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Feb. 18, 2026 - The Charlie Kirk Show
40:29
The Trump Team's Secret Midterm Strategy Session
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Fighting Evil and Proclaiming Truth 00:10:24
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 going to end up miserable.
But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful.
College is a scam, everybody.
You got to stop sending your kids to college.
You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
Go start a turning 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, use me.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
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All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
It is February 18th, 2026.
Blake, welcome.
Howdy.
Happy morning.
Last night on Capitol Hill, the senior Trump political command briefed its core team on the midterms.
This is reporting from Mark Halperin, a frequent guest on this show.
And I am reading from an X account that he has given to all.
Some great reporting from Mark Halpern here.
I like his, he's got it here.
It was a meeting at the Capitol Hill Club.
So that's where Republicans often meet.
The group was served chicken and steak.
Very Halpern detail there.
It's great how it gets the food.
It was a two hour program starting around 5 30.
This is a veteran group, not panicked or shaken, he says, just focused on the work and the task at hand.
There were about 75 to 100 people in the room.
Many cabinet members were there, including Scott Besant, Howard Lucknick.
RFK, Sean Duffy, along with their most senior aides.
The meeting was hosted by Susie Wiles, who spoke briefly.
The pollster and strategist, Tony Fabrizio, who Charlie loved, presented with about 25 slides on the data of what voters care about, the demographics, the issues, the messages that resonate, and what do not.
The economy will be the issue in the election, he said.
Messages that break through, banning stock trading for Congress.
That's a message that breaks through.
Yeah.
So, this is economic messages that get through the most, is what he's saying here.
So, yeah, banning stock trading for Congress.
I think that's a very interesting one.
Transparency on health insurance data, including pricing and claims reimbursement, lower prescription drug costs, and the Trump tax cuts.
I think this is worth hovering, though, for just a second.
Again, this is Tony Fabrizio, one of the most famed, respected pollsters in the entire world.
I guess, political scene, but especially within President Trump's.
Was this the guy?
I remember when Charlie, on election night, Charlie would be texting back and forth with like an unnamed person.
He's like, he tells me, like, we got this.
We got, like, was that Tony?
Yeah, there were a few of them on election night.
One of them was Dad, a Republican.
Another one was Tony Fabrizio.
And yeah, Charlie loved Tony.
Tony is beloved by the Trump administration, by the team, trusted deeply.
But again, let's just hover on these slides.
I really love, I do love, I do, banning stock trading for Congress is an interesting one.
I know people, I think that is underrated because I do think there's been really all the way back since the big crash in 08, over and over again, public attention goes back to how wealthy members of Congress are, how much wealthier they routinely get while they're in Congress, the fact that insider trading for a long time had no restrictions at all, it's still not that restricted.
Now, there's always like new ways that you can cash in, and people notice it.
It's like you can literally borrow a theme.
I see a theme in these issues that they list.
There is an underpinning of the populist energy in each one of these, right?
And it's coming from a conservative angle.
So the question is how can you get wins that resonate, that stick in the brain of voters?
You're also accomplishing a massive portfolio of policy agenda items that are having huge impacts actually on the economy, underlying economic.
Momentum.
But these are things that stick in the minds of normie people that are not plugged into the day in, day out of the political rigmarole.
This is what I'm saying.
Banning stock trading for Congress.
That's so interesting because it's not really a thing that makes any individual person richer.
No.
But it captures the idea of are the elites against us?
Are they just exploiting us and playing by different rules?
There is such a hunger in tackling the corruption and draining the swamp.
Now we're going to get to the Potomac story.
In the next segment.
So that brings a whole new meaning to draining the swamp.
But that's what we're getting at is that the voters, the grassroots, they want to see accountability.
They want to see the elites that have been getting away with it in their minds for so long be held accountable.
And these are the issues.
It's not GDP.
It's not even, according to Tony Fabrizio, stopping the invasion at the border, which is a huge accomplishment that guaranteed has more impact on your daily life than any of the things I'm going to list.
We didn't read that.
He actually says, apparently, Fabrizio in his presentation, he said, This is from Mark Halpern.
Taking credit for closing the border does not resonate much, which is a bummer because it is an incredible accomplishment of this administration.
But if it's not resonating, it's not resonating.
You should still do it, of course, because it's good.
Of course.
But check it out.
Let's read these again.
