000 Because look, I wouldn't, some people would ask the question, okay, does APAC have more power than like your traditional Armenian lobby?
00:50:46.000 And more broadly, let's just take it more broadly, like, is there any concern that, or how would you address the concern, let me put it this way, how would you address the concern that some people have that a foreign government tends to have an outsized amount of platform in the U.S. government?
00:51:05.000 Charlie, I think that there are tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans who care a lot about U.S. relations with the state of Israel for understandable reasons.
00:51:16.000 This literally goes back, by the way, those of you who are familiar with your American history, this literally goes back to the American founding.
00:51:22.000 The American founders were extremely, extremely eloquent and outspoken about this.
00:51:27.000 From George Washington to John Adams to Hamilton to Abraham Lincoln's famous February 1861 speech referring to Americans as an almost chosen people.
00:51:35.000 They quoted the Hebrew Bible over and over and over again.
00:51:38.000 They understood that the Christianity upon which America is predicated is not exclusively, but has a lot of Old Testament Hebrew Bible emphasis therein.
00:51:49.000 And that has been part of our Constitution, part of our legal code, part of our moral code since day one.
00:51:54.000 So it is completely reasonable for people in the year 2025 to look at that, to look at all the other things we've talked about when it comes to deterring Islamism and Sharia supremacism, when it comes to trying to achieve this Abraham Accord-style nationalist realist foreign policy, when it comes to deterring the Iranian regime and their various proxies, it's very, very understandable for American citizens, again, Americans, to look at that and to conclude that we have important reasons for allying with Israel.
00:52:20.000 They are not doing so on behalf of a foreign government.
00:52:23.000 This framing is absurd.
00:52:25.000 It's utterly absurd.
00:52:26.000 They are doing so because they are patriotic Americans and they feel it is their subjective sense that as patriotic Americans that this alliance is further.
00:52:34.000 And they are U.S. passport holders.
00:52:36.000 Some people think that they're strictly foreign nationals.
00:52:38.000 Is that correct?
00:52:39.000 Yes, and that's just simply just not true.
00:52:41.000 Now, again, I say that, by the way, as someone who's been very critical of AIPAC, but it's just simply not true.
00:52:45.000 We're using that as a filler term.
00:52:46.000 So now, Dave, for you, two quick ones.
00:52:50.000 Do you think that the Council for American Islamic Relations should register as a foreign agent?
00:52:54.000 Yeah, I don't think there should be any groups advocating on behalf of foreign governments.
00:52:59.000 You're being consistent.
00:53:00.000 Secondly, though, and Josh did not say this, but he laced it in through one of the salvos that was, he said, you know, Dave, you're accusing them of being bought by the Jews.
00:53:10.000 Now, Dave, there is a rise of, I just think, some disgusting stuff online.
00:53:14.000 I'm not blaming you for this.
00:53:15.000 I'm not one of those people, right?
00:53:17.000 But what do you have to say that there's this, like, dark Jew hate out there?
00:53:23.000 And you see it, and I see it.
00:53:24.000 I hate it.
00:53:24.000 It's not good.
00:53:26.000 And everyone in this audience, guys, don't get yourself involved in that.
00:53:29.000 I'm telling you, it will rot your brain.
00:53:30.000 It's bad for your soul.
00:53:32.000 It's bad.
00:53:33.000 It's evil.
00:53:33.000 I think it's demonic.
00:53:35.000 And so, Dave, though, how do you navigate being critical of a foreign government while also, like, some people say, well, your fans hate you.
00:53:45.000 You're not responsible, your fans.
00:53:46.000 That is dumb.
00:53:47.000 That is terrible.
00:53:48.000 I don't believe that.
00:53:49.000 At the same time, though, Dave, you have a big responsibility on your shoulders, right?
00:53:52.000 Because you're saying something that is heterodox, not in popular opinion, that some people are trying to use to push a much more sinister agenda.
00:54:00.000 Yeah, well, I think there's a lot of truth to that.
00:54:03.000 And I think that the fact is that the policies that America, the U.S. government is pursuing are almost guaranteed to create this.
00:54:15.000 And look, I think there's a lot of factors here.
00:54:17.000 I don't have nearly enough time to kind of give all of my thoughts on this.
00:54:20.000 But I think as you young people know, right, even though kind of over the last year with Trump's victory, wokeism has been receding, at least to some degree, it really can't be overstated how much every institution in American life bought into racialism over the last 15 years.
00:54:40.000 And it's like these young kids came up in an environment where that was just considered normal.
00:54:44.000 Like you judge people by their race and make racialist arguments.
00:54:48.000 And yes, now that has also been embraced by some people on the right.
00:54:52.000 I will say that I think what I think the best thing to always do in these situations is tell the truth, try to be a good person, try to deliver your message in the most compelling way, and let the chips fall where they may.
