The Charlie Kirk Show - June 18, 2025


What Was No Kings Even About?


Episode Stats

Length

36 minutes

Words per Minute

169.48228

Word Count

6,220

Sentence Count

617

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

28


Summary

Join us live from the Bitcoin studio as we discuss the No Kings protest, the Iran war, and what it means from a historical perspective. Recorded in Los Angeles, CA at the Center for American Progress (CAPP).


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here, live from the Bitcoin.com studio.
00:00:03.000 We have an amazing, fearless citizen journalist join us, and then Daisy and Blake join us to talk about the war in Iran, what it means, and from a historical perspective.
00:00:14.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to our podcast.
00:00:18.000 That is the Charlie Kirk Show podcast page.
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00:00:25.000 That is tpusa.com.
00:00:26.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:27.000 Here we go.
00:00:28.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:30.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:32.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:35.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:38.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:40.000 He's an incredible guy.
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00:01:26.000 This last weekend was the No Kings protest.
00:01:31.000 No kings, they say.
00:01:32.000 It's funny.
00:01:33.000 They weren't doing no kings protests when the most authoritarian thing of all happened in our country the last 30 years, when the entire nation was locked down by Democrat governors and we were forced to take an mRNA gene-altering vaccine against our will, and I was not allowed to visit the city of New York or Los Angeles without, show me your papers, a vaccine passport.
00:01:57.000 No kings, they say.
00:01:58.000 It's funny.
00:02:00.000 American military members were kicked out of the U.S. military because they would not take the COVID shot.
00:02:08.000 The same party that selected and appointed Kamala Harris as the candidate with no election, no process like a Zoom call, thinks Trump is a king.
00:02:19.000 The same party that prevented Bernie Sanders from becoming the nominee in 2016 and partially 2020 thinks that Trump is a king.
00:02:29.000 Now, no honest person looks at the situation and thinks that Trump is a dictator unless, of course, you are part of the resist AARP crowd.
00:02:40.000 You see, it's very interesting.
00:02:41.000 Besides the purple-haired jihadis and the rank-and-file stormtroopers of the left, look at that picture here from the No Kings protest.
00:02:50.000 It looks old.
00:02:53.000 It's kind of like the last gasp of...
00:02:58.000 Not all boomers are liberals.
00:03:01.000 Not all boomers are liberals.
00:03:02.000 We got great boomers in this audience.
00:03:04.000 But look at that audience.
00:03:06.000 That is an almost all-white, elderly crowd.
00:03:12.000 Not that it matters what color of the skin that they are, but it's kind of interesting.
00:03:18.000 But they're the ones who whine all the time if anything is too white.
00:03:22.000 They say Turning Point chapter meetings are too white.
00:03:25.000 Turning Point USA.
00:03:27.000 College events are too white.
00:03:29.000 I thought diversity was your strength.
00:03:31.000 You guys don't have any age diversity, racial diversity, cultural diversity.
00:03:37.000 Again, I'm not the diversity police.
00:03:38.000 I don't care.
00:03:39.000 If you want to have an all-white gathering, who am I to say?
00:03:42.000 But somebody who was on the front lines of the No Kings protest this last weekend and did a fabulous job.
00:03:48.000 is Nate Friedman, host of the Nate Friedman Show, independent journalist.
00:03:52.000 You can find him at YouTube at NateFriedman97.
00:03:56.000 Saw a great clip of his that I do want to play, but first, Nate, welcome to the program, and please introduce yourself.
00:04:00.000 Thank you so much, Charlie.
00:04:02.000 Yeah, my name is Nate Friedman.
00:04:03.000 I'm an independent journalist, boots-on-the-ground journalist, and yeah, I speak to people on the street and just get to know what's really going on in this country.
00:04:10.000 And so you were at the No Kings protest, and you started, you did this very powerful video that I hope we have queued up somewhere.
00:04:19.000 Where, let's play it, 296, where you identified some of these protesters do this for a living.
00:04:25.000 Play cut 296.
00:04:27.000 Here's my press credentials.
00:04:28.000 Okay, thank you.
00:04:29.000 Okay, so who are you with?
