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A
My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro American student organization in the country, fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're gonna end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You gotta stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Point USA College chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life. And I encourage you to do the same. Here I am, Lord.
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B
Use me.
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A
Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. The Charlie Kirk show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends and viewers.
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C
All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk show. It's March 12, 2026. Welcome, Blake.
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A
Howdy.
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C
Lots to get to. We're gonna start off with a guest here right at the top of the hour, and that's Stuart Kaplan. He's a former FBI special agent because we have an FBI report that suggests the Iranian regime could target California with drones. That's right, a drone attack off America's west coast. And so we need some experts to help us break this down. So welcome to the show. Stuart Kaplan, former FBI AGENT.
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D
Good afternoon. Thank you for having me.
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C
Well, it's an honor to have you. Let's go ahead and play one of these clips here just to set the table for us. I think it's important as an ABC report cut 9, the FBI warning of
- [01:54]
E
possible Iranian drone attacks on our homeland. A new alert reviewed by ABC News revealing Iran's aspirations to conduct a surprise attack specifically against unspecified targets in California. The FBI saying it's warned police departments across the Golden State now of strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles or drones as tensions rise in the Middle East.
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C
The alert that we reviewed said an uncorroborated report suggested that unidentified Mexican cartel leaders had authorized attacks using drones carrying explosives. So they know that capability exists. And the separate alert that we've reviewed, Kira, says that Iran has those same kinds of aspirations. All right, so, Stuart, what. What are you hearing? What's separate fact from fiction here, please?
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D
So let me give you some unfortunate facts and a real reality check. When you go back to October 7th of 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, that was a real wake up call to our intel community across the board. And I can tell you, unfortunately, as you may recall, some of our most stellar politicians were on the sidelines offering their congratulations to Hamas and other proxies in an effort to downplay the impact that that devastating day had on Israel. On Israel and on their Israeli citizens. And the intel community became very alarmed at the prospect that anybody here domestically, homegrown could go online, go to their local hobby store and purchase a drone and easily and readily adapt a drone and attach an improvised explosive device. And that device could also allow someone to be anonymous, meaning that apparatus or that drone could be deployed without anybody knowing where that original deployment happened. For example, you could deploy it from your house, from a rooftop, from a backyard, anywhere because of the GPS technology that is now readily available. And the FBI became very alarmed at that prospect. Unfortunately, during that period of time, with the Biden administration being too concerned about placating the Palestinian movement and our higher academic learning institutions with lowering the American flag and raising the Palestinian flag, it became a lackluster effort or a effort that was non existent. And now the bells and whistles are resonating and the alarm bells are off the charts. With respect to now playing catch up. The problem with now trying to play catch up is there are too many people that have entered into the United States unvetted, unchecked, unchallenged, as well as our borders are open with respect to social media, gaming platforms, the Internet and homegrown terrorism. And sleeper cells are here domestically. I don't care if you just take by way of example the two suburbanites that came from Pennsylvania last week to New York City and tried to deploy improvised explosive devices. Fortunately, they were identified and neutralized very quickly. But that's a perfect example of the climate that we are living in. And so the threat of deployment of drones anywhere in the United States is real. It's here. It's been unchallenged, it's been unchecked. And we now are in a catch up period to try to identify and neutralize those potential threats.
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C
So I wanna play a clip from President Trump yesterday about the sleeper cells. He was asked about it and we'll get your reaction on the other side. Cut six. They try to hit us back.
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D
Have you been briefed about how many
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C
Iran sleeper cells there could be inside
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F
the US Right now?
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G
And a lot of people came in through Biden with this stupid open border, but we know where most of them are. We've got our eye on all of them. I think if it doesn't, they came in through the open border policies of sleepy Joe Biden, one of the worst, the worst president in the history of our country. And we've got our eyes on all of them.
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C
Do you buy that, Stuart?
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D
You know, in fairness and just being transparent, I'm not so sure that our government has our eyes on all those potential sleeper cells, or it would be nearly impossible to have our eyes, whether digital surveillance or physical surveillance, on every individual who has come into the country unchecked or unchallenged. I think the other issue that's percolating is you have the drug cartels that they themselves are under a tremendous amount of pressure because the United States has flexed, finally its muscle to try to neutralize that threat in Mexico. And so I think the drug cartels can easily be persuaded to fund or assist or aid other individuals who, quite frankly, are enemies of the United States. And we have a conversion of multiple fronts, multiple threats. And of course, keep in mind that the purchase of a drone is not a very expensive proposition. Anybody can go into a big box store at this particular time in our lives and go into Best Buy and buy a drone and easily go online and adapt it to disperse or dispense or drop an improvised explosive device or attach some sort of chemical agent to it. That's a significant threat. And unfortunately, and I can use, by way of example, I could park my car or my van outside the stadium in Dallas, Texas, at a Dallas Cowboys football game unchallenged, you know, with very little if no security with respect to at least getting into the parking lot. Await until such time as maybe the first quarter, second quarter, halftime, whenever I decide, and I can open the hatch of my van and deploy a drone and fly it into and onto that stadium before anybody would be able to identify and, you know, realize the potential threat, it would be way too late. And that is the danger and the reality that we are confronted with right now. Now, I'm not trying to be an alarmist. You've asked me a question. And in fairness to your viewers and to your listening audience, I think it is better for us to be better informed. And I will say this to your viewing audience that we all, in 2026, play a role in. If you see something, say something. Because our national security, our potential way of life is at risk. We are the greatest country on this planet. We enjoy our freedoms, but right now, there are too many countries or too many individuals that would like to see us on our knees, and that would be a change of trajectory of where we have been as a nation.
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C
Stuart, I want to put up this quote from Caroline Levitt. She said this post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people. They wrote this based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single unverified tip. The email even states the tip was based on unverified. She highlights that intelligence. Yet ABC News left out this critical fact in their story. Why? To be clear, no such threat from Iran to our homeland exists and it never did. Your reaction?
- [10:02]
D
So let me just say this. I don't know where ABC actually got that information, but I again, I want to be clear to your audience. Not only is there a real threat with respect to the deployment of drones, there is a real threat with the utilization of ultralights. Now, some of your viewers may be too young to remember or to know ultralights are like a kind of like a hang glider with a propeller.
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C
Little, of course, what was that? The super bowl or something where they landed in the middle of.
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D
Exactly. And those improvised type of cheap, inexpensive apparatuses that are readily available to anybody to the consumer online were also deployed on October 7th of 2023.
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C
Of course. Yeah. And I want to be clear, Stuart. I don't want to give any of the bad guys ideas out there, but I understand your point for sure, that there are cheap, homemade ways to cause havoc and to attack Americans, to commit terrorism in the homeland.
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D
And to your point, I don't want to give anybody any further ideas either. But what I want to try to do is that it used to be we were solely relying upon law enforcement and our intelligence community to keep us safe. And most of the time it was better that we didn't really know what was out there because to some extent we may end up in the fetal position and may say to ourselves, it's just not worth getting out of bed. But I want your viewers to know that we shall never, ever succumb to any threats, whether domestically or abroad. But with that being said, we all play a part in paying attention to, to our surroundings and to our neighbors and our loved ones and even our family members. Because often, too often, more recently, is that people who are the closest to these individuals, there are some signals or some red flags that had they been brought to the attention of law enforcement, may have been readily identified and neutralized the threat before the consequences play out.
