Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, frames Trump’s State of the Union as a test of his "America First" policies, spotlighting Joe Abraham’s grief over his daughter Katie’s 2024 death caused by an HIV-positive illegal immigrant released under Illinois’ sanctuary laws. Kirk contrasts Trump’s swift action—apprehending the driver within two days—with Democratic inaction, accusing Pritzker of exploiting immigration for electoral manipulation. Celebrating the U.S. men’s hockey team’s gold medal and patriotic defiance, he mocks critics like Don Lamond as irrelevant while praising Trump’s 341,000-case reduction in immigration courts via Margolin’s trained judges. Kane adds economic wins—$30K more purchasing power for homebuyers under Trump—and fraud crackdowns as key messaging tools, though skepticism lingers about midterm gains. The debate pivots to Iran: Trump’s precision-strike credibility (Syria, Venezuela) clashes with Epstein’s "America First" caution over public support, while Ratcliffe and Rubio’s classified briefing hints at looming tensions—success could rally the base, failure risk backlash. [Automatically generated summary]
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All right, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
Hour two is underway.
I'm here in DC, ahead of the state of the union.
Blake's holding it down at Phoenix, Arizona.
Illinois Team Potentially Appears00:15:23
So there was a powerful event that happened yesterday.
And again, President Trump, I thought, hit an amazing note when he said, I will not forget.
And he was referring to angel families.
And a lot of us know the story of Lake and Riley in Georgia, who was killed at the hands of an illegal immigrant.
But there are so many stories that we don't hear as much about, and we need to.
And here to help us is Joe Abraham.
He's an angel father to daughter Katie, who was killed by an illegal immigrant.
He joins us now.
He was at the event yesterday.
Joe, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
And thanks so much for taking the time to be with us.
Please tell us your story and your family story.
Sure.
Thanks for having me and allowing me to talk about Katie and Katie's life.
So Katie was 20 years old.
She was a third-year student at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.
And her and a friend, a friend in the Glenview, Illinois area, that's where we live, took the train down to Urbana, Illinois to visit some friends at the University of Illinois over the weekend of January 18th.
They went down there.
They were in an automobile on January 19th at a stoplight idol, and they were rear-ended at almost 80 miles an hour.
Just decimated the Honda Civic they were in.
The SUV just plowed right into them.
No braking, no swerving.
Katie unfortunately died on the scene.
Another young woman died the next day.
There were three injuries.
And it turned out the person who struck the vehicle, you know, not only fled right away.
I mean, can you imagine?
You decimate five lives and the first instinct you have is to flee.
So it turns out he is an illegal alien, a Guatemalan national using a Mexican national alias.
So Sanctuary State, Illinois, when they nullified federal law, did not put any type of a real process in place on the front end.
There were no guardrails.
That's how negligent and how Illinois is so mismanaged by the governor Pritzker on down, General Assembly, every state legislature.
So there are no guardrails.
Now, on top of this, in the country using an alias and false documentations, identity theft or whatever you want to call it, he flees.
They finally apprehend him two days after Donald Trump is in office on the 20th, shuts down the border.
Truly believe if Mjorkis and Biden were still running things, he would have never been apprehended.
So thank goodness for Donald Trump coming in, shutting the border down, allowing U.S. Marshals and Border Patrol to do their jobs, unlike the prior administration.
They apprehended him.
Now, it turns out in federal court, he is now that he's been incarcerated, is being treated for HIV.
So understand this as well.
Illinois did not only have zero minimal vetting checks because the federal enforcement officers knew he was using an alias.
They knew he was not who he says he was.
Illinois didn't bother to check.
Two, did Illinois help this guy with any health screening?
No, there was absolutely not.
So Illinois allows folks to roam around the state unchecked, unvetted, unhealth screened.
So this guy has HIV in our communities, was let go to roam free.
Was he as reckless with his HIV as he was behind the wheel, drunk driving?
I suspect he was.
So Katie ends up paying a price, a predictable outcome of reckless, extreme, radical policies out of Illinois, and she pays the price.
She's on some altar we don't even understand.