00:55:06.000 But I do think that the level of Israeli control over our politics is frankly pretty undeniable as much as people try to.
00:55:14.000 Look, just think one example, right, of this.
00:55:17.000 So Donald Trump, you remember at the end of the 12-day war when Donald Trump starts pushing for a ceasefire, and then what does Israel do?
00:55:24.000 They come in and start bombing regime targets, not nuclear sites.
00:55:28.000 They come in and start bombing.
00:55:29.000 And then Donald Trump was furious with Netanyahu.
00:55:32.000 Obviously, he had his most angry moment toward Netanyahu when he said, they both don't know what the F they're doing.
00:55:37.000 I kind of love that moment for the record.
00:55:39.000 I love it.
00:55:41.000 I love that moment too.
00:55:43.000 But then the next day, he's right back to just advocating that they drop the charges against Netanyahu.
00:55:48.000 He's still going to continue funding Netanyahu unconditionally.
00:55:51.000 You know, anyone else, Donald Trump, would have come up with a nickname for him already and just been smashing him all over the place.
00:55:59.000 He was trying to lure America into a war that Donald Trump didn't want to get into.
00:56:04.000 But he said he did because he literally chose to get involved.
00:56:06.000 Like, that was Donald Trump's decision.
00:56:07.000 Right, but it was also his decision.
00:56:08.000 Because Israelis had a backup for him.
00:56:10.000 Right, right, but it was also his decision to push for a ceasefire and to try to end the thing.
00:56:13.000 And Israel agreed immediately.
00:56:15.000 No, they bombed the crap out of him immediately.
00:56:17.000 That's why Trump was so upset.
00:56:18.000 Same more question.
00:56:19.000 I want to phase out USAID to Israel, okay?
00:56:22.000 I established that.
00:56:23.000 Allegedly, Prime Minister Netanyahu is now getting on board with that as well.
00:56:26.000 Certainly a lot of people in his coalition told me.
00:56:28.000 I'll believe that when I say that.
00:56:29.000 Well, he's basically said that, so you should believe it.
00:56:31.000 But politicians saying something.
00:56:33.000 Let Josh finish his question.
00:56:34.000 You should believe.
00:56:35.000 Dave, let Josh finish his question.
00:56:37.000 If the Israeli government were to agree that that is the best policy, and if the United States were to do that, then what in God's name is your actual problem?
00:56:46.000 Well, I'm sorry.
00:56:47.000 So if America was not propping up Israel and America was not— Well, there's other military intervention, obviously.
00:56:55.000 So I'm not sure I'd follow.
00:56:56.000 be very happy to wind down the foreign aid.
00:56:58.000 But other than that, what is my...
00:57:04.000 But no, I mean, I do think objectively what Israel's doing to Gaza is horrible.
00:57:08.000 I think you couldn't do it without us.
00:57:11.000 So make that case.
00:57:11.000 If they were, I would still be against that.
00:57:13.000 We have to go fast because people have flights and stuff.
00:57:15.000 But I want to get to this, right?
00:57:16.000 And we still haven't gotten to the final conclusion.
00:57:19.000 So let's talk Gaza because first I want to go, Josh, on October 7th, because I want you to remind people what happened on October 7th.
00:57:25.000 And Dave, I'll be honest, I think your portion of the debate, your portion of your community could do a better job of remembering the horror on October 7th.
00:57:32.000 I'm just going to be honest.
00:57:33.000 I'm not putting that on you.
00:57:34.000 I'm saying just your community.
00:57:36.000 But I'm going to have, right?
00:57:38.000 That's just me.
00:57:38.000 I want you just to think, because I think we kind of forget because there was something unique and terrible.
00:57:41.000 Josh, I want you to talk about that.
00:57:43.000 And then I want you to make the best case you can because every human being is made in the image of God.
00:57:47.000 I don't like seeing dead kids anywhere.
00:57:49.000 I don't like seeing dead kids in Gaza.
00:57:50.000 I don't like it.
00:57:51.000 So we're Christians here.
00:57:53.000 So, Josh, I want you to kind of walk us through the series of events because it can't be lost than us.
00:57:57.000 Talk about Gaza.
00:57:58.000 Talk about the horror of October 7th.
00:58:00.000 Then, Dave, I want you to talk about your criticism about Gaza.
00:58:02.000 And then I'm going to ask you a follow-up, Dave, about something that happened from the Joe Rogan show.
00:58:06.000 Josh, you first.
00:58:08.000 I'm just curious.
00:58:09.000 Has anyone just put your hand up and make some noise?
00:58:11.000 Have you been, any of you, to the parts of Israel that were slaughtered by Hamas?
00:58:15.000 Anyone?
