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Kash Patel INCOHERENT On Kirk Assassin Manifesto
Breaking Points
Sep 16, 2025 Breaking Points

Krystal and Saagar discuss confusing new details on the Charlie Kirk assassination.



Transcript

Morning everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an
amazing show for everybody today. What
do we have Crystal?
Indeed we do. Lot to get to this
morning. So we've got the very latest
with regard to the investigation into
Charlie Kirk's assassin. We're also
going to break down this fight between
Candace Owens and Bill Aman over whether
or not pressure was applied to Charlie
Kirk towards the end of his life with
regard to Israel. There's a lot to get
to there. Um, also we don't want to miss
other news that is breaking the world.
Trump blew up another Venezuela boat
yesterday as we seemingly edge even
closer to a regime change operation
there. Um he also apparently had a heads
up about that Israeli strike on Qatar
though they're denying it but Israeli
officials leaked to Barack Ravid and it
is very likely as we said on that day
that Trump would have a heads up with
regard to that. So we'll break that down
for you. Um this also happens as uh the
Gaza City ground invasion has begun. So
lots to get to there. We're also going
to take a look at um we didn't get to
this yesterday because we talked too
much today. We will get to it. Zoron
picking up some new endorsers and um
actually we had some news as well.
Andrew Cuomo now trying to distance
himself from his previous positions on
Israel which pretty interesting turn of
events and I've got a monologue today.
I'm going to be taking a look at the
rise of the Black Pill killers. So, um,
putting together some of the recent
school shootings and what we know about,
uh, Tyler Robinson and asking if this is
a broader societal phenomenon that we
now are going to be dealing with, which
is quite terrifying, frankly.
I'm looking forward to that. Thank you
to everybody who's been supporting the
show. Really means a lot in crazy times
like this. So, let's go ahead and get
uh, as Crystal said, to the Cash Patel
latest clown show uh, that we have seen
on display. It's absolutely shocking
honestly to even see the way that this
man is conducting himself in public and
uh it would all be a joke if it not only
was he's not the top law enforcement
officer in the entire country but his
public statements remember can all be
used at trial should Tyler Robinson
contest his innocence at trial. Defense
lawyers and others potentially taking
advantage of all of the misstatements
and some of the timeline and other
things that Cash Patel has now laid out
that make absolutely no sense. So, here
is the latest from attorney g from
sorry, the FBI director Cash Patel in a
Fox News interview yesterday, which was
totally all over the map. Let's take a
listen.
All right, FBI director Cash Patel joins
us now. I can't imagine, Mr. Director,
how busy you've been, especially uh
Charlie Kirk isn't just a impactful
person. He's your friend. So, I
understand that. But having said that,
people are looking to you to find out is
how big this investigation is going to
be. Can you tell us the latest?
Absolutely. It's so good to be with you
and you're right. My personal feelings
and relationship with Charlie, I have a
job to do for the American people and
I've committed to do it for President
Trump.
So yeah, that's uh the first statement
that we have here from uh Mr. Patel. But
the most important stuff that really
starts to uh actually break down are
some of the misstatements in particular
about the investigation. You'll remember
that if you look at this quote
unofficial timeline and more that's been
laid out by the government, there really
is a lot of stuff, Crystal, which
doesn't make sense. So, for example, we
have things about the screwdriver and
whether Tyler Robinson was able to
assemble the rifle uh up on the roof,
disassemble it, take it down while
jumping off, reassemble it, stash it in
the woods before it's eventually found.
This is also comporting with claims of
finding DNA evidence on the said towel,
but we don't actually see the towel.
We've looked at the video in which it
was uh wrapped up. Remember also, you
know, the official narrative is about
driving in changing clothes. We don't
have photos specifically about what
those clothes look like. I could go on.
I mean, there's so many more uh that he
has laid out here and he is completely
unable to lay that out um in answer some
of these questions. Take a listen to
that. on the ground um on the around
5:00 p.m. local on September 11th was
walk the entire crime scene, including
the foots the sub suspect himself took.