She dies on some altar of J.B. Pritzker and his lapdogs in the General Assembly.
So I sit here with a life sentence thanks to my Illinois government, and Katie received the death penalty.
She got death.
That's it.
And Illinois is right now trying to erase us, silence us, make us disappear.
We're so inconvenient to their nonsense stories about how there are no illegals in the country, that everyone is good.
And it just goes against human nature how they approach things.
It's really rather disgusting and insidious.
Well, and Joe, you know, CNN, MS Now refused to air that ceremony that was honoring your families, that was honoring Katie and Lake and Riley and so many others before.
And I was reading your op-ed here and you sent a letter to J.B. Pritzker with 11 questions and he's, I believe, still not gotten back to you, it sounds like.
But you've written here the pain our family has experienced in the last 12 plus months since Katie's death is beyond description.
I wish I could explain it to people.
The pain is so unbearable at times.
It has me almost unable to function.
I'm haunted by the knowledge that I will never walk my daughter down the aisle.
I'll never hold her children.
I'll never see her again.
I would give anything, anything in the rest of my days for just one more hour with her.
It's very emotional to read that.
Compare what you've seen from the state of Illinois and President Trump in that ceremony yesterday.
Oh, you can't even, you can't even believe the difference.
You know, J.B. Pritzker loves to talk about Donald Trump being an authoritarian, this, that, and the other.
If my firsthand experience is Donald Trump has welcomed us to the White House more than once, has looked me in the eye, father to father, and said, this has been a mess.
We're going to clean it up.
And J.B. Pritzker, compare him, ignored us.
I was in the same committee room as he was, just 10 feet away from him for eight hours, didn't say one, didn't even look in my direction.
He doesn't even probably know who I am, nor does he care.
Jan Schaukowski, another woman who now is picking her successor, this Daniel Bis guy from Evanston, and you should see Evanston.
It's like Chicago Jr.
And apparently there's no kings, but in Illinois, you can decide who you're going to appoint to take over your seat.
So she's walking by me as if I wasn't there.
So there was not one Democrat who would talk to me.
And this state is all in Illinois is all run by Democrats.
So I need to talk to them.
That's who's running this thing.
And not one would talk to me.
So look at the difference there.
This guy is not compassionate, J.B. Prince.
He's not a caring man.
He is someone who's aloof.
He's arrogant.
Somehow, I think he doesn't, you know, need the voters.
He certainly doesn't, he's not accountable to the voters.
He's, to me, I think, you know, people are leaving Illinois in droves and he's backfilling them with this free-for-all immigration policy because I think he needs warm bodies.
Here's what I suspect.
And I can tell you a story on that too, if you'd like.
I wonder how many ballots are tied to these illegal alien bodies.
That's why I think he's arrogant and doesn't really need to answer to the voters.
No, I think that that's, I think a lot of us suspect the same.
And we obviously see it because it ends up in the census data.
It ends up in electoral college votes.
It ends up in congressional apportionment.
So whether or not there's ballot to ballot illegal voting, it's still power that is being given to Democrats one way or the other.
Joe, thank you so much for making the time.
I know you've got travel and you wedged this dent.
You wedged us in today.
So I'm grateful to you.
I'm grateful for you standing up for your daughter, for angel families all over the country for being bold and courageous.
Thank you so much.
And I'm so sorry for your hard work.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
God bless you, Joe.
God bless.
If you're tired of watching this country drift away from the values that made it great, it's time to get involved.
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It's been kind of a heavy show, Blake, and I think we need to cleanse the palette here and talk about some good things.
All right.
So another judge ruling came down, a motion.
It basically, suffice to say that they denied the defense's motion, and the death penalty is still very much in place and on track in this case.
So that's one good news.
Second good news, Erica Kirk, it has just been announced, will be at the State of the Union tonight.
It's public, public information now.
President Trump has invited her personally and she will be attending.
So that's going all over the internet right now, which is great.
And we have a hockey story that I'm going to hit, but Blake, you have a very, very good one.
Andrew, you can hit your party boy thing.
I want a white pill for the whole, for America in a big picture.
