The Charlie Kirk Show - February 25, 2026


Trump's State of the Union Test


Episode Stats

Length

35 minutes

Words per Minute

181.4058

Word Count

6,452

Sentence Count

553


Summary


Transcript

00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.
00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.
00:00:11.000 My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
00:00:14.000 If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.
00:00:19.000 But if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end up purposeful.
00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.
00:00:26.000 You got to stop sending your kids to college.
00:00:27.000 You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
00:00:31.000 Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.
00:00:33.000 Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter.
00:00:35.000 Go find out how your church can get involved.
00:00:37.000 Sign up and become an activist.
00:00:39.000 I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
00:00:41.000 Most important decision I ever made in my life.
00:00:43.000 And I encourage you to do the same.
00:00:45.000 Here I am.
00:00:46.000 Lord Musemy.
00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:49.000 Here we go.
00:00:56.000 The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000 All right, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:10.000 Hour two is underway.
00:01:12.000 I'm here in DC, ahead of the state of the union.
00:01:14.000 Blake's holding it down at Phoenix, Arizona.
00:01:17.000 So there was a powerful event that happened yesterday.
00:01:21.000 And again, President Trump, I thought, hit an amazing note when he said, I will not forget.
00:01:26.000 And he was referring to angel families.
00:01:28.000 And a lot of us know the story of Lake and Riley in Georgia, who was killed at the hands of an illegal immigrant.
00:01:36.000 But there are so many stories that we don't hear as much about, and we need to.
00:01:42.000 And here to help us is Joe Abraham.
00:01:45.000 He's an angel father to daughter Katie, who was killed by an illegal immigrant.
00:01:49.000 He joins us now.
00:01:49.000 He was at the event yesterday.
00:01:51.000 Joe, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:53.000 And thanks so much for taking the time to be with us.
00:01:56.000 Please tell us your story and your family story.
00:01:59.000 Sure.
00:01:59.000 Thanks for having me and allowing me to talk about Katie and Katie's life.
00:02:04.000 So Katie was 20 years old.
00:02:05.000 She was a third-year student at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.
00:02:11.000 And her and a friend, a friend in the Glenview, Illinois area, that's where we live, took the train down to Urbana, Illinois to visit some friends at the University of Illinois over the weekend of January 18th.
00:02:25.000 They went down there.
00:02:27.000 They were in an automobile on January 19th at a stoplight idol, and they were rear-ended at almost 80 miles an hour.
00:02:36.000 Just decimated the Honda Civic they were in.
00:02:39.000 The SUV just plowed right into them.
00:02:41.000 No braking, no swerving.
00:02:43.000 Katie unfortunately died on the scene.
00:02:46.000 Another young woman died the next day.
00:02:48.000 There were three injuries.
00:02:50.000 And it turned out the person who struck the vehicle, you know, not only fled right away.
00:02:57.000 I mean, can you imagine?
00:02:58.000 You decimate five lives and the first instinct you have is to flee.
00:03:03.000 So it turns out he is an illegal alien, a Guatemalan national using a Mexican national alias.
00:03:13.000 So Sanctuary State, Illinois, when they nullified federal law, did not put any type of a real process in place on the front end.
00:03:24.000 There were no guardrails.
00:03:26.000 That's how negligent and how Illinois is so mismanaged by the governor Pritzker on down, General Assembly, every state legislature.
00:03:38.000 So there are no guardrails.
00:03:39.000 Now, on top of this, in the country using an alias and false documentations, identity theft or whatever you want to call it, he flees.
00:03:49.000 They finally apprehend him two days after Donald Trump is in office on the 20th, shuts down the border.
00:03:56.000 Truly believe if Mjorkis and Biden were still running things, he would have never been apprehended.
00:04:02.000 So thank goodness for Donald Trump coming in, shutting the border down, allowing U.S. Marshals and Border Patrol to do their jobs, unlike the prior administration.
00:04:12.000 They apprehended him.
00:04:13.000 Now, it turns out in federal court, he is now that he's been incarcerated, is being treated for HIV.
00:04:20.000 So understand this as well.
00:04:22.000 Illinois did not only have zero minimal vetting checks because the federal enforcement officers knew he was using an alias.
00:04:32.000 They knew he was not who he says he was.
00:04:34.000 Illinois didn't bother to check.
00:04:36.000 Two, did Illinois help this guy with any health screening?
00:04:40.000 No, there was absolutely not.
00:04:42.000 So Illinois allows folks to roam around the state unchecked, unvetted, unhealth screened.
00:04:49.000 So this guy has HIV in our communities, was let go to roam free.
00:04:54.000 Was he as reckless with his HIV as he was behind the wheel, drunk driving?
00:05:01.000 I suspect he was.
00:05:02.000 So Katie ends up paying a price, a predictable outcome of reckless, extreme, radical policies out of Illinois, and she pays the price.