Banning stock trading for Congress.
Get those dirty, corrupt politicians in Congress.
Transparency on health insurance.
Get big medicine.
Get big hospitals.
Get big insurance.
We want to know what we're paying for.
We want them to stop getting away with it.
Lowering prescription drug costs.
Stopping big pharma.
And the Trump tax cuts.
The Trump tax cuts will resonate because guess what?
People are already experiencing about an 11% boost in their tax returns.
Housing affordability.
This is a Charlie Kirk special.
And we're going to get into this in hour two with Secretary Scott Turner from HUD.
And we're going to talk about that.
JD Vance had a great interview with Martha McCallum yesterday.
Taking credit for closing the border does not resonate much.
To Blake's earlier point.
One last thing, and then I want us to move into this.
I really like how it's not just, oh, we need more of a domestic focus on the economy.
It's that specific bit of, This is a specific thing like banning stock trading or really honing in on prescription drug crisis that will be noticed and will produce results.
A thousand percent.
And by the way, if you think back to the campaign, it was similar, right?
No tax on tips, no tax on Social Security.
These were things that people could hang their hat on.
They could say, oh, that sounds good.
And by the way, it cuts through Normieville, it cuts through to Main Street.
Yes.
And speaking of stuff that goes back to 2024, so he goes on, he says he makes recommendations for how they should spend time in media.
And he says, spend time.
On podcasts and social media, not national news interviews.
No one's watching Meet the Press anymore.
He says paid media should go on targeted media, like that social media apps, not on broadcast.
He says Facebook is still king for voters.
Then Instagram, TikTok, and TikTok against this.
And I want to push back against the pushback.
Facebook is where normie voters live, aka older voters.
They're the ones who will reliably turn out.
Facebook exists for one reason, and it's so boomers can share anti Obama and anti Biden memes.
So there's actually data on this.
It's.
Older millennials who were the first generation to have.
Facebook, their parents, and that X are in between zone.
So it makes sense.
They're original users, but they're still the most apt to vote, right?
Yeah.
We have a minute here.
They're targeting, he typoed this, it's 36 targeted House races and seven key Senate races.
And they're Frank, Frabizio, and then James Blair gets up, the political czar, and they say historically they know it's common for the president's party to lose seats, often a lot of seats in the midterms.
They believe they'll only lose the Senate if we lose 50 House seats.
So that's kind of an optimistic take.
We're likely to keep the Senate, keep the ability to confirm Supreme Court justices, confirm appointees, unless it's a true massive bloodbath.
And I think they're aware, as long as they take the right moves, they might lose seats.
It's likely they'll lose seats, but not catastrophically.
He says, trying to argue about wages being up will not help.
Voters just have to feel it.
And then this is interesting.
Apparently, they said, since President Trump wasn't there, he says, Trump will do what he wants to do.
He will say what he wants to say.
He goes on guts and instincts.
He's not as data driven.
But everyone else, you know, they can.
Stay on their message, and they'll expect you know, Trump has good instincts.
They talk about it as a parallel path that everybody that can stay on message, do it.
Trump's gonna go with his gut, he's gonna message on instinct.
He's the president, after all, he's earned the right.
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The Cost of Villainizing White People 00:09:00
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So, we want to get to this Potomac story.
Yes, the Potomac, not the Potomac, because it has just experienced the largest sewage spill in U.S. history.
240 million gallons of raw sewage flooding the Potomac in one month.
This has been going on for weeks, which is just remarkable, actually, that anything this catastrophic and horrific and smelly and gross and disgusting would be allowed to happen.
I can't imagine.
Almost like where the third world is.
I can't imagine just a giant.
Poop smell permeating over the capital of the United States of America.
Drain the swap.
Where all the politicians and power seekers are.
I know.
It's terrible.
So here's the thing there's multiple layers to this story.
Let's start with NBC is finally covering this 464.
The river George Washington called the nation's river is tonight off limits and contaminated after a 60 year old sewage line in Maryland broke open last month, spewing more than 240 million gallons of raw waste.
Into the river, the same river that flows past the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Memorial and used by boaters, kayakers, high school, and college rowing teams.
So you can see some of the toilet paper and the sewage up on the banks there.
Riverkeeper Dean Nell Yokes says the stench and environmental damage are staggering, with E. coli levels more than 10,000 times above EPA quality standards at the time of the spill.
