The Charlie Kirk Show - Iran: The Air War vs. the Airwaves War
Aired: 2026-03-05
Duration: 01:12:31


=== Honest Us vs. Base Unity (14:39) ===

[00:00:03]  My name is Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:05]  I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.
[00:00:11]  My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
[00:00:14]  If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.
[00:00:19]  But if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end up purposeful.
[00:00:24]  College is a scam, everybody.
[00:00:26]  You got to stop sending your kids to college.
[00:00:27]  You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
[00:00:31]  Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.
[00:00:33]  Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter.
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[00:00:39]  I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
[00:00:41]  Most important decision I ever made in my life.
[00:00:43]  And I encourage you to do the same.
[00:00:45]  Here I am.
[00:00:46]  Lord, use me.
[00:00:48]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:49]  Here we go.
[00:00:56]  The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
[00:01:09]  All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:01:12]  It is March 5th already.
[00:01:14]  March 5th.
[00:01:15]  There is a lot to get to today.
[00:01:17]  Very busy show.
[00:01:17]  We're going to be welcomed by or joined by Mike Howell, President of Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation.
[00:01:23]  But first, I want to get into a concept of two things can be true at once.
[00:01:28]  We want this audience to be as educated as possible.
[00:01:31]  We want you to have sophisticated thoughts, nuanced thoughts.
[00:01:34]  Life is not black and white.
[00:01:37]  And the two things at once idea I want everyone to keep in their mind is this image, 587.
[00:01:44]  This is reporting from The Economist.
[00:01:46]  Hat tip to Kane from Citizen Free Press for flagging this for me.
[00:01:50]  The Iran war has been a stunning aerial success.
[00:01:56]  This is The Economist.
[00:01:57]  This is, you know, this is not state media.
[00:01:59]  This is The Economist.
[00:02:01]  And this is without doubt true, but the subhead is also true.
[00:02:06]  Even if, at the political level, its direction is a mess.
[00:02:11]  Now, listen, I was an early critic, as was Blake, that this war had not been sold to the American public sufficiently.
[00:02:20]  I believe that to be the case.
[00:02:22]  I will also give them credit in the days that have ensued since the initial strikes, they've done a better job of explaining the why and the why now.
[00:02:32]  But so, two things can be true at once.
[00:02:36]  Our military is second to none.
[00:02:38]  When President Trump lauds the military, when Secretary of War Pete Hegseth explains just how lethal and precise and incredible they are, all those things are true.
[00:02:49]  Our military men and women are the best in the world.
[00:02:53]  And our aerial assault has proven to be the best in the world.
[00:02:56]  And look at what we did in Venezuela.
[00:02:58]  Absolutely true.
[00:03:00]  But some of you have been upset with us in our take because we haven't been sufficiently, I guess, enthusiastic.
[00:03:08]  But I want to bring your attention.
[00:03:10]  And Blake, actually, before I get there, why don't you say what you were going to say?
[00:03:13]  Well, I'm just, I think what we are seeing is there's kind of two wars.
[00:03:17]  There's the literal air war over Iran and there's the airwaves war.
[00:03:21]  There's the war over public opinion.
[00:03:23]  Every war goes that way.
[00:03:24]  And it's a little different from conflicts you've had in the past where if you want to use an obvious example, World War II.
[00:03:32]  World War II starts with 100% popular support for the war because the Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor.
[00:03:38]  Everyone is on board and it would only go down from there if there were a lot of setbacks.
[00:03:43]  Saw this after 9-11.
[00:03:44]  You saw this after 9-11.
[00:03:45]  Afghanistan, 95% support for that war, goes down from there.
[00:03:49]  Iraq, probably 65, 70% support for that war when it began, goes down from there.
[00:03:55]  This is different where we seem to be starting with at best 50-50, maybe less support.
[00:04:02]  And the plan is that they can sell it through how successful it is.
[00:04:06]  And by the way, I do want to say this could end up proving, and I said this yesterday, to be the absolutely right geopolitical national security.
[00:04:15]  100%.
[00:04:15]  They have information we don't.
[00:04:17]  Yes.
[00:04:17]  And you would be a fool not to see the potential upside of controlling the Strait of Hormuz, of getting rid of a malignant actor and a terrorist, the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East.
[00:04:29]  There's a thousand upsides to this.
[00:04:31]  If Trump can say you're never going to be hearing about Iran like you've been hearing from them for the past 45 years ever again, that's a good thing.
[00:04:38]  But we have an obligation to make this point because some people are saying, people are saying, oh, actually, the base is super united behind this.
[00:04:47]  Like they're fine on that.
[00:04:48]  And we had students on the show yesterday and we just, we wanted to ask them, we said, be honest with us.
[00:04:54]  What is the attitude like on campus about what has just happened?
[00:04:59]  And they answered us.
[00:05:01]  And we told them not to be completely honest with us.
[00:05:04]  And they were.
[00:05:05]  And there's two clips here that I want to make sure we highlight.
[00:05:08]  Blake, you can call the first one if you want.
[00:05:09]  Yeah, and this was, I believe this was asking a chapter leader at Appalachian State.
[00:05:13]  So this is not an Ivy League school.
[00:05:15]  This is not Berkeley.
[00:05:16]  This is a school in rural North Carolina.
[00:05:19]  Yep.
[00:05:20]  A lot of Trump voters.
[00:05:21]  592.
[00:05:22]  So I want to start off by asking you guys to give us the vibe on campus of this strikes against Iran.
[00:05:29]  What's the vibe?
[00:05:30]  What are people saying?
[00:05:31]  Let's go ahead and start with.
[00:05:32]  Be honest with us.
[00:05:33]  Yeah, be honest.
[00:05:34]  Tell us.
[00:05:34]  We want to know.
[00:05:35]  We want the unvarnished truth.
[00:05:37]  Brooke, you first.
[00:05:39]  Yeah, I think at my campus especially, people are very upset with the United States and their involvement.
[00:05:48]  I think that a lot of direction is pointed at Israel and questioning our allies and the motives in that way.
[00:05:58]  And Megan?
[00:06:01]  Yeah, I definitely agree.
[00:06:03]  That's the same vibe that we're having on campus.
[00:06:07]  And I think more people don't want to see another war.
[00:06:12]  All right.
[00:06:13]  So that was, we thought maybe that was just a broad segment.
[00:06:17]  But then we asked a follow-up question: 593.
[00:06:20]  Copy.
[00:06:20]  So are you seeing protests?
[00:06:22]  Are you seeing people gathering in the square, in the quad?
[00:06:27]  What kind of activities are you seeing this manifest in?
[00:06:31]  I'm mostly seeing things through online platforms, people on Instagram or Twitter, just, you know, really going in at President Trump and being upset that gas prices might go up and forever war.
[00:06:48]  Like people really, really do not want boots on the ground in this circumstance.
[00:06:52]  Are you seeing that even from people that you know voted for Trump in 2024?
[00:06:57]  Or is it more, is it still mostly from people you know would be left-wing regardless?
[00:07:03]  I think the idea of starting a new foreign war is really, even for Trump voters, really deterring people from wanting to align with the administration and their actions.
[00:07:15]  That should be a flashing red light to everybody that supports President Trump, which we completely support President Trump.
[00:07:22]  I mean, candidly, where I'm at, Democrats are completely unacceptable in any way, shape, or form.
[00:07:28]  The entire reason this matters is you do not want to alienate the voters who did vote this last year or two years ago to get the illegals out, to secure the border, to put America first.
[00:07:41]  And all of those things matter more than ever.
[00:07:43]  The left has gone more insane than ever on issue after issue.
[00:07:47]  And mark my words, they are going to try and impeach this president if they get the House.
[00:07:52]  They will impeach him.
[00:07:54]  And that's where we're going for in the second half of this hour.
[00:07:57]  And you can be upset with me for telling you the truth, but I know this to be a fact, put it that way, that they are going to use different, let's call them controversies within this administration.
[00:08:12]  And they are telegraphing their moves here.
[00:08:16]  They understand that going after Trump was politically a disaster for them.
[00:08:20]  And that's probably one of the reasons why we have President Trump in the first place.
[00:08:24]  They're going to go for some of the lieutenants.
[00:08:27]  And if they can keep the popularity of this war down, if even our own conservative students are alienated, then they've got a great chance of taking back the House.
[00:08:39]  And we need to fight that.
[00:08:40]  I'm not a doomer.
[00:08:41]  I don't think this is set in stone.
[00:08:43]  You talk about this now so that it doesn't become a reality later.
[00:08:48]  And we are completely supportive of our military.
[00:08:50]  When the mission was, when they pressed go, when the green light was hit, we're all in for success and we're praying for success, but we have to be honest about the political ramifications as well.
[00:09:04]  This year, it marks a very critical moment in our country's history.
[00:09:09]  As the opposition grows more aggressive and unapologetic and insane, the fight now reaches into everyday decisions we make.
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[00:10:15]  I'm going to throw up this image, 596.
[00:10:17]  Again, I don't want you guys to get mad at what we're telling you.
[00:10:21]  It's just true that this is a politically fraught war.
[00:10:24]  Our military is second to none.
[00:10:26]  They're doing an incredible job.
[00:10:28]  They've been planning these operations for a while.
[00:10:31]  This could be the national security best call.
[00:10:34]  But we have to be honest about the fact that, as Blake said, there's an air war, there's an aerial assault, and there's an airwaves war.
[00:10:41]  There's a PR battle.
[00:10:42]  And we have to be honest that this is going to be an uphill battle.
[00:10:46]  Our kids on chapters warned us about this.
[00:10:49]  But then there's this from Politico.
[00:10:51]  U.S. Central Command, meanwhile, is asking the Pentagon to send more military intelligence officers to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days.
[00:11:01]  Excuse me?
[00:11:02]  But likely through September.
[00:11:05]  According to a notification obtained by Politico.
[00:11:08]  Now, obviously, we don't trust the media automatically, but if they say a notification, my guess is they have some source who showed them basically the request being made and for how long it was.
[00:11:20]  So if this report is true, again, let's go back.
[00:11:23]  We were told four to five weeks.
[00:11:25]  We could move that up.
[00:11:26]  We could move that back.
[00:11:28]  I'm not a fan of putting timelines on military actions because war is unpredictable.
[00:11:32]  War is hell.
[00:11:33]  We don't know what's going to happen.
[00:11:35]  So there's my starting point.
[00:11:37]  I think once you go, you better win.
[00:11:40]  You can't put that genie back in the bottle.
[00:11:42]  So I'm all for achieving missional objectives and strategic objectives in the region once you press go.
[00:11:48]  Hear me out.
[00:11:49]  But when there is a political calculation that you're also making in a midterm year, then when the timeline starts getting dragged out to 100 days, to September, there is going to be a political fallout.
[00:12:04]  Our country is sick of being at war.
[00:12:08]  The independents, normies, young people, these are contingencies that are sick of being at war, and we need to consider them and keep them in mind.
[00:12:18]  So that's a big, big thing.
[00:12:20]  This is our flashing red light to say, don't forget Gen Z. Don't forget independents.
[00:12:25]  Don't forget the people that built the coalition that was big enough to win a popular vote in seven swing states.
[00:12:32]  We have to consider this because if we lose in the midterms, if, I'm not saying we will, I'm not a doomer.
[00:12:39]  We're going to work our butts off to make sure that doesn't happen.
[00:12:42]  But if, you better believe it, they are going to impeach President Trump.
[00:12:47]  And we don't know how many fighters we're going to have in the Senate.
[00:12:49]  Impeach President Trump, if it goes bad enough, you lose the Senate, and that's much worse.
[00:12:53]  Then, okay, yeah, they're doing their endless investigations from the House.
[00:12:56]  That's bad.
[00:12:57]  But if they take the Senate, very likely that the Democrats will say, we are just going to categorically not confirm any appointees by the Trump administration.
[00:13:06]  In-House, no more judges, no more cabinet secretaries, no more undersecretaries.
[00:13:11]  Anyone who leaves is just an empty slot.
[00:13:14]  No more U.S. attorneys.
[00:13:16]  Oh, you can't investigate fraud in Minnesota or in Maine, Maine, or anywhere else.
[00:13:21]  California.
[00:13:22]  Those are the stakes.
[00:13:23]  And so we have to say, if this has political consequences, if this is going to be, if they need to do a good job of selling it, they need to know that.
[00:13:32]  Yeah.
[00:13:32]  And unfortunately, this whole hour is going to be a bit of tough medicine.
[00:13:35]  I mean, it really is.
[00:13:36]  And we're going to get into the next segment, some of the controversy brewing at DHS.
[00:13:42]  If you're not aware of it, we're going to fill you in because it's important.
[00:13:45]  Why?
[00:13:46]  Because these are arrows in the quiver of the Democrat Party.
[00:13:49]  So play this out.
[00:13:51]  If, not when, if, it's a big if, they control the House after the midterms, which historically is the norm, okay?
[00:13:59]  If they control the house after the midterms.
[00:14:03]  If they make some ground in the Senate.
[00:14:06]  We don't know how Susan Collins is going to vote.
[00:14:08]  We don't know how Curtis in Utah is going to vote.
[00:14:10]  McConnell.
[00:14:11]  We don't know any of that stuff.
[00:14:12]  All right, Movie Connell will be out.
[00:14:15]  We don't know how Lisa Murkowski is going to vote.
[00:14:18]  Rand Paul even.
[00:14:20]  There's a lot of question marks in the Senate.
[00:14:22]  So don't rest on the Senate either.
[00:14:24]  And we just found out that Montana, I'm just Daines.
[00:14:31]  Yes.
[00:14:31]  Danes announced his retirement.
[00:14:34]  That came out the last minute in Montana.
[00:14:36]  Meanwhile, Sheehy is getting into fights in the Capitol, broke some dudes' hand, some protesters' hand.