00:58:16.000 All right, a few people.
00:58:17.000 Okay.
00:58:18.000 So I was also there a few months after it happened.
00:58:22.000 If you haven't been there, it's very difficult to describe what you see.
00:58:25.000 You see these kibbutzim, these small villages.
00:58:28.000 By the way, these were typically left-wingers.
00:58:30.000 These were peaceniks that were establishing their villages on the border to try to engage in pen-pal diplomacy, if you will, with the Arabs of Gaza.
00:58:38.000 These are very kind of left-wing peacenik people.
00:58:41.000 And you see just kitchenware throughout the streets, teddy bears everywhere, blood-stained walls, bullet holes as far as the eye can see.
00:58:51.000 It's very difficult to describe.
00:58:53.000 The only time that I had that similar feeling walking around places like Kafaraza was when I was in Treblinka, the Nazi concentration camp itself.
00:58:59.000 So, look, in total, and there's a brand new report talking about the extent of the mass raping and sexual violence that Hamas committed on October 7th combined, you're looking at roughly 1,200 people slaughtered.
00:59:11.000 By the way, not all Israeli nationals.
00:59:13.000 Dozens of Americans were either murdered or taken hostage in Gaza as well.
00:59:18.000 In total, something like 40 to 50 different nationalities were represented of those who were slaughtered on October 7th.
00:59:24.000 In fact, just looking at it from a very strictly, narrowly American perspective, October 7th amounted on its own terms to the largest American-only hostage crisis since Tehran in 1979 because of all the American citizens who were then taken hostage into Gaza.
00:59:39.000 So it was an unspeakable atrocity.
00:59:41.000 We don't really have all the answers to this day as to how it happened.
00:59:44.000 Perhaps we never will.
00:59:45.000 I certainly hope to get some clarity at some point there.
00:59:48.000 But it was the single deadliest day for the Jewish people since World War II.
00:59:53.000 And given Israel's small size, it's roughly the equivalent of 45 to 59-11s, if you can possibly contextualize that.
01:00:00.000 So that was what precipitated this war.
01:00:03.000 And it was a war that Israel Charlie did not want, as you know.
01:00:06.000 Hamas took over in 2007.
01:00:08.000 Israel repeatedly, time and time again, decided not to try to topple Hamas under the idea that you could potentially have an even worse alternative, better to deal with the devil that you know, and so forth there.
01:00:20.000 October 7th, I think extremely reasonably, given the sheer level of carnage and terror and just outright satanic, demonic evil that happened, they quite reasonably concluded that that policy simply had to end.
01:00:32.000 And what's happened in Gaza for the past year and a half, almost two years now, has been a protracted war in one of the most condensed urban environments in the world.
01:00:40.000 It is very, very, very, very difficult war-fighting conditions.
01:00:44.000 I would like to remind you just of at least one or two very simple facts.
01:00:48.000 One is that let's not forget that Hamas, who Israel is at war against in Gaza, is a U.S.-recognized foreign terrorist organization.
01:00:56.000 They are indistinguishable in that respect from al-Qaeda or ISIS or any of these other foreign terrorist organizations.
01:01:02.000 They are a rabid jihadist network that, like all these other jihadis and Sharia supremacists, also wants to kill not merely Jews, but Christians and all infidels.
01:01:10.000 They say that very clearly in the 1987 founding charter.
01:01:13.000 That is point number one.
01:01:14.000 Point number two, Charlie, you mentioned that this is a very Christian audience.
01:01:18.000 I am Jewish.
01:01:19.000 We happen to share most of the Bible.
01:01:21.000 And I am a firm believer in Genesis 127, that we are all made in God's image.
01:01:25.000 That is one of my foundational beliefs in everything.
01:01:29.000 I write about this at great length in my book, Israel and Civilization.
01:01:34.000 To me, that's the single foundational ethical imperative of all of Western civilization.
01:01:37.000 It informs my pro-life views and so much else.
01:01:40.000 So I, like you and like so many others, also weep whenever innocent people are dead.
01:01:45.000 There are two points to make, and I'll make them very briefly because I know I'm sensitive to time.
01:01:48.000 One is that we know, because we actually have people like John Spencer, the head of urban warfare studies at West Point, who have actually been able to crunch numbers, we know that when you actually look at the civilian to combatant death ratios in Gaza, it is the most humane civilian to combatant death ratio in the entire history of urban warfare.
01:02:08.000 John Spencer was there, by the way, in 2016, 2017 in Fallujah, Iraq, during the Trump-led ISIS counterinsurgency.
01:02:15.000 The United States Army, God bless them, did not even do quite as well as the IDF in terms of civilian to combatant death ratio, according to John Spencer of West Point.
