The New York Nail Bombs + The FBI's Maricopa Raid

Summary

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The Charlie Kirk Show

Episode: The New York Nail Bombs + The FBI's Maricopa Raid
Date: March 9, 2026
Host: Charlie Kirk
Guests/Panelists: Blake, Beau Alford, Gabriel Victor, John Solomon, Robert Barnes

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into two major issues:

• The attempted nail bomb attack at Gracie Mansion in New York City by radicalized youths, exploring its implications for immigration, media bias, and western vulnerabilities.
• The FBI's secret subpoena of tens of terabytes of Maricopa County election data as part of ongoing federal investigations into electoral integrity, and the broader context of federal scrutiny into election processes nationwide.

Additional topics include:

• The political fallout from the Iran conflict and its impact on the Trump coalition.
• Controversies around memorializing Charlie Kirk in Arizona.
• Updates on trends in student visa issuance and its impact on American higher education.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Gracie Mansion Nail Bomb Attack (Start–26:11)

Incident Breakdown

• Incident: Two young men, Amir Balat (18, son of Turkish immigrants) and Ibrahim Kayumi (19, son of Afghan immigrants), both U.S. citizens, attempted to bomb anti-Islamification protesters at Gracie Mansion, the residence of Mayor Mamdani.
• Weapon Used: TATP (“Mother of Satan”)—a highly volatile, powerful explosive favored by ISIS.
• Victims: The bomb was thrown at protesters, not at the mayor or his residence.
• Outcome: Luckily, the bomb did not detonate, averting mass casualties.

Radicalization & Immigration

• Both suspects had traveled to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Melbourne, Australia (described as “terrorist training grounds”).
• Discussion centered on the challenge of “homegrown terrorism” vs. immigration:

  "You can stop third world immigration, but guess what? Their kids could be radicalized by ISIS videos on the internet."
  —Blake (04:05)

• Panel critiques leftist and media narratives that shift attention to “white supremacy” despite the attack’s Islamist nature.

Media & Political Response

• Mainstream headlines implied anti-Islam protesters were violent, misleading the public (NBC, Axios examples cited).
• Mayor Mamdani's statement blamed a "white supremacist protest," downplaying the terrorism:

  "Some Islamists tried to blow up a bunch of people in New York City and he starts his speech with white supremacy. Bad. That's what it's come to."
  —Blake (09:12)

• Media described the Islamist bombers as “activists” and the anti-Islam protest leader, Jake Lang, as a "white supremacist."

Broader Cultural and Security Context

• Panel points to structural vulnerabilities in the West due to mass immigration and a refusal to confront the threat of Islamist radicalization.
• "[America] intentionally lobotomized ourselves...to not notice the obvious." —Beau Alford (13:56)
• The attack serves as “one of the most symbolically important moments…of the situation that we find ourselves [in]” (09:12), hinting at a tipping point in domestic security risks tied to foreign conflicts.

On-the-Ground Reporting (17:45–27:28)

• Gabriel Victor and Beau Alford, photojournalists on site, recount the chaos:
  • Violent, aggressive crowd, instigated by Antifa and leftists, not ordinary protesters.
  • NYPD was effective and authoritative at containing violence.
  • Demographics: Counter-protesters mostly young (teens to mid-20s) and “white leftists.”
  • Jake Lang’s supporters described as peaceful, except for a controversial goat-related stunt the night before, cited as possible provocation but not justifying violence.

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2. Arizona License Plate Veto (29:50–32:42)

• Context: Arizona Governor Hobbs vetoed the proposal for a Turning Point USA specialty license plate.
• Panel’s Reaction: Outrage at what they see as political bias, calling it “grotesque” that a conservative leader “murdered in cold blood” is denied honor, while hypothetical left-wing martyrs would be celebrated.

  "I suspect she's kind of glad he got shot." —Beau Alford (32:32)

• Highlighted as an example of partisan double standards and disrespect for conservative figures.

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3. Christian Politics & Progressive Christianity (33:07–36:25)

• Prompted by: David French’s New York Times piece praising Texas Rep. James Talarico as a model Christian politician.
• The panel criticizes Talarico as “a true left-wing zealot” who dresses up progressive politics in the language of Christianity.
• Example: Talarico’s statement of love for “trans children” used to critique left-leaning interpretations of faith.

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4. The Iran War: Political & Geopolitical Ramifications (37:43–53:13)

Robert Barnes’ Skeptical Take (37:43–53:13)

• Political Risks:
  • The Iran war is “fracturing the Trump 2024 base.”
  • Antiwar sentiment strong among young and new Trump voters, especially in swing states.
  • Risk of losing the coalition that helped Trump win in 2024:

    "You can't cut off this many parts of your coalition and survive." —Charlie Kirk (44:42)

• Geopolitical Limits:
  • Unlikely objectives: Regime change in Iran via military means not probable due to deep-rooted Shia beliefs around martyrdom.
  • Escalation risks: Threats to regional stability, supply shocks (oil/desalination), and possibility of nuclear conflict if Israel feels existentially threatened.
• Strategic Advice:

  "Declare victory and leave...The longer this drags on, the more political risk develops in the US and the more geopolitical risk comes about in the Middle East."
  —Robert Barnes (46:33)

• Risk vs Reward:

  "I don't assess the reward probability is high and I assess the risk probability is very high."
  —Robert Barnes (52:39)

• Consensus: The panel largely agrees, emphasizing the need to avoid a drawn-out foreign entanglement that could jeopardize domestic electoral prospects.

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5. FBI Maricopa County Election Raid & Broader Federal Probes (54:30–64:46)

John Solomon’s Blockbuster Reporting (54:40–64:38)

• Major Revelations:
  • The FBI obtained 40TB of election data from the Arizona Senate (dating 2020–2024) via a grand jury subpoena—without Maricopa County’s direct knowledge.
  • Trigger for probe: Congressional monitors flagged “commingling” of ballots (blank and cast) in Maricopa warehouses; FBI deemed this suspicious.
  • Preceded by high-profile FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia (2020 ballots).
• Wider Pattern:
  • FBI is investigating up to five target jurisdictions with histories of election irregularities or accusations (including possible attention to Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia).
  • Federal law applies if state/local officials fail to follow election procedures in federal races—potentially elevating issues from “incompetence” to “federal crime.”
• Trump World Surveillance:
  • FBI Arctic Frost probe surveilled nearly 100 GOP groups, including Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk’s team.
  • Multiple active and past counterintelligence investigations into President Trump during and after his presidency, some based on “what words you used to talk about Hunter Biden in Ukraine.”
• Panel’s Take: See this as indicative of deep state overreach and political weaponization of law enforcement for targeting conservatives and censorship.

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6. White Pill: Decline in Foreign Student Visas (65:54–72:21)

• Student Visa Trends:
  • 36% drop in foreign student visas last year; 60% drop for Indian students.
• Implications:
  • Viewed as positive by the hosts: fewer foreign students means more opportunity for American-born students, especially in STEM.
  • Critique of U.S. dependence on foreign labor, especially in sensitive defense and research positions, and worries about espionage from adversarial countries.
  • Hopes for a revitalization of American native talent and a pushback against “administrative bloat” in universities.
• Encouragement: Urging listeners not to “black pill” or succumb to doom, as conservative policies are achieving meaningful victories beneath the surface.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Media Spin:

  "Multiple arrests made after suspicious devices found outside Gracie Mansion during anti Islam rally and counter protest. ...the bombs were thrown at the anti Muslim protesters. Not by the anti Muslim protesters."
  —Blake (09:59–10:32)

• On Political Shortsightedness:

  "If we bombed Iran and we achieved our missional objective there, and yet we lost the presidency or the midterms, it wouldn’t be worth it to him."
  —Citing Matt Walsh (45:42)

• On Western Self-Inflicted Vulnerability:

  "We've intentionally lobotomized ourselves. We've intentionally made ourselves stupid to not notice the obvious."
  —Beau Alford (13:56)

• On American Exceptionalism in Protest:

  "The anti Islam protest in New York City...is as American as apple pie. And these foreigners come in and they throw bombs at them."
  —Blake (15:00)

• On Student Visas:

  "Visa issuances for foreign students went down 36% last year in the Trump administration...Good. Stop paying bloated administrative salaries. ...this is making room for actual American born talent to take those spots."
  —Blake & Beau Alford (68:00–68:34)

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

• New York Bomb Attack Breakdown: 01:15–16:26
• On-the-ground Witness Testimony (Victor/Alford): 17:45–27:28
• Arizona License Plate Controversy: 29:50–32:42
• Progressive Christianity Critique: 33:07–36:25
• Iran Conflict & Political Fallout (Barnes): 37:43–53:13
• FBI Maricopa Election Data Raid: 54:30–64:46
• Declining Student Visas / White Pill: 65:54–72:21

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Conclusion

Episode Takeaway:
The New York bomb incident exposes vulnerabilities from radicalization and mass immigration, compounded by media bias and reluctance of officials to address Islamist threats honestly. Simultaneously, the FBI’s secretive ballot investigations in Arizona and elsewhere are raising alarm bells for conservative activists who see signs of escalating state scrutiny and selective enforcement. Despite daunting headlines (Iran conflict, internal strife), panelists urge perseverance: beneath the surface, key victories are happening, from rolling back foreign influence in universities to exposing threats to electoral integrity.

For action: Stay vigilant, engaged, and focus on the long-game battles for culture, policy, and political power.

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Transcript

[Charlie Kirk]

My name is Charlie Kirk.

[Gabriel Victor]

I run the largest pro American student

[Charlie Kirk]

organization in the country, fighting for the future of our republic.

[Blake]

My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.

[Charlie Kirk]

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.

[Beau Alford]

You gotta stop sending your kids to college.

[Gabriel Victor]

You should get married as young as

[Beau Alford]

possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Point USA College chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter.

[Charlie Kirk]

Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist.

[Beau Alford]

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.

[Charlie Kirk]

Here I am, Lord.

[Beau Alford]

Use me.

[Charlie Kirk]

Buckle up, everybody. Here we go.

[Gabriel Victor]

The Charlie Kirk show is proudly sponsored

[Blake]

by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and

[Beau Alford]

silver experts and the only precious metals

[Blake]

company I recommend to my family, friends and viewers. All right. Happy Monday. It is March 9, 2026. Blake, welcome this morning.

[Beau Alford]

Howdy.

[Blake]

Lots of news this weekend. We are in 10 days of the Iran conflict. What CNBC is describing as the largest oil disruption, energy disruption in history.

[Beau Alford]

In history.

[Blake]

That's what it's calling it.

[Beau Alford]

1972 or 73, I think it was.

[Blake]

That's what they're calling it. I'm not sure I buy it, but yeah, it's been sold. Biggest oil supply disruption in history might be a slight qualifier.

[Beau Alford]

Yeah, I guess most people are too young to remember, including me. I was gonna say, yeah. In the 70s, after the Yom Kippur War, a lot of the Middle east did an oil embargo of the West. And it's interesting because sometimes people speculate that's there's that famous what the heck happened in 1972 or so is that chart where everything starts going bad in the early 70s. And one of the arguments is it was the oil embargo. It suddenly made energy more expensive.

[Blake]

Well, about 20% of the global supply has been disrupted for about nine, 10 days now, more than double the previous record set during the suez crisis of 1956. So that's per CNBC. There's virtually no spare capacity to address the problem because Saudi Arabia, UAE are cut off from the global oil market. Anyway, so listen, I think there is a. Apparently it's not a supply issue. It's just there is a shock to the system and people don't know how it's going to resolve. So uncertainty drives fear. Oil is back down under $100 a barrel, though, it's off its highs. So I think the market is. Is sort of trying to find where the line really should be. But there's definitely some fear rattling the markets. We can get into that in a little bit. But we want to start with the lead today of New York in New York. It was a very disruptive, discouraging, dangerous moment that happened where self radicalized isis, they call them protesters. These are terrorists used explosives called Mother of Satan inside bombs thrown at Gracie Mansion. So Gracie Mansion is of course, where Mayor Mamdani and his Islamist loving wife live. And there were anti Muslim protests saying they didn't want the. They wanted to stop the Islamification, the Muslim takeover of New York City. These two terrorist suspects in the Gracie Square terror incident, Amir Balat, who's 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, are both US citizens. Balat's parents are Turkish immigrants who were naturalized as US citizens in 2017. Kayumi's parents are Afghan immigrants. His mother was naturalized in 2009 and his father in 2004.

[Unnamed Frontlines TPOSA reporter]

Yay.

[Blake]

Yay.

[Beau Alford]

Isn't it great that we're all welcomed here? Yay.

[Blake]

Yay, immigration. So it underlies a bigger problem, which is, yeah, you can stop third world immigration, but guess what? Their kids could be radicalized by ISIS videos on the Internet.

[Beau Alford]

There's gonna be people online who are gonna point out like, this is a homegrown. This isn't an immigration problem, it's a homegrown terrorism problem. Because they're U.S. citizens.

[Blake]

Yeah. And that's. I mean, there seems to be indication that these two young terrorists, budding terrorists, were potentially radicalized abroad as well. Trips to Turkey, trips to Saudi Arabia, which, another funny instance here. Trips to Melbourne, Australia, another known terrorist training ground.

[Beau Alford]

Yep.

[Blake]

Welcome to the brave new world, where the west has been so Islamified that you can now get radicalized in Melbourne, Australia.

[Beau Alford]

That's actually totally the case. If you talk to people in the Middle east, they'll say a lot of the most radical people are in the West. There are a lot more radical Muslims in London or in Birmingham, I think, than there are in Dubai.

[Blake]

Yeah, well, it's interesting because when you put a bunch of Muslims in a Western context, they instantly are infected with leftist ideology, which says that they're part of a systemically oppressive culture. And therefore they end up reacting even more stridently against the west because they just feel different. They feel like they're oppressed, living in their own skin in a Western context. And then they get radicalized even more. So. So let's go through some of the details here. There's a substance known as TATP which is enormously volatile. It's extremely powerful substance. It's become the ISIS explosive substance of choice. 286 Fox News has learned of a

[Charlie Kirk]

disturbing development involving the type of explosive used in the attempted attack and just how dangerous it is. Let's bring in retired NYPD Inspector Paul Morrow who has more information on this device that was found. So it was a homemade device, Paul, but not necessarily a cheesy one, in other words?

[Blake]

No, not at all, John.

[Charlie Kirk]

And I have to tell you, having

[Blake]

done about 15 years work worth of this kind of work, counterterrorism work, this is a bit of a game changer. First of all, let me start by

[Gabriel Victor]

saying New York City got extremely low lucky yesterday.

[Blake]

TATP is enormously volatile.

[Gabriel Victor]

It is not very stable. It's extremely powerful.

[Blake]

And Those bombs, those IEDs are filled with nuts and bolts and very destructive elements. And basically when they go off, they're like dozens and dozens of bullets flying in every direction. This is a protester, a leftist protester who was there saying all immigrants are welcome. Everybody's there. As this Islamist hucks the bomb over his head. 285. We were born and raised in New York and we want everyone here to

[Charlie Kirk]

stay in New York.

[Blake]

You don't get to come from outside

[Beau Alford]

and then tell everyone.

[Blake]

Just an incredible moment. Is there any.

[Beau Alford]

It captures the left, like the alliance of the left really well, you have this middle aged, you know, beta, middle aged kindness is everything. I have the sign outside my house, immigrants welcome, lecturing everyone. And then one of his pet terrorist immigrants jumps over his head and throws this bomb. And of course, importantly, we should note that he has not learned his lesson at all. A person who seems to be him on X had a tweet. I was in the middle of saying as a born and raised New Yorker, we welcome everyone into the city when he threw that over my head and I still stand by it as a born and raised in New Yorker, everyone is welcome.

[Blake]

And then he goes after Jake Lang, who was the gentleman that had organized the counter protest. Ironically, Lang is being described as a white supremacist, as a bigot, an Islamophobe. And ABC is, this is literal news.