=== Mass Deportations Rumors (15:35) ===

[00:14:43]  I mean, I don't think he meant to.
[00:14:44]  It's obvious from the tape, but it was quite the video.
[00:14:47]  So we're setting up a chessboard here where everything that we've worked for could be wiped away.
[00:14:55]  And we can't let that happen.
[00:14:57]  We need to go in clear-eyed and understand the ramifications of the decisions that have been made.
[00:15:03]  And I'm telling you, that segment with our young people yesterday, turning point students, at Appalachian State of all places, records didn't surprise me as much.
[00:15:14]  No, it is a blue-ish college town, but nevertheless, it's still not an Ivy League.
[00:15:18]  But look where they're sourcing their students.
[00:15:20]  The county was overall about 50-50.
[00:15:22]  I just checked.
[00:15:23]  But they're sourcing their students at Appalachian State, much different feeder system.
[00:15:29]  And as we said, we asked people you know who voted for Trump last year, how are they feeling?
[00:15:34]  And they said pretty similar vibe.
[00:15:36]  And I'm telling you, Charlie knew the same.
[00:15:38]  This is why he was raising the flag warning ahead of Operation Midnight Hammer because he understood that this was wildly unpopular.
[00:15:47]  We sold President Trump to young people as the peace president.
[00:15:52]  Now, the truth is, again, underscoring our military, second to none.
[00:15:56]  We support our warriors.
[00:15:58]  We want success.
[00:15:58]  We want this to be the last conflict in the Middle East ever.
[00:16:02]  We want to take Iran as a malignant force in the region off the map.
[00:16:05]  And this could be, very well could be, the right geopolitical move, the right national security movement.
[00:16:11]  I want to answer a specific email here that we got.
[00:16:13]  Liz says, why would you have college students two opinions that could not be more accurate on your show to be propaganda?
[00:16:20]  Charlie spoke to college students all the time.
[00:16:22]  They're voters.
[00:16:22]  He was on campus all the time.
[00:16:24]  He had panels with them all the time.
[00:16:26]  He cared about their opinions and he wanted to know what they were, both because that's the only way you can convince them, but also because they are the future.
[00:16:34]  And they're voters.
[00:16:35]  They're voters.
[00:16:37]  They're 18 and over, all of them.
[00:16:38]  Charlie would absolutely listen to what they had to say, and he would not dismiss them if it was not what he wanted to do.
[00:16:43]  Here's the other thing I want people to keep in mind.
[00:16:45]  It's a leading indicator.
[00:16:46]  When you see all the chatter online and the movement of opinion, a lot of that starts on TikTok and Instagram and memes.
[00:16:55]  Doesn't stay there.
[00:16:57]  What happens on college campus doesn't stay on college campus.
[00:17:01]  Hi, folks.
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[00:18:00]  All right.
[00:18:01]  Welcome to the show.
[00:18:02]  Right now is Mike Howell.
[00:18:03]  He's the president of the Oversight Project.
[00:18:05]  Welcome to the show, Mike.
[00:18:06]  Great to have you.
[00:18:07]  Thanks for having me on.
[00:18:08]  Absolutely.
[00:18:09]  All right.
[00:18:10]  We should set this up.
[00:18:11]  Let's set it up.
[00:18:12]  Christy No is head of DHS and she went to Congress this past week for two days of hearings before the Senate and the House on a whole raft of things.
[00:18:24]  And we'll be blunt, what stands out about it is she got tough questions, obviously, from Democrats, but also from some Republicans.
[00:18:31]  Yep.
[00:18:32]  And Republicans that we like and we respect.
[00:18:35]  Mike, why don't you set the table?
[00:18:36]  I've got a couple clips.
[00:18:37]  I've got one from Senator Kennedy, and we have some headlines when I get to, but the floor is yours.
[00:18:41]  Yeah, so no doubt, it's been a rough couple months at the Department of Homeland Security.
[00:18:46]  I mean, the most obvious thing is the deportation numbers are just way too low.
[00:18:50]  It's President Trump's central campaign promise to conduct mass deportations.
[00:18:54]  They're only at a couple hundred thousand.
[00:18:56]  And so that's number one.
[00:18:58]  But what the Secretary took heat for is really from multiple angles is, you know, ethics issues.
[00:19:05]  And it came from Republicans and Democrats and primarily related to the contracting process.
[00:19:10]  And in doing so, the thing that jumps out at me the most as an oversight guy, I run the Oversight Project is the implication of the president of the United States, President Trump, in that, because she was taking on heated questions about a $200 million ad buy on Fox News telling illegal aliens to self-deport.
[00:19:27]  Pause for a second.
[00:19:28]  Not a lot of illegal aliens watch Fox News where that advertisement was primarily played.
[00:19:33]  And she said the president told her to do it.
[00:19:35]  And so if I'm a White House lawyer, knowing that the president is most likely going to be impeached if Democrats win the House, I have a lot of concern about the fact that one of my cabinet secretaries just implicated the president and a vector of that.
[00:19:48]  That's one of the angles.
[00:19:49]  There's a lot more, but it was a really rough couple days.
[00:19:52]  And we have that clip.
[00:19:53]  This is Senator Kennedy from Louisiana.
[00:19:56]  So again, a senator we like, asking her about, yes, this $220 million ad buy.
[00:20:02]  Let's do 586.
[00:20:05]  How do you square that concern for waste, which I share with the fact that you have spent $220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently.
[00:20:28]  Sir, the president tasked me with getting the message out to the country and to other countries where we were seeing the invasion come from with putting commercials out that told them that if they were in this country illegally, that they needed to leave or we would detain them and remove them and they'd not get the chance to come back to America the right way.
[00:20:47]  That has been extremely effective.
[00:20:49]  Ask you to run these advertisements.
[00:20:53]  Is that right?
[00:20:54]  We had that conversation, yes.
[00:20:56]  All right, so it continues on here, Mike.
[00:20:58]  There's a second part of this that's important because you could see Kennedy's kind of zeroing in here.
[00:21:03]  597.
[00:21:04]  You're testifying that President Trump approved this ahead of time.
[00:21:08]  Is that my understanding?
[00:21:11]  We had conversations about making sure that we were telling people across the I'm asking you, sorry to interrupt, but the president approved ahead of time you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently.
[00:21:29]  Yes, sir.
[00:21:29]  We went through the legal processes.
[00:21:31]  Did it correctly work with OMB?
[00:21:34]  Yes.
[00:21:34]  He did.
[00:21:35]  Yes.
[00:21:36]  Okay.
[00:21:38]  And one thing, Senator, I think would be helpful to know is how effective that communications has been.
[00:21:44]  So this has sparked massive, massive amounts of rumors.
[00:21:51]  And let's just throw some of these.
[00:21:53]  This is, I guess, 590, Trump Moles, GNOME Firing.
[00:22:00]  This is from Punch Bowl News.
[00:22:01]  This was the first to get it after this interaction.
[00:22:06]  588, this is from Daily Beast, not somebody we typically reference here on the show, but nevertheless, now rumors are swirling.
[00:22:15]  Mike, what put it this way, you set up the stakes well.
[00:22:20]  If Democrats get control of the House, he's going to be impeached.
[00:22:24]  They would love something like this to be true, where the DHS secretary is featured prominently is what Senator Kennedy said.
[00:22:35]  They would love for this to be an ethics violation or some sort of corruption, but it goes deeper than this, does it not?
[00:22:42]  There is reporting about airplanes.
[00:22:45]  There's reporting about budgets with former spokespeople.
[00:22:50]  Lay out kind of what she's dealing with here.
[00:22:53]  Yes, she's taking it on from a lot of different angles.
[00:22:56]  And it primarily revolves around the movement of money and the ethical perceptions and issues.
[00:23:02]  And a lot of them came on full display at a hearing from Republicans and Democrats.
[00:23:05]  So let's recall reconciliation, one big beautiful bill, $40 billion to go to ICE, to hire more agents, get detention facilities.