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C
Yeah, absolutely. I want to play this other clip as well and get your reaction, Stuart, because, you know, I'm just curious, you know, what you're hearing with your contacts, I think it's important. Sat 3, please. An alarming report of threats outside Iran. ABC News reports Iran may be activating sleeper cells. Quote, the US has intercepted encryptive communications believed to have originated in Iran that may serve as an operational trigger for sleeper assets outside the country. If true, further illustrating Secretary of State Marco Rubio's point, we are fighting a terrorist government. So that I kind of want to square the circle here, because we're talking about maybe homemade, maybe even individually inspired, like we saw with the Pennsylvania suburbanites that went over to Gracie Mansion. That's homemade, do it yourself stuff. Right. That was a report that seemed like they had a trigger and they were going to get actual Iranian IRGC members that had infiltrated the border under Biden. So what are you hearing? Is the bigger threat here or is it just kind of both? And right now?
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D
No, I think the greatest threat to all of us is, quite frankly, the Internet and being indoctrinated by these extremists that have the ability to be faceless and to prey upon our younger, you know, generation, whether on a gaming platform, Instagram, you know, Facebook, you name it. That our children are so unfortunately distracted by all of this noise out there. And that unfortunately, you know, some of these younger kids are so impressionable and so apt to being influenced that the bad guys realize that we can now sit, you know, in our other countries and target these younger kids to get them to carry out these dastardly deeds. And so, by way of example, again, I being somewhat redundant, the two individuals that I believe were 18 years of age in suburbanite Pennsylvania traveled to New York City to rain havoc.
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C
Yeah. Living in a $2 million home.
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D
That is correct. And so the kids next door could be the next kids to now carry out some terrorist, you know, act of terrorism.
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C
Yeah. And I want to make one point. I called around yesterday when I saw this report, and there is some indication to believe that this was a previous report from, like, early February, before the strikes had even happened. You know, because if you're going to. I think the DIY stuff is really. I think that's really insightful and, you know, terrifying on some level. And so if you see something, say something. Absolutely. Message heard loud and clear. We all have to contribute to the safety of the country. But, you know, as far as them getting, you know, a ship close enough to, you know, 3,000 kilometers and sending in some of those unmanned aerial craft that we've seen in the Middle East, I don't think that's as reasonable. But the cartel angle, that was what piqued my interest in a big way because I believe completely, you know, after El Mencho went down, that the cartels could be very motivated to get involved and try and sow some chaos here domestically. Final 30 seconds to you, Stuart.
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D
No, I mean to your point. Look, the cartels are so well funded, they have so much money and so they can hide behind as a subterfuge and have us think that it may have been the Iranians, it could have been the Chinese, it could have been the Russians. And that also lies in heightening the threat level and the risk of it being misplaced by blaming one group when it could come from another. At the end of the day, like I said, we all play a part in this. I think our government now finally is doing everything possible to keep us safe.
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C
Yeah, well, I mean, when you see those pictures of the cartels and they've got like rocket launchers and armored vehicles, they got capacity, there's no doubt. Stuart Kaplan, former FBI agent thank you for your time. Thank you for, I think, the prescient warning. See something, say something.
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D
Thank you.
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C
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B
Well, fog of war end. It's just, you know, wars are sort of exciting and interesting, but at the same time they move slowly, they consume a lot of attention. But then a lot of time will pass where not much will happen.
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C
Well, there's a lot of, there's a lot of going back and forth that doesn't necessarily translate into any significant meaning for the audience either. So we're bombing more things. Okay, what's the actual status though? So listen, the Iranian military is basically firing back single digit missiles per day right now. Maybe, maybe low double digits. All right? So there's been a lot of capacity that's been taken out. 5,500 targets have been hit in the first 10 days of the conflict. And that's a lot. 5,500 is a lot. Even General Petraeus was on with Jesse Waters last night saying that this is from any way you cut it. And I'm not saying you have to be supportive, I'm not saying you have to be against. I'm just saying militarily, this has been a rout, okay? It doesn't mean that Iran doesn't have levers to pull. They do. But militarily, we control the skies, we bomb at will, we strike at will. And that's something that we need to be aware of. So every ship that Iran has, their navy has been completely obliterated. We've just hit, I think, another 28 ships that were capable of laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. So that's a lot. Okay. Anytime they move or put their head up, we get them. Okay? That is very much true. We hit their biggest bank, the one that pays the irgc. I think this is a very interesting piece of intel as well. Do you have a thought on that?
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B
Well, I mean, I don't know. Banking, it's not like matters physical buildings of banks nearly as much as it used to be.
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C
Well, it matters when you hit the infrastructure and their ability to pay the IRGC troops. So apparently there's a paycheck that's supposed to go out at the end of this week to their military. Now if they stop getting paid, that could be a huge problem. Now their currency is in free fall, their economy is in free fall. This is going to continue putting pressure on the Iranian regime. There's no doubt. All right. So all of these things are positives. Now, I want to play something actually from Newt Gingrich here because there is a counter point to be made. So what are the levers that Iran can pull? Here's Newt Gingrich explaining his thoughts on it. Cut 14.
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G
They have to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
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D
Yes.
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G
I don't care what it costs you. If they can't keep it open, this war will, in fact, be an American defeat before very long because the entire world, including the American people, will react to the price of oil if the strait stays closed very long. So I lived through this with Reagan, as you did in the late 80s. Keeping the strait open is the number one job because it buys you time.
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C
All right, so this is a ally of the president who is being very forthright about his concerns here. And I think there's truth to this. The Strait of Hormuz is the key to a lot of this conflict because we have a new clip from Iranian state media, some of the first, if you will, comments out of the new supreme leader the summer.
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B
Allegedly.
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C
Allegedly. And what clip is this, guys? Okay. Yeah. This is his first public statement. We're going to play this for you. Allegedly. We haven't seen this guy. He's not come out of his bunker, if he's even alive. Cut 4.
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H
On Iranian state media, a presenter read a new statement from Iran's new supreme Leader, Mustaba Khamenei. The supreme leader said in the statement, we believe in friendship with neighbors and only target the bases and we will inevitably continue. That is not true. We know that many Gulf countries have had their residential and civilian infrastructure attacked. Now, Iran's new supreme leader in this statement goes on to say all US Bases should immediately be closed in the region and those bases will be attacked. He calls on unity among the people of Iran and participation in Quds Day, also says that he will target US Bases in the region. Iran's new supreme leader goes on to say the closure of the Strait Hormuz should be continued as a tool to, quote, pressure the enemy.
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C
All right, so I feel like we
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B
should probably explain what the Strait of Hormuz is. I'm not sure if we ever have.
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C
Well, I mean. Yep, sure, go ahead.