00:05:14.000 She's on some altar we don't even understand.
00:05:17.000 She dies on some altar of J.B. Pritzker and his lapdogs in the General Assembly.
00:05:23.000 So I sit here with a life sentence thanks to my Illinois government, and Katie received the death penalty.
00:05:32.000 She got death.
00:05:33.000 That's it.
00:05:34.000 And Illinois is right now trying to erase us, silence us, make us disappear.
00:05:41.000 We're so inconvenient to their nonsense stories about how there are no illegals in the country, that everyone is good.
00:05:51.000 And it just goes against human nature how they approach things.
00:05:55.000 It's really rather disgusting and insidious.
00:05:59.000 Well, and Joe, you know, CNN, MS Now refused to air that ceremony that was honoring your families, that was honoring Katie and Lake and Riley and so many others before.
00:06:09.000 And I was reading your op-ed here and you sent a letter to J.B. Pritzker with 11 questions and he's, I believe, still not gotten back to you, it sounds like.
00:06:18.000 But you've written here the pain our family has experienced in the last 12 plus months since Katie's death is beyond description.
00:06:24.000 I wish I could explain it to people.
00:06:26.000 The pain is so unbearable at times.
00:06:28.000 It has me almost unable to function.
00:06:30.000 I'm haunted by the knowledge that I will never walk my daughter down the aisle.
00:06:34.000 I'll never hold her children.
00:06:35.000 I'll never see her again.
00:06:36.000 I would give anything, anything in the rest of my days for just one more hour with her.
00:06:41.000 It's very emotional to read that.
00:06:44.000 Compare what you've seen from the state of Illinois and President Trump in that ceremony yesterday.
00:06:49.000 Oh, you can't even, you can't even believe the difference.
00:06:52.000 You know, J.B. Pritzker loves to talk about Donald Trump being an authoritarian, this, that, and the other.
00:06:58.000 If my firsthand experience is Donald Trump has welcomed us to the White House more than once, has looked me in the eye, father to father, and said, this has been a mess.
00:07:10.000 We're going to clean it up.
00:07:11.000 And J.B. Pritzker, compare him, ignored us.
00:07:15.000 I was in the same committee room as he was, just 10 feet away from him for eight hours, didn't say one, didn't even look in my direction.
00:07:23.000 He doesn't even probably know who I am, nor does he care.
00:07:26.000 Jan Schaukowski, another woman who now is picking her successor, this Daniel Bis guy from Evanston, and you should see Evanston.
00:07:34.000 It's like Chicago Jr.
00:07:36.000 And apparently there's no kings, but in Illinois, you can decide who you're going to appoint to take over your seat.
00:07:42.000 So she's walking by me as if I wasn't there.
00:07:45.000 So there was not one Democrat who would talk to me.
00:07:48.000 And this state is all in Illinois is all run by Democrats.
00:07:51.000 So I need to talk to them.
00:07:52.000 That's who's running this thing.
00:07:54.000 And not one would talk to me.
00:07:56.000 So look at the difference there.
00:07:57.000 This guy is not compassionate, J.B. Prince.
00:08:00.000 He's not a caring man.
00:08:02.000 He is someone who's aloof.
00:08:04.000 He's arrogant.
00:08:05.000 Somehow, I think he doesn't, you know, need the voters.
00:08:10.000 He certainly doesn't, he's not accountable to the voters.
00:08:13.000 He's, to me, I think, you know, people are leaving Illinois in droves and he's backfilling them with this free-for-all immigration policy because I think he needs warm bodies.
00:08:24.000 Here's what I suspect.
00:08:25.000 And I can tell you a story on that too, if you'd like.
00:08:29.000 I wonder how many ballots are tied to these illegal alien bodies.
00:08:33.000 That's why I think he's arrogant and doesn't really need to answer to the voters.
00:08:37.000 No, I think that that's, I think a lot of us suspect the same.
00:08:41.000 And we obviously see it because it ends up in the census data.
00:08:46.000 It ends up in electoral college votes.
00:08:47.000 It ends up in congressional apportionment.
00:08:50.000 So whether or not there's ballot to ballot illegal voting, it's still power that is being given to Democrats one way or the other.
00:08:59.000 Joe, thank you so much for making the time.
00:09:02.000 I know you've got travel and you wedged this dent.
00:09:04.000 You wedged us in today.
00:09:05.000 So I'm grateful to you.
00:09:07.000 I'm grateful for you standing up for your daughter, for angel families all over the country for being bold and courageous.
00:09:12.000 Thank you so much.
00:09:13.000 And I'm so sorry for your hard work.
00:09:17.000 Thanks so much.
00:09:18.000 Thank you.
00:09:19.000 God bless you, Joe.
00:09:20.000 God bless.
00:09:23.000 If you're tired of watching this country drift away from the values that made it great, it's time to get involved.