And what we learned was there was
evidence, DNA evidence that could be
collected and had been collected,
including a screwdriver that was found
on the rooftop. Also, we went over to
the scene in the wooded area where the
firearm was discarded and the firearm
had a towel wrapped around it. And I can
report today that the DNA hits from the
towel that was wrapped around the
firearm and the DNA on the screwdriver
are positively processed for the suspect
in custody. Remember about that
screwdriver, the fact that it was then
reassembled or it was found assembled in
the woods remains highly relevant.
Another reason why that initial thing
about the cash Patel and his personal
relationship with Charlie Kirk is that
any defense lawyer could say that there
was a personal matter and potentially
corrupted the investigation. It is a bit
complicated because as of right now it's
not a federal case. It is handle being
handled largely by Utah authorities
although they are looking for potential
ways for it to go federal. But all of
this matters in a court of law. the fact
that the timeline does not match up with
the uh I mean just doesn't pass basic
muster for you know the idea is that you
were ch you had an outfit of which we
have not yet seen and allegedly is which
the suspect is identified. This
reassembly is a major question for the
investigation. The charging documents
have not yet been made public. So we're
not yet clear to the official timeline
that will be contested in a court of
law. And we haven't even yet got to the
alleged note that uh Robinson confessed
to. Anything you want to say before we
play that?
Just on the screwdriver. Um so what
cashell is saying there is screwdriver
was found on the roof. Um presumably you
know where the killer was stationed when
he took that fatal shot. Um the reason
why there's a lot of questions around
this is because they released that video
of him jumping off the roof where look
it's blurry. It's difficult to tell
exactly what's going on there, but you
can't visibly see the firearm. So, was
it disassembled?
And then if the screwdriver was on the
roof, but the gun is found reassembled
and was how did he do that? Um, so
that's those are some of the some of the
pieces, you know, that raise question
marks that the government's going to
have to fill in of exactly, okay, what
was he wearing? Where was he wearing?
How did he change? How did he assemble?
How did he reassemble? Where was the
gun? You know, presumably the gun was in
that backpack in the stairwell photos.
All of those sorts of things they will
have to answer. And any, you know, good
defense attorney is going to be asking
these same questions and trying to poke
holes in that narrative. And I said this
yesterday, but I really like go and
watch the OJ documentary if you want to
know how this is done and how an
effective defense attorney can pick
apart a government's narrative. To your
point about the personal relationship,
you know, another thing that they'll be
arguing is that this was uh politicized
from the beginning, from the beginning.
They wanted to pin this on Tyler
Robbins, that they were looking to do
it. that the even this the open
discussion here of the DNA evidence
could be problematic because that type
of evidence has to be introduced with an
expert. It's not a yes or no it's it's
his DNA or not. It's a probabilistic
question. So even things like that um
can end up coming back to bite you when
you're in a court of law. Now I suspect
that they probably are going to have
sufficient evidence to be able to
convince a jury of his peers, but it's
worth raising the question. is also an
indication just that Cash doesn't know
what the hell he's doing. He doesn't
have any idea the way that he could be
screwing over their case here. He
shouldn't be involved in evidence
collection. You know, he's he is is not
the person to be doing that, but he
wants to make himself look like he's
doing something like he's on the scene,
like he's an important part of this so
that he can save his own job. As we, you
know, discussed yesterday, he is under
fire and the knives are out for him
within the administration.
There are two separate things. First of
all, Tyler Robinson's def, you know,
potential defense. he's not cooperating
with authorities. Dan Bonino said that
he's currently placed on suicide watch.
So, obviously, we're all going to be
watching that very carefully. There's
that, but there's also, look, this was a
highly public figure uh for whom the
questions around the assassination all
should be answered specifically if you
don't want conspiracy and other
questions to arise and especially if
it's going to become a political
flagship. And that's especially why this
is important here with Cash Patel's
latest claim that a note was found in
which Tyler Robinson allegedly confessed
that he had murdered Charlie Kirk.
However, he now says that that note did
not exist, but that they can prove it
does ex or it it did exist, but they can
prove that uh it used to exist even
though it does no longer exist right
now. See, I'm getting tripped up because
his own language is so unclear.
Impossible to even discern what he's
actually saying. We're about to show
you.
We will play it here for yourself. And
here you can here's your takeaway. Let's
take a listen.
The written note we believe what did
exist and we have evidence to show what
was in that note which is um and I'm
going to uh summarize basically saying I
the suspect wrote a note saying I have
the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk
and I'm going to take it. That note was
written before the shooting. um evidence
of existence we now have learned existed
before the shooting was in the location
um in the suspect and partner's home.