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B
So if you look at a map of the Middle East, I don't know if we have one hand there we are. So that's the Strait of Hormuz. So Iran is on the north end. So if you think of the Persian Gulf, it's that body of water. And that's kind of where all the oil, all the gas is.
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C
20% of the planet's energy flows through the Strait of Horizon.
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B
So Iraq is right at the end of that gulf. That's where we went in. That's where Kuwait is. And then on the south end of it, you've got Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia. Those are all big oil gas exporters. Iran's on the north end, and that little choke point, a little space, is what a huge amount of the world economy basically flows through. And Iran, you know, they can't, hopefully, they can't easily hit the United States. They can't really easily invade the other countries, but they can sort of hold the world hostage. And what they're planning to do here is they say they can close the Strait of Hormuz by laying mines, which we're sinking boats to lay mines, but submarines can lay mines. I mean, little motorboats can lay mines, speedboats can. I wouldn't be surprised if, like, frogmen can haul mines into place.
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C
They might have to do that. It's a very big challenge to Demine.
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B
You have rockets. And if you want to know how difficult it is, Houthis, which is that militant group in Yemen, they've been harassing ships in the Red Sea, and we really struggled to root them out. There have been ships that have been sailing all the way around Africa to avoid going through the Red Sea because they don't want to get blasted by Houthis. And that's a militant group in Yemen, not a whole state. So the concern of this war is that they would be able to keep that closed. And I think we should be frank with you that there's been a lot of discussion. You know, maybe President Trump could just declare victory and, you know, he doesn't necessarily need to bring down the regime. He can say, we sank their navy. They can't have nukes. They're really degraded. President Trump can't declare victory unless the Strait of Hormuz is open.
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C
Correct.
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B
Period. So he either has to strike a deal to open it or he has to force it open. Only then can he say is it a win.
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C
Right. And that then turns our attention to the new supreme leader, a gentleman that we're told is named Majtaba Khomeini. All right.
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B
The son of the previous Khamenei. But besides that, he's kind of a cipher. In truth. In fact, we don't. We said that that was that first statement he'd given, but that you didn't see it.
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F
We didn't talk.
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B
We don't know if he's injured, we don't know if he's a vegetable, we don't know if he's alive. He could, I mean, we've blown up a lot of the Iranian leadership, so it could be very handy to have this symbolic leader that we know nothing about and then someone else is able to call the shots without getting blown up.
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C
Yeah, and here's the problem is that he in theory could be more hardlined than his father. So he's 56 year old son of the late Ali Khamenei, Iran's longtime supreme leader who was assassinated on the first day of these strikes. He was picked as successor by the assembly of Experts in a quick election March 3rd through the 8th, 2026. So just a, just a few days ago. And he's the, that makes him the third supreme leader since Iran's 1979 revolution. All right, so before this, Mataba never held an official government job, but apparently he was known for pulling strings behind the scenes, in the shadows. He has never held a government job.
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B
I don't know that he's ever given a public speech.
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C
Yeah, he apparently is reported. Again, these are. Some of this we just don't know. As Blake said, he's a bit of a cipher. But some reporting indicates that he has long held deep ties, deep connections within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the irgc, through his father's office. He was a mid ranking cleric who's been whispering in the ears for years. That's how it's been put. He allegedly got hit in the leg during the same strikes that killed his father. According to Israeli officials, he's been MIA from public view since becoming leader on March 8th or 9th. No video appearances yet. This was the first public statement that had been attributed to him. Again, we don't even know if he said it. There's been cardboard cutout AI videos going all over the Internet of this guy. It's kind of a meme, a joke that we've never seen him. And if this is to be believed that yeah, there's the cardboard cutout. If this is to be believed, that this was in fact a statement from him, then we see that he is doubling down, he is not shrinking back. And so I think that we have to be honest about the fact, as Blake said, a full circle moment here, that if you cannot open the Strait of Hormuz, this will be a long drawn out conflict that you cannot simply declare victory and get out of.
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B
Yeah. And so we just kind of offer some big picture perspective. There's a Lot of back and forth. First of all, anything you see online, remember most of it's fake. Huge amounts of AI stuff, huge amount of just made up stuff, unverified claims. Remember, there's going to be people claiming we've 100% wonderful and there's people claiming we've already lost and neither is true. Remember President Trump said he had about a four to five week plan for the campaign. We're 11 years old and we're basically one third of the way into that. There is a lot that can still happen.
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C
Yep. And he said, by the way, all the messaging from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth President Trump is that we're not done yet, but militarily we've done a lot of damage and that is certainly true. But just remember this, no regime has ever been removed by air strikes alone.
- [27:56]
B
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A
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B
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A
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- [30:30]
C
So Pete Hegseth is aware of this and he went hard actually when asked about the straight of her moves spelled S T R A I T no G H common when we declare victory,
- [30:44]
B
maybe we'll rename it the Gay of Hormuz.
- [30:47]
C
All right, here we go. Cut to I would reiterate also to
- [30:51]
I
add to what the Chairman said, the truth the President posted last night about that saying if Iran does anything to stop the flow of oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America 20 times harder than they have been hit thus far. He goes on to say death, fire and fury will rain upon them. You've, you've seen the truth and read it. But he takes very seriously the condition of that straits. We have capabilities that no other nation on earth has and we're certainly working with our energy partners across the administration to control for that. That's part of that scoping of this. The world needs to understand this doesn't have, this isn't intended to be nor is it something that will expand. We know exactly what we're attempting to achieve here scoped properly and the American people can count on that for sure.
- [31:37]
C
All right, so Blake, you were talking to some, some naval experts and some shipping experts about this. We're actually lining up some guests on that front there. So we got, we know that the IEA agreed to release 400 million barrels of reserved oil across the, across the world to help with supply. On the supply side we know that there is ships in the Strait of Hormuz that are too scared to move forward. Some of them even got struck. There was fires. So we don't believe that they have the ability, Iran, to take out these tankers necessarily, but they could.
- [32:14]
B
It's all about escalating risk. And if you want to, for those of you who like history, this is also what happened in the world wars. How did Germany try to win World War I, World War II? They had submarines, they surrounded Britain, they tried to sink ships coming to Britain. And it's not that they had to ship sink every single one. They had to endanger them enough that civilian ship captains would not want to sail their boats there. They would say, no, thanks, I don't want my boat to be in danger. And that's what you have here. Like, frankly, you kind of see the point. When President Trump says that they should be braver, he's basically saying there's hundreds, maybe thousands of these ships. If you guys try to go through, they really can't damage or destroy more than a fraction of you. But it's just enough where ships don't really want to take that risk. They don't want to think, I could be the one who gets blown up for trying to do that. And there have been ships that have gotten hit, they've taken damage. There might be some people who've died from this. And if they're able to slow it up enough, the entire global economy sort of grinds to a halt as a result.
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C
Right. Yeah. President Trump has a clip out. I don't think we have it loaded, but he essentially says they need to be more crazy. I think they should go through. They can't stop them. And there is a story of a crazy Greek.