[Beau Alford]

He's the only person you're allowed to attack in all of this. When he didn't try to blow anyone up.

[Blake]

They refer to the terrorist as an activist. ABC News right there, an activist. Meanwhile, they describe Lang as a white supremacist and as A bigot. All right. And then we have to get to this. We have enough time here. Mayor Mamdani does the meme at 258.

[Charlie Kirk]

On Saturday, a protest was held outside Gracie Mansion where I live with my wife Rama. Neither of us were home at the time. This was a vile protest rooted in white supremacy entitled Stop the Islamic takeover of New York City. I'm the first Muslim mayor of our city. Anti Muslim bigotry is nothing new to me. Nor is it anything new for the

[John Solomon]

1 million or so Muslim New Yorkers

[Charlie Kirk]

who know this city as our home.

[Blake]

He did the maim. And we'll explain that in a second. But yeah. So some Islamists tried to blow up a bunch of people in New York City and he starts his speech with white supremacy. Bad. That's what it's come to. So we gotta go through some of these headlines because this is, I think, one of the most symbolically important moments that I've seen recently of the situation that we find ourselves. Of course we have a conflict in Iran, but we are getting to the point as a country where you don't have to love what's going on in Iran. You don't have to have supported that effort. We're getting to the point where you can't actually conduct war with a Muslim country because you're gonna have too many Islamists in the country that are gonna try and bomb you.

[Beau Alford]

Pretty much. It is. It really is. And people are gonna cheer them on and make excuses for them. Let's just show the example here. Let's throw it up. It's 259. So this was a local NBC, the NBC New York outlet. Multiple arrests made after suspicious devices found outside Gracie Mansion during anti Islam rally and counter protest. So the obvious implication here is that the protesters left these bombs and you know, the violent anti Islamic demonstrators.

[Blake]

Well, and the community note there for the whim, the bombs were thrown at the anti Muslim protesters. Not bad. By the anti Muslim protesters as this post and story would lead you to believe. The witnesses say the attacker shouted Al Akbar as they threw the bombs at the protesters. So thank you community notes. But it didn't stop the failed fake news media. This is another 1. Axios explosive 269 explosive device thrown outside New York City Mayor Mamdani's residence. So all the headlines lead you to believe that somebody was coming after the mayor. She that they want. No, these were Islamists attacking a protest against Islamification of America. So that is our moment. We have to. I mean we have the meme Here, this is the famous Norm MacDonald tweet. What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans, imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims.

[Beau Alford]

And it was exactly. And it was pointed out to today, like younger people probably, we basically live through this alternate universe where we're told that 911 happened and it caused, you know, probably caused a surge of Islamophobia.

[Blake]

That's mom, Donnie. That's what Mamdani always talks about.

[Beau Alford]

And it's all.

[Blake]

His aunt was scared to ride on the fake.

[Beau Alford]

It's all completely fake. That what happened immediately is President Bush came out and took pains to say this is not Islam. It's a tiny number of extremist actors. He's the one who popularized the phrase Islam is a religion of peace that people make fun of a lot because it's not really true. And they endlessly push that. And on top of that, they massively increased the Muslim population of the United States by bringing them in as immigrants throughout the entire war on terrorism period, as refugees as that whole spiel where, you know, they were allies in the Mid east. So we had to bring them here and we're seeing the outcomes here. Who wants to bet those Afghan immigrants who came here about 15 years ago, they were probably here because, oh, they wanted to get out of the Islamic radicalism of Afghanistan. Their lives were in danger and they come here and they have a son who's an Islamic radical. That's happened over and over and over again. And it's going to keep happening over and over and over again.

[Blake]

Yeah, especially when you have like the context, the backdrop. We can't escape it. This is, we're in the 10th day of this conflict in Iran. Emotions are heightened, tensions are heightened. And they're sleeper cells. And maybe they're not organized as you might think. Maybe they're not actual Iranian guard sleeper cells that have infiltrated the country. There's probably that too. But these kids were self radicalized. That's all it takes. It just takes a couple Internet videos and an ideology and a feeling that they live in an oppressive system egged on by leftists like the guy who had the bomb chucked over his head. That completely vindicates their victimization.

[Beau Alford]

And on top of that, another way we've become vulnerable. Remember, for example, throughout the Biden administration, they repurposed the FBI and DHS to say the chief terror threat is white dudes who go to Latin Mass. And so they wouldn't investigate this sort of thing, just like they wouldn't they wouldn't want to police the border so anyone could come in over the border with Chinese espionage. They shut down their China espionage probe because too many of the people they were investigating were Chinese. And it felt kind of racist to do that. Felt really awkward.

[Unnamed Frontlines TPOSA reporter]

Yeah.

[Beau Alford]

And that's the decision we've made over and over and over again that we intentionally lobotomized ourselves. We've intentionally made ourselves stupid to not notice the obvious, to not observe the obvious, to not think the obvious. And I think a lot of us might think, oh well, we'll just avoid saying something because it's impolite, but everyone knows it. But, but for a lot of people, if you are not saying the obvious thing, they will stop thinking the obvious thing. In this case, the obvious thing being Islam as a religion has way more violent radicals than any other major religion. And when you welcome them into the west in huge numbers, this results in terrorist attacks that kill a lot of people. But even if they aren't killing a huge amount, they just totally distort life. Think about all of the public events where you have all of this security theater that you used to not need. Think about all these events where, oh, you have all these bollards and these vehicles everywhere to make sure that some vehicle can't drive in and kill a bunch of people. And then you go to a country that doesn't have this level of migration and they don't have those things because they don't need those things.

[Blake]

Yeah, well, and that's the sectarian violence that has ravaged the old world has now come to the new world by immigration. And it's something we didn't need to do. 276 though this is one of the New York City terrorists home in Pennsylvania. It's a $1.8 million, five bedroom, four bath, 4,700 square foot mansion. It's almost 4,800. And yet these young men were still so radicalized and so put upon by a protest, which is the most American thing. You may not like what Mr. Lang was doing, the anti Islam protest in New York City, but that is as American as apple pie. And these foreigners come in and they throw bombs at them. And guess who the press defends? The bomb throwers? The Islamists. They call Jake Lang a white supremacist and a bigot for doing exactly what the founders intended, which is to peacefully protest. But the foreigners didn't. Oh, but I guess they're not foreigners because they have a piece of paper

[Beau Alford]

the million two million dollar house says it all that you can welcome people into your country and basically give them everything, and they will still resent you,

[Blake]

they will still hate you, and a

[Beau Alford]

lot of people here will be happy to assist them.

[Blake]

Hi, folks. Andrew Colvett here. I'd like to tell you about my friends over at why Refi. You've probably been hearing me talk about why Refi for some time now. We are all in with these guys. If you or someone you know is struggling with private student loan debt, take my advice and give them a call. Maybe you're behind on your payments, maybe you're even in default. You don't have to live in this nightmare anymore. Yrefi will provide you a custom payment based on your ability to pay. They tailor each loan individually. They can save you thousands of dollars and you can get your life back. We go to campuses all over America and we see student after student who's drowning in private student loan debt. Many of them don't even know how much they owe. Yrefi can help. Just go to yrefi.com that's the letter Y. Then refi.com and remember why Refi doesn't care what your credit score is. Just go to yrefi.com and tell them your friend Andrew sent you. Welcome to the show. Gabriel Victor, Frontline TPOSA photojournalist, and Beau Alford, Frontlines TPOSA reporter. Both of them were in New York City over the weekend. Gentlemen, I'm so glad that you're safe. Gabe, let's start with you. It's your first time, I believe, on the show. Apologies.

[Gabriel Victor]

Thank you for having me.

[Blake]

Yeah, of course. Thank you for making the time here. Tell us what you saw. How close were you to this incident and lay out kind of the dynamic between the two sides.