00:09:28.000 That's why I stand with AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens.
00:09:32.000 Charlie loved this country and he loved partnering with organizations that truly stand for what makes America great.
00:09:37.000 One of our most trusted partners, AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens, is doing something special in Charlie's honor.
00:09:44.000 AMAC is offering free memberships to all ages.
00:09:47.000 No credit card, no strings attached, just a chance to stand for faith, family, and freedom.
00:09:51.000 Join this movement.
00:09:53.000 Go to AMAC.us/slash Charlie today.
00:09:56.000 That is amac.us forward slash Charlie today.
00:10:03.000 It's been kind of a heavy show, Blake, and I think we need to cleanse the palette here and talk about some good things.
00:10:09.000 All right.
00:10:10.000 So another judge ruling came down, a motion.
00:10:14.000 It basically, suffice to say that they denied the defense's motion, and the death penalty is still very much in place and on track in this case.
00:10:24.000 So that's one good news.
00:10:25.000 Second good news, Erica Kirk, it has just been announced, will be at the State of the Union tonight.
00:10:30.000 It's public, public information now.
00:10:32.000 President Trump has invited her personally and she will be attending.
00:10:36.000 So that's going all over the internet right now, which is great.
00:10:40.000 And we have a hockey story that I'm going to hit, but Blake, you have a very, very good one.
00:10:46.000 Andrew, you can hit your party boy thing.
00:10:49.000 I want a white pill for the whole, for America in a big picture.
00:10:52.000 I want to highlight, flag this big article.
00:10:55.000 Well, not a big article.
00:10:56.000 They're always short on Axios.
00:10:58.000 Axios has an article this morning with a very sinister sounding title, Inside Trump's Purge of U.S. Immigration Courts.
00:11:06.000 You read it.
00:11:07.000 Here's what the purge is.
00:11:08.000 For literally decades, we've gradually built up this incredibly long backlog of cases in our immigration courts, which is obviously deliberate.
00:11:19.000 While you're waiting for your day in court, you, of course, have the right to just live in America, do whatever you want, work in America.
00:11:26.000 And the Biden administration sent that into overdrive.
00:11:28.000 They were giving people court dates two years, three years.
00:11:31.000 I believe in one case, a court date 10 years out and then releasing people into the country.
00:11:37.000 And I know people are sometimes frustrated that things feel like they're going slow in the Trump administration or that things, you know, it'll be two steps forward, one step back.
00:11:46.000 But this is a great example of how in the background, they're getting the job done.
00:11:52.000 They've hired, they're hiring dozens of new immigration judges, and they've been training them up.
00:11:59.000 And apparently, this month is when they're finally getting into action.
00:12:03.000 And that's important because, as is already in the past year, the backlog of cases, the total number of cases they have to process has fallen by 341,000.
00:12:13.000 And this next year, maybe that'll be half a million, 600, a million.
00:12:17.000 And that's really important because when you adjudicate those cases, it goes really fast.
00:12:21.000 Almost all of these you can handle in a matter of hours, if not less.
00:12:26.000 And once you're doing that, that is what allows ICE to just go and say, oh, you have an order of removal.
00:12:31.000 We're taking you, getting you out of the country.
00:12:33.000 Bam, You make it so much easier for ICE to just grab people, get them out.
00:12:39.000 And it's so great here.
00:12:40.000 They just have these quotes where, like, you know, they put this guy, Darren Margolin, in charge of training up the new hires.
00:12:48.000 He was an immigration judge and he quit in 2024 because he said, quote, I felt like a co-conspirator in treason regarding the Biden administration's policies.
00:12:58.000 Now he is taking leadership of the Executive Office of Immigration Review and he is ramming this through.
00:13:04.000 So I wanted to flag that for people to show there are stories that are not getting front page headlines.
00:13:10.000 They're not getting covered on CNN that we are getting the work done for mass deportations in the years to come.
00:13:18.000 You just purge those cases, get it done.
00:13:20.000 Big white pill for today.
00:13:22.000 That's a white pill.
00:13:23.000 I love the white.
00:13:24.000 I love white pill, Blake.
00:13:25.000 It's my favorite Blake.
00:13:27.000 And so when he comes up with these ideas, I'm like, we're going to find time in the show.
00:13:30.000 Blake, it's perfect.
00:13:33.000 So I love that.
00:13:34.000 And I'm a big immigration hawk.
00:13:35.000 So God bless that.
00:13:36.000 I love how the Axios calls it purge.
00:13:38.000 What a joke.
00:13:39.000 Okay, guys.
00:13:40.000 All right.
00:13:40.000 So here's my white pill of the day.
00:13:43.000 The U.S. men's hockey team is back on U.S. soil.
00:13:47.000 They are still patriots.
00:13:48.000 They're still sounding like the perfect note.
00:13:52.000 And they had to get rerouted to Miami because of the weather in the northern part of the country.