- [33:28]
B
Yes. I was reading there was a thread on X about what ships have gone through and apparently there is a highly risk taking Greek admiral who. Or not admiral, ship owner who he's maybe done this with the Red Sea too, where he just says, let's run it through. I think we'll turn off our transponder. So it's harder to spot these ships, go through at night and just risk it. But another aspect that's made this complicated, for example, there are civilian Iranian ships that actually are still sailing through the straits. We're not sinking them. There are fleet ships, apparently there are Chinese ships that go through and they basically just loudly broadcast this is a Chinese ship and they assume Iran will not take a shot at them. And they haven't.
- [34:07]
C
Right.
- [34:07]
B
And so it's not that it's totally Closed, it's that some ships are able to go through, are allowed through, but
- [34:14]
C
if you are looked at as part of the American allied or the sort of establishment oil industry that's unsanctioned, then you're getting hit. Now also, we should note that Saudi Arabia has begun routing. They do have a pipeline to get through the Red Sea, so they are routing that.
- [34:33]
B
There's a lot of alternatives.
- [34:34]
C
5 million barrels a day are going to be.
- [34:36]
B
A lot of these countries along the Gulf are not. They're not super friendly with the Saudis. Qatar and the Saudi Arabians, for example, famously don't get along that well. And Qatar can't pipeline or they'll probably not want to pipeline through Saudi Arabia.
- [34:49]
C
Yeah.
- [34:49]
B
And I wonder if this were to go on long enough, you might see President Trump trying to forcibly impose more cooperation among these countries and saying, you guys need to work together to get through this crisis. And they've all been shot at by Iran, so that might get them all more eager to cooperate.
- [35:05]
C
No, the reports indicate that there is a lot of cooperation actually within the Arab world at this point.
- [35:11]
B
If you want a white pill about this conflict, it's that Israel and then all of the Sunni Arab states have gotten shot at by Iran. And that could be, in the long run, a way that you go towards all of them papering over past differences. They've all been attacked by the same rogue state and that can potentially, maybe that leads to all of them signing the Abraham Accords, all of them having a long term peace deal. Match that up with Gaza ceasefire stuff and rebuilding that. That would be an optimistic take and we want to flag those optimistic takes because there is a lot of doomerism out there. There's a lot of frustration and we should point towards upside, potential opportunities as well as potential hazards.
- [35:51]
C
Well, what you're seeing this conflict devolve into is that Iran's military could never withstand the US Israeli joint military actions. That was never going to happen. What this could devolve into is more of a Guerril type situation where they use just the fear and uncertainty of passing through the strait to really bog down energy markets, which is the long term issue. Then you see the new supreme leader going underground, not coming out, because if he comes out, he's going to get killed. Israel has already basically said we intend to kill him. And that is another front on this whole Iran war that we need to keep our eye on is that the objectives of the US and Israel could be divergent. Right. Israel wants to see complete regime change. I think President Trump is a little bit more pragmatic, realizes that if this keeps dragging on for too long, that he's going to want to pull out and declare victory. But again, you have to assume that no regime change has ever been successfully accomplished through only aerial assaults. So that brings us to Kharg Island. Now, Carg island is another piece of this puzzle. So Kharg island sits off the coast of Iran. It's been described as. There it is, there's a picture of it. It's been described as the cash register of Iran. This is where their oil ultimately sort of goes and then it gets loaded onto tankers and then shipped, usually to China, basically. And so the question is, are we going to use troops? Are we going to use special forces? That Kharg island is a very important piece to this puzzle. If you were to put troops on that island, could you hold it? Would you be able to protect them? Would they be sitting ducks? But you could essentially cut off their oil flow and increase pressure on the Iranian regime, on the economy of Iran, to force potentially regime change, protests in the streets. If you just occupied.
- [37:48]
B
That I feel, that I feel is a very dangerous set of words like, oh, it starts off, I just occupy this little island. I totally send in little squads to do.
- [37:58]
C
But it's on the table. You better believe it's on the table.
- [38:02]
B
I think, I think you could. There is certainly a defensible case, a few limited raids, a few tiny groups of guys. It's not the same as big boots on the ground taking Tehran and all of that. It's not the same as a ground invasion. That's objectively true, but it is.
- [38:14]
C
Each of those little steps, incremental steps,
- [38:17]
B
leads you towards something that certainly Charlie warned against, President Trump himself warned against in the past. We just have to be. No, we just have to be very careful because there are certainly people out there who would love to see a general ground invasion, and I think we have to keep warning against that.
- [38:37]
C
Before he ever stepped behind a microphone, Charlie understood something important. Leadership begins with learning. He didn't chase a diploma or a title. He chased truth through Hillsdale College's free online courses. He studied the great works of the classics, the principles of the American founding and the life changing truths of the Bible. Those ideas didn't just inform him. They shaped his character, strengthened his convictions and prepared him for the challenges ahead. One of the courses he took was the Genesis Story, taught by Hillsdale Professor Dr. Justin Jackson. This free online course explores the relationship between God and man. What happens when that relationship is broken and the path toward reconciliation. It's a real college course. Rigorous, thoughtful and accessible to anyone willing to learn. You can take the very same course completely free. Grow stronger in your faith. Gain clarity about humanity and your place in the world. Prepare yourself for a life with courage and conviction. Visit charlieforhillsdale.com to enroll today. That's charlie for hillsdale.com learn deeply. Lead boldly. Carry it forward. We are joined by the great Miranda Devine. She is a New York Post columnist as well as author of the Big Guy, a new book that you gotta check out. Miranda, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show. It's good to have you.
- [39:57]
J
Thanks so much, Andrew. It's an honor to be with you all.
- [40:00]
C
You know what's funny, Miranda? I actually still am using that charger that I stole from you. That mobile charger, it's baby blue. So if you ever see me with a baby blue mobile charger, it's Miranda Devine's fault. Anyways, thank you for that.
- [40:14]
J
It was a gift.
- [40:16]
C
It was a gift. It was a gift I stole because I was in a bind and you were very sweet and you said, here, take this. So, Miranda, I woke up this morning to social media showing me all these images of what's happened to Gracie Mansion. I do not have a memory of Gracie Mansion ever being this much in the news. First there was the IEDs that media falsely reported were targeting the mayor. And actually they were targeting anti Muslim protesters out front of the mansion. And now we see that it's been turned into essentially an iftar, a celebration, I guess, a Ramadan related celebration, Muslim celebration. Let's just go ahead and play one of these clips for you. This is Mayor Mamdani speaking some language. I'm not sure which cut. 12.
- [41:05]
F
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
- [41:06]
J
Thank you.
- [41:14]
C
That is America. That is not AI. Miranda. What, what am I watching? What happened? What's going on in New York, please?