[Gabriel Victor]

Yeah, of course. Well, so both of the sides, you know, the leftist side specifically, was already very rowdy and violent prior to the situation with the bomb there. But, you know, Bo and I were right next to each other and we were, what I would say, a couple yards away. A couple feet away even from the incident happening. Yeah, you can see some of the footage there of them burning flags. They actually beat up another journalist after that flag burning happened. They chased him out, you know, saying that he was a Zionist, yelling at him. They ended up punching him, kicking him down on the ground. Yeah, that's that footage right there. It was a very hostile environment, to say the least. And it seemed like these people wanted nothing but trouble. And that's what ended up happening later with the Muslim who committed an act of terrorism. And thank God that bomb did not go off.

[Blake]

Yeah, Seriously, Bo, give us your perspective of what happened. And do we know where these people came from? Were they New Yorkers? Did you get that vibe? Or were they shipped in from somewhere else and they're paid agitators? What could you surmise?

[Unnamed Frontlines TPOSA reporter]

Yeah, absolutely. I would start by saying these were not regular everyday protesters. These aren't people that are just coming in and holding signs. This is a lot more violent of a crowd. Actually texted my wife when I got there. I was like, honey, this is a little bit different. There's a lot of aggression. There's a lot of people getting hurt, attacked, and just, you know, say a prayer for me. I do believe that the antifa crowd did play a part in fueling this attack. They. They were just attacking anyone that they disagreed with. It was only God's grace that got us out untouched. Thankfully, we were not recognized, or we probably would have been one of the people getting attacked as well. But, yeah, when the bombing happened, we were. Or the attempted bombing happened, we were probably 50, 20, 20 to 30ft away. And I was actually posting another video because we're getting everything in real time and I just hear everyone screaming bomb. And they're running away, and then I see the brave NYPD actually going into the scene and thankfully taking the man down.

[Blake]

Jeez. So. So there was anti Muslim protesters on one side, and then there were, I guess, pro Muslim protesters. I mean, did it seem like the pro Muslim or the counter protesters, however you want to describe them, were they. Was it mostly Muslims or was it mostly sort of just like kind of leftists, Antifa types?

[Gabriel Victor]

It was definitely like the antifa types. It was definitely some white New Yorkers. I would probably say a lot of that. You know, New Yorkers are very. They go hard in the paint. A lot of them are very aggressive when it comes to, you know, their beliefs. And it seemed like, you know. And Bo, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is on par with Minneapolis and tifa. When we really went in there and we saw. I mean, right as we got out of our Uber to show up to this event, there was a kid with a freedom shirt getting berated. And it was instant. Like, right as we showed up, we saw some kid get chased out, and it just gave me flashbacks to Minneapolis.

[Unnamed Frontlines TPOSA reporter]

Yeah, absolutely. These were white leftists that were coming here to kill Jake Lang. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that. You could hear multiple of the members saying, kill Jake Lang. They were Doing everything they could to get to him. They were trying to cross the barricades when he ran away from the attempted bombing. The leftists then went to the other side to try and cut him off. They were doing everything in their power to kill him.

[Beau Alford]

What kind of role were police playing through all of this, do you think? They were mostly being helpful, preventing violence where they sort of useless. Give us a sense of how NYPD was behaving throughout this.

[Unnamed Frontlines TPOSA reporter]

Yeah, the police were actually very helpful, I do have to say. They, as soon as something went. Went down, if you saw someone getting attacked, they stepped in and they tried to stop it. They were actually getting very angry at multiple times and were chasing people down using profanities and, you know, trying to get them arrested. So they were. They were very helpful. Only thing I would say is they were a little bit too far away at times. Took them a little bit too long to get to the scene. But at the end of the day, I understand it. You have to let the two sides demonstrate, and you can't help that some of the leftist members are as aggressive as they were.

[Gabriel Victor]

Yeah, this is probably the most helpful NYPD has ever been. While we've been in New York, we've gone to a lot calmer protests in New York, and they always are on the side of the liberals, it seems. But, you know, on that day, they were 100% trying to keep law and order. And, you know, a lot of those police officers are absolute patriots for what they did on that day.

[Blake]

Yeah, well, we're just like you said, Gabe, we're just lucky that those bombs didn't detonate. I mean, because that could have killed a lot of people. I mean, they're the. Another question I have though is how old were the age of the protest? Was it all over? Was it skewing younger? Skewing older?

[Gabriel Victor]

Definitely younger. Definitely on the younger side for this one. I know that some of them have. Some of them were probably in their, like, later 20s, but a lot of them seem to be around that, you know, teenage to mid-20s range, about the age of Boni.

[Blake]

So any idea how they organized? You're just assuming this is antifa networks.

[Unnamed Frontlines TPOSA reporter]

Yeah, I would say antifa networks and I would also probably say Reddit. I don't have anything to verify that information, but I do see leftists gathering on Reddit in threads and in communities. That would be. If I were a guessing man, that would be what I would say.

[Blake]

I don't know if you have. Gabe, if you're going to chime In I have a question though about Jake language and the sort of. The protesters on that side, what were they doing? What were they saying? Were they instigating as well or were they just kind of, I mean, as far as I could tell, they were just in front of the Gracie Mansion saying stop the Islamification of New York. Did they instigate anything?

[Unnamed Frontlines TPOSA reporter]

Definitely not. At the event where Antifa showed up, I mean there were times, do not get me wrong, you could say you're instigating when you're using a goat like he did the night before. That I would say is instigation. But during this event. No, I think that they were being very peaceful and the people that were supporting Jake Lang, all they were doing was, was saying freedom and you know, just supporting American values.

[Blake]

What, what happened with the goat the night before? If you can use PG language just in case.

[Gabriel Victor]

Yeah, he was pretending to have relations with a goat the night before. He pulled up in a U haul, open the door, you know, he had an American flag and he was, he was basically mocking the Muslims. Which you know, some may say it's funny, some may say it's crude, but that seems to be a lot of the stuff that the leftists. The next day at the protest where the attempted bombing occurred, they were actually yelling that they were calling him names that I probably shouldn't say on the show.

[Blake]

Got it. So you think the incident the night before could have been what maybe triggered some of the backlash? Do we know if that's where these young. I mean it's crazy how young the would be terrorists are? I guess they are terrorists. They tried. They're like 18 and 20, I believe, or 18 and 19. Both have parents that were naturalized from Middle Eastern countries, Afghanistan and Turkey. Is there any indication, did you see those suspects around before they threw the IEDs or did they just kind of came out of nowhere?

[Gabriel Victor]

Yeah, not that we recognized at least.

[Unnamed Frontlines TPOSA reporter]

Yeah, that's actually a really good point. They were not someone that I recognized unless they were wearing masks before. They appeared to be individuals. That came later in the protest probably for that specific reason.

[Blake]

Well, gentlemen, I'm just glad you're safe. That could have been really bad. I mean we always are praying for you guys, our TPSA frontlines team and you know, it just thank God that those bombs didn't detonate. That's all I can say. Thank you for your first hand account, gentlemen. Brave, brave guys here that are doing the Lord's work capturing these protests and counter protests live on the street. So thank you Guys, we'll talk to you soon. Thank you.

[Unnamed Frontlines TPOSA reporter]

Thank you, guys.

[Blake]

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[Beau Alford]

Yeah, there's a Choose Life license plate. There's firefighter license plate. There's a Fiesta bowl license plate. There's a God Bless America one. That's actually what I have. There's an Alice Cooper one. There's a Route 66 ones. There's a lot.

[Blake]

And by the way, so when you do this, it's a voluntary. This is not like taxpayer dollars are getting siphoned off the general fund and sent to Turning Point. It's a voluntary $17 contribution that would go to Turning Point. Just like when you do the other ones. There's a small fee that gets sent to whatever cause you're celebrating. But instead of allowing Turning Point to be one of those hundred plus groups that you could do that in the state of Arizona, for an organization that's based here in Arizona, Charlie decided to make Arizona his home. He worked his butt off for this state, loved this state. Every time we'd come back to Arizona, Charlie would be, oh, I love coming back. I love coming home. And this was his home. And this is where Erica's home is. Governor Hobbs vetoed it because she said,

[Beau Alford]

in America, we resolve our political differences at the ballot box, no matter who it targets. Political violence puts us all in harm's way and damages our sacred democratic institutions. I will continue working towards solutions that bring people together. But this bill falls short of that standard by inserting politics into a function of government that should remain non politicians partisan.