00:13:58.000 Well, and so what do you do when you're in Miami?
00:14:00.000 Now, there's a lot of people, oh, you shouldn't be partying.
00:14:03.000 It's like, okay, loosen up.
00:14:04.000 They just won the gold medal.
00:14:06.000 They're out in, you know, a town known for having a nightlife.
00:14:12.000 Okay.
00:14:13.000 And everybody's filming them.
00:14:15.000 They're still singing God bless the USA.
00:14:15.000 And guess what?
00:14:18.000 So here's 378 of the U.S. men's hockey team in Miami last night singing God Bless USA 378.
00:14:56.000 I love it.
00:14:57.000 What do you guys think in the chats?
00:15:00.000 Send us an email, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:15:02.000 Do you love this?
00:15:03.000 Do you love this proud, exuberant patriotism from Team USA after they won the gold?
00:15:09.000 I personally love it.
00:15:10.000 I don't have a problem with Kash Patel enjoying the moment with them either.
00:15:13.000 They invited him in.
00:15:15.000 I think everybody needs to loosen up, have a moment of just pure, unadulterated national pride, and relax.
00:15:21.000 Like, stop being a hater.
00:15:22.000 This is great.
00:15:23.000 You may not like that take.
00:15:25.000 I like it.
00:15:26.000 I think it's great.
00:15:27.000 And by the way, here's the other thing I'd say.
00:15:30.000 Blake, here's the thing I would say.
00:15:32.000 You know what they don't love?
00:15:34.000 They don't love masculinity.
00:15:36.000 They don't like an FBI director like pounding his chest, pounding the table, throwing back a beer.
00:15:41.000 Okay, maybe you don't drink.
00:15:42.000 That's fine.
00:15:43.000 Charlie didn't drink.
00:15:44.000 But listen, adults sometimes have a beer, especially after a huge win.
00:15:44.000 I get it.
00:15:48.000 They don't like the men's hockey team losing teeth and then draping themselves in the American flag and then going to a club in Miami because they get rerouted to a warmer climate with the Northwestern coming in.
00:15:59.000 I'm telling you, what they really have a problem with is unabashed, masculine energy, victory.
00:16:06.000 We're not apologizing for it.
00:16:08.000 And here's what else is great.
00:16:09.000 President Trump promised and he delivered 405.
00:16:12.000 This is the men's hockey team getting picked up by the president for the State of the Union tonight, 405.
00:16:18.000 Look at Miami International Airport.
00:16:20.000 This is where Team USA men's hockey team is on U.S. Air Force 757 plane.
00:16:26.000 This after landing here in South Florida, this is where they, of course, celebrated their Olympic gold medal.
00:16:31.000 A plane headed to Washington, D.C.
00:16:33.000 We know the team potentially could make an appearance tonight at the State of the Union address.
00:16:39.000 All right.
00:16:39.000 But Andrew, that's great.
00:16:40.000 But Andrew, I've got something great for you.
00:16:42.000 The real reason this is amazing is because hockey liberals are a real thing, apparently.
00:16:47.000 There's thousands of them, and they're absolutely flipping out.
00:16:50.000 I wanted to flag this.
00:16:51.000 Some guy with the trans flag on X, he posted this one is personal.
00:16:55.000 It's a scary time on hockey Twitter right now.
00:16:58.000 We can't become hopeless.
00:17:00.000 And the article is titled, Don't Let Them Effing Take It From You.
00:17:05.000 And they are in full meltdown.
00:17:07.000 So I can agree with you.
00:17:08.000 This is a great celebration.
00:17:10.000 You just had to bring us down with that.
00:17:12.000 I love it.
00:17:12.000 Everything's political now.
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00:18:15.000 Welcome to the show, Kane from Citizen Free Press.
00:18:19.000 I've been checking out your stack all morning.
00:18:21.000 My friend, thank you for covering the Charlie Kirk trial right now with Tyler Robinson.
00:18:26.000 It means a lot.
00:18:27.000 And there's some great, we've had some great developments there.
00:18:29.000 So thank you for that.
00:18:30.000 But there's so much going on, Kane.
00:18:32.000 We had kind of a heavy show, Blake will attest in the first, I'd say, hour and a half.
00:18:37.000 And we're doing white pill moments.
00:18:40.000 We're no doomerism on this show right now.
00:18:42.000 So we've got the state of the union tonight, Kane.
00:18:46.000 What are you looking for?
00:18:47.000 What notes do you want the president to hit?
00:18:50.000 What do you think your readers at Citizen Free Press want to hear?
00:18:55.000 Yeah, those are good questions.
00:18:57.000 You know me, dude.
00:18:58.000 I want to hear about the national debt.
00:19:00.000 I'd love to hear Trump talk about a spending freeze.
