The Charlie Kirk Show, March 30, 2026

Summary

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The Charlie Kirk Show – March 30, 2026

Podcast Network: Real America’s Voice / iHeartPodcasts
Episode Theme: Iran War Escalation, American Political Culture, and Cultural Crossroads
Date: March 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Charlie Kirk Show dives deeply into three major themes: the rapidly evolving U.S.-Iran conflict, the cultural and religious controversies unfolding in Jerusalem during Holy Week, and the recent viral cultural exchange between American and Japanese social media users. Featuring special guests including Michael Knowles (The Daily Wire) and Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet), and TPUSA Frontlines reporters, the episode explores the complex intersections of war, faith, identity, and national priorities as America marks its 250th year.

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1. War in Iran: Escalation, Perception, and Policy

Key Discussion Points

• Rising Tensions & Military Movements

  • Major U.S. and Israeli strikes hit Iranian military and nuclear sites.
  • The U.S. is preparing potential for “weeks-long ground operations”; 3,500 U.S. troops added in-theater. (08:42, 09:11)
  • Strait of Hormuz remains a flashpoint; Trump threatens full destruction of Iranian infrastructure if demands are not met. (10:26–11:51)

• Administration Messaging & Negotiation

  • Trump’s negotiation style: mix of aggressive saber-rattling and public signaling of progress (15-point plan, “lotsa presents”—massive oil shipments from Iran). (12:34–13:25)
  • Confusion over the status of a “new regime” in Tehran; skepticism from Iranian officials.

• Hosts’ and Guests’ Positions

  • All hosts and most guests express strong reluctance toward “boots on the ground” in Iran, citing fear of a quagmire akin to Afghanistan and broad public skepticism of new Middle Eastern wars. (10:26, 13:25, 45:51)
  • Emphasis on victory without escalation, preference for swift exit after achieving minimal objectives (free navigation, no nuclear Iran).

Notable Quotes

• “Boots on the ground is a line we don’t want to cross and we are not supportive of boots on the ground full stop.”
  — Charlie Kirk (09:53)
• “Waiting is part of this game…we do not want this thing to get out of control.”
  — Charlie Kirk (10:26)
• “I am a Trump truster…But support is soft. People have trauma from Iraq and Afghanistan. I think it could collapse very quickly.”
  — Michael Knowles (45:51)

Timestamps

• [02:03] Trump’s claims of total Iranian military defeat & “new regime”
• [03:13–03:50] Analyst: Iranian regime = root of regional terrorism, religious zealotry, nuclear risk
• [09:11–10:26] Discussion of ground troops and public skepticism
• [12:34–13:25] Trump's 15-point plan, oil shipments
• [45:51–48:05] Knowles: public support is “soft,” warns about escalation

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2. Iran from the Inside: Voices & Uprising Potential (w/ Ridvan Idemir)

Key Discussion Points

• Iranian Public Sentiment

  • Internet blackouts ongoing for over a month; reports that 85–90% of Iranians despise the regime but fear brutal repression if they revolt. (74:33–78:57)
  • Many Iranians privately welcome attacks on the regime’s infrastructure, hoping for its end; but regime’s security services (IRGC, Basij) are deeply entrenched and violently loyal.

• Prospects of Internal Revolution

  • Skepticism about immediate regime collapse or mass uprising due to regime’s historic mass killings of protesters (e.g., 30,000 killed in recent protests).
  • Western media and social media narratives can be misleading; videos tend to overrepresent urban, internet-connected factions.

• Regime Change Dilemma

  • Only realistic option for regime change without U.S. ground troops would require overwhelming airpower and arming of resistance; boots-on-the-ground would be risky and politically untenable.

Notable Quotes

• “The regime might make up less than 10% of the population, but they have strong, organized military and police forces…[they] have no issues shooting down civilians in masses.”
  — Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet) (74:33)
• “If America just lets them be, any peace deal will be temporary. We’ll be back to fighting in months, maybe years.”
  — Ridvan Idemir (86:49)
• “Do we actually think regime change must happen, or can we tolerate some lesser arrangement?”
  — Blake (90:19)

Timestamps

• [73:44–78:57] Ridvan outlines public mood in Iran, fear, and hopes for change
• [79:58–83:50] Risks and realities of overthrow; brutality of the regime
• [86:49–91:58] Regime change scenarios; limitations of U.S. intervention

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3. American Political Culture: “No Kings” Protests and Religious Freedom

Key Discussion Points

• No Kings Rallies

  • Mass protests (“No Kings”) described as reflecting the Democratic coalition; hosts characterize participants as aging, white, progressive boomers and allege funding from foreign (Chinese/CCP) interests. (01:21, 54:20–56:25, 65:21–67:24)

• Diversity Lacking & Media Manipulation

  • TPUSA reporters note limited demographic diversity, recount being assaulted by older white protestors, and highlight contradictions in calls for democracy versus protest actions. (54:19–59:47, 62:17)

• Underlying Grievances

  • Protesters focus on anti-Trump, anti-war, and anti-ICE sentiments; hosts argue movement is loosely organized and often hostile toward conservatives.

Notable Quotes

• “Mostly old white boomers…pretty tame compared to protests in LA or Portland.”
  — Ro Ortiz (56:02)
• “It feels great knowing we did our due diligence making sure there are no kings in America.”
  — Bo Alford (54:40)
• “They’re chanting ‘this is what democracy looks like’ as they’re advocating for the removal of a democratically elected leader…that is just so ironic.”
  — Ro Ortiz (62:17)

Timestamps

• [54:19–58:57] On-the-ground reporting from “No Kings” protests in NYC and DC
• [65:21–67:24] Discussion of protest funding, Bill Clinton parallels

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4. Cultural Moments: Viral Japanese-American Twitter Exchange

Key Discussion Points

• X/Twitter Overhaul

  • Japan now the top userbase on X (Twitter); widespread auto-translation led to a viral cultural exchange between Japanese and American users. (16:43–18:32)

• **Themes of Identity, Nationalism, and “Cultural Appropriation”

  • Japanese users enthusiastically celebrate “red America”—monster trucks, barbecues, etc.—while Americans reciprocate their appreciation, highlighting mutual respect and cultural curiosity.
  • Hosts praise Japan for cultural homogeneity, border integrity, and societal safety, contrasting it to Western multiculturalism debates.

• Sociopolitical Reflections

  • The exchange is framed as evidence for preference of high-trust, functional cultures, and as a rebuke of the notion that right-wing nationalism is rooted in mere xenophobia.

Notable Quotes

• “Turns out the Japanese are awesome and everyone loves the Japanese.”
  — Blake (18:03)
• “Japan is a pretty closed culture…they still believe its culture is worth protecting. This mass migration doesn’t need to be the case across the world.”
  — Charlie Kirk (22:04)
• “Western right wingers’ deep admiration for the Japanese proves they’re not irrationally xenophobic. They simply dislike dysfunctional people from dysfunctional cultures.”
  — Quoting Tweet via Charlie (24:21)

Timestamps

• [16:43–24:39] The Japanese X (Twitter) “cultural cleanse” and its social/political implications

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5. Jerusalem Controversy: Holy Sites Closed During Holy Week

Key Discussion Points

• Religious Tension

  • Closure of Christian and Jewish holy sites (Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Dome of the Rock, Western Wall) during Iran war security measures, even on Palm Sunday.
  • Outcry led to swift government backtrack; Israeli PM Netanyahu assures that religious services will resume.

• Christian Solidarity

  • Unusual unity between Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, and pro-Israel officials lamenting the closure.
  • Michael Knowles points to “symbolic” resonance: the "No Kings” rally in America vs. Palm Sunday in Jerusalem (triumphal entry of “the real king,” Jesus). (34:26–36:31)

Notable Quotes

• “In the thing itself, it was wrong. Israel had no right to do it…from a PR perspective, it was a huge mistake.”
  — Michael Knowles (31:44)
• “This showed you the bot accounts on social media…when you have Netanyahu, the Catholic Church, and the Protestants all on the same team and you’re on the other, I think you’re the problem.”
  — Michael Knowles (33:00)
• “We got on the same page on Palm Sunday…No Kings rally vs. the arrival of Christ our King in Jerusalem—ironic.”
  — Charlie Kirk (34:26–36:31)

Timestamps

• [29:04–36:31] The Church of the Holy Sepulcher closure, Christian unity, political fallout

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6. American Christian Unity in the Face of Cultural Strife

Key Discussion Points

• Ecumenical Unity
  • Calls for unity among Catholics and Protestants in the context of cultural and political challenges facing Christians in America.
  • Warnings against allowing old theological disputes to divide Christians as they face increasing secular opposition.

Notable Quotes

• “The devil really loves to stoke division…while I’d love to get into the Thirty Years’ War, there’s an imminent political problem threatening all Christians.”
  — Michael Knowles (38:37)
• “If we can’t build a coalition between Protestants and Catholics in America…it’s just, we have to.”
  — Charlie Kirk (39:03)

Timestamps

• [38:37–39:03] On ecumenical Christian alliance

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7. Brief Headlines & Policy Updates

• White House: President Trump unveils new ballroom plans, DHS shutdown persists—hundreds of TSA agents quit, thousands call out sick. (25:00–27:30, 48:53, 51:47)
• Oil Market: U.S. considers seizing Iran’s Kharg island oil terminal; Trump seems prepared to escalate if negotiations falter. (48:53)
• NASA News: Artemis 2 mission, first crewed lunar flight in decades, launching soon. (48:53)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “I want to make Iran great again.”
  — Charlie Kirk (05:55)
• “Protesters were chanting, ‘this is what democracy looks like’ as they’re advocating for the removal of a democratically elected president…that is just so ironic.”
  — Ro Ortiz (62:17)
• “You are definitely an ally…I want to keep encouraging that.”
  — Charlie Kirk to Michael Knowles (39:03)

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Summary Table of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | Speakers/Guests | Highlights | |----------------|------------------------------------------------|--------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:21–05:44 | Iran: War update, US/Israel operations | Charlie, Trump, Analyst | Strike summary, Hormuz, Trump’s victory claims | | 06:58–15:28 | Show outlines, Japan Twitter trends | Charlie, Blake | X/Twitter, cultural exchange setup | | 16:43–24:39 | Viral Japan-America Twitter moments | Charlie, Blake, Knowles | Culture, nationalism, online cross-pollination | | 29:04–36:31 | Jerusalem church closure controversy | Charlie, Knowles, Blake | Palm Sunday, ecumenism, symbolism | | 45:51–48:05 | Iran escalation & boots on ground debate | Charlie, Knowles | Support for Trump, public worries on war | | 54:19–62:07 | TPUSA frontline: No Kings Protests | Bo Alford, Gabe, Ro | Protest demographics, violence, motivations | | 73:44–93:12 | Iran: Uprising possibility, regime strength | Ridvan Idemir, panel | Probability of regime change, costs, boot-on-ground dilemma |

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Final Takeaways

• The episode is a tightly interwoven tapestry of American right-of-center perspectives on war, faith, culture, and politics, all under the looming shadow of foreign conflict.
• Both on war and at home, hosts advocate for caution, skepticism, and prioritizing American interests, while maintaining a clear cultural and religious identity.
• Skepticism of both left-wing protest movements and U.S. military entanglements in Iran pervades the show.
• Unique, notable cultural moments—like the Japan-America Twitter “love affair”—are leveraged as springboards to broader debates about nationalism, immigration, and the “purity” of national identity.
• Calls for religious unity and warnings against division highlight perceived external threats and the need for solidarity.