[00:23:13]  That money really hasn't been spent yet.
[00:23:15]  It's not getting out in the field.
[00:23:16]  We aren't seeing big detention facilities and manpower increases stood up.
[00:23:21]  Instead, the money first was spent on these kind of marketing and communications ploys, which I call mass communications instead of mass deportations.
[00:23:31]  Now, you add to that failure on the operational side, the ethical scandal that is brewing.
[00:23:37]  And it opens up a vector for Democrats and even a lot of Republicans to attack the president's central mandate of his administration, which is the secure the border and mass deportations.
[00:23:49]  And then to make matters worse, you can imagine when these impeachment inquiries into the secretary open, it's going to go right to the president's desk.
[00:23:56]  And Senator Kennedy is a really smart lawyer.
[00:23:59]  He understood the importance and the liability of what the secretary laid out there when she implicated the president.
[00:24:06]  And I think he was trying to do the White House a solid by making them see very clearly where this trail would inevitably lead.
[00:24:15]  The reason we're emphasizing this is this is clearly, it's basically the most important department within this president's administration.
[00:24:22]  It is his most important campaign promise is to deliver on border security deportations.
[00:24:27]  And as we know from what happened in Minneapolis, it's inevitable we're going to get a lot of pressure on the stuff that needs to happen.
[00:24:34]  We need ICE agents out there arresting people.
[00:24:37]  There's going on incidents.
[00:24:38]  Non-negotiable.
[00:24:39]  You're going to take heat for that.
[00:24:41]  It is entirely avoidable and optional to take heat for the advertising budget.
[00:24:47]  This is what I wanted to zero in with you, Mike.
[00:24:49]  I totally agree.
[00:24:51]  You just said something that's incredibly striking.
[00:24:54]  And actually, I'm sitting here boiling, if I'm being honest.
[00:24:59]  You just said we're not getting detention facilities.
[00:25:03]  And so what other contracts are not getting out the door while we're getting marketing budgets?
[00:25:10]  Yeah, the Hill, you know, no one wants to throw shade at this issue.
[00:25:13]  And I'm certainly not here to throw shade, but it's the reality that, you know, $40 billion, not much of it has been spent.
[00:25:20]  DHS hasn't even updated Capitol Hill on the money that's gone out.
[00:25:24]  Most of it's been tied up.
[00:25:25]  One example is the border wall contracts.
[00:25:28]  Those only left the secretary's desk a few months ago because they were being held up in this type of contract approval procedure that has come under this ethical scandal.
[00:25:39]  And so the result was, President Trump got very upset that the wall wasn't being built.
[00:25:43]  We saw the reports of it not going up.
[00:25:45]  There was a finger-pointing exercise within the department as to whose fault that was.
[00:25:49]  It ended up that the contracts were sitting on the secretary's desk as the price of steel increased massively.
[00:25:56]  And then ultimately, after some hearings a few weeks ago, the contracts finally moved.
[00:26:01]  And that's just like one example.
[00:26:03]  And so we can move from the border wall stuff to.
[00:26:05]  So I just want to point out that when you say sitting on the desk, do you mean that literally, like we're waiting for a signature?
[00:26:12]  Yes.
[00:26:14]  Okay.
[00:26:15]  All right.
[00:26:16]  What's happened is, and this is unusual, and the secretary has told lawmakers this, that she approves all contracts over a certain amount, which has led to, you know, removal of authority from CBP, ICE, and elsewhere, and centralized it at headquarters.
[00:26:30]  And that has led to some of the infighting, and I call it drama and again, not commas, in the deportation number.
[00:26:35]  And that's why so many people at DHS are at each other's throats as of late.
[00:26:39]  And it's no secret that the camps have been fighting.
[00:26:42]  At first, it was internal, but it's spilled over into the press with targeted leaks of blaming each other back and forth.
[00:26:48]  And so that's the environment at DHS.
[00:26:50]  But why I care is because we're here to get mass deportations done.
[00:26:54]  And if these facilities aren't stood up, ASAP and many are waiting to go, then we are not going to execute the mass deportation agenda.
[00:27:02]  And so, like, that's what I care about.
[00:27:04]  But when you open up an ethical flank to that, that gives recalcitrant Republicans and Democrats an angle to make sure that we can't even at a later date get that money spent, it's a disaster.
[00:27:15]  And I think that's why the president's so upset about it.
[00:27:18]  I mean, I've been very clear on this show.
[00:27:20]  This is my personally.
[00:27:21]  This is my number one issue.
[00:27:22]  I think it's existential to the future of the country.
[00:27:25]  We must enforce our sovereignty.
[00:27:27]  We must have a border wall.
[00:27:29]  We must deport criminal illegal aliens.
[00:27:32]  And everybody needs to be on the table to deport, by the way.
[00:27:35]  No amnesty, none of this sob story stuff.
[00:27:38]  This is what got President Trump elected more than anything else.
[00:27:43]  When we have to see it through, I have some breaking news.
[00:27:46]  This is a White House correspondent from Reuters, Nandita Bose, or Bose.
[00:27:51]  I'm not sure how you pronounce it.
[00:27:53]  If you guys could get that.
[00:27:54]  President Trump told Reuters he did not sign off on a $200 million ad buy featuring DHS Secretary Christy Noam and had nothing to do with it.
[00:28:04]  That is a massive signal right there.
[00:28:07]  We talk about signal and noise.
[00:28:09]  When President Trump, I mean, that means that President Trump is aware of the machinations and the scheming against him and is concerned enough about this to set the record straight.
[00:28:20]  Mike, how do you interpret this?
[00:28:22]  Yeah, I think you're right.
[00:28:23]  It's a massive signal.
[00:28:24]  It's President Trump saying he's had enough of this.
[00:28:26]  And look, obviously he did not sign off on $200 million ad buy to play on Fox News to tell illegals to self-deport, which, by the way, only less than 100,000 ended up using the application CBP1 to actually do that.
[00:28:40]  DHS hasn't released numbers.
[00:28:42]  But this is the president and his lawyer saying we're not going to get dragged down into this impeachment inquiry just because she brought up his name.
[00:28:49]  Yeah.
[00:28:49]  And here's the other thing.
[00:28:51]  So there was a contract that was supposed to go out, I think was part of this marketing budget to recruit ICE agents, new ICE agents, because we had 10,000 plus to fill, correct?
[00:29:05]  And I'm told that those numbers got filled pretty quickly, and yet without much of the budget being spent, have you heard the same?
[00:29:14]  Yeah, I think ICE recruitment numbers are good right now.
[00:29:17]  These ads, though, I think related to the CBP1 app and the self-deportation.
[00:29:21]  If you recall, they featured the secretary prominently and almost predominantly aired on Fox News at night, which again, legal aliens don't watch.
[00:29:30]  And so they initially grabbed a lot of attention as being unusual.
[00:29:33]  And then you add into it the allegations that the contract was like a sole source emergency funding deal that went to someone with political connections to the secretary.
[00:29:43]  And that was the feature of hearings yesterday and the day before, allegations of corruption there.
[00:29:48]  No, and I get that one.
[00:29:49]  So that's one bucket.
[00:29:50]  But wasn't there a second bucket to recruit ICE agents?
[00:29:53]  I think they did.
[00:29:54]  They had the money to recruit ICE agents.
[00:29:56]  They got the recruits they needed and they just kept spending it, which might have the implication that someone really wanted, you know, they could have returned that money, used that for something else.
[00:30:05]  Right.
[00:30:06]  Yeah.
[00:30:06]  The overall thrust of this is these ads read as self-promotion and political advertising as opposed to mission-focused things.
[00:30:12]  Yeah.
[00:30:13]  So here's another clip with Christy Noam.
[00:30:15]  I believe this is Sheldon Whitehouse, who I don't like.