00:04:32.000 Right now, I am representing myself, and I am representing the folks at Rise and Resist who have been trained to be marshals today.
00:04:41.000 How much do they pay you to wear this vest?
00:04:43.000 Absolutely nothing.
00:04:44.000 Really?
00:04:45.000 So I did some digging, and the woman trying to stop my interview is named Karen Schall.
00:04:50.000 She is a professional protester.
00:04:52.000 I found her at almost 100 different protests.
00:04:55.000 Let's look at her portfolio, shall we?
00:04:57.000 Here's her outside Trump Tower saying TikTok time's up.
00:05:00.000 Here's her saying ban guns, not drag.
00:05:03.000 Amazing.
00:05:04.000 This is her telling us that lies have consequences.
00:05:07.000 She is also very passionate about abortion.
00:05:09.000 Even in the video right now, she's just wearing a hat that says abortion on it.
00:05:14.000 Nate, she's made a career out of this.
00:05:16.000 Yeah.
00:05:18.000 This is her second job, actually.
00:05:20.000 So she's an associate director at Lincoln Center in New York City, which is a very prominent theater.
00:05:26.000 It's a beautiful theater.
00:05:27.000 But she's all over the country, touring the country, protesting.
00:05:31.000 And I just knew that that was going to be the case because no one behaves like that for free.
00:05:37.000 I just refuse to believe that.
00:05:38.000 Yeah.
00:05:39.000 And so you kept on, let's just say, You kept on examining it.
00:05:45.000 And there's a whole group of these paid protesters.
00:05:48.000 Is that correct?
00:05:49.000 That's right.
00:05:49.000 That's right.
00:05:50.000 Yeah.
00:05:50.000 And I've met them personally and dealt with them personally.
00:05:53.000 Tell us more.
00:05:55.000 Yeah.
00:05:55.000 So when I went to the Takedown Tesla protest, almost immediately upon getting there, an older woman comes up to me and has a right-wing troll arrow and follows me around the protest.
00:06:07.000 Now, I hadn't even interviewed anyone up until that point.
00:06:10.000 You know, I had asked someone for an interview, but I wasn't granted one yet.
00:06:14.000 And then she comes along and she follows me and asks everyone I speak to to not talk to me.
00:06:20.000 And that same arrow is at the No Kings protest, the printed the exact same way.
00:06:26.000 And so the original older woman that I spoke to at the Tesla protest, I found her at, you know, 20, 30 different protests.
00:06:34.000 20 or 30. Oh, yeah.
00:06:36.000 Oh, yeah.
00:06:36.000 And then all over the country, too, D.C. blocking the Capitol, stopping senators in the cafeteria, the whole deal.
00:06:43.000 Then two more people come along, and I see that they're teammates, actually, that all the time they're in pictures together.
00:06:49.000 It's all in the Tesla takedown video.
00:06:52.000 And so they all behave the same way.
00:06:54.000 They're all telling each other like this, don't speak to him, don't speak to him.
00:06:57.000 And what's funny is they eat their own.
00:07:00.000 Someone wants to speak.
00:07:02.000 They say, I don't care who Nate is.
00:07:04.000 I want to have a conversation.
00:07:05.000 They say, no, no, no, don't have a conversation.
00:07:07.000 So you see them disagreeing with each other.
00:07:09.000 And it's just, it's crazy because, you know, the left lost the election.
00:07:13.000 So they should know that in order to win back votes, you have to have conversations with the other side.
00:07:19.000 The other side won, right?
00:07:21.000 So it's interesting.
00:07:22.000 Let's go to 279.
00:07:24.000 This is at an ICE protest where he has a sign that says, I stand with Iran.
00:07:28.000 He seems like a pleasant person.
00:07:30.000 Play cut 279.
00:07:32.000 Hey, how you doing?
00:07:33.000 My name is Nate.
00:07:34.000 I'm just a press, and I see you have a different kind of sign.
00:07:36.000 Can you tell me about it?
00:07:37.000 Sure.
00:07:38.000 My sign says I stand with Iran.
00:07:40.000 They don't have a nuke.
00:07:42.000 They never would want to nuke America ever, ever, ever.
00:07:45.000 I've been to Iran.
00:07:47.000 And what about the supreme leader of Iran saying, like, death to America?
00:07:51.000 Is that just like words?
00:07:52.000 Well, that's part of our propaganda.
00:07:58.000 So, Nate, who is this guy?
00:08:03.000 He doesn't seem like a spring chicken.
00:08:05.000 Yeah.
00:08:06.000 So funny thing about this.
00:08:07.000 So I had to get this video.
00:08:09.000 I wanted to get this video out to my audience as fast as possible.
00:08:12.000 I later did find him at like six or seven different protests with this, you know, Veterans Association that he's with.
00:08:19.000 But this guy, he did speak to me for over 10 minutes.
00:08:22.000 And I have to, I always have respect for the people I'm interviewing.
