The Charlie Kirk Show - Prince Andrew Arrested + Child Social Media Ban?
Aired: 2026-02-19
Duration: 37:05


=== Prince Andrew Royal Scandal (15:06) ===

[00:00:03]  My name is Charlie Kirk.
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[00:01:09]  All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show, February 19th, 2026.
[00:01:13]  Blake, I woke up this morning and I was like, woohoo!
[00:01:17]  Prince Andrew's been arrested.
[00:01:18]  This is going to be great.
[00:01:19]  We're going to get him on all the pedophilia stuff.
[00:01:21]  It's a bad day for Andrews.
[00:01:23]  Hopefully, only one Andrew.
[00:01:25]  Let's, you know.
[00:01:27]  A trend is a trend.
[00:01:30]  Well, okay.
[00:01:30]  Let's hope it's a good day for this, Andrew, and a bad day for Prince Andrew.
[00:01:34]  So I thought that we were fine.
[00:01:36]  I thought we were going to finally blow the doors open on this whole Epstein thing.
[00:01:39]  I mean, literally, it's the first thing I looked at on my phone.
[00:01:41]  My eyes are blurry.
[00:01:42]  I'm just waking up.
[00:01:44]  And unfortunately, it has nothing to do with anything, you know, of sex trafficking of minors or any of the innuendo or the salacious stuff.
[00:01:54]  It looks like Prince Andrew was arrested for forwarding documents, this according to the BBC, in 2010 related to his work as, I guess, let's see here.
[00:02:08]  British trade envoy.
[00:02:10]  Yeah, as a British trade envoy, but they have a specific title for him: UK Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.
[00:02:18]  So it looks like in 2010, he sent over documents to, he forwarded them over to Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:02:27]  Documents that he obtained in his official duties as a trade envoy that included some investment opportunities in gold and uranium, and that's what they got him on.
[00:02:40]  It's misconduct in a public office.
[00:02:42]  Now, it's very, it feels a lot like the famous Al Capone thing where he was involved in murders and bootlegging and every manner of crime, extortion, racketeering, and they got him because he didn't pay income tax on his illegal gains.
[00:02:57]  And there's a lot of allegations against.
[00:03:01]  Prince Andrew of various levels of salaciousness, and he's been arrested for forwarding the email that is linked in the New York Times.
[00:03:09]  Right up.
[00:03:10]  This is literally the text of the email that is linked in the New York Times.
[00:03:14]  It is just a forward of an email he received from his assistant, Amit Patel.
[00:03:19]  Sir, please find attached the visit reports for Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen in relation to your recent visit to Southeast Asia.
[00:03:28]  Thank you, Amit.
[00:03:29]  So he forwards those over to Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:03:31]  Apparently, they included, like I said, gold and uranium investment opportunities.
[00:03:35]  Essentially, insider trading, which on the one hand does sort of, I think, shed a little light on how Epstein would make his money.
[00:03:44]  Yes.
[00:03:44]  He had inside sources.
[00:03:46]  It's essentially insider trading at this point.
[00:03:48]  If you get advanced intel on official head of state visits or heads of state, but official government agencies in this case, visiting foreign countries, getting intel on possible investments.
[00:04:02]  Okay.
[00:04:02]  So that's what it is.
[00:04:03]  King Charles, so the brother of Prince Andrew, has released a statement.
[00:04:07]  He says, I have learned with the deepest concern the news about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, which is a very interesting title, and there is a backstory to why he's not called Prince Andrew or His Royal Highness.
[00:04:18]  He's going to explain that.
[00:04:20]  Stripped his titles.
[00:04:21]  But he calls him Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, and suspicion of misconduct in public office.
[00:04:26]  What now follows is the full, fair, and proper process by which this issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities.
[00:04:34]  In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support.
[00:04:37]  And cooperation.
[00:04:38]  Let me state clearly the law must take its course.
[00:04:41]  As this process continues, it would not be right for me to comment further on this matter.
[00:04:45]  Meanwhile, my family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all.
[00:04:49]  Charles R. All right.
[00:04:51]  So this was then followed by all of these headlines.
[00:04:55]  Throw up 525 from the Daily Mail, which is known to be a bit.