=== Sheldon Whitehouse's Concerns (05:02) ===

[00:30:18]  So take it with a grain of salt, but it's about this luxury DHS jet, which is another story.
[00:30:24]  There's an Axio.
[00:30:25]  Axios broke this last week, Mike.
[00:30:27]  I'm sure you saw it, but for our audience who may not be aware, 603.
[00:30:32]  Could you explain this?
[00:30:37]  Sir, I'm looking at a picture of an interior.
[00:30:41]  Looks like a bedroom.
[00:30:43]  Of an airplane.
[00:30:45]  Yes, sir.
[00:30:46]  You're not familiar with that?
[00:30:47]  These photos are not accurate.
[00:30:49]  If you're referring to the airplanes that the Department of Homeland Security has purchased and are purchasing, we're using them for long-range command and control aircraft that is dictated in statute by Congress for the Department of Homeland Security to have a plane.
[00:31:05]  Luxury jet with a bedroom in it.
[00:31:07]  Yeah.
[00:31:08]  Mike, here's the Axios story from last week.
[00:31:11]  What do you know about this?
[00:31:12]  Separate fact from fiction.
[00:31:14]  I don't trust Sheldon Whitehouse at all.
[00:31:16]  So I'm not going to tell you.
[00:31:17]  Yeah, that's the problem here.
[00:31:18]  We don't want Sheldon Whitehouse and the Democrats ever to be right or have a leg up.
[00:31:22]  But here, like, not doing them any favors when money that was supposed to be spent on deportation aircraft are being used for luxury travel for the secretary and others.
[00:31:33]  And, you know, the Axios story checks out.
[00:31:35]  I mean, one of these jets they claimed was for deportation usage and the contract is being used for like international junkets and travel.
[00:31:43]  And you juxtaposed that against a secretary who spent very little time at DHS headquarters.
[00:31:48]  By some counts, less than like a month of time there, and is instead focused on traveling the globe and elsewhere.
[00:31:55]  It kind of begins to just look like what it is.
[00:31:58]  And it's the use of the emergency funds and the one big beautiful bill money, which was supposed to be getting illegals out, is being used to get the Secretary of the Homeland of Security around the world in the country in style.
[00:32:09]  And it just gives Democrats such high ground to make these types of argument.
[00:32:13]  And I don't want to be watching Sheldon Whitehouse and others have that high ground.
[00:32:17]  And that's why it's such a problem.
[00:32:19]  So this is pretty frustrating to hear.
[00:32:23]  This is was kind of the main reason that I, I mean, I don't, there was a lot of reasons, but like deportations was top of my list.
[00:32:31]  Now, devil, you know, double advocate, obviously this has been critical.
[00:32:34]  Yeah.
[00:32:35]  The thing is, okay, let's say the president dismisses her, appoints someone new to the position.
[00:32:41]  Are we able to continue doing deportations, doing the wall, doing the things that need to be done while that position goes unfilled, possibly for months on end?
[00:32:50]  Like in an interim or something.
[00:32:52]  Yeah, so there will be an interim.
[00:32:53]  Will that person be able to deliver on all the things we care about?
[00:32:57]  Or would we want to maybe have the president give her a stern tongue-lashing, but keep her around purely because we can't afford that two-month pause?
[00:33:05]  Yeah, so on the first part of the question, yes.
[00:33:08]  I mean, if you recall in Trump won, we basically ran on acting secretaries while the border wall was being built, which isn't without its problems.
[00:33:14]  But, you know, you could.
[00:33:16]  The OBB money is insulated from the shutdown and all of that.
[00:33:20]  And so it really comes down to policy changes at the department that need to happen.
[00:33:25]  One is, you know, open the aperture of the deportation program.
[00:33:28]  You know, we got to move from this near-exclusive focus on criminals to getting the numbers up, which means work site enforcement, you know, to get into the millions, which, you know, President Trump promised to meet Eisenhower, and that's what it'll take.
[00:33:40]  So that policy change isn't going to happen under current leadership.
[00:33:43]  And then second is this process, which has just hunkered down the moving of this critical $40 billion worth of money.
[00:33:51]  And now it's going to be even harder to move that money under current leadership with everybody just so focused on the perceptions of ethical issues in that contracting process.
[00:34:00]  Politically speaking, of course, it's the president's decision to make.
[00:34:04]  And, you know, he's got the insight into what needs to be done there.
[00:34:08]  But there are people that could come in and get confirmed by the Senate rather quickly.
[00:34:11]  And if you've seen their names floating around, I mean, Jason Schaffetz could fly through the Senate and he's got a lot of experience and wants the deportation numbers up.
[00:34:19]  Mark Morgan, the former head of CVP and ICE in Trump won, he's an operator who knows how to get things done, has law enforcement experience and rank and file support.
[00:34:28]  He could fly through the Senate.
[00:34:30]  So these are all things that I'm sure the White House is weighing with their optionality of having more insight into the various variables in this moving exercise.
[00:34:40]  So, Mike, this has been excellent.
[00:34:43]  Thank you for a dispassionate presentation of the facts.
[00:34:46]  We don't want to rush to judgment, but certainly this is troubling because we have an electorate, a base, a coalition that wants to focus on local domestic issues.
[00:34:56]  Meanwhile, we've got a war in Iran, strikes ongoing.
[00:35:00]  The timeline keeps stretching out.
[00:35:02]  It's going to be a grueling campaign, even if it is the right geopolitical move to make.
[00:35:09]  Meanwhile, the domestic number one issue, the issue that basically unites the entire base, the entire coalition is deportation, sealing the border, getting tough on immigration.

=== Coffee That Stands For Something (02:14) ===

[00:35:20]  And it seems to be just a complete mess.
[00:35:23]  And that is a formula for disaster.
[00:35:26]  Mike, thank you so much.
[00:35:27]  The Oversight Project, this has been excellent.
[00:35:30]  We're going to have you on again soon as this develops.
[00:35:32]  Thank you.
[00:35:33]  Appreciate it.
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[00:36:50]  Your emails are flooding in.
[00:36:52]  We will probably read some of those.
[00:36:55]  Some people like what we have to say.
[00:36:56]  Some people don't very something.
[00:36:59]  It's not even like we didn't like what we had to say.
[00:37:02]  Yeah, that's a good point.
[00:37:03]  But it had to be said.
[00:37:04]  Sometimes you got to take your medicine.
[00:37:06]  But we've got a great hour or two in store for you.
[00:37:11]  And somebody I met at for the first time at America Fest, and that's Matt Van Swall.
[00:37:15]  He's a former nuclear scientist for the Department of Energy.
[00:37:19]  And not Department of Education.
[00:37:21]  DOE.
[00:37:22]  DOE is one of those ones.
[00:37:24]  You are somebody that has your social media following has grown very rapidly.
[00:37:31]  I mean, I don't know how many followers you have on X or whatever.
[00:37:33]  It's a lot, over a million.