00:19:03.000 When you watch Trump every day and have to sort of, because of your job, watch all the press conferences like you guys do, like I do, you know, you hear a lot of the same themes repeated.
00:19:13.000 And so I'm a little bit fearful that, you know, as a junkie, that I will have heard everything that Trump's going to talk about tonight in terms of emphasizing how the economy is better than people say, et cetera, et cetera.
00:19:25.000 But you know me.
00:19:25.000 You know the stack.
00:19:26.000 You saw it yesterday.
00:19:28.000 Two headlines in green italics where I linked to Scott Bessant when he was on Maria Bardaroma's show on Sunday morning talking about the national debt.
00:19:36.000 So I would love, you know, that is the part of what I hope for in, you know, in Trump 2.0 is having control of both Congresses that maybe we could finally realistically take a look at the big three programs of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, start getting the conversations going about how to fix those programs.
00:19:58.000 And also, well, and I threw it in as my second headline as a message to Trump yesterday, specifically to him, because I know he reads the site that, you know, that make this his legacy.
00:20:11.000 Make, you know, fixing the national debt his legacy.
00:20:15.000 And so that's what I'd like to hear.
00:20:17.000 Well, you know, Charlie, the first clips that you'll see of Charlie on TV, it was all about the national debt.
00:20:24.000 He was obsessed with it and remained obsessed with it.
00:20:26.000 He was a fiscal hawk his whole life.
00:20:29.000 And, you know, I would say that a balanced budget, Blake is skeptical.
00:20:35.000 I know.
00:20:35.000 I know Blake's skeptical, but a balanced budget would be a massive, massive accomplishment.
00:20:40.000 I totally agree.
00:20:41.000 Absolutely.
00:20:42.000 We do have to show.
00:20:43.000 Go ahead.
00:20:44.000 I'm just, I think a way that he could maybe at least gesture towards that, the past six months, we've had story after story of massive fraud in government, massive fraud of federal programs, Medicaid, every federal program getting looted in Minnesota, in Maine, in Washington, in California.
00:21:03.000 I think if he made that a big theme of his address about, oh, we're going to have a detailed auditing task force that will identify, arrest, stop the fraud, deport the people committing it.
00:21:15.000 I think that would be a good way to at least make gestures towards the debt, even if I'm skeptical this administration is ready to, they're not going to, I don't think they're going to take big steps on Social Security or any of those big items.
00:21:26.000 Well, you know, I go back to Kane and you're a financial guy.
00:21:30.000 People don't know that your background is in finance, but the tweet from Mark Halperin that we actually made a lot of, we actually had Mark Halperin on the show to talk about it.
00:21:40.000 Apparently, Fabrizio, one of the main pollsters for President Trump, did a whole presentation and he outlined these sort of, I would call them populist economic wins and how to message, how to get through, because this sticky issue of the economy, people still don't feel the momentum.
00:21:58.000 I mean, we're coming out of four years of Biden inflation and they're still not feeling that relief.
00:22:04.000 So Fabrizio's got these ideas of like, you know, ban stock trading for Congress, right?
00:22:08.000 You get these scalps, these actionable wins that would start kind of piercing the noise and getting into the population, the voting population.
00:22:17.000 What do you think about the economic messaging, Kane, specifically tonight?
00:22:22.000 Yeah, well, I read the Fabrizio stuff last week and it was good.
00:22:26.000 And he makes a good point about getting some wins.
00:22:29.000 Getting to what Blake said, Blake is right.
00:22:31.000 Fraud beating fraud polls really, really well.
00:22:35.000 Mark Mitchell of Rashminson has sort of talked about it.
00:22:37.000 He had a piece up talking about how Trump was doing the best, actually doing the best poll-wise when Doge was in the, was Doge was in the news.
00:22:45.000 And then, you know, that maybe the missed opportunity in Minnesota was instead of concentrating on the on the deportation and the ICE part, maybe concentrating more on the fraud part because all, you know, a lot more of America can get behind the fraud stuff.
00:22:58.000 In terms of, you know, a bold move towards Social Security, which Blake also mentioned, yeah, I don't expect that.
00:23:04.000 I just want the conversations to start.
00:23:06.000 You know, let's start talking about how we slowly raise the retirement age from 67 to 70 over 30 years.
00:23:13.000 You know, nothing quick, you know, so that people don't freak out.
00:23:17.000 Another, you know, a thought I have about why people don't really feel the economy getting better is, to be honest, it's interest rates.
00:23:25.000 I've got my neighbors across the street who are stuck in their house.
00:23:29.000 They're the greatest people.
00:23:30.000 They've got four amazing young athletes under 10.
00:23:33.000 Homeschool these kids and they're stuck in this tiny lot.
00:23:37.000 Uh, why?
00:23:38.000 Because of interest rates, their homes at three percent loan, and and so anyway, I think that'll be huge.
00:23:43.000 I put a headline in today about Austin Goolsby, who used to be Obama's you know economic guru, about how he's, you know, still saying he won't lower rates.