- [41:22]
J
Well, I mean, you're watching the takeover of the city by a radical Islamist. He's not just a communist, he's an Islamist. And it's not like he hid that from us. I mean, just a couple of weeks before the election, he tweeted out very proudly a photo of him having a lovely, you know, meeting with a 911 imam or a guy who was an unindicted co conspirator in the first World Trade center attack. Not, not 9 11, but still he was proud of it. It wasn't anything that he was going to hide. And so you can't say that voters didn't know what they were getting. And then of course, in his victory speech, he singled out all the people that got him elected, which was all the foreign born New Yorkers and people who'd been in New York for less than 10 years. So, you know, anyone who's been, who is a long term New Yorker did not vote for Mamdani. So that's what we've got. And since he's been in office, he's really. I actually, I knew he was bad, but I thought, well, he'll have to moderate because he's got a really big mayor for the whole of New York and there are a lot of business interests and you know, surely he'll have to moderate, but he has not done that. And the perfect example was this last weekend when we had these two alleged ISIS radicalized sympathizers, I guess you'd call them young men who threw bombs, IEDs filled with shrapnel to cause maximum carnage into a group of protesters outside Gracie Mansion. And you know, the first thing Namdani does when he comes out is talk about white supremacists and bigotry and racism has no place in New York. And then finally he gets around to, oh, you know, violence has no know placed in. I saw that, like violence, it wasn't violence, it was, it was a terrorist attack. And thank goodness for the NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch, because she came out and just basically called him out by saying very pointedly, let's not be confused here, this was a terrorist attack by two guys who swore allegiance to isis.
- [43:56]
C
Do you get the sense, Miranda, that New Yorkers are waking up to the reality of their Muslim mayor that seems to have more allegiance to his own faith, to his ethnic background than he does necessarily to the city of New York or to America more broadly?
- [44:16]
J
I'm not sure that anyone who wasn't already woken up to it is woken up to it or cares. You know, I mean, they sort of. The protest outside Gracie Mansion on Saturday was an anti Islam protest run by this rubble rouser right winger, Jake Lang. Right. And so the ISIS guys came in to throw bombs at him and his group, but there were a whole bunch of sort of counter protesters there who say everyone is welcome in New York and they would have been blown up just to the same. But one of them, you may have seen the guy with the megaphone and one of these, these terrorists reaches over and throws a bomb over his head. And the megaphone guy looks quite surprised. Well, he said, since, oh, well, you know, I Still think that everyone is welcome. So I don't know how you change leftists. They're so ingrained in their ideology, they've been brainwashed the moment they set foot in their very elite private schools in Manhattan. And they, you know, they went to universities and, I mean, Columbia, for instance, had the big pro Hamas demonstrations that made every Jew in New York feel in fear for their lives. And who does Zoram Mamdani have for a special dinner on Sunday night, just 24 hours after the bomb outside his mansion? Gracie Mansion. He bombed. It didn't go off. I should point out he has Mahmoud Khalil over, who was the pro Hamas activist agitator who organized those protests and who's born in Algeria. He's an Algerian citizen, he's not an American citizen. And the Trump administration wanted to deport him, quite rightly. And, you know, various judges, leftist judges, have got in the way, and he's become a cause celeb for the left. And Mamdani treated him to this very special dinner on Sunday night and tweeted photos of it to rub it in.
- [46:31]
B
So obviously, these symbolic acts are. They're getting a lot of attention and they definitely matter. Do you have a sense what's the city feel like on the ground? Are we seeing a surge of the disorder that makes life less livable? What's it like on the subway now versus maybe a year ago? And where do you expect that to go in the months to come?
- [46:51]
J
There's the only sign so far has been that they just seem to be more homeless on the streets. And Eric Adams had done quite a good job of especially. I mean, they're mostly mentally ill. In fact, they're all mentally ill and. Or drug affected. And so Eric Adams had sort of instituted this sort of, you know, rule where you could take them off the streets involuntarily, because, of course, if you're drug addicted or mentally ill, you're not going to be thinking rationally. So. But Mamdani came in and immediately unwound that with the result that the first big snowstorm that we had, we had something like a dozen homeless people froze on the street.
- [47:35]
C
I think it was like 24, actually.
- [47:39]
J
Right, okay. Some of them, Daddy goes, oh, it was drug overdoses. Right. But, I mean, they died. And it was because of his policies, and that's his version of compassion. So. And apart from that, he's completely inept when it comes to the basics of being there, like plowing the snow and fixing the potholes. So you do notice that the street is falling apart.
- [48:05]
C
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- [49:04]
E
Police are responding to a scene in West Bloomfield for an active situation shooters. Sources rather say an active shooter threat is underway at Temple Israel and they say a major scene was reported there. If you're familiar with the area, this is located on Walnut Lake Road. So a live look there thanks to our Fox 2 Detroit helicopter as we see that there is some smoke there from a building and that seems to be where the helicopter is concentrating this live look. It's a little hard to tell but we do see that emergency responders are surrounding this building. According to Fox 2 Detroit, there is a threat underway at Temple Israel there in Michigan.
- [49:50]
C
All right, so we're joined by Miranda Devine. Breaking news. A major scene reported at Temple Israel in Detroit. The Detroit area, Bloomfield area. Smoke is seen pouring out of the building. Several police vehicles spotted around the perimeter. The Jewish Federation of Detroit has ordered all Jewish organizations to go into lockout protocol. Miranda, this seems to be the latest in a series of. I don't know if you want to call them sleeper cells. We can only. We can only guess at the motivation, but it seems related to a lot of the violence that we've seen since Iran situation has unfolded. Your thoughts?
- [50:28]
J
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean where that synagogue is in Detroit is the largest Jewish population in Michigan. So it's well known West Bloomfield as being a Jewish neighborhood. And of course Detroit itself, larger metro Detroit has one of the largest Muslim and Arab American populations in America. So Dearborn which is the sort of ground zero of the Muslim presence there is about 20 miles away. So I mean, you know, obviously it's too early to draw any conclusions, but it seems pretty obvious that this is a targeted attack and who has motivations to target? So especially, I mean, you know, Department of Homeland Security has warned us that the Iran war has raised the threat of sort of lone wolf style attacks in the homeland. And we've already seen several of them. You know, the Austin, Texas shooting, the guy wearing the Iran flag shirt and the Alarice. And then of course on the weekend, these ISIS guys. I will say though a counter terror guy did point out about the weekend that those guys, although the media made out that they were provoked into, you know, their violent actions by the right wing white, white nationalists or whatever they were. JAKE Lang Protest, anti Muslim protest. There's no way that they would have been able to get organized in the time that that protest took place because he points out it would have taken months to organize to prepare the bombs, to buy all the ingredients. And they had a storage locker with a whole bunch of bombs in it. So this is sort of part of what you would think that whoever is orchestrating this is activating these cells.
- [52:25]
C
Yeah, I think that is an interesting question. There was a report yesterday, I think we played a Will Kane clip earlier in hour one that said there could be a potential trigger that Iran could put out to trigger some of these sleeper cells. But whether it's a do it yourself lone woe situation or a trigger of IRGC members that slipped through the border under Biden, the result is the same, is that we have communities living in fear. Especially as you, I think, aptly pointed out, Miranda, that West Bloomfield, known Jewish community in Michigan, largest in the state, 20 minutes away, 20 miles away from the ground zero for the Islamification of America. Right.