=== Why We Started Helping Nonprofits (06:36) ===

[00:37:35]  And you used to be a left-winger.
[00:37:40]  I don't know how far left, but you were a Democrat.
[00:37:43]  Yeah, definitely.
[00:37:44]  And then you basically had a conversion story, and you happened to be a nuclear scientist, and you happened to be in Phoenix.
[00:37:51]  I was like, you need to come in and explain enrichment because we got this Iran situation going on.
[00:37:57]  But let's start with your conversion.
[00:37:59]  Give us your backstory and what made you kind of start changing.
[00:38:04]  Yeah, so after college, I kind of became significantly more left-leaning.
[00:38:10]  And it started in college and then kind of quickly escalated from there.
[00:38:16]  You know, I was single.
[00:38:17]  I was working, you know, it was in an apartment by myself.
[00:38:20]  I was doing like the online dating thing.
[00:38:23]  And, you know, you start, you know, I was reading the New York Times, you know, CNN, and you kind of get all of your news.
[00:38:30]  And everyone at work is the same way, too.
[00:38:31]  You know, you're all kind of bantering and talking.
[00:38:34]  And you just start to see yourself move slowly to the left as everyone.
[00:38:39]  So you didn't grow up.
[00:38:40]  You didn't grow up necessarily.
[00:38:41]  No, no, no.
[00:38:42]  No, definitely not political.
[00:38:44]  My parents were pretty right-leaning growing up.
[00:38:48]  And I kind of had like a backlash.
[00:38:50]  The same thing with Christianity, too.
[00:38:52]  Like, I grew up going to church with my parents.
[00:38:55]  And then kind of after college, it just drifted away.
[00:38:59]  So what was the turning point then?
[00:39:01]  Unintended.
[00:39:02]  Yeah.
[00:39:02]  So for, you know, my wife and I were in Western North Carolina during Helene.
[00:39:10]  And, you know, we lost power for a couple of weeks, but we saw so much devastation during that time.
[00:39:17]  And I wasn't really on Twitter at all up until Helene.
[00:39:22]  And we watched as FEMA just constantly failed over and over and over.
[00:39:27]  And it was so appalling during that time period because you would see FEMA failures all over the place.
[00:39:35]  And the news would just be glowing reviews of how awesome FEMA was doing and how horrific Helene was.
[00:39:44]  But then you just walk down the street, or what I did, walk down the street and see people living in tents almost months after Helene.
[00:39:53]  And you're like, things are not going OK.
[00:39:56]  I mean, I'm like, I don't know if you remember, but like that was terrible to see the wreckage from that hurricane.
[00:40:04]  Basically, Asheville, aren't you based in that area?
[00:40:07]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:07]  Yeah.
[00:40:08]  So the town was unrecognizable.
[00:40:11]  That hurricane completely wiped that town away.
[00:40:15]  Anything by the river was completely demolished.
[00:40:18]  $79 billion of damage.
[00:40:20]  I mean, people need to remember just how large of a catastrophe Helene was.
[00:40:25]  Yeah, people were quick to forget that.
[00:40:27]  We're still recovering.
[00:40:28]  I mean, like, I'll be just perfectly honest.
[00:40:30]  Like, I haven't thought about it recently.
[00:40:32]  I mean, there's been a couple people that have brought it up here and there, but I mean, you have some of these B-roll images, and I don't even think these are the worst.
[00:40:40]  There was whole swaths of town that were just mud.
[00:40:42]  Oh, yeah.
[00:40:43]  And that's one of the reasons I started putting it out.
[00:40:45]  I had a drone.
[00:40:46]  And people asked me, How did you get big on Twitter?
[00:40:49]  I was the guy with the drone that was putting out just the images from Helene.
[00:40:54]  Like, that was it.
[00:40:55]  And so I throw my drone up and you would just see devastation as far as you could see.
[00:41:00]  And it was awful.
[00:41:01]  I mean, the river just took out everything along it.
[00:41:04]  It was so terrible.
[00:41:06]  But the cleanup after that and the helping of people from FEMA was so slow.
[00:41:12]  It took so long.
[00:41:13]  And we eventually started talking to people like Sean Hendricks, who's a good buddy of mine now, who did Helene cleanup.
[00:41:19]  And we would talk to him and you'd be like, yeah, there are people living in tents today.
[00:41:24]  Still today.
[00:41:25]  No, but months afterwards.
[00:41:28]  And you're like, how is this possible?
[00:41:29]  And you drive around with them.
[00:41:31]  And sure enough, there were people living in tents.
[00:41:33]  And we were like, we have to get involved.
[00:41:35]  So we started getting involved.
[00:41:37]  And I remember this, we started talking with Sean.
[00:41:40]  His name's Sean Hendricks.
[00:41:41]  You can find him on X. Started talking with Sean.
[00:41:43]  It's just having these moments.
[00:41:44]  We were like, you know, the government is not.
[00:41:49]  We would talk to these victims and they'd be like, we applied to FEMA, heard nothing.
[00:41:53]  And then you would see a nonprofit like Glenn Beck's Mercury One step in and they'd just build them a new home like out of nowhere.
[00:42:00]  And FEMA was nowhere to be found.
[00:42:03]  And we were like, I mean, we have to, we have to, you know, get involved.
[00:42:07]  So my wife and I started driving RVs to people.
[00:42:10]  People would just donate RVs out of nowhere and be like, hey, here's an RV.
[00:42:14]  We're not using it.
[00:42:16]  Please give this to someone that needs it.
[00:42:18]  And so we get them in, we would clean them, and then Sean or someone else would drive the RV.
[00:42:24]  And I vividly remember this one time.
[00:42:26]  We were driving an RV to a woman and her son.
[00:42:31]  And I drove the RV up to their house and they were living in a shed with a propane heater.
[00:42:38]  And I remember walking into the shed and my head hurt so bad from the propane.
[00:42:44]  I was like, how the hell can anyone live in this?
[00:42:47]  And this was months after Helene.
[00:42:51]  And I was like, this is crazy.
[00:42:53]  And on that drive, I opened my phone and I saw Lake Lore, which, you know, is an incredible spot.
[00:43:03]  I opened my phone and I saw that Joe Biden had given billions of dollars to Ukraine.
[00:43:13]  And I was sitting there driving an RV to someone, like an American that needed it.
[00:43:19]  And I was like, this is insane.
[00:43:21]  Like, this is absolutely nuts.
[00:43:23]  And then I started, you know, just putting out the stories.
[00:43:26]  It was story after story after story of people applying to FEMA, getting rejected, never hearing back.
[00:43:32]  And they were the worst stories you've ever seen in your life.
[00:43:35]  And the only people that stepped up were the nonprofits and just everyday American citizens.
[00:43:41]  And it was wild.
[00:43:42]  And meanwhile, we're giving away billions of dollars to Ukraine, and we were funding all these nonprofits to help illegals get in the country and gain the system.
[00:43:52]  Yeah, pretty radicalizing, isn't it?
[00:43:54]  Actually, and it's important that we tell those stories because we need to remember how we got here and what actually put President Trump in office, I think.
[00:44:05]  So, you became a Christian, too.
[00:44:06]  Yeah, so we only got a minute left.
[00:44:08]  Of course, I'd ask you the hardest question with a minute back.