00:23:52.000 Thank goodness Kevin Warsh will be able to so.
00:23:54.000 And, by the way, you know, I watch CNBC on mute most of the day, and you know this, the 30-year mortgage has finally dipped under six percent.
00:24:02.000 It's 5.99 now, granted that's.
00:24:04.000 That's still big, you know, those are still a big number compared to three and the three and a half percent, but it's going to get better and I think that'll help.
00:24:12.000 Um well so yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing.
00:24:15.000 Yeah no, there was a.
00:24:16.000 There was a story at a FOX Business this morning that the purchasing power of home buyers is up over thirty thousand dollars uh, under Trump, partly because of interest rates, but also partly because of rising incomes, and so, as those interest rates continue to tick down, people are going to experience a little bit more flexibility.
00:24:33.000 It's the it, you know.
00:24:34.000 I think the Zillow quote in there was, it's the difference between having to settle and being able to actually choose a home you want to live in.
00:24:40.000 So it makes a huge, huge difference for home buyers just to have even 30, 50 000 more money on the table to be able to buy a home.
00:24:49.000 So, but continue, you were, you were going well whatever, I think that's going to help.
00:24:53.000 Uh I, I really think that'll help people's.
00:24:56.000 You know sentiment towards the economy and uh look, I think that you know I think Trump is doing okay.
00:25:02.000 I pay attention to Rasmusson approval.
00:25:04.000 I don't really read, I mean I look at all the other approval numbers that come out, but I really pay attention to Rasmusson's daily tracker and you know Trump slash Republican.
00:25:14.000 Let's say it's Jd Vance in three years or in two years.
00:25:17.000 You know he can win, we can, we can pull it off in these numbers.
00:25:20.000 You guys know that i'm not super optimistic about the midterms right, because what did, how many did Trump lose in 2018?
00:25:27.000 He lost almost 40 seats, or he did lose 40 seats in the House.
00:25:30.000 So the House is going to be very tough.
00:25:32.000 I think we hold the Senate just because of the numbers and and you know it's so vital for our movement, so vital that we um that you know that we win in 2028, that JD wins.
00:25:43.000 And last thing i'll say before I throw it back, I thought it was a great discussion on that Atlantic article that you guys had that.
00:25:49.000 You know that, if I have that in the stat from yesterday, if you care about America, you're obviously a Nazi, like that's how far you know.
00:25:55.000 That's just.
00:25:56.000 It's just such ridiculous tripe from the Democrats.
00:25:59.000 I hate these people anyway.
00:26:00.000 Well okay, since you kind of brought it up and then, by the way, Huffing AND POST said, if you you're feeling uncomfortable being patriotic, you're not alone.
00:26:08.000 Uh, but we got to hit Don Lamon.
00:26:09.000 It's one of our favorite things to do on this show.
00:26:12.000 He's uh, going after the hockey teams here 369.
00:26:16.000 Look.
00:26:16.000 I don't understand why anyone would be want to be in the vicinity of this president at all.
00:26:21.000 Just being honest, if they called on the phone call, I would say no thank no thanks, I don't.
00:26:25.000 Do you want to take the call?
00:26:26.000 No, tell him to call someone else.
00:26:30.000 I'm not interested in being part of this.
00:26:34.000 I'm not interested in being part of this when he doesn't.
00:26:36.000 He is not a patriot and he doesn't care about this country.
00:26:39.000 He doesn't care about the people of this country.
00:26:41.000 He certainly doesn't if you look at the citizens who are being rounded up, if you look at what he's doing to the economy, what he's done to healthcare.
00:26:48.000 He doesn't care about this country.
00:26:49.000 So why should I be smiling and kiking?
00:26:51.000 No, not interested, i'll go party and celebrate somewhere else.
00:26:56.000 I'll wait till I get home to go and party and celebrate with my family and maybe, like a real president, maybe we'll.
00:27:02.000 Maybe one day, Barack Obama will come to our game.
00:27:04.000 Oh, of course, of course, Barack Obama.
00:27:07.000 By the way, that's a 60 year old man talking like a little petulant child Kane.
00:27:11.000 Your reaction to Don Lamond?
00:27:12.000 He's about as popular as month-old convenience store sushi.
00:27:17.000 I don't know dude, I don't Don Lamont, I mean I It.
00:27:22.000 By the way, there's some awesome, there's some awesome, hilarious videos about Don Lamont on Twitter, going back about 10 years, excuse me, on YouTube.
00:27:30.000 Whatever.
00:27:30.000 The guy's irrelevant.
00:27:31.000 He speaks to his audience.
00:27:33.000 You know, he's there for our outrage.
00:27:35.000 Just whatever.
00:27:36.000 He, you know, he got fired from CNN.
00:27:38.000 Sorry, dude.