[00:05:00]  What's the right word for the Daily Mail?
[00:05:02]  The Daily Mail is the best publication in the English language.
[00:05:06]  Okay.
[00:05:07]  But they are somewhat.
[00:05:09]  They rush to judgment.
[00:05:11]  They are sensationalist in the best way.
[00:05:13]  They've covered Ilhan Omar, the incest story, her cheating on her husband.
[00:05:18]  They get photos of everything.
[00:05:19]  So here's the way it works a little inside baseball for you watching at home, because I've dealt with these scoundrels a lot.
[00:05:25]  You're talking about me?
[00:05:26]  No.
[00:05:29]  That's the next segment.
[00:05:30]  They basically put these headlines into multiple, they feed it out onto the internet and they have ABCDE testing.
[00:05:38]  And sometimes they use AI to create the biggest clickbait.
[00:05:41]  They want to know what you're going to click on.
[00:05:43]  So that's what Daily Mail does.
[00:05:44]  That's their whole thing.
[00:05:45]  You will get a headline that has nothing to do with the body of the article, but they learned through actual cause and effect, watching what you will click on, what gets the most clickbait.
[00:05:57]  That is the whole game over Daily Mail.
[00:06:00]  What headline can get you to click on it?
[00:06:02]  So what do they go about?
[00:06:03]  And they use AI.
[00:06:04]  So they go Trump faces furious Epstein backlash after Andrew detained.
[00:06:09]  We have zero arrest.
[00:06:10]  All right.
[00:06:11]  So this is.
[00:06:11]  So now you've got Thomas Massey, you've got Marjorie Taylor Greene, and a lot of others out on social media saying, well, they got Prince Andrew.
[00:06:20]  Why haven't you done anything, Pam Bondi and Donald Trump?
[00:06:22]  And so that is the case.
[00:06:24]  But here's the crux.
[00:06:27]  The assumption is the same assumption I made this morning that they were going to get that Andrew got arrested on pedophilia, on sex trafficking minors, something like this.
[00:06:36]  That's not at all the case.
[00:06:37]  He got arrested on a process charge for forwarding a document to Jeffrey Epstein in 2010 related to his official government.
[00:06:45]  Kind of maybe alleged insider trading 16 years ago.
[00:06:48]  Correct.
[00:06:49]  Well, so technically, official misconduct is what it is, which is a British offense.
[00:06:52]  But I'm going to, you know, it's going to annoy a lot of people, but I've got to push back on this.
[00:06:58]  Like, as I like to.
[00:06:59]  I like to read Michael Tracy on X because he gives a lot of pushback and he points out, I think it's worth remembering.
[00:07:06]  First of all, this is Britain.
[00:07:07]  Britain's the sort of country where you get arrested for saying things people don't like on social media about migrants.
[00:07:13]  It is a country that has a quite 1984 esque willingness to gin up charges for political reasons.
[00:07:20]  And so, yes, like Prince Andrew looks very bad because he was a big associate of Jeffrey Epstein, and that's gross.
[00:07:25]  And he probably did it because he wanted to sleep with young women.
[00:07:29]  Yeah.
[00:07:29]  But at the same time, the main allegations against him came from.
[00:07:32]  Virginia Guffrey, which, as our guest the other week said, Jay Beecher.
[00:07:36]  Yeah, Jay Beecher.
[00:07:37]  She's serial fabulous.
[00:07:39]  She lied about a lot of people.
[00:07:40]  She's the one, Virginia Guffrey, for our audience's sake, is alleged to have been the one that created this aura, this narrative about her list.
[00:07:48]  She did the narrative.
[00:07:50]  Blank male list.
[00:07:51]  To the extent underage women were recruited, she played a central role in that and encouraged them to lie to get.
[00:07:56]  There's a lot of negative stuff there.
[00:07:57]  So she's the source of a lot of these allegations.
[00:08:00]  His alleged relationship with her is the basis for this.
[00:08:03]  And yet, in the UK, Where they met, like she actually was of legal age, according to British laws.
[00:08:11]  Yeah.
[00:08:11]  And that is what drove this.
[00:08:12]  And so they are bringing this case because of big allegations.