01:02:24.000 Point number two, which is a very simple point that Dave Smith and his friends always like to look over, is that when you're just trying to ascribe moral culpability to every single tragic death in Gaza, Charlie, you made this point so, so well in your recent debates over in England against these high-fluid and British foe intellectuals at Cambridge and Oxford, when you said that the moral culpability comes with people who are using human shields.
01:02:44.000 That is just how it works.
01:02:46.000 That is the law of war.
01:02:47.000 That is the law of combat.
01:02:48.000 That is just basic morality and logic 101.
01:02:51.000 So that is essentially how I see Gaza.
01:02:52.000 I know Dave has plenty to say in response to that.
01:02:54.000 So Dave, take two minutes and then I have a crisp follow-up.
01:02:57.000 Yeah, I mean, geez, there's a lot there.
01:03:01.000 First of all, look, if you support what Israel's doing to Gaza right now, I would just, like, my advice to you guys is just know that you never have a leg to stand on claiming to be pro-life for the rest of your life.
01:03:13.000 Just saying that.
01:03:15.000 Oh, it's okay.
01:03:16.000 So it's okay to support a policy.
01:03:17.000 Let's not boo our speakers.
01:03:18.000 It's okay to support a policy that is killing babies.
01:03:21.000 All of a sudden, killing babies is negotiable.
01:03:23.000 All right, fine.
01:03:23.000 I'm just leaving the room.
01:03:25.000 So Dave, why don't you?
01:03:25.000 No, no, no, I'm not talking about it.
01:03:27.000 Hold on, hold on.
01:03:27.000 Back up, back top.
01:03:29.000 Hold on, back up.
01:03:29.000 Dave, why don't you?
01:03:30.000 Why don't I just let you go on this whole long-term?
01:03:31.000 I know, I'm going to actually help you out here, Dave, okay?
01:03:34.000 What I'm doing is I want you to tell the audience what's going on in Gaza, because some people in the audience don't know what's going on.
01:03:40.000 So don't assume they know, and let's not get back to you.
01:03:42.000 Oh, okay.
01:03:43.000 Well, I did assume that most people know that lots of babies are being killed in Gaza.
01:03:47.000 But maybe I shouldn't have assumed that.
01:03:49.000 Don't be sarcastic about it, Dave.
01:03:50.000 Instead, I mean this.
01:03:52.000 No, I meant that.
01:03:53.000 I was a conversation loop where they're on social media all the time, okay?
01:03:55.000 So walk through numbers.
01:03:57.000 Walk through what animates you to say something like that.
01:03:59.000 Well, okay.
01:04:00.000 Well, let me respond to a few of the things that Josh claimed.
01:04:02.000 I mean, if you want to go, there was just a major report a couple weeks ago in Heretz, the Israeli newspaper, where they had a bunch of IDF soldiers.
01:04:09.000 They actually had one who went on record who was saying that they were ordered to shoot at crowds of people who were going into left-wing filth, by the way.
01:04:19.000 Josh, I let you talk.
01:04:20.000 Let's please let Dave make his case.
01:04:21.000 Well, is the IDF soldier who went on the record also filth?
01:04:24.000 Probably.
01:04:25.000 Okay.
01:04:25.000 All right, there you go.
01:04:26.000 So see, you're whatever.
01:04:28.000 That's when you'll criticize the IDF.
01:04:30.000 Look, Josh is just lying when he says that Israel supported Hamas for all those years because they feared there might be a worse alternative.
01:04:37.000 It's just not true.
01:04:38.000 And this has been so widely reported.
01:04:40.000 You don't have to rely on Horetz.
01:04:41.000 You can rely on all types of reporting, or you can just look at all of the leaders in their own words, what they said.
01:04:46.000 They chose Netanyahu, and this was very controversial in Israel.
01:04:49.000 There were lots of critics of this.
01:04:51.000 Netanyahu thought he had this brilliant idea, which is that he would prop up Hamas and keep them in power.
01:04:57.000 His exact quote was, we can control the Height of the flame.
01:05:01.000 So he was like, We'll keep these terrorists in power, and that way we can tell the entire international community that, look, we have no partner for peace, we have no one to deal with here, and that way we never have to negotiate with the Palestinians.
01:05:14.000 This was the game that he played, and it blew up in his face and really blew up in the Israeli people's face on October 7th.
01:05:20.000 And I've never downplayed October 7th.
01:05:23.000 I know, but I'm just making the point that I never have.
01:05:25.000 Thank you for that.
01:05:26.000 It was a horrible totally.
01:05:29.000 You don't have to downplay any of that.
01:05:31.000 And in fact, I've criticized many other critics of Israel who have downplayed that.
01:05:35.000 It was a horrible day.
01:05:37.000 Awful, atrocious acts were committed by Hamas terrorists.