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Transcript

[Unknown Female Reporter]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

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[Charlie Kirk]

The Charlie Kirk show starts now. These no Kings rallies actually look pretty representative to me of the Democratic coalition. I saw people flying the hammer and sickle in New York. I saw Hezbollah flags, I saw Hamas flags, I saw Palestinian flags. I saw trans signs. I see weirdo liberal boomers out there.

[Bo Alford]

This is pretty representative of the Democratic

[Charlie Kirk]

coalition and that's who funds it as well, by the way. And so I think if America looks at this and says, what do the

[Michael Knowles]

two parties stand for?

[Charlie Kirk]

They got it at the no Kingdom now. I went to six and I'll tell

[Blake]

you, there's so much excitement, there's so much energy.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, a lot of free shit. I'll get you a T shirt.

[Michael Knowles]

That's a lot of free speech for a country.

[Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet)]

That's a lot of free speech.

[Donald Trump]

Ahead of schedule with Iran, we're weeks ahead of schedule. If you would have said that in three days we were going to knock out 158 ships, their entire navy, which we did. We knocked out their entire air force. We knocked out most of their missiles. That's why you see missile attacks. But they're down to they're sputtering. And we have a group. It's really a new regime. It's a new group of people, people that we've never dealt with before that are acting very reasonable. It is truly regime.

[Unnamed Political Analyst]

Look at this region. Every single terrorist group in this region has a link to the Iranian regime. Every single one. The Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Shia militias that are attacking everyone out of Iraq. Every single one of these groups and all the destabilization in this region tracks directly back to the Iranian regime. Those things have to be addressed. And if Iran had been willing to address those in the past, we wouldn't be having this interview on this topic right now. Their refusal to do so and their continuing move towards one day acquiring a nuclear capability. These people are lunatics. They are insane. They religious zealots who can never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon because they have an apocalyptic vision of the future. And all of their neighbors know that.

[Charlie Kirk]

By the way, you called the Ayatollah Khamenei the new Hitler of the Middle East.

[Michael Knowles]

Absolutely.

[Charlie Kirk]

Why?

[Michael Knowles]

Because he wants to expand.

[Charlie Kirk]

He wants to create his own project

[Terrence Bates]

in the Middle East.

[Charlie Kirk]

Very much like Hitler who wanted to expand. At the time, many countries around the world and in Europe did not realize how dangerous Hitler was until what happened, happened.

[Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet)]

I don't want to see the same

[Charlie Kirk]

events happening in the Middle East. Does Saudi Arabia need nuclear weapons to counter Iran?

[Michael Knowles]

Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb.

[Charlie Kirk]

But without a doubt, if Iran developed

[Michael Knowles]

a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.

[News Reporter]

The reports indicate the United States is preparing for the possibility of ground operations into Iran. 3500 additional US service members arrived in the CENTCOM area of operations weekend, including 2500 Marines on the USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship. The buildup comes as US and Israeli forces targeted a variety of positions across Iran over the weekend, including Iranian steel manufacturing plants and nuclear development facilities. With exchanges of fire happening between Israel and Iran and between Israel and Hezbollah. In southern Lebanon, another front opened over the weekend. The Iran backed Houthis in Yemen launched a ballistic missile attack against the southern city of Beersheba and a drone attack against the city of Eilat, officially announcing their participation in the conflict.

[Charlie Kirk]

Over time, the US is going to retake control of the straits and there will be freedom of navigation, whether it is through US escorts or a multinational escort.

[Donald Trump]

As you know, they've agreed to send eight boats two days ago and then they added another two. So it was 10 votes. And now today they gave us, as a tribute, I don't know, I can't define it exactly, but they gave us, I think out of a sign of respect, 20 boats of oil, big, big boats of oil going through the Hormuz Strait.

[Unnamed Political Analyst]

Now they are making threats about controlling the Hormuz straits in perpetuity, creating a tolling system and the like. That's not going to be allowed to happen. And the president has a number of options available to him if he so chooses to prevent that from happening. Obviously, I'm not going to discuss what those options are, and we're not going to discuss military tactics. The Department of War would be in charge of those things. I'd refer you to them, but obviously they're not going to discuss with you either. But there is a way forward here to achieve our objectives. We are going to achieve our objectives in a matter of weeks, not months.

[Charlie Kirk]

2026 marks the 250th birthday of the United States.

[Donald Trump]

President Trump is making America great again.

[Charlie Kirk]

I intend to make Iran great again.

[Bleacher Report Announcer]

The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up. March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about. Get real time. Scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.

[Michael Knowles]

Every day is a battle for your mind. Raging information coming from every angle.

[Charlie Kirk]

With the will to deceive. Fear not, you found the place for truth.

[Michael Knowles]

The voice of a generation that still

[Charlie Kirk]

has the will to believe in the

[Michael Knowles]

greatest country in the history of the world. This is the Charlie Kirk Show. Buckle up. Here we go.

[Charlie Kirk]

All right. Welcome to the Charlie Kirk show. It's Monday, March 30, 2026, here at the Bitcoin.com studios in Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome, Blake.

[Michael Knowles]

Howdy.

[Charlie Kirk]

Howdy. We've got a jam packed show for you. Lots of news over the weekend to get to and a Japanese timeline purge on X. Not a purge. Well, it's like a cleanse. That's what it is. The Japanese are amazing. We love them and it's been amazing. And watching them take over X, it's been much needed. And we're going to get to that, too. In the second segment here, we've also got Michael Knowles from the Daily Wire. We're going to talk about Cardinal Pizza Balla, which is by far the coolest name in all of Catholicism. It has to be. He's the. What is he? The Latin Patriarch. Patriarch of Jerusalem. And so we're going to talk about some of that controversy as well. Then in Hour two, we've got the we're going to be keeping our eyes out for a press conference about Iran. Apparently there's going to be some updates there. And then we've also got our TPA frontlines team that was scattered out across the country this weekend covering the no Kings protest. So we've got three of those frontline journalists joining us. And then we've got the apostate prophet Ridvan, who was formerly Muslim, now he's a Christian and he's going to be talking about the state of the ground, what the, what the grassroots feels like in Iran. Are they ready to rise up? Are they not? And he's been doing research all weekend getting ready for this segment. So I can't wait to hear what he has to say. We got to start though, with updates on Iran. The biggest controversy over the weekend that I could see was whether or not we're going to be sending ground troops or not.

[Blake]

And it still remains up in the air.

[Charlie Kirk]

It remains up in the air. Let's go ahead and play sats 6

[News Reporter]

reports indicate the United States is preparing for a possible weeks long ground operation in Iran that would include thousands of US service members. Over the weekend, the USS Tripoli, manned with 3500 troops, including 2500 Marines, arrived in the CENTCOM area of operation. This comes as the United States and Israel launched a series of strikes against Iranian military infrastructure over the weekend, including hitting Iran's nuclear development facilities.

[Charlie Kirk]

So we're obviously getting a lot of folks ready over there. Thousands of US Troops are getting stationed and ready to go. And I just want to be very clear where I stand, where I believe Blake stands, where I think turning point stands, frankly, is we give President Trump a lot of trust, a lot of patience when it comes to this. He's proven that he doesn't do quagmires, he doesn't do forever wars. And we've been willing to sort of, you know, be a part of this, watch, wait, understand that waiting is part of this game and to see how this plays out. And we hope for the best, we pray for our troops. But really, boots on the ground is a line we don't want to cross and we are not supportive of boots on the ground full stop.

[Blake]

And as we've warned, whatever you make of the merits of the conflict itself, it is likely to be politically disastrous if it continues long term.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yes.

[Blake]

And we want to make that clear, especially because I think there's a lot of people who will just be determined to sell anything the president does and say, oh, it's really popular. Everyone loves it. And that's not a responsible position to take. If you look at the numbers, this is probably the most skeptical the public has been about any conflict the United States has ever entered.

[Charlie Kirk]

And we've been honest. We've never, we've not been frothing at the mouth. Some of you got mad at us in the emails that we haven't been more, I guess, you know, enthusiastic in our support. What we're, what we're saying is we don't like war, we hate it. Actually doesn't mean that this wasn't the best national security decision that the President could have made. I, I'm not in the room, I don't know the intel. But we do not want boots on the ground. We do not want a quagmire. We do not want this thing to get out of control. And it does seem like President Trump is signaling that things are getting better. He put out a truth this morning. I don't know if this was to encourage the markets. You know, a lot of people are skeptical sometimes about these truths. But he says the United States of America is in a serious discussion with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran. He, there was another quote where he basically said regime change is already done essentially to end our military operations in Iran. Great progress has been made. But if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Carg island, and possibly all desalination plants which we have purposely not yet touched. This will be in retribution for our many soldiers and others that Iran has butchered and killed over the old regime's 47 year reign of terror. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.

[Blake]

And part of what's complicated here is we want this to end quickly, we want this to end without escalation. And we are aware that the President's negotiating style does include lots of very aggressive threats and saber rattling in order to then back off. And so everything we say has to be couched in those terms. Like if the, if the president playing super hardball does help him get out faster, we have to support that because we want us to get out faster.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yes, exactly. And we'll just play. Last week we covered the 15 point plan. He was asked about this 15 point peace plan by reporter. Here's his answer. SOT 9.

[Donald Trump]

You had offered a 15 point plan to the Robins. Did they ever come back? Yeah, they came back on the 15 point plan. They gave us most of the points. Why wouldn't they? You make it sound like they've made some concessions. Can you identify those? Well, they're agreeing with us on the plan. I mean, we asked for 15 things and for the most part, we're going to be asking for a couple of other things. And just to prove that they're serious, they gave us all these boats. What I talked about four days ago, a present. I said they gave me a present, but I didn't think, think I was at liberty to say what it was. What it was, was 8 plus 2. It's 10 massive boatloads of oil. And today they gave us another present. They gave us 20 boatloads of oil that starts being shipped tomorrow. We're having very good meetings, both directly and indirectly, and I think we're getting a lot of very important.