I think they could fix it.
They could just take a box of like kitchen matches and you just light it and burn it for a bit and get it on fire.
Yeah, well, if you set the Potomac on fire, It would probably clean it up faster than what they're going to do here.
And they're saying this might not be fixed for nine months.
Yeah, it's just, I feel like that's probably the most emblematic thing.
It's that when you're decaying, you read like the Hoover Dam got built in like two years or something.
The Empire State Building went up in nine months, I think, less than a year.
And now.
And Chinese are building ships.
Yeah.
We can't fix a pipe for nine months.
You don't even need to go look at China.
I remember Japan once they raised an entire train line in a day.
You can watch the time lapse.
They just shut down the whole station and did it all in one night.
And now.
There's a powerful symbolism in it.
It's already been a month.
This is a six foot wide pipe.
It's quite the.
It's a huge pipe.
And I guess some rocks.
There's like a rock dam.
So they investigate it and they're like, oh, well, we have to clear this rock dam before we can cure the blockage.
But yes, six months, nine months.
And when they say it'll take nine months, that means it might take them a year, two years.
They might just say, ultimately, it's now just the sewage river.
It's the sewage river.
It's the Potomac.
And now President Trump is blaming Wes Moore for Maryland, the governor there.
And the governor is.
Blaming the feds, 465.
President Trump has blamed Maryland's Democratic governor Wes Moore for gross mismanagement, while Moore fired back saying the pipe was federally built and regulated, and the Trump EPA has been slow to respond.
The fear now the Potomac may not be safe for months.
You used to swim right here?
I've swam right here.
Would you swim in here again?
Not for a while.
D.C. Water expects to have the immediate repair job done by mid March, but overhauling the entire line could take at least nine months.
All right, so here is where it gets interesting.
DC Water's manager, David Gaddis, had a whole theory of the case.
What was wrong with the people running this system before?
Hmm.
I'll give you a couple guesses.
422.
You know, when I arrived at DC Water, this was an organization that looked very similar to our industry.
It was predominantly, you know, white male at the top, but this was a utility that's, you know, more than 70% people of color work at this utility.
The people at the top, the executives, the chiefs in that C suite, they should look like.
The employees that they serve and that they work with.
And the same thing with the community.
And so my executive team looks exactly like the community.
It looks like the employees, the staff, be it people of color, women.
Well, now they have a river filled with poop.
Yeah, so how did that work out?
Yeah, so okay, it used to be a bunch of white men running it, and they're the ones who built the pipe.
They probably built it faster than they'll ever repair it here now.
It worked for 60 years.
Well, and then the fact that this was going for four weeks is another just damning detail.
It sort of seems to have started as a small story and then just it keeps going, and people are like, wait, that's still going?
There's still poo going in the river.
You're telling me that the river that flows by the Kennedy Center and the Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial right through our nation's capital is filled with poo.
Now, admittedly, I feel obliged to point out that the Potomac actually has been polluted a long time.
So I know when I moved to D.C., you were not supposed to swim in the Potomac, and that there was like a decade long cleanup process.
And I think maybe a couple years ago, they finally said you could swim in it.
And now it's just right back into the pool.
Well, they have E. coli levels at 10,000 times higher than the pool.
Well, now you definitely can't.
But even before, you were always told not to swim in it.
Here is a general observation.
Because white men get a lot of crap.
We get.
We're the only group it's acceptable to attack us.
You can have genocidal fantasies about them.
Set the record straight, though.
White men created Western civilization.
They settled this continent.
They built the most successful, functional, prosperous, and advanced societies on planet Earth.
And if you are going to go into the C suite of a utility that runs your sewage for millions of people and you remove us arbitrarily, whether that be culturally or in this case bureaucratically, don't be surprised when your city regresses to the historical mean.
Most places on planet Earth have rivers filled with poop.
If you want to understand exactly how this works, there's a great X account.
I'm going to shout it out to everyone, and we should talk about it on Thought Crime next time we have it.
It's a Twitter account called Josie versus Josie.
That's J O Z I.
So Josie versus Josie.
And it's Johannesburg.
That's the nickname for it in South Africa.
And the only thing the account is, is it's photos of Johannesburg from 2010, 2000, 1990.
Old photos of Johannesburg, but mostly like 2009, 2010, old Google Maps photos.