00:08:26.000 They are granting me an interview.
00:08:27.000 They're willing to speak.
00:08:28.000 That's great.
00:08:29.000 But I did.
00:08:30.000 He did lie every two to three minutes.
00:08:32.000 One of the biggest lies was that Hamas is, that Iran is not funding terrorism.
00:08:38.000 And I just said, there's literally videos of Hamas thanking Iran for money.
00:08:45.000 I mean, so it's quite interesting how they just don't listen to facts.
00:08:49.000 And then when I asked them, where's their source of news?
00:08:51.000 Where did he get his source of news?
00:08:52.000 He said, Iranian media.
00:08:54.000 So there you go.
00:08:55.000 Well, Iranian media is having a tough week.
00:08:58.000 So, Nate, how did you get your start here?
00:09:01.000 Sure.
00:09:01.000 So I got my start around the NATO summit of last year when Biden called Zelensky Putin.
00:09:09.000 I thought I just couldn't stay on the sidelines anymore.
00:09:13.000 I thought, okay, this is...
00:09:16.000 This person is obviously not running our country.
00:09:17.000 So I was just curious, are people out on the street going to vote for him again?
00:09:22.000 And I let each side talk.
00:09:24.000 I wanted to hear from both sides.
00:09:26.000 And I really just felt very passionate about having those conversations because polls are one thing, you know, but it doesn't give the country an idea of why are people voting for certain people.
00:09:37.000 So I figured if I just let people talk, then people will make up their own minds of what's the best person to vote for.
00:09:43.000 Stay right there, Nate Friedman.
00:09:45.000 You are part of an ever-growing community of young, dissident journalists.
00:09:50.000 This is what Andrew Breitbart wanted to see this entire time.
00:09:54.000 Andrew Breitbart always said, you have a phone, get out in the streets, ask a couple of questions.
00:10:00.000 And, boy, he would be rejoicing to see people like yourself, people like Frontlines, people like Kalen.
00:10:08.000 We profile a lot of these dissident, frontlines, grassroots journalists.
00:10:13.000 It's what helps keep the country free.
00:10:15.000 So, Nate, good on you.
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00:10:45.000 When you take time to understand how God has consistently blessed America, pouring His grace and mercy on us over and over again, it will give you hope for the days ahead.
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00:11:29.000 Nate Friedman continues us.
00:11:31.000 Let's go to Cut 300.
00:11:32.000 I don't give a shit.
00:11:34.000 Somebody being Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, or anything like that.
00:11:38.000 Okay.
00:11:40.000 What song is that?
00:11:42.000 Talk to me, man.
00:11:44.000 This is so hard.
00:11:45.000 What are you trying to do?
00:11:51.000 What song is that?
00:11:53.000 We're going to push you on YouTube.
00:11:56.000 It sounds good.
00:12:02.000 So she gets paid to go do this.
00:12:06.000 I have a question.
00:12:07.000 Do you have any idea who is financing this?
00:12:10.000 Yes.
00:12:10.000 So she works for a company called Rise and Resist.
00:12:14.000 So there are many nonprofits like this.
00:12:17.000 So there's like Jewish Voices for Peace.
00:12:19.000 There are many nonprofits that are funding this.
00:12:22.000 And it goes all the way to the top.
00:12:24.000 I'm still digging in.
00:12:26.000 but you know, their donation links are to act blue.
00:12:29.000 So it gives you a, Yeah.
00:12:34.000 And so when you went to these protests, I'm sure there were a fair amount of young people, but it does skew older, doesn't it?
00:12:43.000 Yeah.
00:12:44.000 Yeah, it definitely does.
00:12:45.000 And I met an older woman wearing a Make Mexico America Again hat, and she was in her 70s.
00:12:54.000 And just such a hatred for America.
00:12:57.000 It's really sad to see that.
00:13:00.000 It's ironic that this is a no-king's protest and they're all freely chanting against the king.
00:13:07.000 It just doesn't make any sense.
00:13:09.000 So, yeah.
00:13:10.000 So, the coverage, what city did you cover this last week for the protests?
00:13:16.000 So, this was New York City.
00:13:17.000 And so, the protests in LA got very unruly.
00:13:22.000 This is obviously choreographed, obviously financed.
00:13:26.000 I know you've not been doing this for quite some time, but you have good talent.
00:13:29.000 To be able to get in there.
00:13:30.000 And they're going to come after you anytime.
00:13:32.000 And are they starting to recognize you?
00:13:34.000 Yeah.
00:13:34.000 So unfortunately, so for example, when Trump Tower was occupied, I asked a question and I asked one of the leaders of the protest.