[Blake]

Okay, sure. I find this obviously highly offensive that a son of Arizona, yeah, he came from Chicago, but this was the home he chose. A son of Arizona who was murdered in cold blood, taken down by political violence. An assassination the most public and tragic in a generation or more. And she has the gall to stop the legislature, stop the people of Arizona from honoring him and his legacy. Shame on you, Governor Hobbs. I can't wait till Andy Biggs is our governor and we get to do this thing.

[Beau Alford]

It's just truly grotesque because if they had passed one to honor, like, you know, if there was some odious, like borderline criminal person who got killed in Arizona and became a left wing cause celeb and they passed that license plate, she would sign in in a heartbeat. She would absolutely do it. But because we had a person on the right who was grotesquely murdered by someone on the left for his advocacy, and someone just wanted to make a license plate that you could voluntarily pay for the right to use, and she vetoes it. And the obvious answer is because she despises Charlie and deep down, I suspect she's kind of glad he got shot.

[Blake]

It's dark stuff.

[Beau Alford]

A lot of them are.

[Blake]

Yeah.

[Beau Alford]

And so of course she was going to veto it. We shouldn't be surprised at all because that's the type of person.

[Blake]

Yes. Can you imagine if George Floyd was in Arizona?

[Beau Alford]

Exactly. That's what it is.

[Blake]

George Floyd would have got a license plate in the state. Hobbs would have signed that. And I think you're right. I think deep down she despises Charlie, and she may very well be happy that what happened. I mean, I. I don't put anything past these degenerate people. It's just. It's inexcusably cruel to veto that. That bill. So shame on you, Governor Hobbs, and. Yeah, just disgusting. But let's get to James Talrico.

[Beau Alford]

All righty. So we have. This is not even so much about James Tallarico. It's an opportunity to beat up on David French.

[Blake]

By the way, that's. That's Blake's favorite pastime.

[Beau Alford]

Yes, indeed. So I believe Charlie only met David French once. I was with him, and it was. It was pretty respectful.

[Blake]

I think it was at nrb, so a national religious broadcasters event. We were on the Expo floor, just walking the floor, and there comes David French. And it was respectful. It was. And then I talked to David French after for a little while. He's a very effeminate man in person, I believe it.

[Beau Alford]

But he has this appalling bit that he ran over the weekend. He's now a New York Times opinion columnist, which is, you know, fulfilling his dreams. And it was titled James Talarico is a Christian X ray. And unfortunately, I can't. I'm not a New York Times subscriber, and I can't get the whole article to load right now in my.

[Blake]

But what's the gist?

[Beau Alford]

Paywall bypasser. But it was basically that James Tallarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian. And by acting like a Christian, he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the Maga Christian Movement that has dominated political life for 10 years. And he goes off on a bit where he does this whole thing on, okay, you know, there's Christian orthodoxy, which is, you know, Right. Right beliefs. But we don't put enough emphasis on. I believe he called it ortho cardia. I don't even know if that's a real word, but basically means right heart. And so he says that James Talarico has the right heart. That he has. He has the fruits of the spirit, actually, is what he says that you see Tall Rico, and he's so obviously kind and loving and Christian. And he basically just. I don't think he literally says it, but the clear message is, James Talarico is the best Christian in American politics right now. And that's really galling to me because, okay, if he was just a left wing social Democrat, like, if he said, oh, I disagree with my party on a lot of things, but like I have to be on the left for, you know, you've seen the reasons. I would be extremely disappointed, but I'd vaguely get it. But there's something really unsettling with Talarico. Talarico is a true left wing zealot. And the fact that he dresses up, dresses it up in Christianity is what makes him more sinister, not less sinister. That he goes to the Bible and says, actually the Bible. The text of the Bible says that we need abortion and we can't restrict it. The text of the Bible is why I believe it's good for us to mutilate children because of some fad. The text of the Bible is why I think I believe. What did he say? White people are a virus. No, we carry a virus that the white race as a caste carries this virus that they infect the world with.

[Blake]

Here's a new little James Taurico video that Brandon Gill unearthed. 295. Something that you love that's not family or friends. I love.

[Unnamed Frontlines TPOSA reporter]

I'm just saying this because it's on my mind.

[Blake]

The trans children who showed up yesterday at the state Capitol to advocate for their humanity. They shouldn't have to, but it was an inspiration to watch. Who do you love that's not your friends or family? Trans children.

[Beau Alford]

And we love trans children. That's why we don't want them to be literally, irreversibly messed up.

[Blake]

That's not what he's saying.

[Beau Alford]

And yeah, that's definitely not what he's saying. And it says a lot that there's a type of Christian out there, David French, who thinks that that's the most Christian guy we have in politics right now.

[Blake]

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[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, glad to be here.

[Blake]

Great to see you. You have emerged as a very strident voice online political commentator that is not in favor of of the strikes that are happening in Iran. Why don't you give us your perspective? Because you are a MAGA guy in a lot of ways. You have been part of this coalition, a big supporter of the president's, but you were not in support of this war. It's important that we hear this side of the argument. What is your perspective on it and why are you against it?

[Charlie Kirk]

So I see it as a threefold approach. One is the domestic political risk that it poses to the Trump 2024 coalition going forward in terms of political capital to get things done on the Hill, but also in terms of the midterms and in ultimately 2028. The second area of concern is geopolitical. In other words, how likely are we able to achieve an objective that would be favorable to American interest and would be perceived as favorable to American interests going forward? And then third is whether or not this is a use of our military that is constitutional, that is clearly legal and lawful, and that won't put our men and men and women at undue risk of harm for a unachievable objective. So from the domestic political side, I just think it it fractures the Trump 2024 base. It shrinks MAGA. More and more people are not identifying as MAGA. That's why you can get I think Richard Barris calls people's pundit, calls it purification through subtraction. So Trump may look at it and say, oh, I have 90% support, but it's of a shrinking base. That's not a good situation to be in politically in terms of domestic political capital to get things done on the Hill. But also in terms of the midterms, the and there was a big part of his base that was anti war. There was another part of his base that's libertarian that leans non intervention. Since 2015, he's campaigned very effectively as the peace president, the anti war candidate. This undermines and sabotages that entire public perception and thereby impairs his coalition from an electoral perspective and political capital. That was the degree to which he is seen as unpopular on the Hill limits his ability to get things done legislatively. The. But then you go to the geopolitics of it and it's for all the reasons and the military side of it that Charlie identified last year that you dig into this. It's unlikely that a regime, a we can attain a peaceful, free Iranian society and government through bombing them into such an agreement. And so as he pointed out that you know, the Shia are built on a culture of suffering. It's, you know, the Charlie was very good at developing strategic empathy and people sometimes confuse that with sympathy. It's, you don't sympathize with the Iranian regime. You can strategically empathize with it so that you understand it. And if you understand the culture and the people and the people in power, but also the people that could contest or challenge that power, then you have a sense of how probable or likely a sequence of events are using military or martial means. And what Charlie identified is that they have the, they have the means to militarily resist in ways that we cannot completely suppress. That they're unlikely to change their regime because the part of the Shia Islamic Charlie loved to study religions around the world and understand what motivated people around the world. But the Shia Islam religion is built on martyrdom, it's built on suffering, it's built on sacrifice. That's why the Ayatollah was happy to be martyred at the beginning of this conflict and he's now been replaced by his son. His son who is more. This is one of the points Charlie made that you got to look at who is likely to replace the existing regime. And there you look at who is likely to replace him. Well, it's more hardliners, people that are more likely to acquire nuclear weapons rather than less. More likely to be anti US and anti Israel than less. The new Ayatoll, new Ayatollah just had the Americans and the Israelis kill his father, kill his mother, kill his wife, kill his son and kill his niece. One year old niece. So what's the likelihood he's going to be really pro American? Unlikely. He's known as more of a hardliner, etc. So then you have the, so that's, you know, scenario number one is that it's unlikely to achieve, achieve a peaceful, free, democratic, pro Israel, pro US Regime. So why are we risking American resources? Why are we risking American men and women? Why are we risking Trump's domestic political coalition and his political capital?