I want to highlight, flag this big article.
Well, not a big article.
They're always short on Axios.
Axios has an article this morning with a very sinister sounding title, Inside Trump's Purge of U.S. Immigration Courts.
You read it.
Here's what the purge is.
For literally decades, we've gradually built up this incredibly long backlog of cases in our immigration courts, which is obviously deliberate.
While you're waiting for your day in court, you, of course, have the right to just live in America, do whatever you want, work in America.
And the Biden administration sent that into overdrive.
They were giving people court dates two years, three years.
I believe in one case, a court date 10 years out and then releasing people into the country.
And I know people are sometimes frustrated that things feel like they're going slow in the Trump administration or that things, you know, it'll be two steps forward, one step back.
But this is a great example of how in the background, they're getting the job done.
They've hired, they're hiring dozens of new immigration judges, and they've been training them up.
And apparently, this month is when they're finally getting into action.
And that's important because, as is already in the past year, the backlog of cases, the total number of cases they have to process has fallen by 341,000.
And this next year, maybe that'll be half a million, 600, a million.
And that's really important because when you adjudicate those cases, it goes really fast.
Almost all of these you can handle in a matter of hours, if not less.
And once you're doing that, that is what allows ICE to just go and say, oh, you have an order of removal.
We're taking you, getting you out of the country.
Bam, You make it so much easier for ICE to just grab people, get them out.
And it's so great here.
They just have these quotes where, like, you know, they put this guy, Darren Margolin, in charge of training up the new hires.
He was an immigration judge and he quit in 2024 because he said, quote, I felt like a co-conspirator in treason regarding the Biden administration's policies.
Now he is taking leadership of the Executive Office of Immigration Review and he is ramming this through.
So I wanted to flag that for people to show there are stories that are not getting front page headlines.
They're not getting covered on CNN that we are getting the work done for mass deportations in the years to come.
You just purge those cases, get it done.
Big white pill for today.
That's a white pill.
I love the white.
I love white pill, Blake.
It's my favorite Blake.
And so when he comes up with these ideas, I'm like, we're going to find time in the show.
Blake, it's perfect.
So I love that.
And I'm a big immigration hawk.
So God bless that.
I love how the Axios calls it purge.
What a joke.
Okay, guys.
All right.
So here's my white pill of the day.
The U.S. men's hockey team is back on U.S. soil.
They are still patriots.
They're still sounding like the perfect note.
And they had to get rerouted to Miami because of the weather in the northern part of the country.
Well, and so what do you do when you're in Miami?
Now, there's a lot of people, oh, you shouldn't be partying.
It's like, okay, loosen up.
They just won the gold medal.
They're out in, you know, a town known for having a nightlife.
Okay.
And everybody's filming them.
And guess what?
They're still singing God bless the USA.
So here's 378 of the U.S. men's hockey team in Miami last night singing God Bless USA 378.
I love it.
What do you guys think in the chats?
Send us an email, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Do you love this?
Do you love this proud, exuberant patriotism from Team USA after they won the gold?
I personally love it.
I don't have a problem with Kash Patel enjoying the moment with them either.
They invited him in.
I think everybody needs to loosen up, have a moment of just pure, unadulterated national pride, and relax.
Like, stop being a hater.
This is great.
You may not like that take.
I like it.
I think it's great.
And by the way, here's the other thing I'd say.
Blake, here's the thing I would say.
You know what they don't love?
They don't love masculinity.
They don't like an FBI director like pounding his chest, pounding the table, throwing back a beer.
Okay, maybe you don't drink.
That's fine.
Charlie didn't drink.
I get it.
But listen, adults sometimes have a beer, especially after a huge win.
They don't like the men's hockey team losing teeth and then draping themselves in the American flag and then going to a club in Miami because they get rerouted to a warmer climate with the Northwestern coming in.
I'm telling you, what they really have a problem with is unabashed, masculine energy, victory.
We're not apologizing for it.
And here's what else is great.
President Trump promised and he delivered 405.
This is the men's hockey team getting picked up by the president for the State of the Union tonight, 405.