00:13:45.000 First of all, oftentimes I'll try to speak to someone and they'll say, go and speak to our media person.
00:13:50.000 They won't think independently for themselves.
00:13:52.000 They'll just tell me to go speak to another person.
00:13:54.000 So I speak to a person and I say, you know, is Trump a dictator?
00:13:58.000 And they refuse to answer because they know that if Trump were a dictator, they wouldn't let a mass amount of people occupy his wife and son's home, right?
00:14:10.000 They start to recognize me, and I see this woman who works for this company called Jewish Currents, which is a magazine company that often works with Jewish Voices for Peace, which is a far-left radical group, does not speak for the Jewish people, very anti-Zionist, and actually celebrated October 7th.
00:14:30.000 And you can see that it's paid for because this woman who's the leader of this protest, the only one that I'm qualified to speak to, so-called, she is working for this Jewish Currents.
00:14:39.000 It's magazine, and she's just there in the middle of the day, right?
00:14:42.000 So that's just an example of what sort of happens.
00:14:46.000 And also, I went to a protest recently, one of those anti-ice ones, and these guys in cafeas, you know, they're masked up, sunglasses, everything, and they walk up to me.
00:14:56.000 They take a photo of my press ID, and I say, do you want to ask me anything?
00:14:59.000 Do you want to speak to me?
00:15:01.000 No, you know, you've got nothing to hide, right?
00:15:03.000 You're oppressed.
00:15:03.000 And they just take photos of me and walk away.
00:15:05.000 So, yeah, it's not nice to have guys with cafeas walk up to you and take photos of your press ID, but that's what I'm willing to risk when I'm out there in the field.
00:15:12.000 And so, in closing here, you as a young man, I'm guessing you're Jewish, is that correct?
00:15:19.000 Yeah, that's right.
00:15:19.000 And so this takes a lot of chutzpah for you to go out into the streets and you kind of see the protests and...
00:15:33.000 Yeah, absolutely.
00:15:35.000 Okay, so what I wish liberal Jews would understand is that Trump has been the best president of all time for Jewish people.
00:15:42.000 It's very, very clear.
00:15:44.000 He's so good to Israel.
00:15:45.000 He moved the embassy to Jerusalem.
00:15:47.000 His daughter converted to Judaism.
00:15:50.000 Judaism, he loves the Jewish people.
00:15:51.000 And he brought many hostages home.
00:15:54.000 It's remarkable.
00:15:55.000 And that alone should be enough.
00:15:58.000 Bringing those people home should be enough.
00:16:00.000 And he said he was going to do it, and he did.
00:16:01.000 So that's what I wish liberal Jews would understand, that Trump is the best president for Jews.
00:16:07.000 We want to work with you at Turning Point USA.
00:16:14.000 Frontlines, grassroots journalism is the salvation of a free society.
00:16:19.000 Please.
00:16:19.000 Absolutely.
00:16:20.000 Nate Friedman, 97, on YouTube.
00:16:22.000 I speak to everybody on the street.
00:16:24.000 I speak to both sides.
00:16:25.000 I never show bias in the interviews.
00:16:27.000 I speak to both sides and just let you make your judgment of what you believe.
00:16:32.000 Very good.
00:16:33.000 Nate, thank you so much.
00:16:34.000 God bless you.
00:16:35.000 Talk to you soon.
00:16:36.000 Thank you.
00:16:37.000 Excellent.
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00:16:41.000 And that's what I love.
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00:16:45.000 It takes courage.
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00:17:53.000 Music Hello there!
00:17:57.000 I'm producer Blake.
00:17:58.000 This is producer Daisy.
00:17:59.000 Charlie had to head out a bit early to get to D.C., so we thought we could do a slightly different segment.
00:18:08.000 People have been hearing a lot of news over the last few weeks.
00:18:11.000 They've been hearing a lot about mullahs and...
00:18:19.000 And we know a lot of our viewers are younger people.
00:18:23.000 They're members of Gen Z. They may not know all the background of this.
00:18:27.000 And so we thought it'd be a fun segment to have one of our producers, who is a Gen Zer, Daisy, join us.
00:18:32.000 I'm a millennial, shamefully.
00:18:34.000 25 and proud.
00:18:35.000 So we heard that song, which that was a song from...
00:18:40.000 That is a song from right after 9-11.
00:18:42.000 And, you know, it says...
00:18:48.000 Yes, as in I know they're two different countries, but I would be lying if I said I didn't think they were extremely similar.
00:18:56.000 From my knowledge, they're both Muslim countries in the Middle East.