01:05:41.000 But at the same time, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was propping those guys up, in fact, according to the Israeli former defense secretary, he sent the head of the Mossad to Qatar to, quote, beg them to continue shipping the money in.
01:05:57.000 Meanwhile, they had a blockade around Gaza.
01:06:00.000 They wouldn't let sugar, they wouldn't let potatoes in, because they claim that's dual use.
01:06:05.000 That could be used to build rockets so the kids can't get food.
01:06:10.000 Yet, hundreds of millions of dollars in cash directly to Hamas.
01:06:15.000 I guess money doesn't have a dual use.
01:06:18.000 So, you know, the whole mission of this, what you can't even really call a war, because it's not a war, it's the destruction of a captive people.
01:06:27.000 Gaza's been occupied since 1967 by the Israelis.
01:06:31.000 And they're now just slaughtering the people there under, that's a fact.
01:06:36.000 And it's under the supposed goal that they want to eliminate Hamas, and they want to retrieve the hostages.
01:06:44.000 And yet, Hamas is not being eliminated.
01:06:48.000 The Israeli government is claiming that they've killed 20,000 of their fighters, and yet there's still as many as there were at the beginning.
01:06:55.000 Let me ask you the follow-up that I wish that I had an answer to when you were on the Joe Rogan show, but that thing descended into a mess, right?
01:07:01.000 It was madness.
01:07:02.000 So I'm going to try to do it here.
01:07:04.000 This was the best point that I think that you, for whatever reason, it wasn't answered.
01:07:08.000 How then should Israel have responded to October 7th?
01:07:11.000 Be specific.
01:07:13.000 I know you might say, well, don't kill kids, but hold on.
01:07:16.000 How would you say you would be okay for Israel to respond?
01:07:18.000 Because it would be a defensive war at that time.
01:07:21.000 1,300 of their own kids and women were killed and raped.
01:07:24.000 So please just answer, how then would you be okay with Israel responding to October 7th?
01:07:29.000 Yeah, well, I certainly, look, I'm not saying that Israel was going to respond with zero violence from after October 7th.
01:07:37.000 But I think the important thing to remember here is that, first of all, for the entire history of Israel's existence, they've been dealing with this terrorism problem.
01:07:47.000 Now, I would argue that the Palestinians have been dealing with a terrorism problem from Israel as well.
01:07:51.000 But this is, and they've never, until Netanyahu, they never treated it as a problem for the regular old military.
01:07:58.000 It was always targeted assassinations and special ops.
01:08:02.000 And look, the truth is, this is the fact, right?
01:08:04.000 When you have been occupying a group of people since 1967, Israel has completely controlled Gaza.
01:08:12.000 They withdrew 20 years ago.
01:08:13.000 Yes, okay.
01:08:14.000 And if you want to go back and look at this, you can read.
01:08:16.000 Sharon's top advisor, in his own words, said the disengagement was to put the people.
01:08:22.000 We're running out of time.
01:08:23.000 I know, but it's not.
01:08:23.000 Okay, I won't be able to go through all of this, but it's not true.
01:08:26.000 Israel continued to occupy the whole time.
01:08:28.000 And when people broke out of the...
01:08:34.000 Okay.
01:08:34.000 So when people break out of Gaza and just start slaughtering civilians in Israel, yes, it was a horrible day and the world feels for those civilians, but at the same time, you have to know if you're Israel that the way that you respond to this is going to be how you're characterized in the international community.
01:08:53.000 And so you would at least make some effort to not kill so many civilians.
01:08:58.000 You can't, dude, Smotrich, the finance minister, was bragging for three months that not one ounce of grain would get into Gaza.
01:09:08.000 Hamas has all the needs.
01:09:10.000 Hamas has all the food.
01:09:11.000 Dude, you interrupt every two seconds, dude.
01:09:14.000 Hamas has all the food they need.
01:09:15.000 This is a war on the civilian population.
01:09:18.000 And then, as is reported, admitted by IDF.
01:09:21.000 By the way, this is admitted by the Israeli government.
01:09:23.000 You can say whatever you want about Horetz.
01:09:25.000 They denied that they gave the orders, but they admitted that it was the IDF who was shooting at those people.
01:09:30.000 Then after you deny the civilians food for three months, then you start shooting at the people who are desperately trying to get some food for them and their kids.
01:09:39.000 So no, listen, I'm sorry.
01:09:40.000 And I guess I am partly rejecting the premise of your question.
01:09:44.000 Well, let me just say it like this, Charlie.
01:09:45.000 If you're pro-life and you say I You should not buy this food.
01:09:50.000 Just let Dave finish his sentence.
01:09:52.000 Shut up, bro.
01:09:53.000 It's not pro-life here.
01:09:55.000 It's a stupid argument.