So when they would just drive around and take photos.
And then today.
And that's all the account is.
All you have is Johannesburg after another 15 years of.
There's a lot of DEI.
South Africa is basically the DEI country.
It's in their laws, in their constitution at this point.
You have to have African economic empowerment, I believe they call it.
Black economic empowerment, they'll have labels like that.
And that is how they run their country.
You can see how it's turned out.
Rhodesia is another example of that.
There's beautiful pictures of Rhodesia from the 1960s and 70s.
Or go, if you want a closer to home example, go to London, like Charlie did last spring.
You'll see.
Beautiful building after beautiful building built 200 years ago, and they can barely even repair them now.
They're talking about tearing down the Palace of Westminster because it would be annoying to repair it.
They can't do that.
We should do regime change on them if they try to change it.
We can't go that far.
You know, be careful when you attack the people that uphold society, that produce in your society, that maintain it, that built it in the first place.
You might just miss them when they are gone.
And I think the Potomac story.
Is a sad, sad reminder that villainizing white people often comes with steep costs.
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California's Top Two Primary Drama 00:16:10
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We get contacted all of the time by viewers and listeners of this show.
They always want to ask about California.
They say, Can you guys save California?
And Charlie was always honest.
We're always honest.
And we say, We're focused on the core swing states Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia, places like that.
And California, if you're there, you should fight for it.
You should do everything you can.
But it's not imminently about to flip.
But there is a governor's election this year.
And California has a very interesting law.
They have.
Jungle primaries, which is regardless of party, everyone into a big pot, and the top two vote getters go to the general.
And that's how it works.
And they did this so they could get more left wing people in a lot of the country.
You'd only have two Democrats, you could get a more left wing one versus a moderate, and so on.
Yeah, they wanted a Dem versus a Dem.
But a side effect of just a big jungle primary is well, it's a blue state.
There are six Democrats at least running in the governor's race, and there's only two Republicans.
And yesterday we got this poll.
It's apparently done by Tavern Research and is an internal poll.
For the Javier Becerra campaign.
And these are top two advance.
The top two polling are Chad Bianco, 20%, Steve Hilton, 12%.
And then six Democrats.
And this is what's great.
So I called Steve yesterday.
I was like, Steve, you're in the top two.
Like, this is great.
And he goes, Oh, that's a fake poll.
And this wonderful English accent saying, Oh, that's a fake poll.
Wait till you see what comes out tomorrow.
So now we have a new poll, and I'm struggling to get the number here.
It is 450.
So put up the new one.
I think this is for Emerson.
Did a poll.
Steve Hilton's actually at 17%.
In December, he was down at 12%.
So if you go to the left side of that graph, he is now pulled ahead as the top poll receiving, most favorable of all the candidates.
This one has Swalwell.
Yeah.
Eric Swalwell as number two.
Chad Bianco, the other Republican, at number three.
But also, they're both at 14%.
So effectively tied for second.
Effectively tied for second.
Top two advance.
Porter, Steyer, Becerra, Villaragosa, and then undecided is still a huge chunk because, you know, it's early.
If we were to get it where just two Republicans are the nominees in California for the governorship, that would possibly be the funniest thing I've seen in state level politics.
It basically would be a literal coup.
We would take over the state.
Well, without further ado, one of those men, and apparently the leading candidate for the governor of the state of California.
Steve Hilton joins us now.
Steve, congratulations on these new breaking poll results.
You are at 17%.
I mean, this is a massively crowded field.
So to get to 17 is a huge accomplishment.
Welcome back to the show.
Tell us what it means.
Well, it's great to be with you guys.
Always fun.
And I really appreciate the way you laid all that out there.
Exactly right.
We've got this ridiculous top two system.
And there is a crazy scenario, as you were just mentioning, where you could get two Republicans in the top two.
That's theoretically possible.
But in practice, it's not going to happen because.
The Democrat machine is not just going to surrender California.
And right now, there's another thing that's happened, which is as well as the existing candidates that have been in the race for a while, people like, I can barely say their names without laughing, that these are the, as the president would say, they're not sending their best when you think about the Democrats.
Eric Swalwell, Katie Porter, the billionaire climate fanatic Tom Steyer.
Well, on top of that, you've got another one now.
A guy called Matt Mahan.
He is the mayor of San Jose.