[Charlie Kirk]

So I'm, I'm very pro signaling that this thing can get done, that there can be a route forward, that we can have peace quicker, sooner, without boots on the ground. Now, if President Trump is moving those assets into the region in order as to Blake's point to saber rattle to strengthen his negotiations, that's okay. I understand he's gotta do what he's gotta do. But we do not want boots on the ground. We do not want this thing becoming a quagmire. Because in war this tends to happen. When you get into a situation, you escalate a little bit. Well, then something else goes wrong, then you escalate a little bit more and then you think, well, we're committed. We better take Carg island, we better take this field, we better blow this up and we better hold it for the protection of the local citizenry. Whatever the rationale will be, there will be endless rationales. And that's the point. There will always be a reason to go farther and deeper and get more committed. This is how you end up in Afghanistan for 20 years. So hopefully, prayerfully, this will not be the decision that is made prayerfully. We will get out prayerfully this. There will be moderate actors on the other side of this negotiation. Prayerfully, there will be an opportunity for us to declare victory and exit stage left. That's what we want to do. And hopefully, and prayerfully, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened. And that really, I think, is the crux of the matter. Can we get that thing open? Scott Besant is basically saying it will happen. Marco Rubio saying it will happen. Hopefully we get that done. Prayerfully, we get that done. Because boots on the ground is a line I certainly do not want to cross. I do not think the American people want to cross. And to Blake's point, it's politically extraordinarily fraught. All right, I want to tell you guys about Strong Sell. It's that time again. Strong Sell is an amazing supplement. It was one of Charlie's favorites. These guys have built an incredible business. Why? Because they came up with a proprietary way to deliver nadh to the cells. So you used to have to do this through IVs. No longer. Now you have to spend hundreds of dollars.

[Blake]

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[Charlie Kirk]

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[Blake]

There's hair all over.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. I mean, it is true. You are hairier than we see.

[Blake]

Much hairier's old clips and Blake, hair in the soul.

[Charlie Kirk]

Okay, well, it's getting confusing now. We're gonna be right back. We're gonna break down the Japanese Twitter immersion. We'll be right back. Oh, I love it. Okay, so if you are not on X, consider yourself lucky. Most of the time.

[Blake]

Yeah, most of the time.

[Charlie Kirk]

If you are not on X this weekend, you have missed out in one of the great cultural exchanges I have ever seen, actually. And what's amazing about it is that, you know, so there's a guy on Twitter that. I think he's kind of like the guy who X. He announces all the big changes, right? And he said that the number one country on X, actually, per capita, is Japan. The saturation of Japanese users.

[Blake]

I've got it here, actually.

[Charlie Kirk]

It's Nikita Beer.

[Blake]

He is. Let's see what his title is. He's head of product.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah.

[Blake]

At X. And he says they have more daily active users and more overall time spent on X than any other country in the world. The US has more users overall, but they're not on it as much. Whereas over two thirds of Japan uses X on a least monthly basis. And they used to be very much in their own world. They speak a difficult language that no one can understand, but especially with modern AI tools, it's really easy to translate everything and have it be pretty accurate. And so what X has started to do, and it really ramped up in the last few weeks, is they've started to share a lot more cross language content.

[Charlie Kirk]

So it's got. They have an auto translator. Yeah.

[Blake]

Because they have an auto translator. And so you'll, you can scroll through and you'll see a post and it'll just be automatically translated from Japanese or from French.

[Charlie Kirk]

And they're wonderful.

[Blake]

And they're wonderful. And people have discovered this, especially over the past week, there was a giant explosion of Japanese stuff showing up on Americans X. Yeah. And it's amazing. It turns out the Japanese are awesome and everyone loves the Japanese.

[Charlie Kirk]

Well, I heard it put this way that there's like four really cool foreign countries in the world and the rest of them are awful, but Japan is, is definitely one of the really cool ones. Do we have 24 ready? Yeah, here. This, this is a good explainer video on how this happened.

[Social Media Commentator]

24, you're not on X, formerly known as Twitter. You're probably missing. There's a massive love affair going on between Americans and Japanese people. So basically the product manager at X decided to reveal the information that the largest country participating on X is actually Japan. It's not America. America's number two. And so they decided to flip on the auto translate feature. And then from that point on, Americans and Japanese people started interacting and turns out we love each other. And that's honestly really nice to see. Like, the timeline is just filled with Japanese people talking about American culture, predominantly like red America culture. We're talking like monster trucks, barbecues, pickup trucks, Texas in general, and obviously Japan. You know, Americans have always had a thing for Japan. So that's, you know, the weed thing's always been there, but the tweets are so it's, I have to say, it's so nice to see an ally actually like us because we get so much smugness from Europeans these days that it's really nice to see something.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah.

[Blake]

So like there was one. They actually showed the photo there. Throw up this tweet. It's the one with all the guys around the barbecue. This Japanese guy just posts a photo and it's a bunch of white dudes probably in the south somewhere with just A gigantic pile of steaks over a giant grill. And he says, I'd love to see this photo. I want to participate in this event in person someday.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah.

[Blake]

And they got 20 million.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. These guys are like, I've been told that if I just post a picture of nice looking meat, I'll get a lot of comments and then like, you know, millions of engagements later. And the other thing that's been really interesting about this is that there, I feel like it's transforming people's brains in real time right now about something called cultural appropriation. Right. We have been told in this country that cultural appropriation is so terrible and it's bad. Well, guess what? You can play the B roll of these Japanese people dancing to American music if you want this. They are all about appropriating American culture. And they're show like, I think they're doing the twist, right?

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Blake]

This is a thing that has been the case in Japan for a while, and people are more aware of it, that Japan actually has a lot of. Nostalgia is not the right word, but a lot of enthusiasm for like, what you'd consider really iconically American parts and especially classic America. So they like cowboys, they like jazz music, they like classic Hollywood stuff.

[Charlie Kirk]

Like bluegrass.

[Blake]

Yeah. So they like bluegrass. They like, like gangster movies.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Blake]

You know, like, you know, kind of classic, you know, Roaring twenties type stuff. And they like barbecue. Yeah. They love baseball. They love.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah.

[Blake]

Monster trucks, pro wrestling. Hulk Hogan was big in Japan.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. And it's just so sweet because these people. Well, here's what you realize, and this is what I was thinking about this morning, is that Japan is a pretty closed culture, meaning they don't have a ton of immigrants. The reason you have the current prime minister of Japan, who's a big Trump fan, is because they got flooded with a bunch of Muslims and they started seeing mosques pop up and they closed it down instantly. Now, I'm not saying the problem's completely fixed, but that is a new wave in Japan that they haven't had to deal with as far as foreign cultures coming into their own. So it's a pretty homogenous culture. They don't have to. And these videos of them not having to lock up at the Apple Store their Apple phones and their Apple devices, because nobody's gonna steal anything. There was one tweet where I saw this American guy had their baby and they had a stroller, the baby in a stroller. And they were gonna cross Jaywalka street, and this old Japanese man stops him and says, the downfall of civilization starts

[Blake]

with a single individual.

[Charlie Kirk]

Single individual, which is an amazing lesson to learn. But here's the thought. Society has been constructed. Civilization has been constructed for millennia, Blake. You know, you and I geek out on like British history, for example. They get invaded by the Vikings and so for hundreds of years they're just fighting off the invaders. And you think about this. We build cities with walls. In the old days it was every city had to be protected. Our whole civ were built around protecting against the invading hordes. Look at Roman history. And yet something happened. The borders get really well constructed, really firm. And we fight wars and they're huge wars. But it's all with the assumption that these borders are sacred, that they mean something. And then you enter into modern culture and the modern world and you got air travel and all this stuff. And it's like we forgot that our cultures meant something, that they were worth protecting. And then you get this one outpost, Japan, that still believes that its culture is worth protecting. And it's marvelous, it's wonderful. And it just. I happen to believe that what you're seeing is going to be this re energizing behind the nation state and about the purity of a culture and the beauty of a culture. This mass migration, this invasion level migration that we've suffered under doesn't need to be the case across the world. We can build antibodies to it and relearn these old lessons against stopping the invading hordes.

[Blake]

Yeah, this is the other great thing. I think the other reason this is really blown up on the right is a lot of the stuff that's gone viral from Japan is Japanese people just saying really right wing stuff. Yeah, I'm really tired of all of these immigrants. And then there was one like some, I guess some Muslim migrant to Japan was complaining because in Japan the tradition is to cremate bodies instead of burying them and he wanted them to change it. And the person, they just say the stuff that you practically get in trouble for saying in America. Okay, go to some other country that, you know, buries bodies. Japan does cremation. And they say that all the time. And there's a bunch of that. And I think one of the best summaries I saw this was by an American. But it really gets at the heart of it where he says the new auto translate feature is great. Right wing Americans get to read and retweet their cultural allies. High conscientious Japanese who cook delicious food and respect craftsmanship. And left wing Americans get to retweet their cultural allies. Bio lenist Communists and Third World rapists.

[Charlie Kirk]

I like this one. So this is actually a Korean guy observing this culture exchange happening. And he goes, Western right wingers, deep admiration for Japanese, for the Japanese proves they're not irrationally xenophobic. They simply dislike dysfunctional people from dysfunctional cultures.

[Blake]

Exactly.

[Charlie Kirk]

And to that, I say amen. It's really that simple. But there's really not that many good cultures out there. So the list is short. But we like those guys. We'll be right back with Michael Knowles. Don't go anywhere.

[Terrence Bates]

Welcome back to this real America's Voice news break. I'm Terrence Bates. We're keeping an eye on the White House where Press Secretary Caroline Levitt is set to host her latest press briefing to start off this week. That's expected to happen at any moment. Now, here's a live look at the room as you can see. Journalists getting in place, taking their seats, waiting for Caroline Levitt to arrive. She's scheduled to start the press briefing at the top of the hour. Typically, it's a little bit later than that, but of course, we'll take you there live the moment it happens. In the meantime, President Trump's day at the White House includes taking pictures with this year's class of White House interns. 47 will also participate in a policy meeting and take time this afternoon to sign legislation. The commander in Chief's construction. The commander in construction, excuse me, says that his planned White House ballroom is ahead of schedule and under budget. His assessment of the project comes as a lawsuit seeking to stop it moves forward. Aboard Air Force One on Sunday, the president showing off renderings of the new ballroom.