- [53:10]
B
Right next to, I mean, there's a very old Jewish community in Detroit. It's been there a very long time. More recently it's, yeah, as you say, the center of Islamic settlement in the United States. That's always caused some friction, but it's really ramped up a lot. Charlie warned about this all the time, that there is a huge surge in just anti Semitism and Jew hatred in America. A lot of it is coming from immigration, a lot of it's coming from the left because it hates Israel a lot. But also, let's be frank, some of it's also happened on the right and it's a recurring bugbear. It infects people's brains. They Ramble about it online. And for some of the. I think some of them think it's just like, funny, but it's very lethal for a lot of people.
- [53:55]
C
Yeah. Miranda, when you, you know, obviously New York has a huge Jewish community as well, you talked about the way that the October 7th attack and the response from universities like Columbia made the Jewish community feel unsafe in New York. Have you heard from any of your Jewish friends in the city of New York? I mean, how are they reacting to what's going on in Iran? Are they on security? Is it increased? I mean, what is happening with the Jewish community in New York right now?
- [54:24]
J
Well, Jews in New York are already locked down maximum security because it's been such a hostile environment for them since October 7th. Like since the very day before Israel retaliated in Gaza. They have been under siege. So they're, you know, the ones I know anyway are very much for what President Trump's doing in Iran, think it's absolutely crucial and just abhor Mamdani and just feel kind of betrayed by fellow New Yorkers that Mamdani is now, you know, an Islamist, basically got voted in on the heels of the October 7th backlash. So I think it's very sad. The other thing I'll just point out about Dearborn, which is interesting, is I remember way back when, you know, before the 24 election, when we were all fighting this fight and Charlie was doing that so well about, you know, transgender children and girls in women's sport and indoctrinating children about gender in schools. And, you know, who was a very good ally on that? It was the parents of Muslim parents in Dearborn, Michigan. I mean, I remember being quite surprised and seeing that they were very vocal and that was something that the Democrats paid attention to because that's their base. So it's very sad that, you know, you can have, like, peaceful allyship with these people and then suddenly it turns lethal. Like, seems to have happened today in West Bloomfield.
- [56:01]
C
Yeah, you've seen this in your home nation of Australia as well, the Bondi beach shooting. And, you know, it's really sad to me that Melbourne is now listed as one of the cities. Obviously that happened in Sydney, but Melbourne is listed as one of the cities, the hotbeds for radicalization for Islamists. So the whole world's flipped upside down.
- [56:23]
J
And do you know, Melbourne is the most left wing city in the whole of Australia. It was the one that had the harshest lockdown in the world that everyone embraced and then reelected the same government that did that. And very left wing and they're like frogs in boiling water. Have very good friends there and they just love it because they, I mean, I guess it's a fun city, but like New York, it's very left wing and it's no surprise that it's also the most radicalized because there's this left Muslim Islamist alliance.
- [56:56]
C
Well, and you know what they do is they react to the Bandai beat shooting with like anti hate speech laws. I mean the leftist reaction to terror
- [57:03]
B
is just the worst thing of any terror attack is, you know, the backlash that comes after it occurs.
- [57:08]
C
Miranda Devine, New York Post columnist, author of the Big Guy. Check her out. Thank you, Miranda. We'll have you on again soon.
- [57:15]
J
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, guys.
- [57:19]
C
Before he ever stepped behind a microphone, Charlie understood something important. Leadership begins with learning. He didn't chase a diploma or a title. He chased truth through Hillsdale College's free online courses. He studied the great works of the classics, the principles of the American founding, and the life changing truths of the Bible. Those ideas didn't just inform him. They shaped his character, strengthened his convictions, and prepared him for the challenges ahead. One of the courses he took was the Genesis Story. Taught by Hillsdale Professor Dr. Justin Jackson. This free online course explores the relationship between God and man, what happens when that relationship is broken, and the path toward reconciliation. It's a real college course, rigorous, thoughtful and accessible to anyone willing to learn. You can take the very same course completely free. Grow stronger in your faith. Gain clarity about humanity and your place in the world. Prepare yourself for a life with courage and conviction. Visit charlieforhillsdale.com to enroll today. That's charliefillsdale.com learn deeply, lead boldly. Carry it forward. We are joined in studio by Pastor Lucas Miles. He's the senior director of TPUSA Faith. Welcome back.
- [58:32]
F
Thanks for having me. Always good to be with you guys.
- [58:34]
C
Yeah. So let's just start with this breaking news out of Detroit. If we could throw some of that B roll up, that'd be great. There is an active shooter situation. I'm getting, you know, the details as we have. It says that no confirmed casualties, arrests, suspect identity or motive released by authorities as of the latest report. But we know that it's close to Dearborn, which is the largest Muslim population at least in the state of Michigan. Maybe in the country, I'm not sure. And West Bloomfield is the area where the largest Jewish population lives, so we're guessing. Obviously we haven't had any confirmed reports, but it certainly seems in line with that. The rise of anti Semitism is very alarming. And a lot of that is getting attached to evangelicals a lot. I mean, there's sort of. Now the attack has morphed into an attack on evangelicals because they're seen as being supportive of the state of Israel. I don't want to put you in too much hot water here. This is not what you prep for, because we actually have things that we're doing in the Make Heaven Crowded tour. But just give us your take of the landscape right now.
- [59:45]
F
Yeah, I mean, I would argue that ultimately that this. That it's starting to land on the target, and that is the elimination of this evangelical, really majority in this nation. When you look at why we were so successful 2024 election, major part of that, evangelicals, you look at really the foundation of this nation, the founding of our nation, evangelicalism. Protestants have been at the center of that. And I think that there is this concerted effort to try to dismantle that. I think that a lot of the ideas on the left, whether that be pagan constructs or Marxist constructs, that those cannot be successful unless this biblical worldview is completely removed. And these things are tied together.
- [60:35]
C
Right.
- [60:35]
F
The evangelicals, Protestants historically have aligned with the state of Israel and viewed that as within a spectrum. You have replacement theology on one side and you have dispensation on the other side. But they're both within Orthodoxy. And so we can have a debate on those. What is outside of Orthodoxy? Dual Covenantism, where there's two ways to get saved, one through Christ and another through genealogy. And on the opposite side of that is anti Semitism. Both of those exist outside of Christianity. And so, you know, this is. There's a lot to unpack here. And it just feels like the attacks are just being bombarded from every direction right now. And it's hard to keep up, honestly.
- [61:09]
C
Yeah. I have one update. The building Temple Israel was not. Was not in service. Nothing was scheduled in that building until 1:30 local time. It looks like the attack started around 12:30. A vehicle was deliberately driven into Temple Israel at around 12:30 local time, sparking an active security situation. The car caught fire with visible smoke. Shots were fired afterwards. So the Jewish Federation of Detroit confirmed we are aware of an active security incident at Temple Israel. Law enforcement are responding. Our Jewish agencies are currently in precautionary lockdown. We ask community members to stay away from the area at this time. This was at 5725 Walnut Lake Road, West Bloomfield, Michigan. Nearby Bloomfield Hills and West Bloomfield schools placed in secure Lockdown mode. Again, no confirmed casualties. We don't have any suspect identity, no mode of release, no nothing. Blake, I know you have a lot of thoughts about this. You're Catholic. We have a lot of Catholics at Turning Point. We have a lot of Protestants at Turning Point. You know, you are interesting in this way because you acknowledge that as a Catholic, that a lot of America's founding ethos, ideology, our founding documents came from a Protestant tradition. Like, I guess, make it make sense, combine the two. You know, America kind of is a Protestant nation. This has been the bedrock of our country, our founding, a lot of our strength. But we love Catholics, too. So, I mean, I want your perspective on this.