01:09:56.000 You haven't heard the argument.
01:09:58.000 What's the argument that's stupid?
01:09:59.000 Dave, you're not pro-life, it feels like it's not.
01:10:01.000 No, what's the argument?
01:10:02.000 It's Hamas.
01:10:02.000 That is not pro-life.
01:10:03.000 What's the argument?
01:10:04.000 I just called stupid.
01:10:05.000 What's the argument?
01:10:06.000 Hold on one second, Josh.
01:10:08.000 What's the argument that you called the watch?
01:10:10.000 What's the argument that you called stupid?
01:10:11.000 Why don't you finish it, Josh?
01:10:12.000 Because he doesn't even know what it is.
01:10:13.000 He interrupted me before I even said it.
01:10:15.000 Okay, here's the argument.
01:10:17.000 If you're pro-life, it's not incumbent on you to have a plan for what the mother ought to do with the baby.
01:10:25.000 Like, you don't have to have a plan for daycare and college funds and all that.
01:10:30.000 You just say, hey, I think this option should be off the table.
01:10:32.000 I don't think you have the right to murder the baby while it's inside of you.
01:10:36.000 Likewise, I'm not saying I have to have the perfect plan.
01:10:38.000 If we had more time, I could expand on what I think they should have done.
01:10:41.000 But how about don't deny one ounce of grain for three months and then shoot at the poor people who are trying to get food?
01:10:48.000 Josh, how about you take that option off the table?
01:10:51.000 Is that argument stupid, Josh?
01:10:53.000 Dave.
01:10:54.000 Okay, Josh.
01:10:54.000 The party in Gaza that is not pro-life is Hamas.
01:10:58.000 Agreed.
01:10:59.000 Hamas is the jihadist U.S.-recognized foreign terrorist organization that in their founding charter, by the way, they were founded simply as the Palestinian Arab offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
01:11:09.000 We all agree Hamas is bad.
01:11:10.000 Well, no, I'm not going to sit here while he interrupts me every time I say he can ever interrupt me.
01:11:17.000 Look, I know there are a lot of choices when it comes to who you choose for your cell phone service.
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01:12:04.000 Call 972 Patriot today or go to PatriotMobile.com slash Charlie.
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01:12:11.000 Go to PatriotMobile.com slash Charlie or call 972 Patriot and make the Twitch today.
01:12:18.000 Dave, respectfully, you are criticizing him for interrupting.
01:12:21.000 So don't do that.
01:12:22.000 So just let's have an uninterrupted narrative.
01:12:27.000 Thank you.
01:12:28.000 Okay.
01:12:28.000 Hamas calls in their founding charter for the death not merely of every Israeli, not merely every Jew, but of every infidel, which they identify as not merely all Christians, but also all Muslims who don't subscribe to their idiosyncratic form of Sunni Sharia supremacism.
01:12:44.000 So the group in Hamas, assuming the group in Gaza that is not pro-life, is Hamas.
01:12:49.000 And Hamas has the unequivocal, and I would argue sole moral culpability for the human shield-induced deaths of all the women, civilians, and babies when they are indiscriminately firing rockets, mortars, and missiles from mosques, from United Nations schools, and on.
01:13:05.000 That is where the blame goes.
01:13:07.000 The blame goes to Hamas.
01:13:09.000 Once upon a time, anyone with any decent functioning moral compass or any knowledge of international law 101 would have been able to tell you that.
01:13:16.000 So that is where this goes.
01:13:18.000 But again, it's just you pivot to blaming Hamas, and they're the ones who aren't pro-life.
01:13:22.000 As if I was making the claim that Hamas is pro-life, I'm criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu for funding and propping up this horrific terrorist organization.
01:13:30.000 So how are you in one breath going to talk about how terrible they are and then completely remove culpability from the guy who kept them?
01:13:36.000 I am curious.
01:13:37.000 Got it.
01:13:38.000 I'm curious.
01:13:38.000 I got to interrupt.
01:13:40.000 What is your response to the human shield argument?
01:13:42.000 It has been proven.
01:13:43.000 It is legit.
01:13:44.000 What is your response to a fact?
01:13:47.000 We don't know how widespread it's done, but I think it's rather that Hamas uses human shields.
01:13:51.000 Yeah, they certainly have.
01:13:52.000 Like, I'm not denying that.
01:13:54.000 But at the same time, like, it's kind of, you know, if, let's say, like, in a domestic criminal situation, if there was somebody who killed a bunch of people and then they ran into a school and they're like using the kids as human shields, they're hiding behind the kids.
01:14:07.000 And then your local police department came over and said, blow up the school and killed all the kids.
01:14:12.000 You wouldn't go, well, they have no moral responsibility because they were using them as human shields.