[Beau Alford]

Yeah, and I guess I feel like there's a lot of disagreement over how much, how much it is splitting the coalition because you can produce polls that say support for the war among GOP voters is very high. I've seen those. But I think a thing people are missing is that this matters the most with that sort of, that marginal, maybe that last 10% of the Trump coalition that got him to where he was, where he was winning all the swing states, where he was winning the popular vote. It was the people where that, oh, peace president, no new war. That stuff appealed to them a lot more. And I think that a lot of when people disagree over this, they're missing that. That's the group that. And they're also the most marginal. They were least likely to respond to polls, and they're more detached. They maybe weren't voting in other elections.

[Blake]

And young people.

[Beau Alford]

And young people. Exactly.

[Blake]

And young people. So, Robert, you and I talked on the phone and we had these students from Rutgers and Appalachian State, and we asked them, what do young Trump voters think of this? And here was their answers. 306 copy. So are you seeing protests? Are you seeing. Are people gathering in the square, in the quad? What kind of activities are you seeing this manifest in? I'm mostly seeing things through online platforms, people on Instagram or Twitter just, you know, really going in at President Trump and, and being upset that, you know, gas prices might go up and forever war. Like, people really, really do not want boots on the ground in this circumstance.

[Beau Alford]

Are you seeing that even from people that, you know, voted for Trump in 2024? Or is it more? Is it still mostly from people you know would be left wing regardless?

[Blake]

Or I think the idea of starting a new foreign war is really, even for Trump voters, really deterring people from wanting to align with the administration and their actions. So even amongst Trump voters, and then with the other gal that was on said the same thing at her university. So the youth vote came plus 13% in our direction, which is a huge swing, historic swing. And this seems to indicate that we are in jeopardy, if not already before that, with some of the Epstein stuff, the Midnight Hammer stuff, of alienating those new additions to the coalition already.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, exactly to your point. I mean, you guys would be on top of it more than others. I remember watching that the live that the young generation, the new maga, part of the coalition A lot of them were African American male voters, Hispanic voters and young people, disproportionately millennials and zoomers that joined the Trump coalition in 2024 that weren't part of it before. That boosted us from, you know, being minus four to plus one in the national vote. That allowed for the sweep of the swing states, that allowed for some coattails in the House and the Senate to have the House and the Senate. So that's what's at danger of losing. Young voters do not support this conflict. They don't want us involved in foreign conflicts, period. So the sooner the President can bring us home, the better. Similar. And then the other vote is, though, the historic anti war vote disproportionately in rural and working class areas in the industrial and rural Midwest and amongst Hispanic voters in the Southwest, which were bleeding out badly as we saw from the Texas primary results and then the Libertarian vote. And it's just, you can't cut off this many parts of your coalition and survive.

[Blake]

We set out the stakes here. Politically, this is fraught. I think Blake and I were talking earlier this morning. The longer this drags on, the more fraught it becomes, the more there is an oil supply shock, then it's going to become even more painful. Oil was up at, I think, $110. It's come back down under 100 since last time I checked it. But it's no doubt this has political ramifications. I think Matt Walsh was the one who said it, that if we bombed Iran and we achieved our missional objective there, and yet we lost the presidency or the midterms, it wouldn't be worth it to him. Okay, this is a series of impossible decisions. What needs to happen and how quickly, Robert Barnes, for this to come out as good as it possibly could be.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. I think the first part is declare victory and leave. The President did that with the Houthis when we didn't quite achieve the original objective, but he realized that it was unlikely to be achieved, so he just declared victory and left. Vice President Vance has been giving the President an off ramp all the way through. Say, look, the real focus of this was always about nuclear weapons, not about regime change, not about dictating to Iran its next supreme leader, not about any of the things that other people like Lindsey Graham want to drag the President into doing. One thing I would recommend is just have Lindsey Graham off the air. Him running around saying, let's go, Robert.

[Blake]

I keep saying the exact same thing. If you follow me on X, I've just been like, get this guy away from the freaking microphone for the love. He's like, frothing at the mouth. He's like, anyways, continue. I cut you off, please.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. And, you know, to remind people out there, you know, Charlie said if we did anything, we need to defeat Lindsey Graham in the primary. You got two good candidates running there, Mark lynch and Paul Danz. So I highly recommend that whichever candidate you like, but just we got to have Lindsey Graham out of there. He's a walking, talking disaster. PR wise for the President, but also policy wise. So I think, you know, take J.D. vance's recommended the declare victory. Say the. Apparently we hit several of the last remaining nuclear enrichment facilities, including the new ones. He took out the Ayatollah. Declare victory and go home and get out as quickly as you can. Because the longer this drags on, as you know, the more political risk develops in the US and the more geopolitical risk comes about in the Middle East. You know, if they start hitting desalination plants, if they start keep that they keep the Straits of Hormuz closed. Not only does oil and gas, natural gas prices spike, but also you could have a drought in a. In a food crisis throughout the Gulf states because they depend, many of them, for the Straits of Hormuz, the. To get access to their food. So the people forget, you know, that it's all desert there in the Gulf states. So that's why they rely on desalination plants. Including Israel does. I think it's in Israel's best interest that we get out of this quicker rather than later. Because who knows, if Iran really thinks they're under existential threat, we don't want to know what they might do. They might hit everything. They might hit all the oil, gas, refinery places, they might hit all the desalination plants, they might hit the nuclear reactors.

[Blake]

Yeah, I don't mean to cut you off again, but Blake was bringing up a point. Apparently that was the one line Lindsey Graham wasn't prepared to cross, was please

[Beau Alford]

don't blow up all of their oil. Stuff. Like they're going to need that after the war is over.

[Blake]

So even Lindsey Graham was chastising Israel for going after the refineries. But. Yes, continue, Exactly.

[Charlie Kirk]

So essentially, there's just lots of exponential geopolitical risk that this could get out of hand really fast. What if Israel feels they're under existential threat? Do they use nuclear weapons? Pakistan has said if they use nuclear weapons, Pakistan will use nuclear weapons. So this is just, you know, the Mideast is a place that can quickly and easily, as Charlie repeatedly reminded people, get out of control. You might have the best. And the temptation of any president is, is to double down. Don't. Trump has always been brilliant in recognizing, I'm in trouble, time to get out. You know, people forget the Sun Tzu principle, which is when the enemy is stronger, you retreat. You don't walk into a trap that gets you mired down. That's the mistake George W. Bush made. That's the mistake past politicians have made.

[Blake]

So, Robert, just to play devil's advocate here, though, you know, President Trump has said he doesn't like the new ayatollah. He's not happy with that. He said he wants to be involved in the selection of the next leader, somebody that will be friendly with America. And he also said that. That essentially he believes he needs to finish the job because he doesn't trust future presidents, that they will do the right thing in the future. He said, I don't wanna be fighting them and come back in five years or in 10 years. Gotta get it done the right way. Now, how do you balance those two things? Still declare political and a military victory?