Look at Miami International Airport.
This is where Team USA men's hockey team is on U.S. Air Force 757 plane.
This after landing here in South Florida, this is where they, of course, celebrated their Olympic gold medal.
A plane headed to Washington, D.C.
We know the team potentially could make an appearance tonight at the State of the Union address.
All right.
But Andrew, that's great.
National Debt Concerns00:08:39
But Andrew, I've got something great for you.
The real reason this is amazing is because hockey liberals are a real thing, apparently.
There's thousands of them, and they're absolutely flipping out.
I wanted to flag this.
Some guy with the trans flag on X, he posted this one is personal.
It's a scary time on hockey Twitter right now.
We can't become hopeless.
And the article is titled, Don't Let Them Effing Take It From You.
And they are in full meltdown.
So I can agree with you.
This is a great celebration.
You just had to bring us down with that.
I love it.
Everything's political now.
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Welcome to the show, Kane from Citizen Free Press.
I've been checking out your stack all morning.
My friend, thank you for covering the Charlie Kirk trial right now with Tyler Robinson.
It means a lot.
And there's some great, we've had some great developments there.
So thank you for that.
But there's so much going on, Kane.
We had kind of a heavy show, Blake will attest in the first, I'd say, hour and a half.
And we're doing white pill moments.
We're no doomerism on this show right now.
So we've got the state of the union tonight, Kane.
What are you looking for?
What notes do you want the president to hit?
What do you think your readers at Citizen Free Press want to hear?
Yeah, those are good questions.
You know me, dude.
I want to hear about the national debt.
I'd love to hear Trump talk about a spending freeze.
When you watch Trump every day and have to sort of, because of your job, watch all the press conferences like you guys do, like I do, you know, you hear a lot of the same themes repeated.
And so I'm a little bit fearful that, you know, as a junkie, that I will have heard everything that Trump's going to talk about tonight in terms of emphasizing how the economy is better than people say, et cetera, et cetera.
But you know me.
You know the stack.
You saw it yesterday.
Two headlines in green italics where I linked to Scott Bessant when he was on Maria Bardaroma's show on Sunday morning talking about the national debt.
So I would love, you know, that is the part of what I hope for in, you know, in Trump 2.0 is having control of both Congresses that maybe we could finally realistically take a look at the big three programs of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, start getting the conversations going about how to fix those programs.
And also, well, and I threw it in as my second headline as a message to Trump yesterday, specifically to him, because I know he reads the site that, you know, that make this his legacy.
Make, you know, fixing the national debt his legacy.
And so that's what I'd like to hear.
Well, you know, Charlie, the first clips that you'll see of Charlie on TV, it was all about the national debt.
He was obsessed with it and remained obsessed with it.
He was a fiscal hawk his whole life.
And, you know, I would say that a balanced budget, Blake is skeptical.
I know.
I know Blake's skeptical, but a balanced budget would be a massive, massive accomplishment.
I totally agree.
Absolutely.
We do have to show.
Go ahead.
I'm just, I think a way that he could maybe at least gesture towards that, the past six months, we've had story after story of massive fraud in government, massive fraud of federal programs, Medicaid, every federal program getting looted in Minnesota, in Maine, in Washington, in California.
I think if he made that a big theme of his address about, oh, we're going to have a detailed auditing task force that will identify, arrest, stop the fraud, deport the people committing it.
I think that would be a good way to at least make gestures towards the debt, even if I'm skeptical this administration is ready to, they're not going to, I don't think they're going to take big steps on Social Security or any of those big items.
Well, you know, I go back to Kane and you're a financial guy.
People don't know that your background is in finance, but the tweet from Mark Halperin that we actually made a lot of, we actually had Mark Halperin on the show to talk about it.
Apparently, Fabrizio, one of the main pollsters for President Trump, did a whole presentation and he outlined these sort of, I would call them populist economic wins and how to message, how to get through, because this sticky issue of the economy, people still don't feel the momentum.
I mean, we're coming out of four years of Biden inflation and they're still not feeling that relief.