But we have since learned that the note,
even though it has been destroyed, we
have found forensic evidence of the
note. And we have confirmed what that
note says because of our aggressive
interview posture at the FBI.
Our aggressive interview posture at the
FBI. Interview with whom? Where was the
note? Who? What are you saying? Did you
conduct an interview with the trans
boyfriend uh with a roommate with
members of the discord? Where did these
messages come from? How was such note,
you know, given forward? And you're
putting this forward before any of the
charging documents. I mean, this is the
problem with not just the podcaster FBI,
but it really is just the rank
incompetence and also just wanting
stardom in appearing on Fox News for
Nobody asked you to go on Fox News for
15 minutes. Nobody, absolutely nobody in
the world said that you needed to do
that. Uh you are corrupting a law
enforcement investigation, dramatically
confusing the public and potentially
influencing the defense of a killer or
alleged killer who we all want to see
brought to justice. So everywhere that
every single way that you square it,
it's nuts. And again, it just fits not
only with the incompetence, but with a
lot of the misstatements which really
could come back to haunt them at trial.
The latest one also is on Discord. So,
there's a new claim from the FBI that
Tyler Robinson actually did confess.
Potentially, this is what Cash meant. We
don't know because nobody even asked him
that he allegedly confessed to the
murder of Charlie Kirk while he was in
this Discord chat. Here are the details
that they said yesterday, but they
haven't released said messages. So, take
a listen.
About 2 hours before he was turned into
authorities. This according to the
Washington Post, we are working to
independently confirm this as well, but
the Washington Post says that Tyler
Robinson, the 22-year-old suspect
charged in Charlie Kirk's murder,
confessed, and I want to read this.
According to the Washington Post,
writing on Discord, that social media
chat group uh that the FBI says he used,
quote, "Hey guys, I have bad news for
you all. It was me at UVU yesterday. I'm
sorry for all of this." This coming from
the Washington Post. Now, this comes as
DOJ officials began late last week and
over the weekend looking at the
potential for at least one federal
charge. No guarantee they'll get there.
A department spokesperson declined
comment, but a source familiar said
investigators are not ruling anything
out at this time, especially his online
gaming presence, his chats, as we just
mentioned. Who was he talking to? The
reason why this is very confusing is
remember Discord initially put out a
statement that the statements made by
the Utah governor that he had helped
plan Tyler Robinson allegedly helped
plan the assassination of Charlie Kirk
on Discord. Discord put out statements
that those messages don't exist. Discord
has since put out a statement Crystal
and said that these messages do appear
to be consistent with the account that
was linked to Tyler Robinson some 2
hours before he turned himself in. But
again, it remains very unclear what the
previous messages that they alluded to
even are. And to the full statement, the
transcript and all of that has not yet
been released. So, well, look, I want to
be clear. We're not alleging conspiracy
or any of that. I want to be absolutely
clear about that. What we are showing is
the rank incompetence here by the FBI,
the lack of communication, the raising
of questions here legitimately about
Cash Patel and the FBI's own handling of
this investigation and the relevance
that that means for law enforcement
matters and obviously what is a heinous
assassination, but also one that is
potentially going to be used, as we'll
get to just in a little bit, for
political purposes. And so that's why
the facts on this stuff really matter.
And you know, if we look at these
history of these investigations, every
single one is more questions than
answers. The uh Trump assassination, we
don't know a goddamn thing about him.
Case closed by Cash Patel, by the way,
and his FBI. Uh I will remind everybody
about Vegas. I mean, I'm sorry. There is
not a goddamn thing about the Steven
Paddock case that makes a lick of sense.
If he had been alive and they had to
prosecute him, good luck. Uh yeah, I
mean, things like saying that no video
or whatever existed in a Vegas casino.
Really? I mean, I could go on forever
really in in a lot of these
investigations all the way back to Waco
and and everything. So, what I'm telling
you is not that there is some grand
conspiracy necessarily, but that the
screw-ups, the explanations, etc., have
always been a breeding ground for people
to, I think, legitimately say what the
hell is going on here and especially if
it's going to be used for political
weaponization purposes.