00:19:00.000 Yeah, so we'll start there.
00:19:02.000 So they're both Muslim countries in the Middle East, and they are, in fact, right next to each other.
00:19:07.000 I don't know if you guys want to grab a map of the Mideast really quick, but so you have We invaded it in 2003, so 22 years ago.
00:19:18.000 And we invaded it.
00:19:20.000 It was run by a guy named Saddam Hussein.
00:19:22.000 You know who Saddam was, right?
00:19:23.000 Yes, and he was killed.
00:19:25.000 Yes, he was executed, actually.
00:19:27.000 So they put him on trial.
00:19:28.000 He was a bad dude.
00:19:29.000 He was a dictator.
00:19:31.000 He killed a lot of his own people.
00:19:32.000 He was like your prototypical strongman.
00:19:35.000 Was he killed by us?
00:19:38.000 Technically, we put him through a trial for bad things that he had done.
00:19:41.000 he was sentenced to death and then he was hanged and I think the Iraqi government technically hanged him because it There was video of it.
00:19:50.000 It was kind of disturbing to watch.
00:19:51.000 We won't go into that.
00:19:52.000 Well, I don't remember hearing about Saddam Hussein.
00:19:55.000 I do remember, and it's a running thing on TikTok that everyone my age has memories of not knowing who Osama bin Laden was, but being somewhere and your parents freaking out that Osama bin Laden was killed.
00:20:07.000 And there's a whole running joke on X and on TikTok that people used to think that that was someone that they knew in their lives who was killed.
00:20:14.000 Oh, wow.
00:20:16.000 I remember where I was when I found out he was killed.
00:20:18.000 I don't know who he was.
00:20:20.000 Did you ever think you knew who he was?
00:20:22.000 No, I mean, my parents were hardcore Republicans, so I knew he was a bad guy.
00:20:26.000 They were clearly excited.
00:20:28.000 They were very excited that he was killed.
00:20:30.000 Okay, so Iraq and Iran, different countries.
00:20:34.000 They border each other.
00:20:35.000 They're similar in a few ways.
00:20:37.000 So you've heard of Islam, of course.
00:20:39.000 Do you know there's two major types of Islam?
00:20:42.000 Yes.
00:20:43.000 They both start with S's.
00:20:44.000 One is radical and one is not radical.
00:20:46.000 No, they are.
00:20:48.000 If only it were that simple, Daisy.
00:20:50.000 That was so genuine.
00:20:50.000 So the main type of Islam is called Sunni Islam.
00:20:53.000 That is what most Muslims are worldwide.
00:20:56.000 And in fact, most Muslim terrorists are Sunni.
00:20:59.000 So the guys who did 9-11 were Sunnis.
00:21:02.000 Okay.
00:21:03.000 But I don't want to say that's the terrorist one because there's a billion Sunni Muslims out there.
00:21:08.000 So Egypt is Sunni.
00:21:09.000 Saudi Arabia is Sunni.
00:21:11.000 Afghanistan is mostly Sunni.
00:21:14.000 Iran is Shia, and that is the other type of Islam.
00:21:18.000 And Iraq is also majority Shia, but it's mixed.
00:21:24.000 So I want to say about 60% Shia.
00:21:27.000 And like 30% Sunni and they also had a Christian minority and some other stuff.
00:21:31.000 When you say these countries are Shia or Sunni, is that like everyone in the country has to?
00:21:35.000 In Iran, almost everybody is Shia.
00:21:39.000 They do have other minorities, very small, but it is mostly Shia.
00:21:43.000 Now what that means is they often are in conflict with all the other countries in the Middle East because they have religious differences with them.
00:21:49.000 And they just have somewhat different beliefs.
00:21:51.000 They're in conflict with the other Muslim countries.
00:21:54.000 Often over that and other reasons.
00:21:57.000 And on top of that, Shia Islam has some interesting beliefs.
00:22:02.000 So I mentioned the 9-11 guys were Sunnis, but Shia Islam has a particular emphasis on martyrdom as a heroic thing.
00:22:12.000 It's a religion centered around this early Muslim figure named Ali.
00:22:18.000 And that he died in a civil war between some early Muslims, and they think Ali was the best, and he was killed by them.
00:22:26.000 And that's kind of their difference with Sunnis, is they're still litigating a civil war from 1,500 years ago.
00:22:31.000 And so there's that.
00:22:34.000 And they also have a very interesting belief.
00:22:36.000 You'll hear them called the Twelver Shias.
00:22:38.000 So they believe there were a series of imams.
00:22:41.000 That's like a chief, kind of an Islamic teacher.
00:22:43.000 You'll hear imam used to just describe a normalismic cleric, but this is like a kind of super imam, basically.
00:22:49.000 And they believe that there were 12 of them, so there were 11 who kind of, there have been 12 historically, and then the 12th one died, but they kind of, I believe the belief is they think he's like in hiding, like he's still alive and he will return.