[Donald Trump]

Now the military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed. But the military is building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that's under construction, and we're doing very well.

[Terrence Bates]

While President Trump is showing off what the new White House ballroom will look like, he's also waiting for Congress and the Senate to agree on funding the Department of Homeland Security so that TSA agents can get their paychecks. The DHS shutdown is now the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history. The Department of Homeland Security is the fourth largest agency in the federal government and makes up just under 10% of the government's total workforce. The US House has passed a stopgap DHS funding bill after House Republicans rejected a Senate bill that would have reopened the agency. DHS says more than 500 TSA agents have now quit their jobs due to the Shutdown. Thousands more have called out sick over the past couple of days. That's a quick check of your headlines. As always, we appreciate having you along for the ride. I'm Terrence Bates. We're going to get back to your regularly scheduled programming and we'll have more from the president's news conference or at least the White House press secretary's news conference coming up at the top of the hour.

[Charlie Kirk]

This movement will not be silenced.

[Michael Knowles]

You're listening to the Charlie Kirk show.

[Charlie Kirk]

All right, welcome back. I want to tell you guys about Patriot Mobile first. Then we'll welcome onto the show Michael Knowles. But every day Americans are making choices with where to spend their money and those choices really matter. They have a trickle down effect, especially when you can support companies like Patriot Mobile, which is the only Christian conservative wireless provider out there. And what do they do when you put your money into that company? They then support shows like this. They support Christian conservative causes all across the country. We talk about mosques and Islamic invasion and that sort of thing. Well, guess what, they're fighting that in Texas and they're fighting it against all over the country. They support all the same things, values of faith, family and freedom that you do. And they do it through their cell phone company. So just do it today. Today is the time to make the switch. If you've heard me talk about Patriot mobile and you haven't done it yet, what are you waiting for? Glenn and Jenny are the best. Support them. These are the good guys. It's very, very simple. And you get the same great service you've become accustomed to. I have two lines on my phone because it's that important. Take a stand today. Go to patriot mobile.com Charlie or call 972-patriot and use promo code Charlie for a free month of service. That's patriot mobile.com Charlie. All right. Welcoming now to the show Michael Knowles. Good to see you, Michael. How you been?

[Michael Knowles]

Good to see you gentlemen. I'm better now that I'm hanging out with you guys.

[Charlie Kirk]

Well, exactly that Japan has taken over our ex feeds. I think we all are feeling a lift from this.

[Michael Knowles]

It's great. Much appreciated.

[Charlie Kirk]

I know, Seriously, we needed it bad. We needed it real bad. So, you know, we have a very ecumenical spirit on this show. We are by nature he's catholic, I'm protestant, although I was born catholic. But you know, it's a long story. Cradle cork on here.

[Michael Knowles]

We'll get you excited.

[Blake]

Left the true faith for then I

[Charlie Kirk]

got saved in college. The old fashioned. I actually got saved reading a C.S. lewis book. So, you know, Anglican guy. So, anyway, so here we are.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, by the way, not to derail us, but actually in college, when I was, like, falling away and everything, and it was an evangelical Protestant guy who had a table set up on the Commons, and I was somewhat interested in religion, but I was very interested in free stuff. And he was giving out books. And one. One of the first things that brought me back to the faith was an evangelical guy passing me a C.S. lewis book at a. At a college table.

[Charlie Kirk]

You know, C.S. lewis. If you haven't read him, read Mere Christian. It's a great place to start, but I'm actually going through the great divorce right now, and a grief observed as well, so he's amazing. He strengthens my faith every time I read his stuff. Anyways, so. But there was a big kerfuffle, all right? And I want to get the Prots and the Catholics, you know, back on the same page. We got to get the vibes right here, Michael. That's why, I mean, Charlie's gonna be

[Blake]

rough getting the Protestants on the same page of this, but we should set this up for people who aren't aware of this. So there's a major church in the heart of Jerusalem in the Old City, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It's built over the site which Catholics, Orthodox, a lot of other Christian groups believe is Jesus's tomb. I say that because I know when Charlie went to the Holy Land, there is another tomb that a lot of Protestants like. But this is the one. This is the traditional one. That's been the case for a very long time, and it's in the heart of the Old City. And since the beginning of the war with Iran, they have closed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for religious services. Now, what's not brought up by a lot of people, they have also closed Al Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and they have closed the Western Wall for, like, a large number of pilgrims.

[Charlie Kirk]

This is Palm Sunday.

[Blake]

This was Palm Sunday. And the dispute specifically was that the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierre Batista pizzabala, say that 10 times fast.

[Charlie Kirk]

By far the coolest name in Christendom.

[Blake]

He complained because he was not allowed even to basically, privately, him and a couple others offer a Mass for Palm Sunday. And he was very concerned about that. And it caused a lot of backlash, a PR nightmare for the Israeli government, which eventually, quickly, Benjamin Netanyahu did step in and say, I am going to take steps to make sure religious services can be held during Holy Week. But Michael, you were commenting on this a lot online as well.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, Michael, what was your take?

[Michael Knowles]

So this was an egregious mistake by the Israeli government in the thing itself, because the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem should not under any circumstances whatsoever be prevented from going to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, much less on Palm Sunday, during which time we commemorate Christ's entry into Jerusalem as a king. You know, fetid with palms, and it starts off Holy Week. So in the thing itself, it was wrong. Israel had no right to do it. But. But just from a PR perspective, it was a huge mistake. And there is a silver lining here. I've been telling people for weeks now things get a little wacky during Lent. This is just my experience. I think if you have eyes of faith, you might have seen it yourself. People who are atheists are gonna look at us like we're crazy for saying that. But there's something about Lent, especially something about Holy Week. Things get a little tough. I don't know, the devil goes into.

[Charlie Kirk]

It's a full moon or something. Yeah, exactly.

[Michael Knowles]

Yes, it is. It is. And so there's a silver lining though, to this really unfortunate incident yester which is there was a global outcry and everybody seemed to agree. Protestants, Catholics, eventually the Israeli government. You had Mike Huckabee come out, the US Ambassador to Israel, who is as pro Israel as any person ever has been since Theodore Herzl. And he came out and he said, hey, this was a mistake, guys. They really shouldn't have done this. Senator Cruz, a good friend of mine, very, very Southern Baptist, very, very pro Israel. He says he's the most pro Israel US Senator. He came out, he said, Huckabee's total Israel really bungled this one. Can't do it. So you got the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptists, Evangelicals, you've got. Then Isaac Herzog and Benjamin Netanyahu came out and said, hey, this was a huge mistake. This is bet on us, we're not gonna do it. We talked to Pizzabala, he's gonna be allowed to say these private prayers and you know, smaller events, celebrations, not 200 people masses, but we wanna make sure that there's a presence of the Holy Sepulcher during Holy Week. So it all worked out. And the thing that I noticed on top of all of it is this really showed you the bot accounts on social media, some of the operative accounts. I mean, people were making all sorts of disgusting claims about Cardinal Pizzabala. This is a great man. This is a man who during the Gaza war, he offered himself to Hamas in exchange for the Israeli hostages. He's just a wonderful man of the church. And so the people who were going after him still and defending, keeping him out of the Holy Sepulcher, I said, hold on. When you have Netanyahu, the Catholic Church, and the Protestants all on the same team, and you're on the other team, I think you're the problem. Okay? I think we know which side to be on.

[Charlie Kirk]

It was like cats and dogs living together. There was this amazing breakthrough on social media over the weekend. It was like a ray of light came down, and we got on the same page on Palm Sunday, which is ironic. I actually didn't make this connection. I'm sure everybody on X already did, you know, days ago. But this whole, like, no Kings rally, meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Palm Sunday, celebrating, literally, the arrival. The triumphant arrival of Christ our King, to the city of Jerusalem. It is ironic.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, I'm gonna confess my ignorance or my lack of thought on this. That's the first time that occurred to me. I had. I'm hearing it for the first time. And that's a. That's an amazing connection. Because the thing is, if you're. If you're a person of faith, especially if you're Christian, Christianity has a very, very symbolic view of the world. Like, everything makes sense. There are no mere coincidences. And if you think that God is real, then stuff is playing out in history beyond our own actions and our own imaginations. And so the libs who did their stupid no Kings protests this weekend with Maisie Hirono accidentally admitting that Trump is not a king and never will be anyway. That's a point for another time when they were doing that. I'm sure they didn't realize the symbolism of it all, but the symbolism is there nonetheless. I mean, frankly, there is even symbolism to the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem being denied entry into the Holy Sepulcher, whether people intended it or not, really, probably they did not. There is a real symbol here. And for the libs to just say, yeah, no kings. No kings. He is not the King of the Jews.

[Charlie Kirk]

On Palm Sunday weekend, we are literally. They're holding their protest. And 2,000 years ago, there was a whole other gathering where they were declaring, we do have a king. It really is a dramatic juxtaposition. And that's what happens when you purge God from your political ideology. You don't catch the obvious, but apparently you didn't either, Michael, so we can talk about that.

[Michael Knowles]

I didn't. I missed the obvious. I needed you to tell me. That's an amazing observation.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. I just realized that we do have a king. His name is Jesus, and he's still alive and reigning over us today. And that's a beautiful thing. And I do agree with you, though, that when you see. And I really. That was the spirit, actually, of inviting you on the show. Was this ecumenical, like, I just felt. I just been feeling in the ether, Michael, like, a little bit of, like, tension between the prots and the Catholics. And it's like, oh, yeah, going back about 500 years. But it felt like, you know, in recent years, we kind of put most of that stuff behind. I mean, I. As a cradle Catholic. I mean, Blake disagrees. I just think, in general, we tend to see each other very, very much as allies. Same team. Yeah, we disagree around the edges or we disagree about that, but I want that to be the case, especially somebody who grew up as a cradle Catholic, like I said, went to Catholic high school and things. You know, I'm the kind of guy who gets annoyed.

[Blake]

I get annoyed when these Protestant churches go squish and they, like, delete the stuff from their statements of faith that the Pope is the Antichrist or whatever,

[Charlie Kirk]

because, like, come on, you know, you

[Blake]

got to believe in.

[Michael Knowles]

I was just talking.

[News Reporter]

Not.

[Charlie Kirk]

All right.