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, when
I was scrolling yesterday on Twitter,
practically every post was some new
theory of like, "Oh, look at this guy
over here. Look at this video. Look at
how he moves his arm. This is the real
killer." I mean, like a hundred
different theories that I saw. So, this
is already going on. So when you have
the government which first the Utah
governor said that there were discord
messages that you know where he was
effectively planning the shooting. Then
Discord comes out and says that doesn't
happen. Yep.
Then Cash Patel says there was a note
but the note was destroyed but we have
evidence of the note but we got evidence
of the note like through aggressive
interview techniques which by the way
again a lawyer what are they going to
say? Well you got this information under
duress. like what are we talking about
here? You know, did you like basically
torture this person into giving some
sort of a false confession? All of these
things are going to breed a lot of
speculation and that is exactly what we
see unfolding. If I had to guess as to
what the hell they're talking about here
and how all these wires got crossed, my
guess, which is just a guess because you
cannot tell from their statements what
the hell they're talking about, is that
there was apparently allegedly some sort
of a note, that there was discussion
about that note, not from Tyler, but
from some of the people that he was, you
know, maybe the roommates or whoever,
some associates with him. There was some
discussion of that note on Discord.
Somebody got rid of the note and the,
you know, the the revelations about
these messages on Discord were um
something that the FBI was able to get
through their aggressive interview.
Posh, if I had to try to square this
mess, that would be my guess as to
what's going on. And that could account
for like the confusion of what the
governor originally said about there
being discord messages about what he was
going to do and why he was going to do
it. Maybe those didn't come from him.
They came from other people in the
circle who had seen this note, who were
talking about the note. That's the best
that I can figure out of what's going on
here. But incredibly unclear.
Absolutely. You know, incredibly
unclear. And it's entirely possible that
that's what I just said is not remotely
even what they're talking about.
Exactly right. We need to see the
charging documents. People need to stop
going on on uh Twitter and Fox News
trying to I mean, Cash, let's be honest,
what's he trying to do? He's trying to
reclaim his reputation because everybody
knows he's a clown in the way that he's
acting.
He's going on Fox News because of Trump.
He wants Trump to see him on there and
Trump to feel like he's doing a good
job. I mean, the problem is he can't
deliver on that ability of like seeming
like he's competent and in command here.
And Steve Bannon reacted exactly to
this. Uh a huge portion of the right
going after Cash Patel. Now, I think
very justifiably, let's take a listen.
I'm told that
the reason that the video and what
Michael uh Savage says and others about
jumping off the roof is that he's got a
gun in his hand and he drops the gun to
the ground, the rifle.
That's that's what when you when you
confront him on that video, it said,
"Oh, you guys are missing it." He
actually has the rifle. He hasn't taken
it apart. He drops the rifle down and
then goes hides it. Maybe it is. It's
just too fuzzy. I don't know. But the
timeline makes no sense. Now they're
putting out video that they got the guy
walking around in shorts in the um you
know cuz he had two costumes walking
around two two sets of clothes walking
around in the neighborhoods yet CNN
played today again CNN played the
doorbell video we saw the other day
where he's walking stifflegged like he's
got a rifle or a part of a barrel or
something in his pants. He's very
stifflegged. They played it again. So
clearly that has not been refuted by the
authorities. This is why
this morning, first off, over the
weekend, shifting this now not to a
single murder, but actually to an
investigation of a conspiracy. And as
President Trump says, many
investigations. He talked the other day
about Soros in a um in an investigation,
the source involvement, all of it. I
think you're going to see a much more
sophisticated, much broader
investigation into this. 2,000 times I
watched that video, I missed it cuz I'm
still missing it. And maybe it's
accurate, but I don't understand the
doorbell. I got to The car wasn't
impounded. You haven't uh rolled up any
of the Discord chat. It seems like we're
being spoonfed a narrative. There you
go. I think uh you know, lazing raising
some legitimate questions here. Let's
put this up here. Uh this is uh
something that was posted by Steve
Bannon. Uh just recapping some of the
questions. Brief recap. Again, you know,
this is not all 100% correct. I'm just
showing it to you because this is what
was posted by Steve Bannon as to the
level of questions and other things that
are now being raised about the FBI and
the director's leadership. So, the main
takeaway for all of this is really in my
opinion rank incompetence. And you know,
yes, Crystal, as you said, that's
potentially explainable many of the
things that they have said, but that's
not how things need to work uh at the
highest level of American law
enforcement in a court of law.