00:23:02.000 He's like a messianic figure.
00:23:04.000 So they so Shia Islam is a messianic version of Islam where they think this 12th Imam is going to reveal himself.
00:23:12.000 He'll be called the Mahdi.
00:23:13.000 So there are multiple instances of a person proclaiming themselves to be the Mahdi as like an apocalyptic figure.
00:23:20.000 And wow, we're going way down the rabbit hole of this.
00:23:23.000 OK, well, so my next question and this is again just what I what I'm seeing from a Gen Z perspective.
00:23:31.000 The two different types of Muslims.
00:23:33.000 Do they both?
00:23:37.000 Dislike Israel?
00:23:39.000 They both dislike the Jewish religion?
00:23:41.000 There are plenty.
00:23:42.000 I don't want to say, again, not all of them think this, but both Sunnis and Shias have a long history of conflict with Israel.
00:23:49.000 So, for example, Israel had multiple wars with Egypt, Sunni country.
00:23:52.000 They had multiple wars.
00:23:54.000 I mean, Hamas, that's a mostly Sunni group.
00:23:56.000 However, Iran despises Israel.
00:23:59.000 So, you know, they call us the Great Satan.
00:24:01.000 They call Israel the Little Satan.
00:24:03.000 Another group that Israel fights against, you've maybe heard of, Hezbollah.
00:24:06.000 Yes.
00:24:06.000 Hezbollah is a Shia militant group that occupies southern Lebanon.
00:24:12.000 So there are Shias in Lebanon, too.
00:24:14.000 Hezbollah is a Shia group.
00:24:15.000 So, Hamas.
00:24:17.000 Yes.
00:24:17.000 Which, where does...
00:24:22.000 Right.
00:24:23.000 And they are a Palestinian radical Islamist group.
00:24:26.000 They are mostly Sunni.
00:24:27.000 In fact, I think they might just be exclusively Sunni.
00:24:28.000 Okay.
00:24:29.000 That was my question.
00:24:30.000 So, Iran and Iraq were talking about how similar they are.
00:24:33.000 Are they allies, or they're just similar to people who don't live in the Middle East?
00:24:37.000 Similar people.
00:24:38.000 They were hostile to each other historically.
00:24:40.000 So, Saddam Hussein, his country was mostly Shia.
00:24:43.000 Saddam was Sunni, and he wasn't really a religious figure to the same extent, but his base was Sunni's.
00:24:51.000 Okay.
00:24:51.000 And so it was kind of a...
00:24:56.000 So he was hostile towards Iran.
00:24:59.000 So to show you how complicated it is, we invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam.
00:25:04.000 In the 1980s, we gave weapons to Saddam.
00:25:09.000 I'm not sure we gave weapons.
00:25:10.000 We gave some form of support to Saddam because he invaded Iran and we were anti-Iran.
00:25:18.000 Okay.
00:25:19.000 So are a lot of people anti-Iran?
00:25:21.000 Yes, a lot of people are anti-Iran.
00:25:23.000 So that's part of where this is complicated.
00:25:25.000 So obviously we have at this point, Have you ever heard of the Iranian hostage crisis?
00:25:33.000 Yes.
00:25:33.000 So yes, that was the big thing in the Middle East.
00:25:37.000 In fact, that was the biggest story in America, if you were around in 1980, was the hostages in Iran.
00:25:43.000 I wasn't around, but I've heard of it.
00:25:44.000 So what happened was, Iran had a monarchy, they overthrew him, and he was replaced by this Islamic government.
00:25:51.000 They're led by a guy called the Ayatollah.
00:25:53.000 And Ayatollah is kind of just a supreme Islamic cleric title.
00:25:58.000 Do have Israel and Iran also had a long history of conflict, or it's just the nuclear threat, the weapon threat that is making Israel wants to go after Iran?
00:26:09.000 As you can see, if you look at them, they don't border each other.
00:26:11.000 So between them, there's Jordan, then Iraq, then Iran.
00:26:14.000 So they're several hundred miles away.
00:26:15.000 So there's not a lot of ability to directly fight each other.
00:26:19.000 And historically, there hasn't been.
00:26:21.000 So recently, Iran's been shooting missiles at Israel.
00:26:24.000 That wasn't a thing they were doing.
00:26:27.000 20 years ago.
00:26:27.000 But there's hostility in other ways.
00:26:30.000 What Iran sort of pioneered was they would sponsor terrorist groups in other countries or militant groups.
00:26:38.000 So for example, Hezbollah, who I mentioned, Hezbollah has directly fought Israel.
00:26:42.000 Hezbollah has definitely received assistance from Iran.
00:26:46.000 They've received training.
00:26:47.000 They've received money.
00:26:48.000 They've received weapons.
00:26:49.000 They've received moral support.
00:26:51.000 So it's like proxy wars.
00:26:53.000 So the same way that we give weapons to Ukraine, so Ukraine can fight against Russia.