01:14:16.000 Yeah, as Bill Burr said in his special, you got to work around that, bro.
01:14:20.000 And like, Hamas is terrible.
01:14:23.000 Nobody's arguing with that.
01:14:24.000 But that doesn't mean there's no responsibility for the people dropping the bomb.
01:14:28.000 And by the way, again, as you don't want to talk about, how about when they're shooting at people trying to get aid?
01:14:32.000 There were no human shields there.
01:14:34.000 I don't know if you're going to have to go.
01:14:34.000 I don't look at a picture of Gaza.
01:14:36.000 Human shields does not describe most of what's happened to Gaza.
01:14:40.000 Yes, there are certain instances.
01:14:42.000 And by the way, Israel also has a bunch of military targets in civilian areas.
01:14:47.000 I'm just saying, that doesn't actually mean it's okay to just, now you have a moral get out of jail free card to do whatever you want to the poor innocent people who, as you pointed out, are also victims of Hamas.
01:14:59.000 Josh.
01:14:59.000 And that's what people are objecting to.
01:15:01.000 Josh, what is your response to, I know there was some pushback online to the shooting at the aid site with food.
01:15:06.000 Is that as Dave is telling it?
01:15:09.000 Charlie, honestly, I have not spent too much time on the details, but what I can tell you is this.
01:15:13.000 We know for a fact that at least until the recent Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is this U.S.-organized NGO distributing aid, we know that prior to the establishment of this, Hamas was pilfering and confiscating a shockingly high percentage of the aid that entered Gaza, sometimes well more than 50%.
01:15:30.000 Because that's what they do.
01:15:31.000 They have monopoly of use of force in Gaza, and they were essentially just artificially inflating the prices of the actual Gazans' goods and then stealing it all for themselves.
01:15:39.000 That's what Hamas does.
01:15:40.000 It is a deeply corrupt kleptocracy, in addition to being a jihadist hellhole.
01:15:45.000 Now, the new aid group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, is a noble and righteous effort.
01:15:50.000 That guess who opposes it?
01:15:51.000 Hamas.
01:15:52.000 Hamas are the ones who actually have started indiscriminately shooting, even much more so than whatever anecdote Dave Smith is talking about.
01:15:58.000 Hamas is the one that has actually started indiscriminately shooting at this U.S., perpetuated this U.S. orchestrated new aid distribution organization because Hamas doesn't like the fact that the United States under Donald Trump, God bless him, has found a way to get around the Hamas monopoly on aid distribution in Gaza.
01:16:14.000 We are way over time.
01:16:15.000 And so now I want to end with what we want.
01:16:19.000 Okay, we both are challenging, we're defending, so we got to go fast.
01:16:23.000 Josh, I'm going to start with you.
01:16:25.000 What are you pushing for?
01:16:26.000 What is success?
01:16:28.000 What is the end destination?
01:16:30.000 What are you prescribing?
01:16:31.000 What are you offering?
01:16:32.000 And then Dave will let you do it.
01:16:33.000 And then please don't interrupt.
01:16:36.000 Charlie, great, great debate.
01:16:37.000 Thank you for moderating this.
01:16:38.000 So I support the Trump Doctrine of Foreign Policy.
01:16:41.000 I have been a staunch proponent of the Trump Doctrine since the Trump Doctrine first came into instantiation during the first Trump presidency.
01:16:48.000 The Trump Doctrine, again, is neither neoconservative nor isolationist.
01:16:52.000 It is a nationalist, realist, America-first approach to foreign policy that understands three things.
01:16:58.000 One, America's number one focus this century must be on combating our actual civilizational foe, the Chinese Communist Party.
01:17:05.000 Two, America has declining resources.
01:17:07.000 Three, the way to deal with both those two is to prioritize in non-Indo-Pacific regions of the world, allies who are capable of securing and patrolling their neck of the woods in a way that redounds not just to their national interests, but to the American national interests.
01:17:23.000 That in the Middle East is Israel.
01:17:24.000 We've seen that time and time again throughout the Middle East.
01:17:27.000 And again, Charlie, just to drive home this point there, the guy who understands this better than anyone, despite this whole kind of very online debate about what MAGA or America First should think about foreign policy and U.S.S relations, the guy who understands this the best, as he recently reminded us, is the guy who literally defined the terms, MAGA and America First.
01:17:44.000 To Donald Trump, it is completely commonsensical.
01:17:47.000 It is utterly logical.
01:17:48.000 It flows from first principles that to be America First is to necessarily support tight-knit, close-knit U.S. relations.
01:17:56.000 We saw this in the U.S.-Iran war.
01:17:58.000 We saw the B-2 bombers do what they did, and God bless them for dropping those bombs in that 37-hour interval.