[00:08:17]  But I think it's worth remembering what the origin of this is.
[00:08:20]  And then we go back to what the president himself said last summer.
[00:08:23]  A lot of people are going to be getting tarred and hit for things that are running ahead of what the facts are or where there's nothing proven.
[00:08:32]  And we're kind of seeing this here where they're just, they're howling, Where are the arrests?
[00:08:36]  What were the arrests before?
[00:08:37]  The come up for Prince Andrew is that he was.
[00:08:39]  A dirty, you know, dirty old man, dirty old man, and uh, you know, he showed some really poor judgment.
[00:08:46]  What's funny, also, though, is this clip from 2015 of President Trump has surfaced now, which I think is just fantastic.
[00:08:53]  Once again, Trump just has this knack of coming out unscathed.
[00:08:57]  524.
[00:08:58]  You raised the question of Jeffrey Epstein in your remarks about in the QA.
[00:09:02]  I think he's got a problem.
[00:09:03]  I don't think the problem will be, I don't know, but that island was uh, really a cesspool.
[00:09:07]  There's no question about it.
[00:09:08]  Just ask Prince Andrew, he'll tell you about it.
[00:09:13]  Just ask Riz Andrew.
[00:09:15]  That's 2015.
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[00:10:26]  This is what's interesting about the Prince Andrew thing.
[00:10:28]  So the news hits.
[00:10:31]  Everybody jumps on Trump because, you know, there has been no arrest over here.
[00:10:37]  But what's interesting and different, I would say, about the Prince Andrew situation is two thoughts I want you to keep in your head at the same time.
[00:10:44]  We have to be sophisticated consumers of information.
[00:10:49]  First thought none of this would happen if Pam Bondi had not released these documents in the first place.
[00:10:56]  So there's one.
[00:10:57]  The only reason this is happening is because the UK officials have access to documents that were released by the US Department of Justice.
[00:11:06]  So that's the thing you need to think of first.
[00:11:09]  Secondly, we had Mike Davis on earlier this week, and he assured us that there are ongoing investigations into co conspirators.
[00:11:19]  Les Wexner was labeled as a co conspirator in these documents.
[00:11:25]  And who knows who else is being investigated?
[00:11:28]  My money is on Reed Hoffman.
[00:11:30]  Reed Hoffman has lied repeatedly about his associations with Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:11:36]  He has funded some of the most.
[00:11:39]  Nefarious, sinister attempts of lawfare to get Trump over and over and over again.
[00:11:45]  Reed Hoffman is a marked man, in my opinion, by the Department of Justice.
[00:11:50]  And thirdly, think of this Prince Andrew is no longer Prince Andrew.
[00:11:55]  He's no longer His Royal Highness.
[00:11:57]  We call him that out of sort of a vestige of the royal past.
[00:12:01]  But in 2022, in January, Queen Elizabeth II stripped him of the use of his style, His Royal Highness.
[00:12:09]  HRH in any official capacity, all of his military titles and royal patronages were returned to the Queen, effectively removed from him.
[00:12:18]  This included honorary military appointments such as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, other UK titles like Honorary Air Commodore of the Royal Air Force, various overseas honorary Colonel and Chief roles, royal patronages, his charity affiliations.
[00:12:32]  And then in 2025, so just last year, his brother, King Charles, removed the title Prince.
[00:12:40]  And that included Duke of York, Earl of Iverness, and Baron Kelly Lay.
[00:12:47]  So all of these have been removed from him.
[00:12:50]  And that was in October 17th.
[00:12:52]  And then again, like I said, on October 30th, they officially removed the titular dignity of Prince.
[00:12:58]  And that is why he will now forever be known as Andrew Mountboulton Windsor.
[00:13:04]  So they have been on this Prince Andrew train for a long time, but it's the first arrest of a British royal.
[00:13:11]  Basically, in living memory or in recent modern history.
[00:13:14]  I think I saw somewhere where they said it was the first ever, and all I can remember is that they once beheaded a king.
[00:13:19]  I was going to say, I saw that talking point as well.
[00:13:22]  And yeah, it's like, okay.
[00:13:24]  But at least in modern history, this is the first race.
[00:13:27]  I think it would be a very big.