00:27:39.000 Like, not a fan.
00:27:42.000 It's just, it's really, it's, it's really a shame that we can't have bipartisan patriotism anymore.
00:27:47.000 It's just a shame.
00:27:48.000 It's a shame what they've done to the country.
00:27:51.000 It's the disease, right?
00:27:52.000 It's the Trump brainworm.
00:27:54.000 So whatever.
00:27:55.000 Kane, I have to spill the beans here a little bit.
00:27:57.000 That picture that you see on your screen, if you're watching right now, is inaccurate.
00:28:01.000 I have seen there's facial hair.
00:28:04.000 There's you have a whole new look going on, Kane.
00:28:07.000 Show it.
00:28:08.000 I don't want to divulge too much here.
00:28:10.000 Show it.
00:28:11.000 Show it.
00:28:14.000 I got to pull it up now.
00:28:16.000 Listen, I'll pull it up right out.
00:28:18.000 But here, here's while we're doing this.
00:28:20.000 Okay, hold on.
00:28:21.000 I got it.
00:28:21.000 I got it.
00:28:23.000 We'll get it up just for you.
00:28:25.000 What it is, it's going to be nine years on May 1st for this website.
00:28:29.000 And running this website, I didn't realize it when I showed up in Detroit last summer.
00:28:34.000 I lost like 20 pounds slowly by just basic attrition because, you know, you let's say you wake up in the morning and you think, do I need food or do I need to check the headlines?
00:28:45.000 And when your office is like 14 feet away from your bed, like you end up in that, in the office.
00:28:52.000 And then, and then, right, you work until the there you go.
00:28:56.000 There's the front yard.
00:28:59.000 Yeah, that's after a work.
00:29:00.000 That is it.
00:29:00.000 So that's that's a beard.
00:29:02.000 That's a beard.
00:29:03.000 Kane, I think you have an oddly shaped beard.
00:29:07.000 I appreciate it.
00:29:08.000 It's uh, it's it's powerful.
00:29:10.000 You're a man-possessed.
00:29:12.000 Yeah, thank you.
00:29:13.000 Yes.
00:29:14.000 So that's my weight is back up.
00:29:15.000 People will be happy to know that the last year and a half, I've been getting back in the gym three, four days a week.
00:29:22.000 I sneak out of the CFP headquarters, get in the gym.
00:29:28.000 You know, that beard is why I never appear on camera for the, I don't, you know, I don't even get showers until like five or six o'clock at night because you wake up.
00:29:39.000 I don't want to say I wake up in a panic every morning, but you sort of wake up and you know that like you missed headlines during the six hours while you're sleeping.
00:29:48.000 Yeah.
00:29:48.000 Listen, Kane, you got to take care of your health.
00:29:50.000 And you got that Charlie was always big on the health.
00:29:53.000 And personal hygiene is also very important.
00:29:55.000 Okay.
00:29:56.000 Two elephants in the room at the State of the Union, Kane.
00:30:00.000 That's Iran and the Epstein files.
00:30:03.000 What do you make of both, especially Iran?
00:30:06.000 What are you seeing from CFP Nation, especially on Iran?
00:30:11.000 Well, yeah, that's a good question about what the people think.
00:30:14.000 Obviously, a huge part of the America first thing is not to want to get involved in foreign wars.
00:30:20.000 So there's a natural trepidation that exists and that's there.
00:30:23.000 But at the same time, it's a trust, you know, there's a trust Trump vibe.
00:30:29.000 People really do trust him.
00:30:30.000 Look, remember when in Trump 1.0, when he sent cruise missiles into Syria and people freaked out for 24 hours.
00:30:37.000 Oh my God.
00:30:38.000 And that's all it was a short little Reagan burst.
00:30:42.000 You guys aren't old enough, but Reagan took care of Gaddafi with some cruise missiles in the 80s.
00:30:47.000 I remember it.
00:30:48.000 And it was just, you know, 12 hours of bombing and we got our point across.
00:30:52.000 So anyway, people trust Trump.
00:30:54.000 So I don't think that people are radically freaked out.
00:30:58.000 If you're asking, you know, I've had a lot of people sort of ask me, what are the odds?
00:31:01.000 What do I see happening there?
00:31:02.000 Look, I would say that Iran has been given fair warning.
00:31:07.000 You know, Trump doesn't, Trump is well aware of that, what they say about him on Wall Street, the taco trade.
00:31:14.000 And when it comes to these foreign policy things, Trump doesn't fool around.
00:31:19.000 So I think Iran better, you know, I put it in the stack yesterday.
00:31:23.000 There's going to be meetings in Geneva.
00:31:24.000 I think on Thursday, Iran supposedly has a new proposal on getting rid of nukes.
00:31:30.000 But if they don't do it, you know, Trump, this will be the last thing I'll say.