Just don't say anything.
Bingo. Exactly. I mean, if you you know,
if you watch the governor, um, who has
been much more like, even he has said
some things that aren't true, but he's
getting his information from law
enforcement at the end of the day, he'll
get asked questions where I said, I I
can't say anything.
I can't get into that for the integrity
of the investment. Okay, great.
Okay. You know, I mean, listen, as a
journalist, I would like as much
disclosure as possible, but what Cash
Mattel is doing is not disclosure. It's
it's actually muddling and confusing um
the picture of of what we know here. But
yeah, I mean Steve Bannon reposted, we
can put that back up on the screen.
Steve Bannon reposted this and said, and
this is the short list um of questions
that we have. They haven't recovered the
bullet. We're talking about specifically
uh the the bullet, the single shot that
murdered Charlie Kirk. They haven't
presented any video photographic
evidence of the alleged shooter with the
gun. The closest we get is actually that
TMZ released doorbell camera where you
see him walking stiff leg like he's got
a gun down his pants, but you don't
actually see the weapon. Alleged shooter
did not confess to law enforcement,
which was something we were that was
very fuzzy at the beginning. It seemed
like he was cooperating. We're all
surprised to learn that he was not
actually cooperating with law
enforcement. They haven't presented any
pictures or videos of the alle shooter
changing his clothes on the roof, which
is contradicted by the photos that have
been released. They don't have any
physical evidence of quote unquote the
note where the alleged shooter allegedly
claimed he would have a chance to take
out Charlie Kirk. TPUSA staff
contaminated the crime scene, removed
the camera sitting be directly behind
Charlie immediately after the shooting.
Where is that footage? I don't know if
you guys have seen this, but this is
this appears to be true. Pretty shortly
after the shooting, you see images of
them breaking down the the tent and
reclaiming the merch and all of that.
Well, that's an active crime scene. like
it's, you know, seems like you would
have that cordoned off and you would
want to preserve every aspect of that
crime scene, but pretty quickly you see
um staff able to come in and take down
the tent. Discord disputes the FBI's
claim the alleged shooter discussed any
plans to assassinate Charlie Kirk. If
true, they'd have data to back this up.
We might end up seeing all of this
eventually. I hope we do. So far, the
evidence that's actually been presented
is hardly convincing. This I think was
put out before Discord did confirm that
there were these messages not planning
the shooting but apparently confessing
to the shooting. So um in any case
that's that's the picture as best as we
have it right now.
That's that's all we can really present
to you. And uh the reason why again that
we've said that why the questions and
all the for example if we think back to
the 1960s if you think about uh Oliver
Stone and actually a really emergence of
the anti-war left in the 1960s it was
always underrated how much the Kennedy
assassination I'm not comparing the two
what I'm saying is that it was a clear
throughine that Stone has always drawn
from that assassination and kind of the
age of innocence ending to the eventual
military adventurism of what ended end
up happening in Vietnam. 9/11 remains
the same. Look, I mean, it took years
years into the war in Iraq and
Afghanistan for the secret pages about
Saudi Arabia to be released from the
9/11 Commission. Uh the 9/11 Commission
report itself. This is a joke. I mean,
everybody knows that. And then no, no
one's saying Israel did it. Okay? What
we're saying is there's a lot of sketchy
that remains completely unanswered
around that entire thing. I mean, I
remember last year new video from 1998
of an a Saudi embassy worker casing out
the US capital that gets released. It
takes 23 years for that to get released.
But that's well after the consequences.
So the point is that if it's going to
lead to extraordinary action, I would
hope that one of the things that
actually happens is that all information
gets released. So at the very least then
all Americans can judge these things for
themselves. Hey, if you like that video,
hit the like button or leave a comment
below. It really helps get the show to
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Part 1 of 2

Tucker Carlson LIVE: America After Charlie Kirk
Tucker Carlson
Streamed live on Sep 16, 2025 The Tucker Carlson Show

Megyn Kelly, Scott Adams, Cenk Uygur, and Fr. Josiah Trenham join us for a live broadcast on America in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination—examining his influence on politics and what comes next for our nation.