[Michael Knowles]

Before the. Right before this interview, I was talking to Doug Wilson, who I adore, because he is, like, the most hardcore Protestant I've ever met in my life, and I have a lot of them in my life. But. But I do agree with you on this point especially. Look, it comes full circle with the devil goes into overtime during Lent and Holy Week. The devil really loves to stoke division. And you've seen this politically within the administration trying to stoke division in this really unified admin. And then you certainly see it among Americans of other types and especially people of faith, is you think, hey, guys, the left wants to harm us. The left wants to slaughter babies and redefine marriage and extirpate Christianity from public life. And while I would love to get into the thirty Years War, while I would love to discuss all of the nuances of Luther vs. Zwingli vs. Calvin vs. The One Holy, Catholic and apostolic faith, like, that's cool, guys.

[Charlie Kirk]

We'll do that.

[Michael Knowles]

But to suggest that we should be spending all of our times relitigating, like, 1517, when there is an actual imminent political problem that is threatening all Christians, is, to me, a little. I don't know, a little misguided. I don't think of politics as debate club. I Think of it as real political communities where people have to live together and hopefully flourish. And I think we gotta get real sometimes, so. I totally agree.

[Charlie Kirk]

Well, if we can't build a coalition between Protestants and Catholics in America, then we have. And listen, there's gonna be disagreements. There's gonna be disagreements on theological stuff, that's fine. But you are definitely an ally, and I wanna just keep encouraging that. More with Michael Knowles in just a second. I'm gonna tell you guys about all family pharmacy. Love these guys. I'm pretty sure these guys are Italian origin, probably Catholic. I think down in Florida, they built an amazing business with all family pharmacy. You can order prescription medications before you get sick. You don't have to wait in line. Go ask your doctor for permission. Go wait in line again at the pharmacy. No, keep these at home. Have them ready when you need them. Most everything is done online. A licensed doctor even reviews your request and then your medication shipped right to your door. So you have it ready when you need it. They offer antibiotics, antivirals, Tamiflu, Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, mebendazole, Ish. I got it. Right, yeah. Methylene blue. Even your daily maintenance medications. Blake's looking like he doesn't know what I'm talking about. I. I don't know how to say that word correctly. I'm gonna keep trying. This is about access, about freedom. Get it? Get ahead of this. Allfamilypharmacy.com Kirk Use code KIRK10 at checkout. Save 10% on your next order. We'll be right back. All right, welcome back. More with Michael Knowles here. So, Michael, we've been having a really wonderful conversation and Blake wants to completely throw a wrench in it.

[Michael Knowles]

Perfect. I was waiting.

[Blake]

Well, so I think, you know, we obviously touched upon the drama around the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but I think all of us understand this is part of a bigger debate about Israel, America's relationship towards it. And we see a lot of surging skepticism or outright hostility. Anti Semitism, more than skepticism in some quarters for the least. So I was wondering, do you have any thought if you've been following this? In addition to the scuffle over the Holy Sepulcher, there's also been claims about the last Christian settlement in the West. The all Christian settlement in the west bank has claimed it's getting attacked a lot by Israeli settlers. There's a lot of constant violence there. There's also reports of kind of the last Christians in Syria getting wiped out as A result of the government there. And I guess if you've been following either of those things, if you have thoughts on them and how they relate to America's alliances and relationships in the Holy Land.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, certainly. You know, I do care particularly about persecuted Christians in the Middle East. My friend Father Benedict Keely has a group called Nazarean.org, which I strongly recommend people support. It helps persecuted Christians in the Middle east and elsewhere, but there are very few. You know, these are the oldest Christian communities in the world. And it's kind of funny when missionaries from America or Europe say, we're going to go and evangelize in the Middle east to say, you know, they were the first ones they evangelized, you believe it or not. And so they've been decimated over the last 25 years. You see this even outside of the Middle east with Armenia. You know, Azerbaijan was unfortunately kind of won the war with Armenia destroyed. Armenia is the oldest Christian nation in the world. It became Christian before even the Edict of Milan, before Emperor Constantine. And they've been really put on the back foot as well. And it's ironic there because in the case of Azerbaijan in Armenia, and this kind of brings it back to the Israel issue. Israel was backing Azerbaijan, which is a Muslim country, against Armenia, which is a Christian country. But it's because Armenia had better relations with Iran, which is a Muslim country, and Iran is the existential threat to Israel. So bizarrely, the United States, which has a good relationship with Armenia, was funding the weapons that were going to Azerbaijan, and it becomes a real mess. So how do we make sense of these things? Well, right off the bat, I would say obviously one can criticize the Israeli government and should, in some cases, one should be skeptical of entangling alliances broadly. But I would just caution people, I would not allow your skepticism of or even antipathy for Israel to push you into the position of being pro Islam. You know, the Christians in the Middle east and elsewhere who are persecuted are persecuted by Muslims. We saw on Palm Sunday in Nigeria, at least 10 Christians were massacred by Muslims in Nigeria in the Plateau region just adds to the number which has grown immensely in recent years. So it's a major problem. And I think that sort of ideological or shallow responses to these issues in the Middle east really miss the point. This is a long standing problem. Islam has been a longstanding problem for 1400 years. The question of sovereignty in the Holy Land has been disputed for roughly 2,000 years right now. And so a little skepticism I think is merited. It's just. It has to be done with some balance and with some prudence and with some charity. To look at Twitter, to look at some podcasts, you would think that we've just. We've been in a quagmire in the Middle east for 2000 years because someone didn't read, you know, the pseudonymous Twitter accounts post. If only we had the tweeter, we could have solved it all. No, these are immensely complex problems that are not only religious, but also political.

[Charlie Kirk]

I think it's well said. I just want to. I want to give Noel some credit that we did not prep him for that question. We did not.

[Blake]

We just threw him to the wolves on that one.

[Charlie Kirk]

And you navigated it deftly. I think that you deserve some credit for that. I was like, here we go, here we go.

[Michael Knowles]

The problem, though, is because I didn't just throw a grenade at this country or that country or whatever, I'm not gonna get as many clicks. My answer.

[Charlie Kirk]

It was too wordy. Which country? Name?

[Michael Knowles]

N. Yeah, do you Tell me the country. Which one is it?

[Charlie Kirk]

Listen, I think that's great. All right, so we started the show off, and we'll give you one last hard one here. So does it does appear that President Trump, the Trump administration, are positioning assets in the Middle east for a potential boots on the ground situation? We don't know yet if this is saber rattling. We don't know if this is to strengthen a negotiating hand to, you know, listen, if you doubt President Trump's will to do military strikes of any nature, you shouldn't. And I think he understands that he has that card to play. So he's moving the assets in. What do you expect to transpire in the next coming weeks? And if he does use boots on the ground, what do you think the political ramifications would be?

[Michael Knowles]

The political ramifications will be very, very tough. And. And the reason that I think some people don't understand that is because the war itself or the strikes themselves, whether you want to admit it's a war or just call them isolated strikes, regardless, it has a lot of support among conservative Republicans. 90% support about. But I think that support is soft. I think people recognize Iran has been a threat for a long time. There is a grand strategic interest in getting rid of the Iranian regime. Trump has been talking about this for 40 years. So, yeah, sure, they've been a thorn on our side for 50 years. That's all true. But I think that 90% support is soft. I think people have trauma from the political experience of The Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I think it could collapse very quickly. However, and this was one of the arguments for more restraint in Iran, is that the die is cast. We are where we are. We cannot let the Iranians get away with closing the Strait of Hormuz. If we let them get away with that now, we will have only strengthened the Iranian regime. I don't care how many missiles we took out. I don't care how many ayatollahs we killed. That will have strengthened them tremendously. The next time we have any disagreement with them, they're gonna close that straight and they're gonna feel confident that we're not really gonna do anything about it. So I am a Trump truster. He's got a better record on foreign policy than any president in my lifetime. And what I've said since the beginning of this war is I would have argued against it, and I did argue against it. But Trump says five weeks. I'll start worrying on week six. The issue right now, I think, for the polling and for the administration is, okay, we're at the start of week five. That means we're entering into week six. Trump says we're close to a deal in the coming weeks, but I think you could see that 90% support start to crater. Pret. Am I, Am I a panican? Am I being a panican?

[Charlie Kirk]

Nope. No. That's about where we started the show today. I mean, listen, my position is I don't want boots on the ground, but I'm with you. What you said, the die is cast. Like this operation is under underway. You cannot let that straight up Hormuz get closed. And this is why we were reticent in the first place, because war has a tendency of getting out of.

[Blake]

Wars are unpredictable. They're easier to start than to end. They are, they just.

[Charlie Kirk]

They rarely.

[Blake]

They're expensive and they're just. They're rarely. They rarely give you. The outcome that you're promised is the most likely one. When you start.

[Charlie Kirk]

Well, and listen, when you look at some of this stuff, you know, there's that video going viral online of the no kings in la, and they're saying, you know, shoot ICE agents. It's like, well, there's a lot of enemy combatants here that I wish we would have spent $200 billion addressing. So. Yeah, yeah. Anyways.

[Michael Knowles]

Even just the focus of it, I agree.

[Charlie Kirk]

Exactly. And, and so there's a. There's a lot of reason to feel that kind of knot in your stomach. We're, we're praying for troop our troops we're praying for success and we're praying for you, Michael. God bless you. Thank you.

[Michael Knowles]

Thank you, gentlemen. Good to see you.

[Charlie Kirk]

All right, hour two in just a few minutes. We'll be right back.

[Terrence Bates]

Terrance Bates here with your Real America's Voice news break. We appreciate you being here with us. We have an eye on the White House as the latest press briefing is set to get underway at any moment. Now, here's a live look at the room as journalists are taking their seats and preparing to hear from White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt. You can imagine that much of the conversation is going to have to do with the war in Iraq and the ground troops that have already been deployed to that region. We, of course, will take you to this White House press briefing live the moment it happens. In the meantime, the world's decreasing oil supply due to Iran limiting maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is forcing some difficult decisions for heads of state. President Trump, for instance, says he is considering seizing Iran's Kharg island oil terminal. Despite reported progress in a ceasefire negotiation with Iran. President Trump appears prepared to put US Boots on the ground if needed. Meantime, Pakistan says it will host talks between Tehran and Washington soon. Iran's parliament speaker, however, dismissing the talks and instead focusing on the US Military buildup in the region, saying, quote, waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever. NASA is in the final stages of preparation for an historic return to the movie moon. The Artemis 2 mission is now just days away from launch. Teams at the Kennedy Space center are moving into final countdown operations, with liftoff targeted for as soon as April 1st and conditions looking promising for an April 1st launch. The mission will send four astronauts around the moon and back, marking the first crewed lunar flight in more than a half century. It's a major step towards long term human exploration of deep space. NASA officials say this flight will test critical systems and lay the groundwork for future missions. That would include eventual plans to return astronauts to the lunar surface. President Trump's day at the White House includes taking pictures with his year with this year's class of White House interns. 47 will also participate in a policy meeting and take time this afternoon to sign legislation. In the meantime, the commander in construction, as I call him, says the planned White House ballroom is ahead of schedule and under budget. His assessment of the project comes as a lawsuit seeking to stop the project moves forward. Aboard Air Force One on Sunday, the president showing off renderings of the new

[Donald Trump]

ballroom now the military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed. But the military is building a massive complex under the ballroom and that's under construction and we're doing very well.