00:31:34.000 You know, there was that Axio story yesterday that said that Trump's bigot, you know, his top general, Raisin Kane, maybe was showing a little bit of caution about bombing in Iran.
00:31:45.000 And then Trump himself almost immediately put out a long message on True Social that you alerted me to, by the way, Andrew.
00:31:54.000 And I hadn't seen Trump's response to that.
00:31:56.000 And that was important.
00:31:57.000 I think, you know, you can figure out a lot by seeing how Trump is reacting to certain stories.
00:32:02.000 So the fact that he said that, no, that there, you know, that Raisin Kane really wasn't worried and that Axios got the story wrong.
00:32:10.000 I think it tells you that Iran should be worried, that the mullahs should be worried.
00:32:15.000 And then I'll quickly say on Epstein, well, go ahead.
00:32:17.000 If you want to respond on that, go ahead.
00:32:19.000 Well, yeah, I'm going to respond on that just quickly.
00:32:21.000 I got asked by Politico about people invoking Charlie's name with this Iran strike.
00:32:25.000 And I was very clear with him.
00:32:26.000 I said, yeah, Charlie was America first to his core.
00:32:29.000 He wanted a nation build in America.
00:32:31.000 He didn't want foreign adventurism, none of it.
00:32:33.000 But when it came to the first Iran strike, you heard a lot more chatter.
00:32:37.000 There was a lot more people getting up in arms about it.
00:32:39.000 And Charlie stood the course.
00:32:41.000 He was adamant.
00:32:43.000 Hey, we do not want foreign adventurism.
00:32:45.000 We do not want nation building abroad.
00:32:46.000 We want nation building here at home.
00:32:48.000 But at the end of the day, this is why we elected President Trump to lead the military, to lead this nation.
00:32:55.000 At some point, you have to say this is their job.
00:32:58.000 They need to do the best they can.
00:33:00.000 They need to make the best decisions they can.
00:33:02.000 And I think you're seeing that after Venezuela, which was incredible by any metric, what they did in Iran the first time.
00:33:09.000 I think people understand Trump is a high violence, precision attack kind of guy when it comes to kinetic warfare.
00:33:19.000 Now, do we want to avoid a regime change, drawn-out conflict?
00:33:23.000 Absolutely.
00:33:24.000 Can they do that here?
00:33:25.000 Question remains, we don't know.
00:33:27.000 We don't know what's going to happen.
00:33:28.000 And I think Blake made a good point yesterday when he said that we haven't really been sold on the case for this conflict yet either.
00:33:35.000 Blake, I don't know if you have any thoughts there because you're great on this.
00:33:38.000 Yeah, I think, honestly, if they need to make a case, State of the Union is as good a time as any.
00:33:44.000 But I think as things stand out, I think this is what Charlie would be most frustrated about is if you are going to launch a regime change war, which I think at this point, strikes of the magnitude they seem to be planning would have to be, you need to be able to, in a handful of sentences, say why this is invaluable for America's national interests and national security.
00:34:09.000 And right now, I think if it were to happen, I think people would just be confused and they would say, why now?
00:34:14.000 Why not a month ago?
00:34:15.000 Why not last summer?
00:34:16.000 Why not 10 years ago?
00:34:18.000 What is special about this moment?
00:34:20.000 And at that point, you're just banking on if it's super successful, that justifies itself.
00:34:26.000 If it's super successful and there are no American deaths, then that's great.
00:34:30.000 But if there's any casualties at all, that's where the lack of a clear explanation becomes a big albatross.
00:34:38.000 These are difficult decisions, right?
00:34:39.000 I don't, none of us envy the president having to make these very difficult decisions.
00:34:43.000 But regime change through airstrikes is not easy.
00:34:46.000 You have the Ayatollah hiding 300 feet underground in bunkers.
00:34:50.000 So you don't even know that a certain amount of bombing is going to get rid of them.
00:34:53.000 And then you have to deal with the fact that there are hundreds of other mullahs to replace them.
00:34:57.000 I mean, Iran is a fully, a fully structured theocracy now after 40 years.
00:35:02.000 And it's not, you know, just getting rid of the Ayatollah or a few others won't necessarily lead.
00:35:06.000 So these are all difficult decisions, but we trust in President Trump.
00:35:10.000 And I think the base completely trusts him.
00:35:12.000 As you said eloquently, he's earned this trust.
00:35:15.000 Yeah, well said.
00:35:16.000 And by the way, today at 3 p.m., CIA Director John Ratcliffe is set to join Secretary of State Marco Rubio for a classified briefing on Iran.
00:35:24.000 All right.
00:35:25.000 There you go.
00:35:25.000 Kane, well done, my friend.
00:35:27.000 Blake, well done.
00:35:28.000 And Phoenix, we'll see you guys tomorrow.
00:35:29.000 Tonight's the State of the Union, and we'll be streaming it on Charlie Kirk Show channels.
00:35:33.000 Check us out there.