Transcript

Introduction

Hey, I'm Tucker Carlson. Last week, within... just really minutes after Charlie Kirk was shot at that event in Utah,
a kind of proxy war broke out over his memory. Who gets to own it, who gets to use it?
While the rest of us were still reeling in shock, trying to figure out what happened, a ton of people appeared online, not just in this country, to take
tell you exactly what happened, exactly what it meant, and exactly what we should do next.
And you can see why with this level of emotion, rage and grief in the air, it's pretty wise to leverage that much energy.
It's almost like nuclear power. It can be used for... good or bad, and a lot of people wanted to use it,
there's no question about that. So they begin telling you, Charlie died for this. He lived for this and he died for that. So...
the crazier reaches of the left, it was, Charlie was a Nazi. And the lesson is Nazis get killed.
It makes sense. He was a bad guy who got what he deserved. And a lot of them said that out loud. Certain parts of the right immediately told you that.
Actually this was about something completely different. You know, Charlie died for Israel. Many began to say the Prime Minister of Israel...
said that and so did a lot of other people. Charlie was a defender of Israel, which he was, by the way,
and therefore he died for that cause. But none of these explanations, all self serving, are really satisfactory.
They don't capture who Charlie Kirk was, and on some basic level, they're dishonest... Charlie was not a Nazi.
He was not killed because he was a Nazi. Yes, he was a defender of Israel. He didn't die for Israel However,
why did he die? What was his life about? What was the... sin, the core sin that Charlie Kirk committed against somebody,
power that got him killed in the end? And the answer is right in front of us, certainly those of us who knew him...
Charlie's life was defined by his Christian faith, not his spirituality, but his belief in Jesus,
his life as a Christian. Everything in his life flowed from those beliefs. Everything, everything he did, said and believed...
came from the fact that he was above all a Christian. And that is
and was and in fact has always been deeply provocative and offensive to the rest of the world.
And why is that? It's worth thinking about it for just a second. Christianity doesn't seem like the kind of religion that provoke
people to anger and violence. In fact, it seems just the opposite. It's the world's most profoundly nonviolent religion,
maybe the world's only truly nonviolent religion... A religion based on a Man who Christians believe was also God,
who, as he was being led away to be tortured to death... on made up charges,
scolded one of his disciples for fighting back. This is a religion committed to love
above all and to living in peace and harmony. Truly, it's a universalist religion that believes that every person...
has a shot at heaven. It's not exclusionary at all. And so you would think it would make sense that if you're a government
or if you're in power, that you'd want a lot of Christians living in your country because
they're not going to cause massive problems. Not a lot of... sincere Christians are fomenting insurrection at any given moment.
Pretty much none. Most of the time they're tidy. They get married, they love their children.
They pay their taxes. They're commanded to pay their taxes... So why wouldn't you want a nation full of Christians?
Why wouldn't you encourage... this religious belief, even if it wasn't yours? Why would you hate it?
Well, there are a couple of reasons. There are a couple of things about Christianity, and these were evident throughout
Charlie's public life, that are... deeply provocative to the people in power. And the first is the insistence that Christianity
comes with inherently... that you are not God, you are not God, and neither are your leaders. God is God,
and all of us stand before him in the end to be judged, and all of us will be found lacking. Christians believe the only way to heaven is through Jesus.
That's the only way. But all of us, whether we believe in Jesus or not,
are fallen. We are sinners, we are less than we ought to be. We are not gods, and neither are the people who lead us.
And this has a lot of implications, the first being if you're not God, you don't get to do whatever you want... There are limits.
There are rules that you didn't write that you have to abide by. That's not a judgment, that's a statement of fact...
Some call it natural law. It's been the basis of every functioning society since the beginning of time.
But the basis of our society is the Christian understanding of justice,
which flows... from that belief. You are not God. God is. He writes the most basic rules, you abide by them, period.
That's the basis of our law. That's the basis of Western law. That is a threat,
a challenge... to people who would ignore the limits on their behavior, very much including our leaders and very much including the most powerful people...
in our society, whether they're elected or not... Nobody wants to be told you're not allowed to do something.
And Christianity inherently... tells people that, doesn't judge them, it just states it clearly.
No, you do not have the power to kill, except possibly in self defense. But you can't just go killing people.