No one's really heard of him, but he's got big tech money behind him.
And that's going to propel him up.
He's got a lot of money.
And on the other side of it, the unions, they always get behind one candidate.
They're going to pick their puppet, as it were.
And it looks to me like they're getting behind Eric Swalwell.
So within a couple of weeks, even maybe certainly within months, you will get two very well funded Democrats moving up purely because of all the money that the government unions.
And the tech community are putting in.
So, the real risk actually is that we get two Democrats in the top two.
That's what I'm really concerned about.
And then, of course, the chance for change in California is gone.
And it has a massively negative impact on the other races in California.
If there's no Republican in the governor's race, you can forget about any of the congressional seats in California that are in play that we absolutely need to protect the House majority.
You can forget about voter ID, which is on the ballot.
I wanted to update on that, Steve, actually, because we had Calvert on the show giving us the update where we stand on that right now.
Fantastic.
It's qualified for the ballot.
We've got more than enough signatures.
It's been led by Ken, has been great on it.
A friend of mine, Carl DeMaio, has been really working hard.
I've been on the road getting signatures as well.
It's qualified for the ballot.
This is huge.
It's not just huge in its own right because it helps stop the cheating.
It actually is a big part of why I believe we can really win this year.
Because voter ID, of course, as we know, it's popular across the board, even in California, even among California Democrats, there's a majority for voter ID.
But of course, it's really popular with Republicans.
That means it's going to really help the turnout in November.
And in a midterm, as you know, that's what it's all about getting your voters out.
And so it's one of the main reasons I think we can actually win this year, truly win in November and elect me governor is voter ID being on the ballot.
Well, and listen, there is, I mean, there is probably no politician in the United States so loathed and so mocked, save for like AOC and Ilhan Omar, as Eric Swawa.
I mean, this, the fact to see his name ahead of, Katie Porter shocked me actually because, yeah, Katie Porter is got a terrible bedside manner, she's terrible to her staff, she's mean.
Uh, but you know, she's a little like Eric Swalwell.
I mean, also, we have to weigh the possibility that she may, if the race is close, simply eat Eric Swalwell.
You do not have to chime in on any of this if you don't want to, uh, Steve Hilton.
Well, I will say what I will say one thing, which is I can't decide between them.
What is my preference?
You know, Katie Porter with the endless opportunity for mashed potato jokes.
Or Eric Swalwell with the possibilities for Fang Fang jokes all over the place.
I can't decide.
There's flatulating on camera, there's Fang Fang, and now the new one is his erotic poetry.
He's given Stacey Abrams a run for her money.
He once penned a graphic sex charge college poem boasting of lovers kissing till veins imploded and exploded with blood rolled down our chins.
Ah, okay.
Formless and magnificent.
A flurry of limbs and nails.
I guess, you know.
A flurry of limbs and nails.
All of us.
Bad poetry.
He was 19, I guess.
All of us were cringe once, but it is very funny.
So, right now, I'm going to.
Okay.
I think I'm going to stick to saying my plan is for $3 gas in California because we're going to end the Democrats' climate insanity.
How about that?
That's my response to that.
Well, yeah.
What are you seeing resonating on the campaign trail?
Because we just got this.
Interesting report from Mark Halperin talking on the national level.
They want to see banning stock trading.
They want to see price transparency at hospital.
So Fabrizio's giving the president and the administration these messaging line items that will pierce the noise, right?
What's piercing the noise in California?
So we're on the road.
I mean, you can see it behind me because I'm on the road with that.
We call it the Cal Affordable Tour because it's all of these, everything is the most expensive in California than anywhere else in the country.
So, my plan is incredibly.
You've got to end the Democrat climate crusade.
So, you get $3 gas, cut electric bills.
We have the highest gas prices in the country, even though we have abundant oil reserves, higher than Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
We have the highest electric bills everywhere apart from Hawaii.
These are the concerns.
Tax is the highest in the country.
Every rent, housing, all of these things.
Charlie used to talk about, and that's one of the things that so resonates, of course, for all of us, is that simple American dream get married, raise a family.
Buy your own home, a good, decent life.
They've made that impossible in California.
It's actually those simple things $3 gas, cut your electric bills in half, your first hundred grand tax free, a home you can afford to buy.
That's really what people are responding to.
And I think that's, and the Democrats have no answer, like literally nothing to say about any of that.