[00:13:29]  It would be very unfortunate if one of the world's oldest monarchies and one of its last really big monarchies were to fall over something like this, which it very much might.
[00:13:42]  There's a.
[00:13:43]  There is a Republican movement in the UK to abolish it and just retire the royal family.
[00:13:48]  I think it's definitely a movement in other countries.
[00:13:52]  You know, a very funny thing is one of the biggest supports of the British royal family is not who you think, it's the Canadian left.
[00:14:00]  Left wingers in Canada like the British royal family because they hate America.
[00:14:05]  And so they see having a royal family as something that makes Canada not America.
[00:14:09]  It's like a Justin Poole.
[00:14:11]  Like when King Charles visited, made his first visit after becoming king, Justin Trudeau went all out for it.
[00:14:17]  He was a big fan of it.
[00:14:18]  But it is a distinguished group.
[00:14:20]  I think it's easy for us to dump on it.
[00:14:22]  I mean, we're America, we're a republic, we don't have kings, we shouldn't have kings.
[00:14:25]  But as conservatives, we do respect and honor traditions, old things.
[00:14:30]  We realize they have value that's not always obvious.
[00:14:33]  And I think there is a real value in the fact that there has been a king or queen of England in London for over a thousand years, that they are the descendants of those people who were there during the Blitz, who were there when Napoleon might have invaded, who were there when the Armada was sailing for England.
[00:14:53]  Same line of people.
[00:14:55]  Well, and listen, I'm a big fan of the British royals.
[00:14:58]  I think Western civilization needs institutions that stand up and.
[00:15:04]  That helped guide the West back to a sense of its tradition, of its identity.

=== Social Media Addiction Risks (13:02) ===

[00:15:10]  But listen, there are things happening in the background at the DOJ that we just need to keep our eyes on.
[00:15:17]  And we need to sort of say, listen, the wheels of justice turn slowly sometimes, but they are happening.
[00:15:23]  Okay.
[00:15:24]  And again, I would mention the name Reed Hoffman.
[00:15:27]  You've seen this just this morning that Bill Gates has dropped out of a speaking engagement due to increased scrutiny over the Epstein files.
[00:15:33]  Kathy Rumler has stepped down at Goldman Sachs.
[00:15:38]  Because of her connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:15:41]  It was worth mentioning that she was Obama's longest serving White House counsel.
[00:15:45]  So the DOJ's release of these documents, obviously spurned on by Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey, who have attempted to weaponize the release of these documents for their own political ends.
[00:15:59]  It remains unclear what their ultimate intentions are here.
[00:16:03]  But the whole point is that there is a very large faction of people that want to use these documents to get Trump.
[00:16:10]  All right.
[00:16:10]  Time and time again, as we saw in that 2015 document or the video, Trump comes out looking pretty darn good.
[00:16:18]  He looks amazing, actually.
[00:16:20]  Yes.
[00:16:20]  But it's, you know, I think we should, again, be careful and talk around this.
[00:16:23]  Like, yes, Bill Gates has stepped away from things, and Bill Gates should feel embarrassed.
[00:16:27]  He was very clearly close with an individual who, regardless of what other crimes he committed, was a gross figure.
[00:16:34]  It was just, it's ugly that he was so close with him.
[00:16:36]  And we should feel that same way with Reid and a bunch of others, that they felt no shame about endlessly associating with a guy who.
[00:16:43]  Basically, clearly, his life revolved around fighting with teenagers.
[00:16:46]  And many of them lied about this.
[00:16:47]  But it's not, frankly, it's not illegal to lie about who you're friends with.
[00:16:50]  It's illegal to lie under oath to law enforcement, but we don't know if he did.
[00:16:54]  So we should remember that for a lot of people, this has become a political cause out of proportion to what is actually proven, what is actually provable.
[00:17:05]  And yeah, more might be coming, but we should remember that there is a lot of, we've been through a few rounds of lawfare in our time.
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[00:18:27]  Alan Bukhari, Foundation for Freedom Online.
[00:18:30]  You've known him on this show for a number of years.
[00:18:33]  He's come back and used to be with Breitbart covering all their digital stuff.