And you can't go killing people because. And this is the second thing about Christianity that tends to set
the teeth of the powerful on edge. Christianity insists... that every human being
is created by God. Every single one. And that means that every human being has a soul,
a distinct, unique soul created by God. It is once again the only true
universalist faith... there is. And the New Testament is the story of this, an under read collection of books
that is not the story of the Old Testament. It is very much the story of the New Testament.
In the New Testament, all people are God's chosen. Every single one. And the story itself
makes that point. The founder of most Christian churches in the early near east was a former...
Pharisee, a Jew who was in charge of killing Christians... until he famously met Jesus on the road to Damascus.
His name was Saul, it became Paul... And he is the most prolific author in the New Testament and the basis
of a lot of Christian theology. And his life tells the story. People...
can change no matter what they look like, no matter what they previously believed, no matter where they're from, no matter what language they speak,
because they are created by God. And every person, every single person, whether you like them or their relatives or the way they look or not,
has that chance because all were created by God and all were loved by God. That is the basis of Christianity.
That's the Christian story. And so a sincere Christian proceeds with that belief.
There is no tribalism in Christianity. There is no identity politics. It's the opposite.
You may prefer to be with people who look like you, that's fine. But God doesn't prefer to be with people who look like you.
God prefers to be with all people because he created all people... He's the God of the universe, not just...
of the people you like. And that again... has massive implications for the way that sincere Christians live and for the
way that Charlie Kirk lived his life. And the first is if...
other people have souls, if they, like you, were created by God, then they have freedom of conscience.
You can tell them what they ought to think, but you can't make them. You can tell them what they ought to say, but you can't force them.
Christianity does not convert by the sword. It can't. It requires... free will. And it requires free will
because it respects... the individual conscience emanating from the distinct soul of every human
being. And that is why in the west, which is based on Christianity, our civilization is a Christian civilization,
tattered though it currently is. collective punishment. Hurting people for the sins of
their relatives is unthinkable. It's a crime because each person... will stand
alone as he was made before God. And every person is equal
before God... fundamentally doesn't mean each person is equal in his ability.
It doesn't mean each person is equal in the choices he makes. Of course not. But it means that every person is a human being with a divine spark inside.
That is the core assumption of Christianity. And it was obvious when you watch Charlie Kirk, that he believed that.
Charlie's been famously quoted for the last couple of days saying he abhors anti Semitism. That is absolutely right. And he did.
He said that in public, and he said it very often in private. He meant it, too.
But he abhorred... racism and bigotry on the basis of genetics... of all kinds, because he was a Christian
and he believed that God created each person. Now, why is this a problem
for temporal authorities? Why is it a problem for the people in power?.. Because once again, it circumscribes
what they can do. It sets a limit on their powers... If God created each person, including the infuriating, annoying,
disastrously wrong person I'm talking to, then I can't force him... to repeat my creed.
I'm not in charge of his conscience. Only he is. And that is a...
limit... So when Charlie Kirk said, I believe in free speech, he didn't simply... believe in free speech because it was in the Bill of Rights.
He understood that it was in the Bill of Rights because it's in the New Testament. He understood that's a right that comes from God bestowed on all of us at birth...
And he felt his job, his duty, was not simply to protect it, but to live it,
to show people what that looks like. I just want to play. Of the many clips we could play of Charlie Kirk on college campus,
he spent his whole life worn out most of the time... as an older man. I often said to him,
how the hell do you get on plane after plane after plane? But he felt an evangelical duty, small evangelical duty to do it, to get out there and talk to people.
Why?.. Not simply to build a coalition or get this or that person elected, but because... he believed, as a Christian.
that... convincing people voluntarily with words in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. So the Gospel of John begins, words
are the key... to Winning people's minds and their souls. And he really meant this. He wasn't just
repeating the words, he meant it. And it was obvious in the way that he interacted with people
who disagree with him and... people who hated him. Here's one clip that tells part of the story.
Would you want someone who is not necessarily stable or ready to bring a child into this world
and provide that child the life it deserves? Would you want them to still bring that child into this world?
Without a doubt. Every life has a moral obligation to be able to live. If I can't give...
that child... the life it deserves, why? Why am I bringing it to? Got it. This will be my last question...