So Fabrizio's got these ideas of like, you know, ban stock trading for Congress, right?
You get these scalps, these actionable wins that would start kind of piercing the noise and getting into the population, the voting population.
What do you think about the economic messaging, Kane, specifically tonight?
Yeah, well, I read the Fabrizio stuff last week and it was good.
And he makes a good point about getting some wins.
Getting to what Blake said, Blake is right.
Fraud beating fraud polls really, really well.
Mark Mitchell of Rashminson has sort of talked about it.
He had a piece up talking about how Trump was doing the best, actually doing the best poll-wise when Doge was in the, was Doge was in the news.
And then, you know, that maybe the missed opportunity in Minnesota was instead of concentrating on the on the deportation and the ICE part, maybe concentrating more on the fraud part because all, you know, a lot more of America can get behind the fraud stuff.
In terms of, you know, a bold move towards Social Security, which Blake also mentioned, yeah, I don't expect that.
I just want the conversations to start.
You know, let's start talking about how we slowly raise the retirement age from 67 to 70 over 30 years.
You know, nothing quick, you know, so that people don't freak out.
Another, you know, a thought I have about why people don't really feel the economy getting better is, to be honest, it's interest rates.
I've got my neighbors across the street who are stuck in their house.
They're the greatest people.
They've got four amazing young athletes under 10.
Homeschool these kids and they're stuck in this tiny lot.
Uh, why?
Because of interest rates, their homes at three percent loan, and and so anyway, I think that'll be huge.
I put a headline in today about Austin Goolsby, who used to be Obama's you know economic guru, about how he's, you know, still saying he won't lower rates.
Thank goodness Kevin Warsh will be able to so.
And, by the way, you know, I watch CNBC on mute most of the day, and you know this, the 30-year mortgage has finally dipped under six percent.
It's 5.99 now, granted that's.
That's still big, you know, those are still a big number compared to three and the three and a half percent, but it's going to get better and I think that'll help.
Um well so yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing.
Yeah no, there was a.
There was a story at a FOX Business this morning that the purchasing power of home buyers is up over thirty thousand dollars uh, under Trump, partly because of interest rates, but also partly because of rising incomes, and so, as those interest rates continue to tick down, people are going to experience a little bit more flexibility.
It's the it, you know.
I think the Zillow quote in there was, it's the difference between having to settle and being able to actually choose a home you want to live in.
So it makes a huge, huge difference for home buyers just to have even 30, 50 000 more money on the table to be able to buy a home.
So, but continue, you were, you were going well whatever, I think that's going to help.
Uh I, I really think that'll help people's.
You know sentiment towards the economy and uh look, I think that you know I think Trump is doing okay.
I pay attention to Rasmusson approval.
I don't really read, I mean I look at all the other approval numbers that come out, but I really pay attention to Rasmusson's daily tracker and you know Trump slash Republican.
Let's say it's Jd Vance in three years or in two years.
You know he can win, we can, we can pull it off in these numbers.
Spill The Beans00:04:19
You guys know that i'm not super optimistic about the midterms right, because what did, how many did Trump lose in 2018?
He lost almost 40 seats, or he did lose 40 seats in the House.
So the House is going to be very tough.
I think we hold the Senate just because of the numbers and and you know it's so vital for our movement, so vital that we um that you know that we win in 2028, that JD wins.
And last thing i'll say before I throw it back, I thought it was a great discussion on that Atlantic article that you guys had that.
You know that, if I have that in the stat from yesterday, if you care about America, you're obviously a Nazi, like that's how far you know.
That's just.
It's just such ridiculous tripe from the Democrats.
I hate these people anyway.
Well okay, since you kind of brought it up and then, by the way, Huffing AND POST said, if you you're feeling uncomfortable being patriotic, you're not alone.
Uh, but we got to hit Don Lamon.
It's one of our favorite things to do on this show.
He's uh, going after the hockey teams here 369.
Look.
I don't understand why anyone would be want to be in the vicinity of this president at all.
Just being honest, if they called on the phone call, I would say no thank no thanks, I don't.
Do you want to take the call?