[00:18:36]  Now he's with Foundation for Freedom Online and Mike Ben's over at the good people there.
[00:18:40]  So, Alan, we want to bring you in.
[00:18:42]  Welcome back.
[00:18:43]  We want to bring you in because there is this, they're calling it a bellwether case in Los Angeles Superior Court.
[00:18:51]  And it involves a young woman.
[00:18:53]  And I guess, you know, a lot of families are out there, a lot of families are linking hands outside of the courthouse, and they are alleging that social media.
[00:19:02]  Is destroying their lives, getting them addicted, that it's engineered to be addictive and that it's causing suicidal ideation, it's causing depression, and that they say that it has been intentionally designed this way.
[00:19:14]  Alan, break down the court case here.
[00:19:18]  What's being alleged?
[00:19:19]  What are the defenses?
[00:19:20]  Give us the 30,000 foot view.
[00:19:22]  Well, look, obviously social media is addictive in a way.
[00:19:26]  And there have been complaints about addictive media for a long time.
[00:19:29]  Before social media, there were similar complaints about TV and how that was ruining people's health.
[00:19:35]  But I must say, this framing that social media could be a health hazard is quite dangerous.
[00:19:41]  And asking social media to be less addictive is asking them to make their product less effective.
[00:19:47]  They're an information product.
[00:19:48]  And the big winner at the end of the day, if that happens, is going to be legacy media.
[00:19:53]  So, you always have to look at who stands to benefit from this framing of social media as a health hazard.
[00:19:59]  It's other information services, especially the media companies that have been displaced by social media.
[00:20:05]  Now, social media addictiveness is a real problem, and there are major concerns, genuine concerns about the effect on children.
[00:20:13]  But when you have to pay attention to who's latching onto this cause, it's often progressive governments like the UK that are committed to online censorship, not because they care about children.
[00:20:25]  The UK government is embroiled in a scandal right now because one of their top appointees, Peter Mandelson, the former US ambassador, was connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:20:37]  But what they see in this agenda, in this narrative about addictiveness and the harm that social media can cause to children, a potential Trojan horse for what they actually want, which is political censorship, which is punishing social media companies that don't.
[00:20:56]  Ban who they don't like, that don't ban their political opponents.
[00:21:02]  If you look around the world, governments are latching onto any excuse they can find.
[00:21:06]  The EU is launching a probe into X over allegations about grok being used to generate deepfakes.
[00:21:14]  The UK has done the same thing.
[00:21:15]  They even tried to team up with Australia and Canada to ban X over that issue.
[00:21:20]  And why they're going after X?
[00:21:21]  Because that's where all their political opponents are, that's where their narratives are being challenged.
[00:21:25]  So when we think about the addictiveness issue, we have to think not just about the issue itself, but who's championing the cause.
[00:21:31]  And what the second order effects are going to be of designating social media a public health hazard.
[00:21:37]  It will make it much easier to regulate and much easier to regulate those algorithms that the establishment are really quite afraid of because those algorithms are how citizen journalists can challenge mainstream media narratives.
[00:21:50]  Well, Alam, you're definitely right.
[00:21:51]  It's very clear the British government, the German government, the French government want excuses to ban X, to find X, and presumably other social media outlets that they are out of their control.
[00:22:03]  I think it's also clearly the case that a lot of these apps are designed to be addictive in a way that clearly is damaging young children's health.
[00:22:13]  I think the rise of Facebook, Instagram, and other social media is clearly correlated with young, especially teenage women's mental well being, going off a cliff.
[00:22:24]  We can see that with the rise of the smartphone.
[00:22:26]  And it strikes me that there must be some things that could be legally relevant here that don't put you in danger of widespread censorship.
[00:22:34]  I think one of the most obvious is just.
[00:22:36]  Doom scrolling, the infinite scroll that a lot of these apps use, that clearly seems to be linked to addictive behavior.
[00:22:42]  And I don't see how banning that would immediately imperil speech.
[00:22:46]  And I just go back to you're almost certainly familiar with this the famous Sean Parker comment all the way back in 2017, where he basically just got on a stage and said, We engineered the app to give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because if someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever, and it would get you in a feedback loop and you would be hooked on it.
[00:23:09]  Apparently, we have that.