[Terrence Bates]

And while the President is showing off what the new White House ballroom will look like, he's also waiting for Congress and the Senate to agree on funding the Department of Homeland Security so that TSA agents can get their paycheck. The DHS shutdown is now the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history. The department is the fourth largest agency in the federal government, and it makes up just under 10% of the government's total workforce. The US House has passed a stopgap DHS funding bill after House Republicans rejected a bill that's from the Senate that would have reopened the agency. DHS says more than 500 TSA agencies agents have now quit their jobs due to the shutdown. Thousands more have called out for work. Again, we are waiting for White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt to arrive for the latest White House press briefing. It was set to start at the top of the hour. We're expecting that she will arrive here any moment now. Journalists already in place, waiting for that briefing to happen. As you can imagine, the issue of Iran is likely going to take center stage as many, many of the questions will have to do with that. There will also likely be lots of questions about the Department of Homeland Security and funding for that agency as it is now shut down for well over 40 days. Again, the longest government shutdown in US history. On Friday, you may remember, President Trump signed an executive order authorizing payment for TSA agents who have been working for well over six weeks with no pay. Also, the House has passed a stopgap measure that would also send funding to those TSA workers in lieu of the Senate's bill, which of course did not pass in the U.S. house. So we'll be covering all of that for you throughout the day. And we'll take you live here to the White House press briefing the moment it starts.

[Charlie Kirk]

All right, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show. Welcoming now to the show are three TPUSA Frontlines journalists. We've got Bo Alford, frontlines TPUSA reporter. We've got Gabe Victor, frontlines photojournalist. And then we have Ro Ortiz, a new edition Frontline TPOSA photojournalist. I believe she's in D.C. hello, everybody.

[Unknown Female Reporter]

Hi.

[Charlie Kirk]

Good to see you. So you guys are all active covering the Geriatrics Against Kingship event, holding Signs by a billionaire that lives in Shanghai. Tell us about what you saw. Why don't we just start with you, Beau. Where were you stationed? What did you see? What was the vibes.

[Bo Alford]

Yes, sir, we were in New York City. I'd like to start by saying it. It feels great knowing that we did our due diligence and making sure there are no kings in America. No, we were in New York. There was a pretty good sized turnout, but there, the people there couldn't answer some of the more basic questions I had to ask them, which we can get that, get to that in a little bit. But yeah, I was in New York City.

[Charlie Kirk]

And Gabe, you were also in New York, is that right?

[Gabe Victor]

Right, yeah, I was in New York along with Bo. And you know, to, to, to mention the amount of people, there was a lot. I mean, there was about probably 300,000 people. That's how many people RSVP for it or signed up online. And you know, I've normally gone to these events and they say that there's a lot more coming than there actually is, but for this event in New York, it was a huge turn out.

[Charlie Kirk]

Well, that's interesting to see. I mean, 300,000 for New York, though. I mean, I mean, it's like, what, what is the population? New York?

[Blake]

About 8 million.

[Charlie Kirk]

8 million. I mean, you know. All right, fine.

[Gabe Victor]

It's a lot of New York Patriots.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, exactly.

[Michael Knowles]

This is true.

[Gabe Victor]

There was actually a lot of people who did mention that they did come from out of state.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, I bet that's true. Roe, where were you covering and what did you see? What were the vibes?

[Unknown Female Reporter]

I was in Washington D.C. there were. It was a good turnout. There were lots of people. A couple thousand, definitely. It was mostly old white boomers. I barely saw people of color. It was pretty tame compared to the protests you saw in LA or in Portland where they're spray painting kill your local ice agent. It was very chill and tame.

[Charlie Kirk]

Well, that's a very interesting observation you just made. And it reminded me of a clip we have ready SOT23.

[Blake]

Seems like there's a lack of diversity

[Charlie Kirk]

here today, that it's mostly people who

[Blake]

look like you and I and I just.

[Charlie Kirk]

This is not, it is not, not for black people, for people of color to be. To get out on the street. They're at risk when they do that. If anybody's going to get arrested here, it's going to be a black person. It is not safe for them and they don't need to participate. We need to walk in Their name. So did you guys get the vibe that if a black person would have showed up at one of these rallies that they would have got arrested? I'm just curious.

[Unknown Female Reporter]

Absolutely not.

[Gabe Victor]

Yeah, no, not unless they were committing a crime, you know.

[Unknown Female Reporter]

Gotta love that white savior complex.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. I mean, this is. I mean, it really was. It was Robert De Niro. It was Bruce Springsteen. It was Amy Klobuchar, Tim Wall.

[Blake]

I think there was some sort of. There was like a musical rally that. Yeah, it was like Bruce Springsteen, Bernie Sanders. It was something where like, the youngest person there, Jane Fonda, like the youngest person at. On the stage was like 78 years old. Another thing I saw they mentioned this, actually, the Bulwark posted this. They were pointing out turnout in the Villages, you know, a very Florida, heavy part of Florida. They were saying it was. It was double the turnout of last year. And there's video of, you know, them racing by, all this turnout and. Okay, yeah, I guess turnout is turnout. But it does strike me that really, this sort of mass protest, it's a lot of people who wish they were still protesting the Vietnam War. It's very old lib boomers, basically, which. There's a lot of great boomers out there too. But this is a subtype.

[Charlie Kirk]

And maybe New York was different. So Rose saying it was old boomers in D.C. what about in New York? I mean, New York's a younger city. There's a lot of people, young people that flock to New York to, you know, try and start a life, and they're excited by the city and a lot of people from out of town. Did you see a more diverse group there, Beau or Gabe?

[Bo Alford]

Not necessarily. I would say it was slightly more diverse. But it is important to note that I was assaulted twice, and both times I was assaulted was by old white men. There were a few people that were diverse, but for the most part it was old white people that felt like it was their need to speak up for minorities.

[Gabe Victor]

Yeah, I would say that it was very middle aged, like older, millennial, younger, Gen X kind of people that were at this protest, for sure.

[Charlie Kirk]

So. Which is interesting. You know, it's 75% of liberal students say preventing a speaker From Talk Justified. 27% say violence is acceptable to stop your political, I guess, enemies. Obviously, we all lived through the assassination of our friend Charlie. And, you know, you see that conservatives show up on campuses, they get spat at, they get blocked, they get harassed. You got assaulted, Beau. I didn't know that. That's the first time hearing about this. What like when you're talking to people on the streets, like, what is the animation? What is their motivating factor? Why are they crossing these lines that have been sacrosanct in American political culture? Why is this happening right now? Do you. Do you get. Can you get any conclusion?

[Bo Alford]

Yeah, great question. I can tell you, especially the first time that I was assaulted, which the video is coming out here soon, he didn't know the answer. I asked a very basic question, and then people started stepping in, trying to get the subject changed. When he couldn't get that answer, and one person took it upon himself. He was an older white man walking. When I kept pressing him. When he didn't know the answer, another. Another man stepped in and decided to knock the mic out of my hand. And then another person later on in the day proceeded to try and knock my beanie off.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, Gabe, I'm sorry that happened to you, Bo. Gabe, you were probably right there with him, right?

[Michael Knowles]

What was your observation?

[Gabe Victor]

You know, like, these people, the reason that they get so violent, at least in my opinion, is over and over again they're told that conservatives or that right wingers, that even just journalists in general are Nazis, that they're violent. And, you know, if you were to think that. That our grandparents, or grandparents of great grandparents of many other people, they went out and they fought Nazis on the front lines. So they think that in their mind, it is justified to attack us, to hurt us, because they truly believe deep down that we are all these evil, authoritarian Nazi types.

[Charlie Kirk]

Ro, you seem, you know, very sweet. Not like Beau or Gabe. Did. Did you get accosted at all at one of these by any of these protesters?

[Unknown Female Reporter]

I didn't. I blended it very well, though. But I knew if. I know that if they knew my stance on things, they would not be nice to me at all. And honestly, it's just very unfortunate. I feel that they have tunnel vision when it comes to these issues, and it's reinforced by the media. I mean, you saw at the protests, there was. The one I went to in D.C. there was a correspondent from MSNOW, and he had an F. Trump shirt on, as he's like, talking on a reporter did on the news. Yeah, yeah. And so they see that and they. It just reinforces this mindset that they have, and it's just very unfortunate that they treat other people with such disrespect.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. And did you get any insight when you asked them questions of what they were protesting? I mean, they obviously, Trump is not a king, but they, they. They're saying it anyways. Did you get any insight?

[Unknown Female Reporter]

Yeah, I mean, it was funny. So they were chanting this is what democracy looks like as they're advocating for the removal of a democratically elected leader. I mean, that is just so ironic.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, they're celebrating their. Their democratic freedoms and their God given freedoms that are enshrined in our constitution. You know, know they're screaming at a ghost, which is essentially what it is. Let me tell you about blackout coffee, folks. I am drinking it right now. I filled up in the break. Love blackout coffee. This is a family run American company roasting fresh coffee in the usa built by people who believe in hard work, freedom and this country. No global corporations, no fake activism. These guys are the real deal. You can get Morning Reaper, which is my favorite@blackout coffee.com Charlie. Use Charlie at checkout for 20% off your first order order. And for an even better deal, sign up for a blackout coffee subscription, which is what we do here at the office. Save money, get free shipping and earn free coffee through the rewards program. That's blackout coffee.com Charlie. Use promo code Charlie for 20 off your first order. You're gonna love this stuff. We'll be right back. All right. Private student loan debt in the U.S. totals about $300 billion. Blake knows his numbers now. How much that is?

[Blake]

45 billion. More than 45 billion.