- [62:41]
B
I mean, it's definitely. I think, you know, Catholics aren't as. They don't have the same kind of connection that evangelicals often do with Israel. You know, with Israel, with Judaism, you know, the idea of, like, for example, Messianic Judaism is not really a thing that has currency in Catholicism. The general idea of Catholicism is like the church is sort of the fulfillment of the Old Testament. So the desire of the church is everyone would join the church because.
- [63:13]
C
Yep, that's what. Is there a Catholic prayer historically at Easter or something?
- [63:17]
B
No, I believe there still is.
- [63:19]
C
I didn't know if that ended after Vatican.
- [63:21]
B
I think they may have changed the wording of it because people disliked it, but.
- [63:28]
C
But it was a prayer. Prayer for. There's still a saved.
- [63:30]
B
There is still a prayer for the Jewish people. Maybe. Maybe what it is is I think there's a prayer for the Jewish people. And it doesn't explicitly say, like, they should convert anymore.
- [63:38]
C
Used to.
- [63:39]
B
I'd have to see the text historically, but it is during the Easter vigil.
- [63:42]
C
I mean, well, I pray the same. I want them. I want Jews to meet Jesus. But this whole, I think this underlying attack against the Protestant bedrock of the country, which has been a bulwark of freedom, it's been a bulwark of conservatism. I mean, what is the 80, 20 vote for Trump or something like that? It is under siege. And so, I mean, maybe tie that into what we're doing with Make Heaven crowded.
- [64:06]
F
Well, look, I mean, you have. There's a lot of groups. It's like, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And I think you're seeing that with Islamicists, Marxists. You're seeing this with, you know, those that would be in kind of this. This neo Nazi, you know, groiper kind of thing that's happening. And I think that they're finding some degree of commonality, though they're completely opposing views themselves, is that they have this sort of uniform position, you know, against Israel. And that's become, you know, just this, this, this unifying, you know, factor in many ways. And so it's, it's frightening. What we need for a solution for this. We need ideological change on an individual level. And that's really what we're doing at Make Heaven Crowded. It's, it's really about, you know, going around the nation taking that spear. Something happened at Charlie's memorial. I mean, you, you cannot get away from that. And there was a, a spiritual DNA shift in this nation that took place. And we saw that it was tangible in the room. It was tangible. It was tangible. After that, churches exploded. My own church, 3x after Charlie's memorial, the next week.
- [65:07]
B
Three times.
- [65:08]
F
Three times. Yeah, yeah. And we've sustained the vast majority of that, of that growth. And so. And we're seeing that we work with 11,000 churches now at TPUSA Faith across a wide array of.
- [65:18]
C
It's actually 12,000. I checked with the two.
- [65:21]
F
Did it hit 12,000? Okay. All right.
- [65:23]
C
All right. Well, you know, not to throw you
- [65:25]
F
under the bus here, but it's growing faster than we can count it. Right. So that was a last week number that I had. And it's been so exciting to see this development. And, you know, these are that. And, you know, understand that number of 12,000. We were at about 4,600 on September 10th. And so we have, we have almost 3x the network of churches that we work with, and we have pastors that are calling us and saying, look, I was always aligned with you guys ideologically, but I just never was really willing to wade into these waters. I never was willing to get in the fight. I was, you know, I was afraid of losing, you know, my people or losing, you know, tithes or whatever. And just like, I know what's at stake now. I know what time it is, and I got to get in the fight. So this Make Heaven Crowded tour, we're going to 30 cities across the country this year. Our next one coming up is in Pennsylvania at Freedom Life Church, I believe, on April 8th. And then we have one of our biggest ones this year is going to be at Prescot, and that is on April 29th. We're expecting over 10,000 people with this one. It is going to be a massive, massive event. Erica's going to be there. Pastor Jack Graham, myself. We've got Ali Beth Stuckey and a couple other surprise guests. We're still lining up.
- [66:35]
C
I mean, listen to some of these cities that we're hitting with the Make Heaven Crowded tour. You've already done Harvest Church, you've already done Awakened Church in San Diego. You've done World Outreach Church in Nashville. But now we're going to Philadelphia, Virginia Beach, Dallas, Portland, Rapid City, South Dakota. There you go. Blake, Little, Dakota. Love. Billings, Montana. Crown Point, Indiana, Louisville, Kentucky, Seattle, Washington. All right. Pursuit Church. Great. In Kirkland, Anchorage, Alaska. El Paso, Texas. Charlotte, North Carolina. Las Vegas, Nevada. Austin, Texas. Woodland Park, Colorado. Phoenix, Arizona. Okay, that's for Amphithe. Amphin, I love that. And then you even got TBD.
- [67:13]
F
Hawaii's in the works. We've got an 8,000 person church in Honolulu that we're working on dates for right now.
- [67:18]
C
That's amazing.
- [67:19]
F
I mean, incredible.
- [67:20]
C
The vision here was to take some of that revival spirit that we all experienced at the memorial and take it on the road, right?
- [67:28]
F
Yes. And so these are very much focused on your relationship with Jesus. We're encouraging the audience when they sign up and you can register. It's a free event. There's no, there's no tithe collected. It's a totally free event when you show up there and. But we're encouraging the attendees to bring a friend. This is where you grab your neighbor that said, hey, you know what, I was impacted by this, but I'm still exploring some stuff about my faith. Or maybe he was coming out to church with you a couple times. Bring him out for this. And we are seeing our first stop. We had 5,500 people who came and we had over 300 people give their life to the Lord. It was incredible.
- [68:01]
C
Whoa.
- [68:02]
F
Yeah.
- [68:02]
C
300 people gave their life to the Lord. That's so encouraging. I've become so convinced some of the darkness that we've seen, and I know a lot of you in the audience have seen it, become very concerned about it, and the shooting is the latest incident of it. But it's because I believe the outpouring of life and love and goodness of the Holy Spirit that was unleashed at Charlie's memorial makes the enemy really, really uncomfortable. And so keep the faith. I believe that what God has unleashed, man cannot stop, nor can the darkness. Alright, quick update on the situation in West Bloomfield. Go ahead and put up some of that B roll, guys. I want people to get a sense of this building structure. But here's the main point as we know it now. The sheriff there is saying that the security guard at the temple saw the gunman and engaged him at the Temple. They are. They say that no one is confirmed to be hurt. That's a preliminary report. Report. So grain of salt, Grain of salt, Grain assault. But right now, they said no one confirmed to be hurt at this time, but it's too early to connect this to terrorism, says the sheriff. So the suspect is not in custody. So they're right now looking to see if there's more than one suspect. They're telling people within a mile they should shelter in place. Everyone has been moved out of the school. This is an update from the sheriff there in West Bloomfield. Go ahead.