[00:23:10]  Oh, we do.
[00:23:11]  Yeah, that's a mythical issue.
[00:23:13]  Yeah, let's go ahead and play that Sean Parker clip.
[00:23:16]  You know, if the thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them to really understand it, that thought process was all about how do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible.
[00:23:35]  And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.
[00:23:45]  And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you.
[00:23:49]  You know, more likes and comments.
[00:23:51]  It's a social validation feedback loop that it's like a, I mean, it's exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.
[00:24:06]  And I just, I think that we, you know, the inventors, creators, you know, and it's me, it's Mark, it's the, you know, Kevin Sisterman, Instagram, it's all of these people, understood this consciously.
[00:24:23]  And we did it anyway.
[00:24:26]  That's super.
[00:24:27]  I mean, that's very chilling actually to watch that they intentionally engineered their platforms.
[00:24:32]  To your point, they have a financial incentive to do so, Alan, to make their products as addictive as possible, to get you to spend as much time on those apps as possible.
[00:24:43]  But this is hurting kids.
[00:24:45]  So I guess the question I have a twofold question.
[00:24:47]  What are the broader implications if this lawsuit is successful?
[00:24:49]  They're calling it a bellwether.
[00:24:51]  I can only imagine this is going to, if it's successful, result in billions of financial losses for these platforms.
[00:24:57]  But secondly, Let's concede the point that we would like to see some guardrails on these apps.
[00:25:03]  What would be a positive outcome?
[00:25:06]  Well, I would always want to look at who's in charge of the regulations and who's in charge of the guardrails rather than what they necessarily are.
[00:25:15]  I think conservatives really have to get involved and take charge of the child safety agenda, much like Adam Kandayev did when he was campaigning for age verification laws.
[00:25:24]  He's now in the Trump administration at NTIA.
[00:25:27]  Because the problem is when you let progressives Take on the child safety agenda, they're just going to use it as a smokescreen for political censorship.
[00:25:36]  We've seen this so many times before.
[00:25:38]  And it's a genuinely difficult issue because social media apps are addictive and they're particularly addictive for kids when their brains are still developing.
[00:25:48]  But you look at what foreign governments are doing, like the UK, France, Spain, many other countries, they're simultaneously trying to ban social media for kids, just a blanket ban, while also trying to lower the voting age to 16.
[00:26:01]  So, what they want really, and you see the end goal here.
[00:26:05]  They want a voting demographic that's empowered to vote, but also doesn't have access to the social media platforms where mainstream pro government narratives might be challenged, where they might encounter information that the government and their allied NGOs and civil society organizations and mainstream media don't want to see.
[00:26:26]  So that is the real danger.
[00:26:28]  So, when we're trying to protect kids from addictive social media, we also have to think about how can we make sure they still have access to that independent media ecosystem that exists on social media.
[00:26:40]  And that governments around the world are working so hard to just completely shut down.
[00:26:45]  Because the same technology that makes social media addictive, that causes engagement, is the same technology that allows citizen journalists to go viral.
[00:26:55]  That is the technology that governments around the world are so afraid of.
[00:26:59]  The same technology that allows a random person to make a post, get millions of views, and share information that the media doesn't want to be shared, that NGOs don't want to see shared, that governments don't want to see shared.
[00:27:12]  So that's the balance you have to strike, and it's a very difficult balance to strike.
[00:27:17]  We have to be constantly aware of these organizations that have an agenda that they're not telling you about when they talk about addictiveness.
[00:27:26]  And particularly, I want to say this the left thinks drag queen story hour is appropriate for children.
[00:27:35]  They think gay pride parades are appropriate for children.
[00:27:37]  They think gender reassignment surgery is appropriate for children.
[00:27:41]  So we should not take any concerns coming from left wing progressives.
[00:27:46]  About the dangers of social media to children and child welfare, seriously.
[00:27:50]  They don't really care about that issue.
[00:27:52]  They care about political control.
[00:27:53]  They care about control of the internet and social media platforms.
[00:27:57]  And that is the danger here.
[00:27:58]  It's hugely tough.
[00:28:00]  I will say, if you look at what they auto feed to children on YouTube, if you make a new child's account, you definitely start worrying about more, possibly some need for regulation.