=== 60% Enriched Uranium Bomb Threat (11:43) ===

[00:44:11]  Yeah, my wife and I started going back to church.
[00:44:14]  It's very tangentially related to seeing all of the nonprofits step up when the government failed.
[00:44:20]  And almost all of the nonprofits, almost all of them, were Christian nonprofits.
[00:44:25]  And we realized later on that our kids did not have a community group.
[00:44:31]  They didn't have any moral teaching outside of my wife and I.
[00:44:36]  And my wife grew up going to church as well.
[00:44:39]  But we both, we had never gone to church together ever in the six years that we've been together.
[00:44:44]  And we were like, we have to go back to church for our kids and for the community that it builds.
[00:44:53]  And so we ended up doing that.
[00:44:55]  And it's been awesome.
[00:44:57]  My daughter works in the nursery.
[00:44:59]  My wife and I just met her.
[00:45:00]  I've been involved.
[00:45:01]  Yeah, she's awesome.
[00:45:01]  You got a beautiful family, man.
[00:45:03]  And yeah, it's been really great.
[00:45:06]  I highly recommend it.
[00:45:08]  Even if you are not a Christian, the community and the morals you get from church is amazing.
[00:45:14]  So a lot has been made in Iran.
[00:45:18]  They were for decades on the precipice of getting a nuclear weapon.
[00:45:23]  My entire lifetime.
[00:45:24]  Yes, help us separate fact from fiction.
[00:45:28]  So we're hearing that, you know, we bomb Furdo.
[00:45:31]  Sure.
[00:45:31]  Then we're told they could make a dirty bomb.
[00:45:35]  Explain enrichment to us.
[00:45:36]  How fast does it go?
[00:45:37]  What does it take?
[00:45:38]  Could you do it in kind of like these crappy backroom labs or whatever?
[00:45:42]  What does it take?
[00:45:43]  Probably not.
[00:45:44]  So the way, so there's a couple ways to do enrichment.
[00:45:48]  The one that we did in the 40s is not what's being done now.
[00:45:51]  So you could do it.
[00:45:53]  You're essentially trying to separate uranium-238 from uranium-235.
[00:45:59]  And if you can get uranium-235 up to 90% enrichment, then you have a bomb.
[00:46:05]  And the reason for that is it's essentially a domino effect.
[00:46:08]  So if you're making, you know, you wanted to make, let's just say, nuclear energy, you would only enrich uranium at most 5%.
[00:46:16]  Like that, that would be the max.
[00:46:17]  If you're anything above 5%, you're clearly trying to do something nefarious.
[00:46:22]  There's no reason.
[00:46:24]  Over what percent?
[00:46:25]  Over 5%.
[00:46:26]  No kidding, that low?
[00:46:27]  Oh, yeah.
[00:46:27]  So 3 to 5%.
[00:46:29]  We're hearing like 60%.
[00:46:31]  That's insane.
[00:46:32]  There's no nuclear reactor on the planet that uses 60%.
[00:46:34]  Anything over 60%.
[00:46:35]  Right then, when they go into the room, apparently it was Kushner and Witkoff.
[00:46:39]  They go into the room with their negotiating counterparts from Iran, and they're like, we have 60% enriched, and we have enough to make 11 bombs of nuclear material, right?
[00:46:50]  Uranium, essentially.
[00:46:52]  So right then, it's kind of like this whole narrative that they're.
[00:46:56]  You're clearly making a nuke.
[00:46:58]  Yeah, we just want to be able to power our country with nuclear energy.
[00:47:02]  Supposedly, we just offered them all the nuclear fuel they could ever want.
[00:47:06]  But that's at 5%.
[00:47:08]  100%.
[00:47:09]  So how long does it take to go from 5% to 60%?
[00:47:12]  So it works on like a to go from zero to, let's just say, 0% enrichment to 5% enrichment takes almost as long, it depends, as going from, let's just say, like 60 to 90%.
[00:47:24]  So there's a very long lag time at the beginning.
[00:47:28]  And so that process could take you 10 years.
[00:47:31]  To go from 0 to 5?
[00:47:33]  No, to go from zero to 90%.
[00:47:35]  Is it all about how much infrastructure you have?
[00:47:39]  It's all about how many centrifuges you have.
[00:47:41]  So if, you know, in the 40s, we determined that it would take like 10,000 centrifuges to get us to a nuclear bomb back in the 40s.
[00:47:51]  And so we didn't do it that way.
[00:47:52]  But Iran's doing it with centrifuges because they're pretending that they want it for nuclear energy, which they're not.
[00:48:00]  Again, if you have anything over 10%, you're going for something.
[00:48:03]  Okay, so you're, as a nuclear scientist, you're hearing and looking at these stats, these figures that are being reported, and you're instantly calling garbage on nuclear energy.
[00:48:14]  You know they're going for a nuclear weapon.
[00:48:17]  Yeah, of course.
[00:48:18]  Okay.
[00:48:19]  So how did we do it in the 40s if we didn't do it with centrifuges?
[00:48:21]  Oh, that's a good question.
[00:48:23]  Is it too long of a question?
[00:48:26]  I don't want to bog us down, but public information?
[00:48:28]  Yeah, is it still secret?
[00:48:29]  Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's public.
[00:48:31]  He's pretty sure.
[00:48:33]  90% sure.
[00:48:34]  No, I think you can grog it.
[00:48:36]  But essentially, the way we would do it was we forced, again, you're trying to separate 235 from 238.
[00:48:44]  And so you would essentially force it through smaller holes, like they're different sized elements.
[00:48:50]  So you would force it through tinier holes.
[00:48:52]  And then we use these monster magnets.
[00:48:55]  And the way that 235 and 238 bent, you could separate it out a lot easier than that.
[00:49:02]  But if you were trying to pretend like you were not making a nuclear bomb, you would do it through centrifuges.
[00:49:09]  You would do it with centrifuges.
[00:49:10]  That's how you do it in the energy world.
[00:49:12]  100%.
[00:49:13]  Okay.
[00:49:14]  So, so, okay.
[00:49:17]  Dirty bomb.
[00:49:19]  What is a dirty bomb?
[00:49:20]  How do you make it?
[00:49:21]  And so, because that's another whole storyline in this.
[00:49:26]  So you could theoretically make a dirty bomb by saying, let's just say you have 60% enriched uranium.
[00:49:34]  The reason you want to enrich it to 90% is to make the bomb as small as possible so you could put it on a rocket.
[00:49:41]  Otherwise, you have this gigantic bomb that you couldn't even put on a plane, right?
[00:49:47]  So the idea is to get, you know, get it as small as possible.
[00:49:50]  And then the explosion is much bigger.
[00:49:51]  It's like a giant domino effect at 90% enrichment versus at 5% enrichment, you're looking at like a slow meltdown, which is why it's perfect for energy because you just have the sustained energy over time versus it's like gasoline versus diesel.
[00:50:06]  If you've ever like lit one versus the other, it's the same idea.
[00:50:09]  So you want to get it to 90% enrichment, you get it on like a very small bowling ball size.
[00:50:14]  You could put it in a rocket and it hit someone.
[00:50:16]  Otherwise, you're just like, how would you transport something that big?
[00:50:19]  So 60% enriched uranium, you could definitely make a bomb.
[00:50:23]  Nobody's saying, but you couldn't send it anywhere.
[00:50:25]  You couldn't fly it.
[00:50:26]  Okay, so a dirty bomb.
[00:50:27]  Yes.
[00:50:28]  And how devastating is that likely to be?
[00:50:31]  I mean, 60%, I mean, it's still pretty devastating.
[00:50:34]  I mean, it'd be worse.
[00:50:35]  So, you know, conventional weapons.
[00:50:39]  Yeah, for sure.
[00:50:39]  Well, and there's all the fallout from that, right?
[00:50:41]  Oh, yeah, it's terrible.
[00:50:43]  So a dirty bomb would be—so what's ideal enrichment for an actual nuclear weapon?
[00:50:49]  90% or above.
[00:50:50]  Okay.
[00:50:51]  Yeah.
[00:50:51]  So a dirty bomb would be less than that.
[00:50:53]  Yes.
[00:50:53]  Okay.
[00:50:53]  Yeah.
[00:50:54]  So in theory, say Fordo.
[00:50:56]  We bomb Fordeau.
[00:50:57]  Yeah.
[00:50:58]  They scurry in there and they get 60% enriched or 70% enriched uranium and they fire it off, kind of as is the end of the?
[00:51:05]  Well, you could not.
[00:51:06]  It'd be very unlikely that you could fire off 60% enriched uranium.
[00:51:11]  Okay, that would be, you would.
[00:51:12]  It would be really tough to do that and have a.
[00:51:15]  Yeah, that'd be tough, but what they could be doing is, if you're at 60% enriched uranium, like I said, like there's a very long lead time for for getting uranium up to the point where you could make a bomb.
[00:51:28]  So if they've already gotten it up to 60% I think this is what I keep hearing from the administration you're pretty close, you know you're.
[00:51:37]  So if they've just got centrifuges somewhere that we don't know about and that are spinning away and 100% is possible yeah, interesting and yeah, I mean so.
[00:51:48]  John Solomon, remember that on the Saturday stream we did after the initial strike, he said that you wouldn't even have to get it out of FORD.
[00:51:55]  You could get it off of potentially, the Black Market, or there's other if someone handed them really like high, so anything above, let's just say 10% is highly enriched uranium.
[00:52:05]  Low-enriched uranium is used for nuclear reactors, then yeah, you're on your way for sure.
[00:52:11]  So, I mean, the more you know, like, okay, so you're being an educated person in this field.
[00:52:19]  This is what you know, this was your career.
[00:52:22]  When you're hearing about this, you're instantly going, yeah, that makes sense.
[00:52:26]  They could, they could hurt a lot of people real quickly.
[00:52:28]  Like, this is a you got to take this extraordinarily seriously for sure.
[00:52:32]  And I don't think I think a lot of the skeptics don't understand just how close we were basically existing all the time with Iran's nuclear program.
[00:52:43]  I mean, we were close all the time.
[00:52:44]  I mean, maybe that's why it feels like, well, we've always been so close.
[00:52:48]  Well, because they have been close to having a nuclear weapon.
[00:52:50]  Yeah, it's very possible, you know, that it just took them this long to get to 60%.
[00:52:56]  And it'd be nice to hear more from the administration about how close they were and evidence about that.
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[00:54:02]  All right, so we have a graph here, I believe.
[00:54:05]  Do we have that up yet, guys?
[00:54:06]  Because this is like, this is the grab.
[00:54:09]  Okay, uranium enrichment.
[00:54:11]  623.
[00:54:12]  I don't know what I'm looking at.
[00:54:13]  Is this the one or do you want the top one?
[00:54:16]  Oh, okay.
[00:54:16]  Never mind.
[00:54:17]  Sorry.
[00:54:17]  622.
[00:54:18]  Throw up 622.
[00:54:19]  So this is what we're looking at.
[00:54:20]  And uranium enrichment and uses.
[00:54:22]  So you're talking about the first 0 to 5% enrichment takes a long time.
[00:54:26]  This is correct.
[00:54:27]  And then going from 5 to 2.
[00:54:31]  It just accelerates.
[00:54:32]  Yeah.
[00:54:33]  So it just, as you can see, if it's, you know, you need about 1,300 total units of, it looks like they're measuring energy or effort somehow, and you're at 1,200 by the time you get to 40%.
[00:54:44]  So the last 50% is less than 10% of the total effort.
[00:54:48]  This is correct.
[00:54:49]  Okay.
[00:54:49]  Effort.
[00:54:51]  SWU.
[00:54:53]  Okay, interesting.
[00:54:53]  So basically, when you talk about enrichment and they say that it's 60% enriched, based on this graph, getting from 60 to 90 happens way faster than going from zero to five.
[00:55:03]  Yeah, and I think when they bombed Ford, they said that they were somewhere around like 60% enriched uranium, which if you were to just take Iran at their word, the amount of centrifuges that they have, that could actually be one week.
[00:55:19]  Like, maybe.
[00:55:20]  It depends.
[00:55:21]  So when they say they set them back, they probably really did set them back pretty far.
[00:55:25]  But if they still kept 60% enriched uranium around and hit it, you know, God knows where, and they have other centrifuges we don't know about, then yeah, that would actually be a big problem.
[00:55:37]  So listen, this is where you go into the, you got to trust the people that we helped get elected to kind of make decisions, tough decisions that could be difficult politically, but man, you can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon.
[00:55:51]  President Trump has been very adamant about that, consistent about that.