00:27:03.000 You've heard about the Houthis lately?
00:27:04.000 Yes.
00:27:05.000 So the Houthis are in yet another country in the Middle East, Yemen.
00:27:08.000 They've also received support from Iran over time.
00:27:12.000 Okay, so is it that Iran has less allies, more just common?
00:27:17.000 Or people have common enemies with Iran.
00:27:20.000 So they have allies, but their allies are non-state actors.
00:27:24.000 a militant group or an ethnic group rather than they don't really have allies who are Yeah, exactly.
00:27:33.000 Stuff like that.
00:27:34.000 You'll hear China as an ally of Iran.
00:27:36.000 It's much more like China just selling things to whoever.
00:27:40.000 So we sanction Iran.
00:27:42.000 We try to crush their economy.
00:27:44.000 China doesn't care as much about that.
00:27:46.000 So they're willing to have trade with Iran.
00:27:49.000 And maybe to the extent that they see Iran as our rival, they might even support them a bit as, oh, you know, America's hostile to us, the enemy of my enemy.
00:27:58.000 But they're not an ally in the way, like, the U.S. and Israel are allies, where there's a lot of direct assistance.
00:28:04.000 So Israel choosing to go after Iran.
00:28:07.000 I have two questions.
00:28:08.000 I don't know if we'll have time to get to them both in this segment, but one...
00:28:26.000 So I want you to explain that a little bit more.
00:28:29.000 But secondly, when Israel chooses to go after Iran, is there anyone specific that they're worried about retaliating against them on behalf of Iran or just these militaristic groups?
00:28:39.000 Yeah, so...
00:28:51.000 He's been warning about Iran's nuclear program.
00:28:54.000 Literally since the 90s.
00:28:55.000 In the 90s, he was saying they're a few years away from getting a bomb.
00:28:58.000 You heard a bit of this in the 2000s.
00:29:00.000 In 2002, George W. Bush gave a State of the Union address where he declared three countries the axis of evil.
00:29:08.000 Iraq was one of them.
00:29:09.000 North Korea was one of them.
00:29:11.000 And then Iran was the third one.
00:29:12.000 So there's been concern, oh, Iran might try to get nukes or WMDs, weapons of mass destruction.
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00:30:23.000 Daisy, I thought maybe I should ask you a question.
00:30:25.000 We'll see how alert Gen Z is.
00:30:30.000 Name one city in Iran.
00:30:36.000 For sure.
00:30:37.000 Okay.
00:30:41.000 Tehran.
00:30:41.000 You got it.
00:30:42.000 You got it.
00:30:43.000 Do you know what that city is?
00:30:45.000 No, I only know.
00:30:46.000 I would not have known that a week ago.
00:30:48.000 I only know about it because that's the one that Trump was truthing about.
00:30:52.000 That is good enough.
00:30:54.000 That is good enough.
00:30:54.000 That is the capital of Iran.
00:30:56.000 I could not name a second city.
00:30:57.000 It's actually quite large.
00:30:58.000 It's about, I want to say it's about the size of New York City.
00:31:01.000 It's one of the largest cities in the world.
00:31:05.000 It runs very mountainous.
00:31:06.000 So you have lots of desert, lots of mountains.
00:31:09.000 Not always a lot of vegetation, but big city.
00:31:12.000 It's a big country.
00:31:13.000 I think there's about 90 million people there.
00:31:16.000 Oh my gosh.
00:31:17.000 Just for comparison.
00:31:18.000 I would have never guessed that.
00:31:22.000 The more you know.
00:31:24.000 Seriously.
00:31:24.000 I guess we still have a minute here.
00:31:25.000 So I could finish that, you know, close the loop on what we were saying about Netanyahu.
00:31:30.000 It really ramped up.
00:31:31.000 I want to say about 2013, 2014, you started getting a lot more agitation, certainly from Netanyahu's and on Israel's end, where they're saying, we have intelligence.
00:31:43.000 Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb.
00:31:46.000 They're getting closer to it.
00:31:47.000 And this is one of the reasons there's so much debate about this, is he did frequently frame it in this, They would call this the breakout period where they would get so close like we couldn't stop them from getting the bomb.
00:32:00.000 And they made this warning a lot.
00:32:02.000 So people who are skeptical of a war with Iran, one reason they're skeptical is they'll say, oh, we keep hearing these warnings that Iran's close to a bomb, but we've heard that before.
00:32:12.000 Like the Israel who cried wolf about a Iran situation.
00:32:14.000 Sort of.
00:32:15.000 That would be the argument for it.
00:32:16.000 I mean, their argument is like, So when they were doing the strikes, they were saying we had evidence they were, you know, days or weeks away from being able to build a nuclear bomb, send it at Israel.