01:18:03.000 That would not have been possible were it not for the Israelis laying the groundwork with the Iranian air defenses and Hezbollah the year prior in 2024.
01:18:11.000 It was the Trump doctrine and U.S.-Israel relations at work.
01:18:14.000 So, Charlie, my vision is for an independent Israel where we ultimately wind down aid and for Israel to be the beacon of protecting and securing American interests in the Middle East, just like other countries can then take responsibility in different regions of the world so that America can then focus on China.
01:18:33.000 Look, I think if you guys are being honest with yourselves, and I do think we should really think about the threats that we really do face here at home, and I'm talking about the Democrats coming back into power.
01:18:45.000 Forget all these made-up threats about other countries that really can't mess with us at all.
01:18:49.000 I don't know if you guys have noticed, and you could say it's a very online debate all you want to, this hasn't been a good month for Donald Trump.
01:18:55.000 His base is really kind of turning on each other, and these are major issues that are dividing his coalition.
01:19:04.000 And this is J.D. Vance winning in a few years is not a given.
01:19:08.000 You know, like the Democrats are going to come back and offer someone.
01:19:11.000 And if we want to have a chance to keep progress going and to get our country in a better place, what we have to do is reject empire and return to being a republic that we were supposed to be.
01:19:23.000 The United States of America was never supposed to be an empire.
01:19:26.000 We were supposed to be a republic, a constitutional republic, a city on a hill that the world could learn from our example because we do liberty so much better than anybody else does.
01:19:37.000 And we've gotten so far away from that over the years.
01:19:39.000 And like I mentioned at the beginning, look, this is the big point.
01:19:42.000 We're going broke.
01:19:44.000 We can't afford to do this anymore.
01:19:47.000 It shouldn't even be a question of whether we should be giving Israel money or whether we should be giving Ukraine money as Donald Trump's also decided to do this year.
01:19:55.000 We don't have it.
01:19:56.000 This is like me taking out money on a credit card to lend to my friends so I can act like I'm the big shot who's lending them money.
01:20:03.000 We are destroying our own young people.
01:20:05.000 You, not me.
01:20:07.000 I'm not a young person.
01:20:08.000 I'm fine.
01:20:08.000 I'm in my 40s and I make good money.
01:20:10.000 Your whole generation is getting screwed over by this because we have to devalue our currency in order to keep up with the demands for this spending that we cannot afford.
01:20:21.000 And so the answer is that we need to pull back.
01:20:24.000 We need to focus on America.
01:20:26.000 That's what America First is supposed to be about.
01:20:29.000 Sound money, fiscal sanity, and true liberty, true free market capitalism.
01:20:35.000 Not a government that spends $7 trillion a year and a crazy casino system on Wall Street with these incredibly low interest rates where people are making tens of millions of dollars off just speculating on nonsense.
01:20:48.000 And this is what, it's the warfare state that drives it.
01:20:51.000 Look, guys, we have spent $20 trillion since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
01:20:57.000 The war in Iraq and Afghanistan are over.
01:21:01.000 And we're looking at our biggest defense budget ever.
01:21:04.000 This is madness, and it will be the death of our country.
01:21:07.000 No Islamist is going to take down our country, but drowning in debt and empire will.
01:21:13.000 That's how great nations fall.
01:21:15.000 And the young Republicans need to reject that.
01:21:18.000 A republic, not an empire, like the great Patrick Buchanan said.
01:21:22.000 I want to just summarize.
01:21:23.000 This was time well spent.
01:21:24.000 Both Dave and Josh agree on some plan to wind down U.S.-Israel aid.
01:21:29.000 That was an agreement, correct?
01:21:30.000 The timeline you could debate about.
01:21:32.000 Number two, they both say every human is made in the image of God, and we should not trivialize when, you know, people are killed.
01:21:39.000 Also, I think we all agreed October 7th was awful.
01:21:42.000 It was terrible.
01:21:43.000 And it should be talked about more, and it needs to be emphasized.
01:21:45.000 We also agree this Jew hate stuff has no place in public discourse, period.
01:21:50.000 End of story.
01:21:51.000 And I don't like it.
01:21:52.000 It's disgusting.
01:21:53.000 And we need to call it out when we see it.
01:21:55.000 And finally, I think the fifth is that I hope we demonstrated, and both our participants got a little lively at times, that this is a debate worth having, that it's better to have this out in the open than silence people and censor them and call them names.
01:22:10.000 Instead, this is how we solve our problems.
01:22:12.000 Give it up for Josh and Dave one last time, everybody.
01:22:15.000 Thank you.
01:22:16.000 Thank you, guys.
01:22:16.000 Thank you, Charlie.
01:22:19.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
01:22:20.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
01:22:22.000 Thanks so much for listening.
01:22:24.000 God bless.