=== Irina Zarutska's Dilemma (07:22) ===

[00:55:55]  I want to pivot a little bit here, though, Matt, because, you know, one of the things, if you follow Matt online, you live in a state that had a terrible, gruesome murder.
[00:56:05]  It was showcased at the State of the Union.
[00:56:08]  And of course, we are talking about Irina Zarutska.
[00:56:11]  She was a Ukrainian war refugee that moved to North Carolina and was brutally killed in a video, I think, that shocked the conscience of so many Americans.
[00:56:22]  100%.
[00:56:23]  And that's your state.
[00:56:24]  And what's interesting about that, it strikes close to home, and Blake will remember this, that, you know, she died just before Charlie was killed.
[00:56:31]  And Charlie was absolutely on top of this.
[00:56:35]  He tweeted about it a lot because this was a story that never should have happened.
[00:56:41]  She should still be alive today.
[00:56:42]  And actually, Erica sat next to Irina Zarutska's parents at the State of the Union.
[00:56:47]  I don't think she knew she was going to be next to them.
[00:56:50]  So it was a really powerful moment.
[00:56:52]  Yeah, I mean, you guys will remember these images.
[00:56:55]  Just horrifying to see them.
[00:56:57]  Our team's putting them up.
[00:56:58]  I just throw them up when you have them.
[00:57:00]  But, Matt, how did this story impact you?
[00:57:02]  Oh, I mean, it's crazy.
[00:57:03]  Like, my wife grew up in Charlotte.
[00:57:06]  So she's ridden the light rail quite a few times.
[00:57:10]  And I'd been kind of reporting on Charlotte crime at that point because it was just, I mean, if anyone wants to go report on Charlotte crime, it's a free-for-all.
[00:57:18]  Like, the media is not covering this whatsoever.
[00:57:20]  It's not hard to find the stories.
[00:57:22]  But this one was just so surprising in the sense that this guy, Charlotte has an insane repeat offender problem.
[00:57:30]  And this is something I cover over and over on Twitter.
[00:57:33]  But this guy had been in and out of prison so many times.
[00:57:36]  His mom said, you know, my son needs to be locked up.
[00:57:39]  He should not be out.
[00:57:41]  And they let him out.
[00:57:42]  Over and over.
[00:57:43]  Constantly.
[00:57:45]  And then he goes and says he's got voices in his head and then murders Irina.
[00:57:49]  And there's something deeply symbolic about this one.
[00:57:52]  Put up 628 and 629, and then the last one, if you can get it.
[00:57:55]  So, people have made murals around the country honoring her in big cities, and they keep getting vandalized.
[00:58:03]  People keep spray painting them, trashing them, damaging them.
[00:58:09]  And there's something very profoundly insightful about, I think, left-wing psychology that they would feel the need to do that, to trash murals of an innocent woman who was murdered by someone who should not have been on the street.
[00:58:25]  And as we know, she has become a symbol, but a lot of people could be this symbol.
[00:58:32]  There's a story that's been going on in Fairfax County, right outside D.C., where there was a murder there where it was, I believe, Abdul Jallow, a illegal immigrant from Africa, let out after, I think, five different malicious woundings, keeps stabbing people.
[00:58:49]  The police sent an email to the Fairfax prosecutor's office saying, you guys let this guy out again.
[00:58:55]  He keeps randomly stabbing people.
[00:58:57]  He's going to randomly stab someone again.
[00:58:59]  And a week or two ago, he stabbed to death a woman, Stephanie Minter, on a bus, which the police had warned he was going to, and the prosecutor ignored it.
[00:59:08]  We can endlessly find cases like this.
[00:59:11]  And look at, throw up 628.
[00:59:14]  This bothers me a lot to see this.
[00:59:17]  I haven't seen this before.
[00:59:19]  And it's an Irina Zarutska mural, 628, if you have it.
[00:59:24]  Please vandalize this.
[00:59:26]  This is a woman who did nothing wrong.
[00:59:28]  She wasn't a public figure.
[00:59:30]  She didn't voice her political opinions online.
[00:59:33]  She didn't go to college campuses to debate college students because Lord knows then you'll get your murals vandalized.
[00:59:40]  She was just riding a bus and she got stabbed in the neck and she died.
[00:59:47]  And people feel bad about that.
[00:59:49]  And that's radicalizing for so many.
[00:59:54]  And I'm sure for you, Matt, as a sort of newer conservative as well.
[00:59:58]  Well, you would just always expect, and almost everyone I talk to expects that violent criminals are in jail.
[01:00:05]  Almost everyone you talk, if you were to ask someone, is someone who murdered someone in jail for murdering someone?
[01:00:11]  Almost 100% of people would say for sure they're in jail.
[01:00:14]  It's almost as common sense as you would assume everybody has to show an ID to vote.
[01:00:18]  It's kind of one of those ideas.
[01:00:19]  Yes, 100%.
[01:00:20]  And the truth of the matter is, if you go and look at any of the major cities, they are letting violent criminals out at an insanely high rate.
[01:00:28]  Like there is a juvenile in Charlotte that has been arrested 150 times and he's still out.
[01:00:37]  Like he's still committing crimes, like breaking into.
[01:00:38]  150 times.
[01:00:39]  Yes.
[01:00:40]  He's not even 18.
[01:00:41]  Like, you know, it really is nuts.
[01:00:44]  Like the amount of times these people are getting arrested and being let out.
[01:00:48]  And there's, I mean, you can go to my Twitter and scroll.
[01:00:50]  I mean, there's endless amounts of these stories.
[01:00:52]  Well, and you had a really interesting insight.
[01:00:55]  You did some reporting, independent journalism, right?
[01:00:58]  It's kind of like part of your new role, where you uncovered that they were classifying a bunch of non-white criminals as white.
[01:01:07]  What was the point of that?
[01:01:08]  And did you get confirmation that your reporting was accurate?
[01:01:11]  Yeah, it's definitely accurate.
[01:01:13]  Now, it depends on which sheriff's office and a lot of different things.
[01:01:19]  But in Charlotte, at least, there's an option to click the word Hispanic if it's in a Hispanic person.
[01:01:29]  There's an option to click the word white or black.
[01:01:32]  And an insane amount of the time, Hispanic people are classified as white in arrest reports.
[01:01:41]  There was one so egregious that I remember this one very clearly.
[01:01:46]  It was clearly a Hispanic male with black hair.
[01:01:50]  And in the arrest report, it was a white male with blonde hair.
[01:01:54]  And if you didn't have the photo of this person, you'd be like, you know, clearly.
[01:01:58]  So this bothers me greatly because the truth of crime stats matters.
[01:02:05]  And people constantly post the crime stats per race of individuals.
[01:02:12]  And if my assumption is that if you were to go and look at the true crime stats based on actual verified race data that is not biased, the white crime rate would be insanely low.
[01:02:28]  Like much, much lower.
[01:02:30]  Because these systems that are at the state level feed into the federal level.
[01:02:33]  Yeah.
[01:02:34]  What do you think though?
[01:02:35]  Why are they doing this?
[01:02:36]  Just because more left-wing ideology, they don't want to.
[01:02:40]  It's possible.
[01:02:41]  So I think there's possibly two reasons.
[01:02:44]  One is maybe, and I've been told this by police officers, that the white button is first on whatever system.
[01:02:50]  So if they're trying to do it quickly, it's just, you know, we'll just leave it at that.
[01:02:54]  In other places, the, you know, Hispanic is an ethnicity, technically not a race, but it depends on, again, like the system that you're in.
[01:03:03]  Sometimes there's not even an option for police officers to tap the word Hispanic.
[01:03:09]  So they'll just, they'll just, you know, you have no option.
[01:03:11]  You just have to tap white.
[01:03:12]  Well, I'm looking at one right here.
[01:03:14]  It's Ahmad Jihad Boja.