[Charlie Kirk]

All right, so he's finally got it. It's only taken a couple months. Why refi Refinances distressed or defaulted private student loans that others will not touch. They care about students. They care about. About saddling you from this mountain of private student loan debt that's putting off family formation. That's putting off buying a home, those conservatizing life events. I'm starting to become convinced the whole point of saddling young people with all this student loan debt is so that they don't start families and that they don't actually buy a home. And they don't do all those things that make them fully live in the American dream. So why refi is here to help? You can actually go to their website and see the payments before and after and they will save you thousands. They're going to get you manageable payments that work with your budget. They will custom tailor a solution for you. So if this is your situation or if you have family members that are living in this nightmare, please go to yrefi.com you do not have to live this way anymore. May not be available in all 50 states, but they will guarantee you a low interest rate. If it is in your, in your state, they will even let you skip a payment every six months up to 12 times completely without penalty. These are amazing, amazing folks. Three minute free rate check without any credit impact. They don't care what your credit score is. So many good things about why refi check them out today. All right, more with our TPUSA frontlines crew. All right, ro, you were in dc, you were talking to all these geriatric boomers and they, you, you, what kind of questions did you ask them and did you find anything out? Did you learn anything?

[Unknown Female Reporter]

Well, I wasn't asking them questions, I was just taking videos and, but I was paying attention to their signs and one sign that really stuck out to me was, was Hitler would be proud of you, Donald Trump. And I think that is just such an insane thing to say. A lot of them were obviously very unhappy with the war in Iran. They were calling for the abolishing ice. And most of the signs are really saying they just don't want Trump, they want to remove him.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, Bo, you were asking questions. What questions did you ask and what did you learn? If was it anything learned?

[Bo Alford]

Absolutely nothing. Questions I asked were very simple. What, what brought you out here? What is the main reason you were out here? What is the biggest issue that you care about that brings you out here? And then I was also asking about conservatives and trying to see what their thoughts were on conservatives in general. So I was asking, what are your thoughts on conservatives? Is there anything you agree with conservatives on? What is your message to conservatives? And their answers were always very extreme, a few of them of which were actually wishing death upon conservatives.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, I'm really interested in knowing if these people understand the origins or the people that are funding these networks that put on the no Kings rallies. For example, Roy Singham, somebody that we've brought up on this show number of times, he's a billionaire in Shanghai High. He attends CCP workshops, he funnels millions of dollars through shell companies through the United States. And three congressional committees have subpoenaed him as a subject of investigation for being a CCP foreign agent. So this is one of the guys funding this. So again, communist country, probably a CCP foreign agent funneling millions of dollars for signs for these people to carry around.

[Blake]

You've heard of Code Pink? I remember Code Pink all the way back in the Bush years.

[Charlie Kirk]

And, well, that's, that's a funny thing to bring up actually, because if you look at like 1990s Democrat party, they were anti illegal immigration, they were pro parents they were pro balance budget, they were pro borders, they were pro free speech. They're basically like Bill Clinton is essentially from the 1990s is not dissimilar to the conservative platform in many ways in 2026, but they didn't have a problem then. Did they call Bill Clinton a king? I don't think they did, but I don't know if there's anything else really to surmise other than that it's just. Really just an anti Trump rally that is spread across the country. And I believe they're trying to spark a color revolution. This is why you hear them talk about we just need 3.5% of the population in order to spark a color revolution. That's what they really want anyways. I don't think they got anywhere close to that this weekend, but nevertheless, it was pretty hilarious. Gabe and Bo, last time we had you guys on, you were dodging IEDs in New York City from a terrorist. You were at the Gracie Mansion. I don't know, terrorist incident. Have you guys had a chance to reflect on what, what. I mean, you really were close to potentially putting your lives at line. Have you had a chance to reflect on that incident anymore? Have you heard any updates about that

[Gabe Victor]

reflection? 100%. We were praying very hard before going to New York again because, you know, this past weekend, it's definitely something that could have happened, right? These radicals, they typically don't show up to these masses, mass events where there's over like 100,000 people at it, but 100% they could, especially if they're, you know, expecting any pushback from right wingers, from conservatives. And I, 100%, you know, was praying before, praying that, you know, me and Bo would be safe and that also the other frontlines reporters would be safe across the country. I know we had people in LA and dc, but, yeah, I, I definitely am glad that we got out of it safe, you know, the first time, and that this weekend there was no issues.

[Bo Alford]

Yeah, yeah, Gabe said that.

[Charlie Kirk]

Well,

[Bo Alford]

sorry, no, no, I didn't want to say that. Well, I was just gonna reflect and, and say basically what he said when I got home. Definitely hugged my wife a little bit harder. And then, I'm not gonna lie, I think that when. When we were told that we were going back to New York City for no kings, it definitely was something in the back of my head, like, you know, the. The previous history of New York, of course. And then also who we have elected as mayor in New York, that's definitely something that's always going to be in the back of your mind. So we definitely prayed a little bit harder and we're thanking God when we were safe.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. Isn't that wild that that's the world we live in now? You know, I just hate. I hate it for all of you guys. I hate it for the country. Ro, I'm going to give you the final word here. You are new to the TPUSA Frontlines team. What is your beat? What are you going to be covering and how's it going so far?

[Unknown Female Reporter]

Oh, it's going great. I'm really enjoying this position. Being with all this team has been fantastic. I'm going to be working on a lot of mini docs exploring different things around America, different issues. At the moment, just heavily focusing on this administration and the amazing things they're doing.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. Because we've got a White House correspondent's about to have a baby. If I'm not.

[Unknown Female Reporter]

Yes, yes. I'm covering for her. She is super pregnant. Like, I think she's giving birth this week. It's crazy.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. So Monica is our TPO Safe Frontlines White House correspondent. She is. She got married not too long ago, and then quickly they're expecting a child and she's about to give birth. So. So, Monica, we, we are praying for you and we wish you all the best. In the meantime, Rose coming in and she's doing great work already. Stay safe out there, guys. Thank you for coming on and telling us your experience. And we're glad you're safe and the geriatric boomers didn't rough you up too bad, Bo. Could have been worse.

[Bo Alford]

Could have been worse.

[Charlie Kirk]

Take care, guys.

[Gabe Victor]

Thank you guys so much.

[Unknown Female Reporter]

Bye.

[Charlie Kirk]

All right, we are going to turn our attention to Iran next. We're going to have have Ridvan Ider, who has been doing his research, trying to figure out what the vibe on the streets of Iran is like right now. Don't go anywhere. Fact first. America first.

[Michael Knowles]

Welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.

[Charlie Kirk]

All right, one of the real privileges of this show is just getting to work with the folks at Hillsdale. They are America's best and greatest university. Charlie believed that. And we get to work with them all the time. In fact, I think we're going to have a professor from Hillsdale on this week and working out the timing on that right now. Charlie understood that when you learn, then you can lead. And that's why we love talking about Hillsdale around here. One of the courses that he taught took, he actually took this, and it's a real college course. Is the Genesis story taught by Hillsdale Professor Dr. Justin Jackson. It's a free online course and explores the relationship between God and man, what happens when that relationship break breaks down and the path to reconciliation. It's rigorous, it's thoughtful, it's challenging, but it is accessible to any of you who are willing and ready to learn. You can take the very same course completely free, or you can take. Take dozens of others. They're amazing, amazing productions. Really, really well done. Thoughtful, great professors that teach them. So visit CharlieForHillsdale.com to enroll today. That's CharlieForHillsdale.comto enroll today. Learn deeply, lead boldly. Carry it forward. Just like Charlie. All right, I'm excited about our next guest here. This is Ridvan Idemir. He is also known as the apostate Prophet. You can check him out on YouTube on X under that handle apostateproph. Welcome back to the show, my friend.

[Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet)]

Thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be here.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, well, we're happy to have you. So for those of you in the audience who are maybe not aware of Ridvan's story, he was born and raised a Muslim and then sort of broke away from the faith, and now he's a Christian, which is excellent. But he gives incredible insights about the Muslim mindset, the frame of mind, their ideology. And so, Ridvan, I tasked you with a specific task to go figure out what the vibe is in Iran right now, the people on the ground. I know you have a lot of Iranian friends, Persian friends. So what is the vibe in Iran? And ultimately, that leads to the next question. Are they going to rise up?

[Michael Knowles]

Okay.

[Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet)]

Well, it's very complicated. I know it's very complicated. I talked to many Iranians over the last few days. I have been following the whole situation very closely, talked to Iranians. I speak to Iranians who live outside of Iran, some that are inside Iran, some that are outside and communicate with families inside Iran. The situation is very complicated. What people need to understand is that the people of Iran haven't had access to the Internet for, I think, 31 days now. So it's been more than a month. The Internet has been entirely and completely shut down by the Islamic Republic, the Islamic regime, with the excuse that, you know, they have to. To tackle misinformation and international global foreign interference and all that. But shutting down your own people's access to the Internet is, of course, a very miserable way to treat your own people. And it's clear why this is being done. It's to prevent Organizing to prevent, mobilization to prevent, you know, people communicating with each other. So the average Iranian has great difficulties accessing information and understanding what's actually going on. Those Iranians that we see, we usually see video recordings. We receive some limited information. The majority of Iranians, according to the latest research of all different sources, say that over 85 to 90% of Iranians despise the Islamic Republic that is in charge and want it gone. So they have no good feelings about this government. Many of them look with hope at the current war. I know for some people it seems like it's a little bit puzzling and confusing that they would cheer on the bombing of their own country, but that's not really what is happening. The current US And Israeli strikes are vastly carried out on military sites and government facilities. Vastly. Not exclusively, but vastly. The Iranians generally seem to be happy about it and celebrate it. You can see them sharing videos of themselves singing about it and smiling and enjoying it and hoping for the downfall of the Islamic regime. Regime. The problem is that the Islamic regime is a strongly and firmly embedded regime, an authoritarian government that also has its own militia and its own forces. So Iran has two separate militaries, the regular national military and then the one that is purely loyal to the Islamic regime. That is an Islamic military. And that military is very vicious and very loyal to, to the Islamic regime. They have their own special forces, the Basij. They have the irgc, which is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is all about protecting Islam and the ambitions of the Islamic Republic. Those people are the problem because as much as the people of Iran are willing to get rid of this regime, they are dealing with a very, very barbaric, very ruthless, very vicious force that is loyal to the Islamic regime. Regime. They might make up only less than 10%. Those who are loyal to the regime might only make up less than 10% of the population. But they have very strong organized military and police forces that protect them and that have no issues shooting down civilians in masses in the thousands if they mobilize, which is why we have not seen much of an uprising. And I'm sure you're going to ask that as a follow up. But so that's, that's the situation right now. People are, people are hopeful that this will, that America and Israel will together do something to weaken and destroy this Islamic regime. But they are also a little bit uncertain and frightened also because Donald Trump has kind of sent mixed messages to the people of Iran, such as the latest is stay inside while bombs are falling. But also at the same time, seize the mobile moment and, you know, be ambitious, make the change and all that. So there is uncertainty, there is hope, there is some fear. But I would say the most dominant feeling that I, that I perceive from Iran is that there is hope at the moment.