[00:28:09]  But thank you, Alam.

=== Iran Deal Timeline Update (08:52) ===

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[00:29:13]  We wanted to get to the latest on Iran.
[00:29:16]  President Trump is saying that he is going to make up his mind a final decision about a strike on Iran within the next 10 days.
[00:29:23]  But we are told that he has yet to make his final decision.
[00:29:27]  JD Vance is simultaneously warning Iran, saying this is deadly serious and they better come to the table.
[00:29:36]  So, this is ongoing conversations that are happening in Iran.
[00:29:40]  Meanwhile, President Trump is saying that he has yet to make up his mind.
[00:29:44]  This all echoes very clearly what we saw.
[00:29:46]  In the 12 day war, where Trump said, I'm going to make up my mind in the next two weeks.
[00:29:50]  I feel when I saw that headline, I'll decide within the next 10 days, my immediate thought was, he has already decided, frankly, because that's what he did last time.
[00:29:58]  And there's this element, you're going to decide within the next 10 days.
[00:30:02]  Well, okay, you reach day 10, and you kind of know if he's decided by then, if he hasn't struck a deal, and then you kind of regress back from there.
[00:30:10]  It's such a strange thing to announce.
[00:30:12]  It feels like a very Trumpian tactic.
[00:30:16]  It's saber rattling, it's sort of saying, listen, If past is prologue, you know what I chose to do that time.
[00:30:22]  I did strike.
[00:30:23]  And, you know, I'm serious about this strike.
[00:30:25]  Let's go ahead and play President Trump.
[00:30:27]  He spoke about Iran just this morning, 5 38.
[00:30:30]  Our country's like, nobody could have signed.
[00:30:32]  You would have had that threat.
[00:30:34]  Nobody could have had, you couldn't have had peace in the Middle East.
[00:30:37]  So now we may have to take it a step further or we may not.
[00:30:40]  Maybe we're going to make a deal.
[00:30:42]  You're going to be finding out over the next probably 10 days.
[00:30:46]  Or it could be even, you know, as you say, they remember what happened last time.
[00:30:51]  When they hear 10 days, Iran should be hearing the planes are literally taking off right now, and you have 12 hours to decide.
[00:30:59]  He continues 5 39.
[00:31:01]  Now is the time for Iran to join us on a path that will complete what we're doing.
[00:31:08]  And if they join us, that'll be great.
[00:31:09]  If they don't join us, that'll be great too.
[00:31:12]  But it'll be a very different path.
[00:31:15]  They cannot continue to threaten the stability of the entire region, and they must make a deal.
[00:31:21]  Or if that doesn't happen, I maybe can understand.
[00:31:24]  If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen, but bad things will happen.
[00:31:30]  All right.
[00:31:30]  So, again, this is very Trumpian.
[00:31:32]  If they don't join us, that'll be good, too.
[00:31:34]  So, here's things we know.
[00:31:37]  Let's separate fact from fiction here.
[00:31:38]  We know that there has been a very serious and significant buildup in recent days of military assets in the region.
[00:31:45]  This would include air and naval assets in the Middle East.
[00:31:49]  But insider sources in the White House have told multiple outlets that Trump is privately argued both for and against military action.
[00:31:59]  And he's polling advisors and allies on what the best course of action is.
[00:32:03]  Now, here's the insider scoop there are significant voices within the White House that are against military action, they're against foreign intervention, they stand firmly on the America First side, saying, We don't want to invade Iran, we do not want a kinetic military strike in Iran.
[00:32:21]  There are other voices that are very, very much chomping at the bit to do so.
[00:32:26]  They see this as the one opportunity with the uprising, the organic uprising of protesters in the streets, to take out the mullahs, as Sean Hannity would say.
[00:32:37]  The mullahs.
[00:32:37]  The mullahs.
[00:32:38]  So, you've got competing factions within the White House.
[00:32:41]  You've got the Hawks and you've got the Doves.
[00:32:44]  It's like I said yesterday.
[00:32:45]  I think what could be tilting him is we have had several of these escalations over the past year.
[00:32:51]  Mostly, President Trump has pushed toward peace, but where they have done things, they did the strike on Iran.