And the idea that we're just going to have more of the same of this nonsense in California is just unthinkable.
So that's why I'm sure we can win.
Especially on gas, the refinery situation.
Didn't just a refinery just shut down?
My family in Nevada was telling me gas in Nevada spiked because a refinery shut down in California.
And now there's a report out of Bloomberg that gasoline starved California is turning to fuel from the Bahamas.
This just came out from Bloomberg.
Gasoline starved California is turning to fuel from the Bahamas.
California is so inept.
They need fuel from the Bahamas.
All right, Steve, here's a question for you.
Are you and Chad talking?
Are you like, what's it going to take to unite the Klans, consolidate the field?
You don't have, you can answer however you want, but it seems to me.
Look, we do.
We've got to avoid splitting the vote.
That's really important.
Otherwise, we could end up with two Democrats, and that's an absolute calamity.
So the truth is that for months now, actually, I've been, I've made it clear my door is open.
I'm building a team to get this done.
It's never actually been done like this in California.
I've got a running mate for Lieutenant Governor Gloria Romero.
Michael Gates, a fantastic fighter, running with me for Attorney General.
He was a, He was the city attorney in Huntington Beach, worked for the Trump administration with Hamid Dillon in the Justice Department.
Herb Morgan running for state controller.
We've set up Cal Doge to find the fraud.
So I'm building a team already.
And I'd love Chad to be part of that.
I don't see any interest on his side.
Steve Hilton for governor, Charlie Kirkendorf, Steve Hilton for governor.
We're behind you 100%, my friend.
Keep going.
Thank you, man.
Keep going.
Great to see you.
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According to Axios, Trump moves closer to a major war with Iran.
So, this is a.
The sources noted it would likely be a joint U.S. Israeli campaign that's much broader in scope and more existential for the regime than the Israeli led 12 day war last June, which U.S. eventually joined to take out Iran's underground nuclear facilities.
So, this is a huge buildup here.
So, we'll go through the numbers here.
Trump's armada has grown to include two aircraft carriers, a dozen warships, Hundreds of fighter jets and multiple air defense systems.
Some of that firepower is still on the way.
And people have been seeing how, over the last few days, a lot of the logistical stuff has been because you can monitor those flights.
So, tankers have been flying across the ocean.
The supply vehicles that would support a major effort, all of that is heading from Europe, from the United States.
Like, you get that long term buildup that would let them have sustained action against the country.
Yeah, exactly.
So, more than 150 U.S. military cargo flights have moved weapon systems and ammunition to the Middle East.
Just in the past 24 hours, another 50 fighter jets, F 35s, F 22s, and F 16s headed to the region.
So, what they say is between the lines, the standoff with Iran has gone on so long, many Americans are likely numb to it.
Maybe, maybe not.
I wouldn't say the base is numb to it.
The Twitterati are not going to be numb to it.
What they're getting at is this is a bigger buildup than we had last summer, than we've had at other times.
And yet, this is the fourth segment of the hour.
It's not what we led the show with.
We haven't really been talking about it.
It's been in the background compared to.
Shut down in Washington compared to the ICE stuff, compared to basically a lot of other issues.
And there's no, I think if you were to say, if we were to, if Trump were to go on air and say, we're launching a regime change war against Iran, I think a lot of people would be wondering why it's happening now.
Last summer, there was actual war between Iran and Israel.
So that was going on.
Their argument would be that there is this mass uprising and then the regime came in, crushed it.
We're talking about tens of thousands of dead protesters, which is obviously horrendous, but there's horrendous things that happen all over the world.
Now, the Pro Iran lobby would say this is the time you could push them over the top, etc. etc.
So, this is what's interesting here the timeline.
The Israeli government, which is pushing for a maximalist scenario targeting regime change as well as Iran's nuclear missile programs, is preparing for a scenario of war within days, according to two Israeli officials.
Some U.S. sources tell Axios that the U.S. might need more time.
Senator Lindsey Graham, this is the part where it got my ears right up.
Senator Lindsey Graham said strikes could still be weeks away, but others say the timeline could be shorter.
This is what it says The boss is getting fed up.
Some people around him warn against going to war with Iran, but I think there is a 90% chance we see Connecticut.
Action in the next few weeks, one Trump advisor said.