[Blake]

I mean, obviously we hope you're right, Ridvan, but at the same time, I guess I just, I sometimes wonder if when we see these clips or when we see these narratives, like, are we being worked? Because I feel like, like certainly before the strikes were launched, I think I perceived on X, I perceived on media a lot of efforts to sell, like, oh, it's really on the tipping point. It's clearly just about to fall and it looks really convincing. And then strikes happen. And it's not even that the government doesn't collapse. It's that there's not obvious signs that it would be, you know, on the ropes. And I guess, inevitably, is it the case that when we're seeing videos come out of countries like Iran, we are going to see the people who are most likely to have access to the Internet, have access to smartphones, have access to stuff even when there's the middle of a war going on. And that's just not going to be a representative group for a country like Iran where there are rural people, poor people, who are more likely to be backing a fundamentalist regime like this one.

[Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet)]

So first again, I would like to establish, I mean, these are. These are legitimate concerns and questions. But so according to all the research, even by Iranian organizations, Gaman and certain others, when the Iranian people themselves are polled, this is prior to the war, when they are polled and asked about their opinions on the government and who or what should be in charge. Over 85% of them say that the Islamic regime should not be in charge. The most popular option for people to pick, as for who should be in charge is half or up to half of the population, says that the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi should take over and should lead the country towards some kind of democracy or something like that. So the people are really, really severely disheartened. Much of the videos that come out are. Many of the videos that come out, come out after blackouts. When somebody records something, then we wait for a while and then they somehow gain access to the Internet. They publish it and then we see it. So I do have a lot of sources of. There's a lot of people I can recommend many people who are doing this all the time. One of those is a Canadian politician, former politician, actually was kicked out because she was Speaking about, you know, critically about Islam, Goldie Amari, she posts about this or reports about this and talks to Iranians within Iran every day. And so the sentiments there are generally that the people have hope. Now, there is one misunderstanding, which is you mentioned tipping point. I would have been, I was also at the beginning of this war, very careful to say that the Islamic regime is about to die or about to crumble. I was sure that the supreme leader Khamenei would die and be killed. He was on the list, very high of people who were to be killed. But the Islamic regime, as I said, is not necessarily at a very terrible tipping point. They are weakened, but even when they are weak, they have a very firm ideology that they stand by. They are hardcore ideologues and loyalists. If they only had three people left in that government, they would still not give up and they would still fire whatever they have at their surroundings in order to survive. This is not a government that actually cares about the people. Think about it this way. If in a Western nation, the majority of the population walked toward their government buildings and demanded that the, the government steps down, in a civilized, you know, Western society, the government would most likely eventually give up. In Iran, Iranians are also very, very much unlike most of the Middle Eastern people. But their government is a very barbaric Islamist regime and they don't understand any of this. If the entire population walked toward the government and demanded them to step down, they would have no problem shooting down and mowing down the entire population. Population in order to preserve their, their ideology and their ideological apocalyptic government which has the ambitions of bringing about their end time figure and, you know, expanding Islam or Shia Islam to the whole world. So there's also one aspect which is at the beginning of the war, Israel itself was trying to explore whether they could help the Iranian people overthrow the regime. The latest reports are that the Israeli government itself is a little bit frustrated because they don't seem to really be able to mobilize the Iranian people. It's because the Iranian people are scared. The last time they stood up, the last few times they stood up, they were massacred. Just a few months ago, In January, over 30,000 of them were killed.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, Ridvan, hang right there. We're gonna play some of these clips from Reza Pavlovi from CPAC and get your reaction to it. And then we're going to talk about boots on the ground. And that's a big debate here in the United States, as you know. So we're gonna discuss both those items with You, I want to tell you about strong cell. Strongcell is amazing. I'll never forget traveling around with Charlie and all of you guys always asking him about strong cell. Yes, he really did love it. And yes, he was a big believer in nadh, which is the breakthrough with strong cell. Nadh is, is what powers your cells in your body. The mitochondria need nadh. This is what gives them nadh. So if you have brain fog, chronic fatigue, chronic illness, word recall issues, try strong cell for four to six weeks, you're going to notice a massive change and you're going to love it. And here's the best part. 90 day risk free money back guarantee now. So use promo code Charlie at [e-mail], save 20% off your order and get a 90 day risk free money back guarantee. We love it. You'll love it. Give it a shot today. We'll be right back with Ridvon. All right, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk show. More with Ridvan Idemir. And he's also known as the apostate prophet. Check him out on YouTube and x a great follow. I'm going to play this cut here from Prince reza Pahlavi at CPAC site 5 for the goodwill between our two people which you see on vibrant display here today. To continue, we must finish the job. This regime in its entirety must go. If we do not finish the job and leave a ramp of the regime in place, the threat posed by this Islamic Republic will not be solved. It will only be made worse. Terrorists cannot be trusted to bring peace. They are thugs. They are not dealmakers. They are agents of chaos. All right, so Ridvan, we've got this juxtaposition here, right, where you hear Raza saying we gotta have regime change. Trump is like, well, we've already had regime change because the guys I'm working with right now are really nice. Nice. And then we just got a report from Breitbart saying Israel will decline to join any ground operations Americans might launch in Iran. There's all kinds of mixed signals. Are we gonna do we need boots on the ground to get this done, to get this mission accomplished, to get the overthrow of the regime? And is that we're against that? I'll just be really honest. We're against that on the show. And so is that needed? Because they're not armed. The IRGC is armed. That's why they mow people down in the streets. How do you overthrow this regime without boots on the ground? Israel says they're not gonna help Reza says we gotta get regime change, make it all make sense.

[Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet)]

And that's also one of the main issues, why the Iranians are not really rising up to overthrow the regime. Rising up to overthrow the regime is not something that the Iranian population would really be, you know, would lovingly do. It would result in mass violence and killings. And it's not. It's. It's not a very good Iranian trait that are. That they are really, really into. Unlike most of the other, you know, Middle Eastern or Arab countries, for example, it is a very difficult situation. It depends on what's really what. What the plan really is. The thing is that Donald Trump and Netanyahu both said that. That. That there is no future for this entire regime. So that the. But then Trump also said that he's actually in good talks with the current Iranian leadership, whereas the Iranian side said we are actually not. So we are receiving lots of mixed signals and there is a complex situation on the ground. The Iranian military says there are no talks. We will not surrender to any of your demands. You will lose this war publishing Lego AI videos and things like that. What the American government currently demands from them is that they completely roll back their nuclear enrichment program. Iran made it very clear that they plan to enrich uranium to absurd levels of, you know, 60 or 80 or 90. And civilian, reasonable civilian use is capped at 5%. So they are clearly aiming for military use to dismantle most of the nuclear facilities, to stop completely and disband all their proxy military units like the Hezbollah, the Houthis and all that. Iran is not going to do these things. Any kind of peace deal that might be reached will be a temporary one. And if there is a peace deal that will be reached, we will be in no time back to fighting again after this, maybe in months, maybe in a few years. So the regime needs to go, it needs to change. It is also, I would say, from my perspective, a moral issue. This is a regime that brutally mistreats and kills its population overnight. Nothing over women or girls refusing to cover themselves properly and all that. For a power like America, it would be a. It would be a good and moral thing to help them take out this. That said.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet)]

That said, I also would not like to see boots on the ground in the traditional way. It would be a very difficult situation. It would bring suffering to America, to Americans, and it could also escalate very quickly and result in massive bloodshed over there. What I do think is reasonable is if. If America and Israel take this seriously and, you know, gain complete air superiority over Iran, which is, by the way, one of the goals of the, of the, of the, of the current proposed peace deal, to have complete, you know, intrusive surveillance over Iran. If they gain proper air superiority. I think the only, only way that boots on the ground could be done would be to send in a special force to take out certain targets and then to establish a, you know, a proper force for the people inside that country. But that is, I am at this point just speculating and, you know, wishing and hoping for something, but it's unclear what's, what's going to come here.

[Blake]

I just, it makes me concerned where people say, as you say, the regime is bad, the regime must go. But if we're going to say the regime, regime must go, what is actually the expense we're willing to bear? Because I think if you could topple this government entirely with air power, it would have happened by now. And so instead, once you're committing troops, well, it's a country. What is it, three times the size of, I think three times the size of Ukraine? It's like five times the size of Texas, something like that. 90 million people, very rugged, very mountainous. It's got a lot of big cities. It's of, got lot a, a lot of deserts, it's got a lot of mountain forests. And I don't think a few thousand people could topple that government. You would actually need a big commitment. And at that point, I don't think we have the political lift for that in the United States. I don't think we have the readiness to spend that sort of thing. And then you're stuck asking yourselves, okay, we say the regime must go, but do we actually think that, or can

[Charlie Kirk]

we tolerate some sort of lesser arrangements? Yeah. My issue is then it's like, well, listen, I don't want a nation build. I mean, I want regime change for the Iranian people, but I want stuff for America too. And the whole time we're focused on this. We're not spending $200 billion here at home to get it fixed. You know what I mean? So I just, as an American, you're kind of going, okay, if we can't get everything we want, but we can get the Strait of Hormuz open and we can get no nukes, end of their ballistic missiles, what, Whatever. Is that good enough? Right. At some point, Iranians need to take this into their own hands. And maybe Reza can do it. Maybe he can spark this revolution.

[Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet)]

Maybe, I mean, he tries to appeal to the loyal forces all the time. The issue is. So there is one conversation that people have and that people raise, which is that the Islamic regime in Iran does not pose an imminent threat to the United States of America. I agree that it doesn't pose an imminent threat to the United States of America. However, it does pose a threat overall. And when you have a very vicious, fierce enemy, you usually don't wait until they pose an imminent threat. So even if it is simply for our own interests, if America just lets them be and comes out with a deal that prevents them from advancing their nuclear enrichment program, first of all, I do not believe for a second that the Islamic regime will actually honor that. So secondly, the Islamic regime has it in their constitution and in their words the entire time. Make no mistake, they are expanding their ballistic missile capabilities. Their slogan, their most popular slogan has been for 40 years now, death to America and death to Israel. America is the great Satan. Israel is the small Satan.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, we gotta wrap up. We're running out of time here. But your point is well made. Thank you for making the time.

[Ridvan Idemir (Apostate Prophet)]

Thank you.

[Charlie Kirk]

We're praying for success in a quick wrap up to this conflict in Iran. Thank you, my friend. We'll talk to you again soon. We'll see you tomorrow. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.