- [69:31]
B
It's just a frightening thing. We've got. It's. Churches, religious houses of all denominations have become. I don't want to say popular, but pretty frequent targets of.
- [69:43]
C
Yeah, just ask Gomez.
- [69:44]
B
Extremely unwell. Yeah. People. They've become. Yeah. So you have protests that intrude into them. You have the shooters. You have targeting of various kinds. And we're going to see, I think, synagogues become more popular targets because of this Iran conflict. We've seen churches and religious schools be hit often multiple times with this transgenderism nexus.
- [70:07]
J
And
- [70:09]
B
I just. I worry about the state of the country because a lot of people are marinating in really extreme ideas, and there's this increasing idea that someone's ideas or someone's beliefs make them a legitimate target for violence. I mean, that's ultimately what happened with Charlie, that people reject debate, they reject normal engagement, and instead they see every problem as something that they can somehow solve by picking up a rifle.
- [70:34]
F
I went to East Africa the first time in 2008, and every church I went to and preached there, it had, you know, guys with, you know, armed guys, AK47 out in front of the church. And it was so foreign to me. And now, like, going to a church that doesn't have a security team, like, I'd be like, what are you guys doing? Like, this is. You have to understand where we're at right now. Like, and it's terrible that we even have to think like this, but this is this the world that we live in. And I think as long as this stuff is allowed to continue and this type of ideology pushes on, you know, houses of worship have to think about security, like, top priority.
- [71:08]
B
And it's such a frustrating sign of decline because America's always had a large number of denominations. The original reason a lot of people know that we had the First Amendment is because we had so many different. Just Protestant churches.
- [71:20]
C
Quakers, Anglicans.
- [71:21]
B
Quakers, Anglicans. Yeah. Congregationalists, and eventually Methodists and so on. And Then, of course, we've had a large number of Catholics since the mid 19th century. We've had a large number of Jews since about the same time. And for the most part, you know, we were able to live in peace. And that was one of the great blessings of America, because a lot of countries with religious divisions, it has ended extremely badly. Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland, Poland, of course, and Russia, you could say. And you just.
- [71:51]
C
What we're looking at now is more like north and South Sudan or Nigeria, you know, where you're getting. Where you're getting a Muslim on Jew violence or a Muslim on Christian violence or just tensions raised in general.
- [72:05]
B
And we should be frank. There's Christian on Jewish violence. And this is one of the things Charlie was most worried about, that he saw this germ spreading on the right people who spend too much time online, too much time in really toxic formulas where they blame. They decide to blame the Jews for their problems.
- [72:21]
C
Well, throw up 209. This is a tweet from Charlie. It says, jew hate has no place in civil society. It rots the brain. Rejected.
- [72:29]
F
I would. I would add, it has no place in Christianity either. If you call yourself a. Again, we can debate about eschatology, that's fine. But if you are calling yourself a Christian and you're saying Christ is king, and then you are promoting some sort of hatred towards a people because of their ethnicity, that isn't Christianity any longer, or the religion.
- [72:49]
C
And I would just say Charlie was very adamant about this, by the way, that Jew hate was a brain rot. And he said it over and over and over again, and we must reject it. Our Savior was a Jewish man. He's a rabbi. So I don't know. You know, at some point, yeah, you could debate about replacement theology. You could. Whatever dispensationalism. Our Savior was a Jewish.
- [73:15]
F
You know, we had. We had a. And I won't. I won't overly quote it because I probably can't do that right now. But, you know, there was a big story this week about a particular pastor who was saying that, you know, he didn't. It didn't really matter to him what Jesus, you know, what his background was. And it's like, if Jesus wasn't a Jewish messiah, then he didn't fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament, then he wasn't actually the Christ. And so it's like, this is intrinsic to our faith. It's not something that we can just do away with. Again, we can debate the eschatology and the role of Israel in the future events of the coming of Christ, but to try to erase the past and do this revisionist history thing on even Jesus own life.
- [73:56]
B
Jesus could not have just been helicoptered into, you know, ancient Scotland or China, and if he preached the same message, it would not have made sense. You think it only made sense within the world of, you know, Judaism.
- [74:09]
F
Yes.
- [74:09]
C
30 A.D. you think about, you know, I was just thinking of that verse where Jesus looked at Jerusalem and he wept.
- [74:15]
F
Yeah.
- [74:15]
C
And he cared about the people in Israel.
- [74:21]
F
Paul was willing to change his trade, his salvation, to save his own brothers and sisters.
- [74:25]
C
He loved the Jewish people. The amount of caring and heart and love. Now, Jesus had his own issues with the ruling class, the Pharisees, obviously. I'm not suggesting you can't have political differences. I'm not suggesting you can't be against the war. I mean, Blake and I have been pretty honest and open about the fact that this is a heck of a climb and it's a big challenge, and Charlie would have probably been against it. But, you know, we have to pray for peace, and we all need Jesus. And I think, like, when you have conversations like this, when you see stuff that's going on in West Bloomfield, you just think, lord, have mercy on America. Pray for peace, and we need Jesus. Which is why what you're doing and the team at TPOSA Faith is doing on the Make Heaven Crowded tour, I think is more important than ever.
- [75:13]
F
It's easy to look online and get really discouraged when you see, you know, just all the conflict and the hate and all the news stories and everything else happening. But. But when I'm telling you, boots on the ground, going to churches around this country, we are seeing still massive, you know, awakening taking place. And in some places, I would even say on the verge of what I would call revival happening. And so this Make Heaven Crowded tour, if you guys haven't heard one nearby you yet, we're going to be going in city. We're actually pushing these into 2027. We're going to be going around. This is not stopping. MakeHeavenCrowdedTour.com Find a City near you or. Or use it as a chance to take a vacation and go see us in another city.
- [75:49]
B
Let's really emphasize that point, because I encounter people who identify as Christians who say they're Christian and it exists online for them. Yeah, it's just an identification they take from the very beginning. In the New Testament, believers gather together. If you are not gathering together with other believers, you are not a believer unless you're in prison. Impossible to do. So if it is possible to gather with believers and you are not among them, you are not a believer, you're
- [76:14]
F
certainly not a disciple.
- [76:15]
C
Right?
- [76:15]
B
You have to go touch grass.
- [76:19]
C
This is what launched TPOSA Faith in the beginning, because Charlie hated that the church had stopped gathering during COVID and he said it was like going to church online is like watching a fire on a screen. It's all the light without the warmth. And that is literally what birthed TPO sa faith. So gather together. Go to one of these tour stops to be a part of the community of believers. The fellowship.
- [76:40]
B
Bring a friend. Yes, because goal is to make it crowded.
- [76:43]
F
Makeheavencrowdedtour. Com.
- [76:50]
B
For more on many of these stories
- [76:51]
F
and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.
- [76:53]
B
Com.