=== Senator Mark Wayne's Deportation Push (09:13) ===

[01:03:18]  Yeah.
[01:03:18]  Race white.
[01:03:20]  Yeah.
[01:03:21]  Clearly not.
[01:03:22]  Okay.
[01:03:23]  Yeah.
[01:03:23]  Yeah.
[01:03:24]  I, and there's so many of these examples.
[01:03:27]  Like, you could just, I mean, you could probably just search the word white on my ex account.
[01:03:32]  And you would see.
[01:03:33]  Yeah, this guy killed three elderly Americans.
[01:03:35]  I remember this story because his name was Jihad.
[01:03:37]  Yeah.
[01:03:37]  He killed him in Florida and he was listed as white.
[01:03:40]  Yeah.
[01:03:41]  This is a guy with the name Jihad.
[01:03:43]  Yeah.
[01:03:45]  Classified as white.
[01:03:46]  Yeah.
[01:03:46]  So is there any efforts at the federal level to fix this?
[01:03:49]  There are, yeah.
[01:03:50]  Yeah, I've gotten a phone call from someone at the administration.
[01:03:53]  I don't know whether I'm allowed to say who, but they are working on this.
[01:03:56]  This is something that they're focused on.
[01:03:58]  Because it feels like it would, I mean, the downstream ramifications are massive.
[01:04:03]  You're being lied to.
[01:04:05]  And there is a whole racial agenda.
[01:04:07]  You could say part of this might be inadvertent.
[01:04:10]  There's got to be part of this that is completely intentional.
[01:04:14]  100%.
[01:04:14]  There's no doubt.
[01:04:15]  Yeah, look at all this.
[01:04:16]  I mean, come on.
[01:04:16]  Yeah.
[01:04:17]  It doesn't pass the eye test or the smell test or the whatever, the common sense test.
[01:04:21]  We have some breaking news, folks.
[01:04:25]  I don't want to say that we did it, but maybe we did it.
[01:04:30]  Secretary Chris.
[01:04:31]  Well, Christy Noam is out as Secretary of DHS.
[01:04:35]  Reports are that Senator Mark Wayne Mullen will be replacing her.
[01:04:42]  We have a statement from the president.
[01:04:44]  Let's read it.
[01:04:44]  Let's get it.
[01:04:45]  I'll start reading it.
[01:04:45]  I am pleased to announce that the highly respected United States Senator from the great state of Oklahoma, Mark Wayne Mullen, will become the United States DHS Secretary effective March 31st, 2026.
[01:04:58]  The current Secretary, Christy Noam, who has served us well and has had numerous and spectacular results, especially on the border, will be removing to be special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, our new security initiative in the Western Hemisphere.
[01:05:12]  We are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida.
[01:05:15]  I thank Christy for her service at Homeland.
[01:05:18]  And then he has a lot about how great Mark Wayne Mullen is and all of that.
[01:05:22]  But yeah, that's breaking in the last matter of minutes.
[01:05:26]  So we spent a lot of time in hour one talking about some of the controversies that have been swirling around DHS, stuff that we don't want to see because it's too critically important to the mission, to reelection, to the coalition.
[01:05:42]  I'm pleased to see that the president is taking decisive action.
[01:05:46]  And Senator Mark Wayne Mullen is a friend of this show, very, very well respected, understands the base, but he also understands the, let's just say, the intricacies of working with blue states and understands working with senators from blue states, what these negotiations, these high wire acts really entail.
[01:06:07]  We talk about crime in blue cities, the ideologies that run these blue cities.
[01:06:14]  They don't want to enforce crime.
[01:06:16]  So you've got an uphill battle then.
[01:06:18]  We make a lot of noise about the numbers that Barack Obama achieved when he was president about deportations.
[01:06:24]  Well, guess what?
[01:06:25]  Almost 80% of those were transfers at the local prison level, at the local jail level.
[01:06:31]  So that was before the Sanctuary City madness really took root.
[01:06:36]  And that was before all this TDS, anti-Trump sentiment, right?
[01:06:40]  Because this was before Trump.
[01:06:41]  So they would just hand criminal illegal aliens over at the jail level.
[01:06:46]  Why is that important?
[01:06:47]  Way safer.
[01:06:49]  Takes way fewer agents to get those transfers accomplished, and you get them deported immediately.
[01:06:55]  You get violent criminals instead of releasing them back into the streets, you get them out of your country.
[01:06:59]  So that's going to be goal number one for Senator Mark Wayne Mullen is to exert enough effort and force and coercion if you have to, political pressure, to get blue cities to cooperate.
[01:07:13]  Now, the good news here is that Tom Homan has already given us a model for this in Minneapolis.
[01:07:18]  Minneapolis was spiraling out of control.
[01:07:20]  President Trump sent Tom Homan into Minneapolis, got them to heal, and now he's got cooperation from 95% of county jails, local jails, Minneapolis to hand over these detention requests.
[01:07:33]  Blake, got to get you in here.
[01:07:35]  How important is this?
[01:07:37]  What do we make of it?
[01:07:38]  We're going to have to see.
[01:07:39]  So we still have a month before it goes in.
[01:07:42]  That would be a pretty brisk confirmation schedule, I think.
[01:07:46]  But he's in the Senate.
[01:07:48]  I think that would help speed things along.
[01:07:49]  We lose the senator.
[01:07:50]  We lose a senator, but it's Oklahoma.
[01:07:52]  That is a race we're highly unlikely to lose.
[01:07:56]  Well, no blackpilling.
[01:07:59]  Wait, you're telling me.
[01:08:00]  And so I think.
[01:08:02]  That's when you know.
[01:08:03]  I mean, we've had Mark Wayne on the show.
[01:08:04]  I think he's got a good head on his shoulders about this sort of thing.
[01:08:07]  It shows they recognize the fact that he has someone ready to go right away.
[01:08:11]  It shows he recognizes the importance of keeping the heat on because he knows this matters.
[01:08:16]  He knows he needs really aggressive enforcement on border stuff.
[01:08:20]  And he needs to keep delivering wins on that because a lot of people voted for that.
[01:08:24]  And that is a signature issue for him.
[01:08:26]  Well, and I think, as we discussed in the first hour, this happened.
[01:08:33]  You're going to have controversy with ICE.
[01:08:35]  People are going to get mad about a bad photograph.
[01:08:38]  They're going to get mad about some bad confrontation with a protester.
[01:08:41]  They're going to get mad about some arrest that gets made.
[01:08:43]  That is inevitable.
[01:08:45]  The sheer scale of the problem means that's going to happen.
[01:08:48]  And so you can't have avoidable stuff.
[01:08:52]  We should not be debating ad buys at DHS.
[01:08:55]  We should not be debating private jet that they're buying at DHS.
[01:09:00]  Keep it on what needs to be happening: securing the border, getting the wall up, getting the illegals out, getting the arrests made.
[01:09:08]  That is where the focus needs to be.
[01:09:10]  I have sources at DHS that I've spoken with, and I think on balance, they are in favor of a change being made.
[01:09:20]  And I think I trust them that they have the interests of the department and the interests of the country at heart when they say that.
[01:09:26]  And I, too, have sources in this world.
[01:09:29]  And, you know, let's hope that this is a good thing.
[01:09:34]  And we've got to wait and see.
[01:09:35]  You know, we've got to see what Senator Mark Wayne Mullen does.
[01:09:38]  It sounds like the future secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
[01:09:42]  But I'm curious your perspective here, Matt, as somebody that is newer in this space.
[01:09:48]  You know, your perspective is probably more on the FEMA angle.
[01:09:52]  But what do you make of something like this?
[01:09:55]  Well, I don't have any sources in the administration, but I do think that people, especially on the right, me too, have been frustrated with the slower pace of deportations.
[01:10:07]  It's the number one issue of anyone you talk to is, why are we not deporting more?
[01:10:12]  Why are we not arresting employers?
[01:10:14]  Why are we not targeting people who speak Spanish with ads to self-deport, right?
[01:10:19]  Like very common sense stuff.
[01:10:22]  Start finding employers that hire illegal aliens.
[01:10:26]  I feel like there's a lot of things on the table that could be used to ramp up deportations that have not yet been used.
[01:10:34]  And this is exactly what I want to see.
[01:10:38]  There was a criminal illegal alien who raped a 14-year-old girl right across from my kids' school.
[01:10:45]  That was last week.
[01:10:47]  Now, I want to say something because we are losing Secretary Nim.
[01:10:51]  I want to say positively about her.
[01:10:53]  She is a woman who didn't shy away from those controversial aspects of ICE that we mentioned, that they were going into cities.
[01:10:59]  They were making arrests aggressively, even where people were complaining about it.
[01:11:05]  And we have to make sure Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, when he takes that job, we're going to keep the heat on him.
[01:11:11]  He can't back off on things.
[01:11:13]  He can't send any signs of weakness.
[01:11:15]  He has to be ready to trample over blue states, trample over blue cities, lay down the law.
[01:11:21]  That is what the base wants.
[01:11:23]  And the left is going to look for weakness here.
[01:11:26]  They're going to look for excuses to roll things back.
[01:11:28]  If we want to keep the coalition together and we've got all of these forces arrayed against us, you've got to go hard on deportations.
[01:11:36]  You've got to be absolutely firm in your resolve.
[01:11:39]  Now, my advice to the senator, future secretary, sounds like, is do not cower.
[01:11:46]  Do not give an inch, but go behind the headlines.
[01:11:49]  Go get underneath.
[01:11:50]  Do not look to be the face.
[01:11:54]  Just be quiet.
[01:11:56]  Make it happen.
[01:11:57]  And at the end of the year, post a huge number and blow people away.
[01:12:01]  Make these blue cities heal.
[01:12:05]  We need you to cooperate, frankly.
[01:12:07]  And I think Senator Mark Wayne Mullen is a guy that can get blue cities to cooperate one way or the other.
[01:12:12]  Matt, we weren't expecting this to be our final segment, but candidly, it's a full circle show.
[01:12:19]  So what can we say?
[01:12:20]  A lot happened today.
[01:12:22]  Matt Vancewell, check him out on X. Follow him.
[01:12:25]  A really important new voice.
[01:12:26]  And I think you're going to continue growing and doing great things.
[01:12:29]  Thank you for having me on.
[01:12:30]  Thank you.
[01:12:30]  It's been an honor.