[00:32:57]  It was limited.
[00:32:57]  It was successful.
[00:32:58]  They did the raid in Venezuela.
[00:33:00]  It was limited.
[00:33:01]  It was very successful.
[00:33:02]  And we had these reports that President Trump was asking for military operations that were limited in scope, limited in duration.
[00:33:10]  That had a very clear cut thing.
[00:33:13]  And so I think we agree Charlie did not want war with Iran.
[00:33:17]  We are very skeptical of that.
[00:33:20]  But what we have seen a pattern from the president is in comparison to prior administrations, he is very resistant to scope creep.
[00:33:28]  He's very resistant to open ended missions.
[00:33:31]  And so I think the president would be wise enough to say we don't want a bunch of troops occupying Iran, we don't want troops helicoptering into.
[00:33:40]  Trump is not going to telegraph his moves, though.
[00:33:42]  He won't.
[00:33:43]  What we can tell you is that based on the assets that have been moved into the region, it does not look like a ground force is part of the equation right now.
[00:33:51]  It would be naval and airstrikes.
[00:33:52]  What we are getting is we're getting the resources for a much larger air campaign than we've seen before.
[00:33:59]  They're sending all these F 22 fighters.
[00:34:01]  So that's a bunch of fighters who could shoot down every jet that goes into the sky that they could send out.
[00:34:06]  The F 35s.
[00:34:07]  Send in enough bombers that you could actually, you're not just striking nuclear plants.
[00:34:11]  You're hitting every military base, you're hitting every city.
[00:34:15]  And I presume if that happens, the intent would be you bomb them until the government agrees to leave power.
[00:34:21]  Now, can that be done if they are adamant about refusing to do so?
[00:34:25]  How long would it go on?
[00:34:26]  That is where it becomes a stickier question.
[00:34:29]  How many, how much resources are we willing to invest in toppling a government on the far side of the world?
[00:34:34]  And politically, if we do it, even if it's successful, will they make the case that this is a good use of America's time, that it's justified?
[00:34:43]  I feel, even in comparison to last summer, that might be the biggest challenge for the administration.
[00:34:47]  If we were to go to war with Iran tonight, I think most Americans would be asking what had prompted it.
[00:34:55]  Yeah.
[00:34:56]  So, this let's we'll sum it up here.
[00:34:58]  It is a political mess for the administration to go into the Middle East.
[00:35:05]  It is much trickier from a polling standpoint, from a grassroots support standpoint, than actions in Venezuela.
[00:35:12]  I understand the opportunity that has been presented by this popular uprising against the mullahs in Iran.
[00:35:19]  And I understand the just the carnage that the regime has exacted upon the population of Iran.
[00:35:27]  However, this is the Middle East.
[00:35:28]  Regime change is always messier than you anticipate.
[00:35:32]  And at some point, you have to ask the question why?
[00:35:37]  Why now?
[00:35:38]  Is it just because Lindsey Graham, Lady Graham, is, you know, Working his magic, his charms in the ear of the president, or what is the deeper incentive?
[00:35:48]  Now, the deeper incentive, President Trump will say, is to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon.
[00:35:53]  Well, then, if that is your incentive, then what's going on with the B2 strikes that happened last summer?
[00:35:59]  Were those effective or were those not effective?
[00:36:00]  Let's end.
[00:36:02]  You have to remember, for some people, they see this as maybe their last opportunity to get a regime change in Iran.
[00:36:08]  You always have to be wary of that.
[00:36:09]  Charlie had a lot of thoughts on this.
[00:36:11]  We talked about it a lot.
[00:36:12]  This is one of his tweets, 558.
[00:36:15]  This is back in 2019.
[00:36:16]  He said, I think that ground troops line is the key one.
[00:36:36]  And I think that would be a bright line for the president that I think he'll be wise enough not to talk about.
[00:36:40]  Yeah, I mean, I think most of us feel assured of that.
[00:36:45]  This is the largest buildup since 2003.
[00:36:47]  And so, I mean, the voters have all the polling says we're desperate for domestic reform and domestic focus.
[00:36:55]  I hope we can do that.
[00:37:01]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.