And what is prompting a lot of this is that there has been attempted Iran U.S. diplomatic negotiations going on, and there is no evidence of a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran on the horizon.
But there's more and more evidence that war is, in fact, now imminent.
We should know that the president has done this a few times.
Escalating to War with Iran 00:04:49
We had the long buildup in Venezuela.
I feel like everyone thought we were going to topple that government.
And then instead, he just yoinked out Maduro.
And instead, you have just kind of a much friendlier relationship with essentially the same government still.
Yeah, and all reports from Venezuela, to be fair, you even have former General Petraeus, retired General Petraeus, praising Trump's handling of Venezuela, which is interesting.
And all reports indicate that it's going well.
Mm hmm.
Now, there's going to be bumps along the road.
There's no doubt.
In a country that large and that's been that chaotic for that long, there's going to be bumps along the road.
But that is one scenario that seems to be going well.
And that was ahead of a snake operation, right?
You take out Maduro, you provide an olive branch to the rest of the government.
Seems to go well.
Maybe he could pursue a similar path.
I would be skeptical of that.
Now, as they always say, who runs Iran?
As they would say, Sean Hannity's voice, the mullahs in Iran.
The mullahs.
It is.
You have the Ayatollah, but the Ayatollah's a really old guy who's a cleric.
He's.
It's not a cult of personality around one guy.
It is a guy who loves to tweet.
It is a theocratic regime.
I mean, they're strong enough that they had military forces who could crush a large uprising in the country.
You would, and also, it's a much more, I think, ideologically hostile regime.
I mean, it's religious extremists.
It's not even just kind of communists, it is full-blown apocalyptic types.
Probably the most aggressive, from a messaging standpoint, regime in the world against the American people.
Exactly.
Think it's the sort of thing where you could helicopter out one guy and they'd be much friendlier.
I think it is the sort of thing where if you were going to go in, you would have to overthrow the government and install a new one.
And at that point, you're risking more U.S. troops.
It's a more expensive operation no matter what happens.
And we were just talking at the top that the goal is to pivot towards domestic stuff, message on the economy, message on drug prices.
I think it would be difficult to mix that with this sort of war unless.
President Trump was highly confident it could be a rapid, decisive operation with no permanent U.S. football.
Do you remember what Trump said during the 12 day war?
He said, We could have taken the Ayatollah out.
We had his location.
We could have done it.
He opted not to then.
So it's an interesting thing to keep in the back of your mind that we have the capability, certainly, to do it from a military standpoint.
The question is, would that be part of this?
You can see how they may have even been selling the president on this that, for example, a lot of people, us included, were very concerned last summer.
This would escalate into a quagmire.
And instead, they said, no, we can do one strike.
They won't detect it.
There will be no losses and it'll succeed.
And they did that with the strikes.
Similar thing in Venezuela.
I think a lot of people would have said, this is a very risky operation where a lot of soldiers could be killed.
And instead, total success, no U.S. losses.
And we took them all out and they were completely humiliating for the regime such that they basically had to submit to us because they're worried we could blow them all to smithereens with no losses.
So you can sort of see how.
The people who are most concerned that an intervention would become a quagmire have, we should just say it, they have been incorrect.
And the people who've said we can do this easily with no losses have been correct several times.
Then, yeah, I have to offer that caveat that if you do that over and over, eventually you do get unlucky.
And you only have to get unlucky once, and we're in another five, 10 year mess.
So, the Ayatollah, I was just looking at his Twitter feed, you know, and you got to imagine this is playing into President Trump's psychology here because you don't threaten America when President Trump is president and basically get away with it.
Americans say, come negotiate with us about your nuclear energy, and the result, by the way, nuclear energy, it's not just energy you guys want.
We know better.
And the result would be that you won't have that energy.
There is no need to negotiate.
But if a negotiation were to take place, predetermining its outcome is a misguided and stupid approach.
That's Ayatollah Khomeini.
Khomeini.
We have another one.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Well, we have another tweet, 473, where he says, The president keeps saying they have the strongest military force in the world.
The strongest military force in the world may at times be struck so hard that it cannot get up again.
Yeah.
Man, they really love to broadcast these.
Every Arab war or every Middle Eastern war is like threatened total annihilation of our enemies.
Die.
One last thing Iran has tried to kill President Trump.
That's going on in the back of his head, too.
Don't forget that.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.
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