[Charlie Kirk]

I think the great gift of Trump is that he can declare victory even when it's not apparent that by his own standards he got it, that he's a brilliant salesman. He's always been a brilliant salesman. So my advice, the president is just sell it. I think American people would be happy with that. Say, look, we took out the regime that caused a lot of harm. The we took out all their nuclear capacity and on that basis we'll be satisfied for now and then try to reenter. I think it'll be tricky to reenter negotiations, but try to the I think otherwise I just look as a risk reward ratio, what's the probability you get that reward of come of a peaceful, free, democratic Iran governed by someone other than the Supreme Leader that is not driven by Shia Islamic beliefs. Structure versus what risk do you have to incur to try to get that reward? I think the chance of that reward is low. The Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard reported that it was not likely to occur that military means could achieve regime change. That can really only happen with a complete cultural shift amongst the Iranian population, in particular Islamic population. And so that's part one is what. How. How do you assess the probability of obtaining that objective? And then what risk are you accruing? You're basically, as Matt Walsh pointed out, even if he could obtain that reward, is it worth sacrificing the entire Trump OG MAGA 2024 coalition. Is it worth sacrificing the populist conservative realignment back to America's constitutional republic and religious roots? Is it worth risking the SAVE Act? Is it worth risking all of his domestic policy agenda? Is it worth risking being impeached in 2027 with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate? My own view is I don't assess the reward probability is high and I assess the risk probability is very high. And so I think the risk reward way out that ratio, I think it's in the best interest of the president, maybe down the road you can pursue that. But now is at the time given the risk that's accruing and the reward seems distant. And I think if he shifts back to a domestic agenda. 1776 Law center, we did a nationwide survey. You know, get rid of all these immunity for big Pharma and these big AG and big companies and government actors when they violate people's civil rights and civil liberties. You know, impose tariffs, but take away the individual income tax on 95% of American households. That was popular even with some Democrats. There's all these popular populist policies he can pursue and enforce in an act if he's not distracted or detoured by a foreign war. So I think when you weigh the risk reward ratio, I think it favors the president finding an exit ramp as quickly and expeditiously as he can so he can shift back to the domestic agenda that can restore the coalition and at least mitigate the harm that's coming in the midterms.

[Blake]

Robert Barnes, well said. Great perspective. Thank you, sir. We'll have you on again soon.

[Beau Alford]

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[Blake]

welcome back to the show. John Solomon, you have a blockbuster report out of JustTheNews.com today out of Maricopa County. Tell us the details, sir.

[John Solomon]

Yeah. So just a month after the FBI raided Fulton county in Atlanta area in Georgia to look at the 2020 ballots there, they did something a little different. They did a grand jury subpoena secretly to get about tens of tens of terabytes, a large amount, about 40 terabytes of data from Maricopa County. Now, they didn't do it to Maricopa County. They did it to the Arizona Senate. It was secretly done so that Maricopa county wouldn't know. But the Senate is confirming today that they did in fact turn over election data from many elections going back to at least 2020 and through 2024. This is the second major metropolitan area where there's always been questions about voting integrity. Now to be targeted by the FBI. It's a really big moment. Very different tactics. Bolton county, very high profile search warrant and a raid. This one more surreptitious behind the scenes grand jury subpoena going to a third party that had custody of the Maricopa county election data.

[Blake]

So this was 2024, not 2020 or even 2022.

[John Solomon]

I think they go all the way back to 2020. That's 2020, 2022 and 2024. That's what my source is, are telling me. So they're looking at a broad swath of election counting. It might even go back before 2020, but I'm certain of 2020, 2022 in 2024. It's a very large amount of data.

[Blake]

Was there a inciting incident here? Was there something that triggered the grand jury in the first place?

[John Solomon]

So a few weeks ago, or actually a couple few months ago, Congressman Abe Haday wrote a very important letter saying, hey, congressional mil monitors that were sent from the House Administration committee back in 2024 went and visited a warehouse and they saw some unusual commingling, or what they thought was unusual commingling of unused ballots, blank ballots and filled out ballots, ballots that people had voted with. These are all paper. Because Arizona's a predominantly paper voting state. That report got flagged by multiple people. The FBI looked at it, thought it was unusual. And that began a look at Maricopa County. And now because of the nature of data that the Arizona Senate had, they get a large swath that goes back many years, at least to 2020. I bet it goes back even before that. And I think what, you know, if you go back and you look at the clips, is that Maricopa County's had lots of problems with trust and competence for a long time. In the early 2000s, it was the Democrats who were complaining about it. And starting in 20, President Trump and Abe Hamade and Kerry Lake and others raised concerns. But there's been basically a decade or two of concern about Maricopa county vote counting vote procedures. And the FBI now is diving in. And the important thing here to understand is while state law and state legislatures set the rules for election, that's what the Constitution allows for. If a state or a county or a election locality doesn't follow, follow the state law in the administration of a federal election, it can become a federal crime. And as we saw in the Fulton county search warrant affidavit, that is the predicate, at least for Georgia, that the FBI is using to do the criminal investigation there.

[Blake]

So you have said that this is the second kind of shoe to drop, but there's more that we should expect to be coming down the pipe.

[John Solomon]

I think that's right. Based on what. What I've heard from my sources, both in the Justice Department, the FBI, and in the election community. There are some other states where there have always been questions about ballots and counting and rule changes. And I think as comprehensive as you've seen Harmeet Dhillon go after the dirty voter rolls and try to force the cleanup of those dirty voter rolls. I think they're up to 28 states that have some sort of compelled action from the Justice Department. I think the FBI is doing something similar, taking a look at some places where there's enough evidence to suggest that maybe the state laws weren't being followed or there was chaos or incompetence or maybe some nefarious behavior, I think other states will follow. I'm told that they're looking at at least five locations. I don't know the other three yet. I can make some guesses, But I think at the end of the day, Maricopa is round two. But I do think there'll be a round three, four and five somewhere else in the country before this is all done.

[Blake]

I mean, I hate to make you speculate here, but, I mean, I bet Blake could pick three other cities if. I bet.

[John Solomon]

I bet he could. He knows it better than I. Yeah.

[Blake]

I'm just gonna suggest here Blake, check my math here. Milwaukee, we had a real close Senate election in 2024. That one of those late night flips with Hobdi. And then we have Detroit, those classic images from 2020, them putting up the cardboard. And then Philadelphia.

[John Solomon]

Those are three really good guesses based on what we. Yeah, and let's remember there's a couple other little pieces here that aren't well known by everyday Americans. But in Michigan, the FBI received evidence from the Michigan State Police in the late 2020 that they had found this voter mill, what they basically called a ballot mill up in Muskegon, I believe it was. And the Michigan State Police believe it was one of seven locations around the country where these things were going on. And they believe they found fake registration data and fake voter ballot requests there. And they referred it to the FBI. And fortunately, the Chris Wray FBI doesn't appear to have very aggressively investigated that. But I think that Michigan makes a lot of sense because the FBI has some prior documentation that came in from Michigan State Police cash. Patel recently found that data, and I know his team are looking at that right now.

[Blake]

So, John, am I right to presume that sometimes there you may not get actual evidence of outright voter fraud, but they're moving in on sort of process crimes? Right. So they, where there's smoke, there's fire, they're kind of, they're finding what they can charge these local officials with.

[John Solomon]

Yeah, I think. And again, I don't think they're there to say, we have a name, let's hang a charge on it. That's what the Democrats did to Donald Trump. I think what they're looking at is, hey, enough people provided visual or paper evidence that the rules weren't followed in the state, and it turns out that that's a federal crime. And if it was intentional, meaning if someone intentionally didn't follow the rules, they knew that what they were doing was wrong and they just simply didn't follow it. That people can be prosecuted under. I think it's section 152 of the Federal statutes. And so that's what the FBI agent in the affidavit described. And so you see places where, listen, in Wisconsin, we all know that after the fact, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that one of the changes they made for Covid voting wasn't lawful. Well, that's a pretty significant decision that was made by people, the Wisconsin Election Commission and others. Does that constitute a federal crime? Those are the sort of things that could potentially be examined in an investigation like this.

[Blake]

Really good reporting here. John, excellent stuff. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what other jurisdictions are going to be rated or grand juries, whatever. You also have mentioned that this FBI Arctic Frost, they targeted turning point USA. You can throw up 251, no doubt. 251 and 247. These images right here. FBI Arctic Frost probe targeted nearly 100 GOP groups, including Charlie Kirk's team, CPSA. Looks like Tyler Boyer specifically was targeted. Surveilled. You have, I don't know, hinted that there could be another sort of anti Trump intel op that is uncovered this week. Can you tell us more?