00:32:28.000 Next question, Daisy.
00:32:29.000 Okay, so I briefed this question in the last segment.
00:32:35.000 Is there, when Israel, you've been telling me that Israel's been talking about this for years, that there is a threat from Iran, and when Israel chose to do the strike, Is there any country or, what you've been telling me, military groups in specific that they were worried would retaliate specifically against Israel?
00:32:57.000 Well, the specific one they'd worry the most about is Iran.
00:33:00.000 So those proxy groups that I mentioned, they've already had a lot of conflict with Israel.
00:33:05.000 So Hezbollah, they've fought them before.
00:33:08.000 they haven't they've done a little bit of skirmishing even just since 10-7 for example there would be some worry that So far, they haven't.
00:33:21.000 I think a big reason they haven't is Israel has shown they're far more gung-ho about they're willing to take out a lot of people.
00:33:28.000 I think they're kind of scared.
00:33:30.000 I think some of Hezbollah's leaders are thought, yeah, I'd rather not die right now.
00:33:34.000 And because they're not necessarily strong allies with Iran, a lot of people just kind of like— Iran, you got it.
00:33:44.000 People have a survival instinct.
00:33:46.000 And so there are places that are allied with Iran, but they won't necessarily want to think, I am ready to kill myself to show solidarity with Iran.
00:33:55.000 And if it looks like the U.S. and Israel are, well, I should say Israel and possibly the U.S. are saying, this time we're serious about it, we're taking out this regime, or at least hitting them very hard, they can think, I would rather stand aside from this one.
00:34:09.000 This is getting too hot to handle.
00:34:10.000 Do you think, we briefly touched on this about how Israel has, some people would say that Israel has been talking about this threat for so long that they never thought it was going to actualize and Israel's actually going to do something about it.
00:34:22.000 Do you think that Iran felt that way, that Israel would never actually...
00:34:27.000 They've been talking about this since 2013.
00:34:29.000 They were genuinely...
00:34:32.000 That's been one of the funnier things about this.
00:34:38.000 Yeah.
00:34:38.000 It's actually truly jarring.
00:34:40.000 So one of the things that you may remember they did is in their opening strikes, they didn't just hit air bases or nuclear plants.
00:34:46.000 They took out leaders of Iran's military.
00:34:50.000 No one is invulnerable, but there's this element of these guys were not prepared to possibly be hit.
00:34:59.000 They didn't have a secure location.
00:35:00.000 Because one of the guys, they just took them out.
00:35:02.000 They blew out an apartment block in Tehran.
00:35:05.000 Why are you in an apartment block in Tehran?
00:35:07.000 Right.
00:35:08.000 And so it seems that they were genuinely...
00:35:13.000 It seems they were caught off guard by this.
00:35:15.000 Immediately beforehand, we'd been talking about, oh, another round of negotiations.
00:35:19.000 Trump was saying, oh, we're going to meet in Oman, yet another Middle Eastern country, to do negotiations.
00:35:24.000 And it seems that they just assumed, oh, we're at least good through those negotiations.
00:35:29.000 We don't have to worry about strikes.
00:35:31.000 And they greatly miscalculated on that front.
00:35:34.000 Okay, so we kind of...
00:35:42.000 I'm not understanding how they're, and we only have a minute left, I'm not understanding how people are at the No Kings protests against Trump, against ICE, and it used to be, like, last year, Americans were so proudly pro-Gaza.
00:35:56.000 They want to go to Gaza.
00:35:57.000 They want to live there.
00:35:58.000 they love it.
00:35:59.000 Now it seems all of a sudden, and I don't know if it's just because they don't have enough information or it's just what they're told to support now they're They support Iran.
00:36:09.000 They want Iran to be able to do whatever they want.
00:36:10.000 I'm not sure how that's connecting with the no-kings protest.
00:36:14.000 It doesn't.
00:36:15.000 What you see, I mean, this is just how the left is generally.
00:36:18.000 The left all causes blob together over time.
00:36:21.000 So you see Palestine flags at your anti-ice protest.
00:36:25.000 You see BLM tweets out pro-Hamas stuff after the 10-7 attacks.
00:36:30.000 That's left, which I think you are plenty familiar with, even if you don't know as much about Iraq and Iran.
00:36:36.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:36:37.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:36:40.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.