No, tell him to call someone else.
I'm not interested in being part of this.
I'm not interested in being part of this when he doesn't.
He is not a patriot and he doesn't care about this country.
He doesn't care about the people of this country.
He certainly doesn't if you look at the citizens who are being rounded up, if you look at what he's doing to the economy, what he's done to healthcare.
He doesn't care about this country.
So why should I be smiling and kiking?
No, not interested, i'll go party and celebrate somewhere else.
I'll wait till I get home to go and party and celebrate with my family and maybe, like a real president, maybe we'll.
Maybe one day, Barack Obama will come to our game.
Oh, of course, of course, Barack Obama.
By the way, that's a 60 year old man talking like a little petulant child Kane.
Your reaction to Don Lamond?
He's about as popular as month-old convenience store sushi.
I don't know dude, I don't Don Lamont, I mean I It.
By the way, there's some awesome, there's some awesome, hilarious videos about Don Lamont on Twitter, going back about 10 years, excuse me, on YouTube.
Whatever.
The guy's irrelevant.
He speaks to his audience.
You know, he's there for our outrage.
Just whatever.
He, you know, he got fired from CNN.
Sorry, dude.
Like, not a fan.
It's just, it's really, it's, it's really a shame that we can't have bipartisan patriotism anymore.
It's just a shame.
It's a shame what they've done to the country.
It's the disease, right?
It's the Trump brainworm.
So whatever.
Kane, I have to spill the beans here a little bit.
That picture that you see on your screen, if you're watching right now, is inaccurate.
I have seen there's facial hair.
There's you have a whole new look going on, Kane.
Show it.
I don't want to divulge too much here.
Show it.
Show it.
I got to pull it up now.
Listen, I'll pull it up right out.
But here, here's while we're doing this.
Okay, hold on.
I got it.
I got it.
We'll get it up just for you.
What it is, it's going to be nine years on May 1st for this website.
And running this website, I didn't realize it when I showed up in Detroit last summer.
I lost like 20 pounds slowly by just basic attrition because, you know, you let's say you wake up in the morning and you think, do I need food or do I need to check the headlines?
And when your office is like 14 feet away from your bed, like you end up in that, in the office.
And then, and then, right, you work until the there you go.
There's the front yard.
Yeah, that's after a work.
That is it.
So that's that's a beard.
That's a beard.
Kane, I think you have an oddly shaped beard.
I appreciate it.
It's uh, it's it's powerful.
You're a man-possessed.
Yeah, thank you.
Yes.
So that's my weight is back up.
People will be happy to know that the last year and a half, I've been getting back in the gym three, four days a week.
I sneak out of the CFP headquarters, get in the gym.
You know, that beard is why I never appear on camera for the, I don't, you know, I don't even get showers until like five or six o'clock at night because you wake up.
Iran Strike Concerns00:05:55
I don't want to say I wake up in a panic every morning, but you sort of wake up and you know that like you missed headlines during the six hours while you're sleeping.
Yeah.
Listen, Kane, you got to take care of your health.
And you got that Charlie was always big on the health.
And personal hygiene is also very important.
Okay.
Two elephants in the room at the State of the Union, Kane.
That's Iran and the Epstein files.
What do you make of both, especially Iran?
What are you seeing from CFP Nation, especially on Iran?
Well, yeah, that's a good question about what the people think.
Obviously, a huge part of the America first thing is not to want to get involved in foreign wars.
So there's a natural trepidation that exists and that's there.
But at the same time, it's a trust, you know, there's a trust Trump vibe.
People really do trust him.
Look, remember when in Trump 1.0, when he sent cruise missiles into Syria and people freaked out for 24 hours.
Oh my God.
And that's all it was a short little Reagan burst.
You guys aren't old enough, but Reagan took care of Gaddafi with some cruise missiles in the 80s.
I remember it.
And it was just, you know, 12 hours of bombing and we got our point across.
So anyway, people trust Trump.
So I don't think that people are radically freaked out.
If you're asking, you know, I've had a lot of people sort of ask me, what are the odds?
What do I see happening there?