[John Solomon]

Yeah, I think so. We're in the final stages of just finishing that up. But I think what you're going to see is the first targeting of President Trump was in the summer of 60. That's Crossfire Hurricane. That's the fake Russia collusion story. The last was Arctic Frost. That's the one that Kash Patel discovered. In between, there were two in the middle. One of them is now known. It's the one that targeted Kash Patel and Susie Wiles phone records. Recently we learned about that. And that is focused on the classified records case. But it was a counterintelligence case that was opened up. But there is another one that's opened up in that same timeframe, maybe a little bit earlier, as, as Crossfire Hurricane is coming to an end. And as. And before the classified documents case began, they basically targeted the president a fourth time. So there will be four counterintelligence investigations in which the FBI treated President Trump as a national security threat nearly the entire time of his political career. We're going to lay all those out in the next 24:48 hours.

[Blake]

You said this could be the most troubling. Can you shed any more light on that?

[John Solomon]

I think because part of the predicate or part of the rationale for what constituted the national security threat was what words you used to talk about. Hunter Biden in Ukraine. Think about that speech may have been a delimiter for determining whether you were treated as a national security threat. And I think that investigation falls in that timeframe. But we're also, we'll be seeing the origins of a disinformation board and then that massive amount of censorship that we saw, some of it in Europe paid by the United States, who then come back and censor Americans, some of it outright occurring on U.S. soil. Charlie and I and many others were targeted in that censorship realm as well. I think that the fact that it went beyond censorship and maybe treated someone just because of what they said about Hunter Biden or Covid or whatever, that they could be deemed a national security threat worthy of being investigated by the FBI is a very concerning thing. And I think that that's where this fourth operation likely lands.

[Blake]

John Solomon, Just the news. Check him out. Check out his show on Real America's Voice as well. Thank you for this. Great work, John.

[John Solomon]

Yeah, good to be with you guys. Thanks so much.

[Blake]

All right, we'll talk to you soon. Hi, folks. Andrew Colvett here. I'd like to tell you about my friends over at Y Refi. You've probably been hearing me talk about why Refi for some time now. We are all in with these guys. If you or someone you know is struggling with private student loan debt, take my advice and give them a call. Maybe you're behind on your payments, maybe you're even in default. You don't have to live in this nightmare anymore. Yrefi will provide you a custom payment based on your ability to pay. They tailor each loan individually. They can save you thousands of dollars, and you can get your life back. We go to campuses all over America and we see student after student who's drowning in private student loan debt. Many of them don't even know how much they owe. Why? Refi can help. Just go to yrefi.com that's the letter Y. Then refi.com and remember, Yrefi doesn't care what your credit score is. Just go to yrefi.com and tell them your friend Andrew sent you. All right, Blake, there's a bunch of doomers.

[Beau Alford]

There's a lot of doomers. We wanted to hit this.

[Blake]

We have some good news for you.

[Beau Alford]

Yeah. So this is the thing that's gonna get really frustrating over the months to come because there's a lot of people who are going to see the conflict with Iran as an excuse to maximally doomer. They want to pout either because they find it emotionally satisfying to complain and pout, or because they. They see it as a chance to win some sort of internal struggle within the right. So they'll either think, oh, we can turf out the MAGA people because Trump's poll numbers will go on, or we can turf out the more interventionist people because we think this war will go bad. There's gonna be a lot of that and it's going to be very important to keep fighting for this cause because a lot of good stuff is happening, stuff that's not always in the headlines. And as an example, something we were celebrating over the Weekend. This is great because it was reported by various outlets as a negative thing where international student visas went down much more than expected. Worse than we thought, because America's colleges have gotten hooked on foreign students bringing in infinity Indians, infinity Chinese, infinity Arabians.

[Blake]

And why do they do this?

[Beau Alford]

They do it for a variety of reasons. One is a lot of state school. They'll pay full freight tuition, so this can fill in holes in their budget. A lot of grad students they bring in because these schools, to save money, pay their grad. Grad students. And STEM subjects are generally paid. They're not paying tuition and they don't want to pay them too much. So someone who's coming to the US from abroad will work for a lot less money, both because they're from a poor country and because they can use this to get a green card into the United States. And that's effectively a form of compensation and an American can't get. So we've gotten totally hooked on foreign students. It's hollowing out America, especially in skilled fields. We've gotten totally hooked on, oh, we need foreign computer programmers, we need foreign physicists, foreign everything. And Americans are losing the ability to do these things. And then we become more hooked than ever. Anyway, visa issuances for foreign students went down 36% last year in the Trump

[Blake]

administration, according to Chronicle of Higher Education's analysis, the Department of State data. This is what's interesting. So this is 97,000 100,000 fewer student visas were awarded. Technically, that's a 17% overall decrease in international student enrollments, which is big, actually very big. One year just from a. They're just doing this kind of behind the scenes. No laws have changed.

[Beau Alford]

Maybe different regulations have changed on EFI Institute, or I'm looking right now, it says economic implications for colleges are significant.

[Blake]

Good. Yes, good. Stop paying bloated administrative salaries. Stop adding admin roles. By the way, when you look at the ratio over the years between students and administrative faculty, we're not talking professors, we're talking admins. The ratio has skyrocketed.

[Beau Alford]

The number of people that, you know, they have their gym, you know their gym, yoga class leaders that are part of the package. You have the community managers. You have the sheer number of psychiatrists, mental health professionals, diversity czars.

[Blake]

Well, and here's the thing. This is what's great. India, the top sender of students to the United States. Hear me out again, because we were talking about H1BS. Everyone wants to get rid of India. I'm on that track. But this is key. India, the top sender of students to the United States, saw an especially steep decline. American consulates there issued only about 20, 22,000 student visas over the summer. A drop of more than 60%. So yet we haven't fixed all of it. But 60% drop in student visas to India, that is significant. That is significant. And to Blake's point, why? Because you're making room for actual American born talent to take those spots, especially when it comes to stem. So a lot of people don't understand the psychology of this. If you're say you're like a white kid from Tulsa and you want to go get a STEM degree somewhere and you apply and you go into the introductory course because they do sort of like come get to know your faculty. If you're thinking about this major or whatever, you go in, you got this white kid from Tulsa who goes in and guess what it is, it's all Chinese and Indians and you're like the one kid from America. And what are you gonna think psychologically about that? Like screw that, I'm gonna go to finance. And so we lose the ability to do really important work. And that's key because then we get hooked on foreign talent, totally hooked.

[Beau Alford]

And then we've often had, we've had foreign born scientists end up in sensitive defense stuff because we're like, well, we have no one else who can fill these jobs. Or we're just totally blase about the risk that having foreign originated people in sensitive defense stuff goes. And then they leak stuff to China endlessly has happened where we have Chinese scientists in sensitive areas or again, those Chinese graduate students. We do so much defense work at universities with professors who are elites in whatever their field is and they'll have Chinese graduate students and they'll say, oh, we're keeping them away from the most sensitive stuff, but they're not away enough. They'll end up.

[Blake]

Well. There's a new report, by the way, the DOJ just showed that over 30,000 visits during the Biden administration from Chinese, Russian and Iranian officials to sensitive laboratories doing research in the United States.

[Beau Alford]

Not a problem that China has, for example, that they we've gotten so hooked it's functionally impossible for us to do work that we think America should be able to do without an endless inflow of people from abroad. And some of those people are useful, some of those people are necessary, but not as many as we've gotten used to. And not to the extent where it's worth hollowing out native born Americans ability to do key work. So that's a white pill for you. It's important to flag these. We're going to keep doing it because we can't let people use this conflict in Iran or anything else to black pill us out of keeping this administration going because it's doing important stuff that no other administration would do that is helping America in the long term. And that's happening on immigration, it's happening on the border, it's happening on regulation, it's happening in a lot of areas.

[Blake]

Yep, Western hemispheric dominance. But yeah there's a I call them the burn it all down people. There is a whole string of thought online that wants to completely sabotage the Trump administration because they aren't perfectly.

[Beau Alford]

Some people find it more fun to burn everything down than to build. In fact most people find it that way. That's why building is hard and why it's necessary. For more on many of these stories and news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.