Look, I would say that Iran has been given fair warning.
You know, Trump doesn't, Trump is well aware of that, what they say about him on Wall Street, the taco trade.
And when it comes to these foreign policy things, Trump doesn't fool around.
So I think Iran better, you know, I put it in the stack yesterday.
There's going to be meetings in Geneva.
I think on Thursday, Iran supposedly has a new proposal on getting rid of nukes.
But if they don't do it, you know, Trump, this will be the last thing I'll say.
You know, there was that Axio story yesterday that said that Trump's bigot, you know, his top general, Raisin Kane, maybe was showing a little bit of caution about bombing in Iran.
And then Trump himself almost immediately put out a long message on True Social that you alerted me to, by the way, Andrew.
And I hadn't seen Trump's response to that.
And that was important.
I think, you know, you can figure out a lot by seeing how Trump is reacting to certain stories.
So the fact that he said that, no, that there, you know, that Raisin Kane really wasn't worried and that Axios got the story wrong.
I think it tells you that Iran should be worried, that the mullahs should be worried.
And then I'll quickly say on Epstein, well, go ahead.
If you want to respond on that, go ahead.
Well, yeah, I'm going to respond on that just quickly.
I got asked by Politico about people invoking Charlie's name with this Iran strike.
And I was very clear with him.
I said, yeah, Charlie was America first to his core.
He wanted a nation build in America.
He didn't want foreign adventurism, none of it.
But when it came to the first Iran strike, you heard a lot more chatter.
There was a lot more people getting up in arms about it.
And Charlie stood the course.
He was adamant.
Hey, we do not want foreign adventurism.
We do not want nation building abroad.
We want nation building here at home.
But at the end of the day, this is why we elected President Trump to lead the military, to lead this nation.
At some point, you have to say this is their job.
They need to do the best they can.
They need to make the best decisions they can.
And I think you're seeing that after Venezuela, which was incredible by any metric, what they did in Iran the first time.
I think people understand Trump is a high violence, precision attack kind of guy when it comes to kinetic warfare.
Now, do we want to avoid a regime change, drawn-out conflict?
Absolutely.
Can they do that here?
Question remains, we don't know.
We don't know what's going to happen.
And I think Blake made a good point yesterday when he said that we haven't really been sold on the case for this conflict yet either.
Blake, I don't know if you have any thoughts there because you're great on this.
Yeah, I think, honestly, if they need to make a case, State of the Union is as good a time as any.
But I think as things stand out, I think this is what Charlie would be most frustrated about is if you are going to launch a regime change war, which I think at this point, strikes of the magnitude they seem to be planning would have to be, you need to be able to, in a handful of sentences, say why this is invaluable for America's national interests and national security.
And right now, I think if it were to happen, I think people would just be confused and they would say, why now?
Why not a month ago?
Why not last summer?
Why not 10 years ago?
What is special about this moment?
And at that point, you're just banking on if it's super successful, that justifies itself.
If it's super successful and there are no American deaths, then that's great.
But if there's any casualties at all, that's where the lack of a clear explanation becomes a big albatross.
These are difficult decisions, right?
I don't, none of us envy the president having to make these very difficult decisions.
But regime change through airstrikes is not easy.
You have the Ayatollah hiding 300 feet underground in bunkers.
So you don't even know that a certain amount of bombing is going to get rid of them.
And then you have to deal with the fact that there are hundreds of other mullahs to replace them.
I mean, Iran is a fully, a fully structured theocracy now after 40 years.
And it's not, you know, just getting rid of the Ayatollah or a few others won't necessarily lead.
So these are all difficult decisions, but we trust in President Trump.
And I think the base completely trusts him.
As you said eloquently, he's earned this trust.
Yeah, well said.
And by the way, today at 3 p.m., CIA Director John Ratcliffe is set to join Secretary of State Marco Rubio for a classified briefing on Iran.
All right.
There you go.
Kane, well done, my friend.
Blake, well done.
And Phoenix, we'll see you guys tomorrow.
Tonight's the State of the Union, and we'll be streaming it on Charlie Kirk Show channels.