I want you to think about it... If a Single mom has two 2 year olds, twins, and she wakes up one day and says,
I can't do it anymore. I can't give them the life they deserve. But that's just not the circumstance. Hold on. Should she be able to take out a shotgun and kill both those kids?
No, of course not. Because you think that would be objectionable. That's why I think it's objectionable to eliminate two
babies that are six weeks old because they're morally the same thing. One just happens to be bigger, one just happens to be older,
one just happens to be outside of the womb. They're both human beings. And you have something in you that says, no way is it okay to kill a two year old.
That's called your soul talking. You have something in you that tells you the truth.
You can call it instinct if you like. Charlie Kirk referred to it as the soul. But
both mean the same thing. You have the spark of the divine God spark inside you and it reacts, it hums, it vibrates like a tuning fork...
And you know, on a basic animal level, like your dog knows when something is wrong. You can feel it.
And the whole purpose of modern society, it seems sometime is to get... the rest of us to ignore what we know.
That vibration inside us that tells us the truth always. It never lies to us. Charlie did not ignore that.
And you'll notice that in the end he appealed to it with... that young woman. He didn't scream, you were a murderer in his face,
though He considered abortion murder, which it is. He felt that deeply. This wasn't a performance. He wasn't
another nonprofit phony in D.C... feigning outrage about something. He really believed...
that taking innocent life was wrong in the womb... or in crowded cities, anywhere.
He thought it was wrong because his faith tells him it's wrong... And because his Conscience confirms that belief,
and so does yours. And so did hers. So did all of ours. We know... when something is wrong,
and the people above us shouted us. No, really, there's an explanation for it.
That's just your super ego barking at you. no You know in your heart,
deep inside, what every person has known, and that is the murder of innocence
is a crime. It's a moral crime, and that girl knew it. And in the end, That was Charlie's appeal...
Listen to that divine spark inside you. Listen to your soul speak to you.
Turn off the music, get off the drugs, push the distractions, which it's hard to believe,
aren't actually designed to crowd out that humming inside us. And be still for a moment
and accept what you already know, what you were born knowing. Listen to that. Or
only someone... who appreciates the person he's speaking to as an actual human being could speak that way.
Notice how rare that is. It's been noted in the past couple of days, Charlie was a free speech champion. Absolutely, he was.
And I pray that that's his legacy. But I also think it's important to explain why that mattered to him...
It was not abstract in any sense. It was central. It was the core... Because consider... what it means if you don't
respect... free speech, which is another way of saying free conscience. The right of other people to make up their own minds about the basic questions
of what is right or wrong and to express their views on those issues. If you don't acknowledge the right of other people to do that,
and if you take steps to prevent them from doing that, what are you really saying? You're really saying, I don't think you have a soul.
I think you're a meat puppet I can control. I think you're an animal, maybe sub animal. You're a slave. You're a person to whom I can dictate...
belief. I don't acknowledge that you have the right to come to your own conclusion is another way of saying,
I don't acknowledge that you're a human being. It's dark. There's nothing darker than that... And trust me, they believe it.
The ones who've thought about it, and there are a lot of those. But for a lot of people, particularly those who are just
repeating what they think they should say or responding to the momentary rage of the moment.
they just throw stuff out. And we've got to hope that the Attorney General of the United States,
Pam Bondi, is in that category... She said this just yesterday. Watch. There's free speech and then there's hate speech.
And there is... no place, especially... now, especially after what happened to Charlie. In our society.
there's free speech... and then there's hate speech. This is the Attorney General of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States,
telling you that there is this other category... called hate speech. And of course, the implication is that's a crime.
There's almost... no sentence that Charlie Kirk... and... I'm not running the risk...
of appropriating his memory for my own ends by saying this... It's provable.
There's no sentence that Charlie Kirk would have objected to more than that. And you've got to think the Attorney General didn't think it through and
was not attempting to desecrate the memory of the person she was purporting to celebrate that.
She just threw that out there that she hadn't thought about it. You hope that... You hope that Charlie Kirk's death... won't be used
by a group we now call bad actors to create a society that was the opposite of the one he worked to build.
You hope that... You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we're seeing in the aftermath of his murder won't be leveraged to
bring hate speech laws to this country. And trust me, if it is, if that does happen,
there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever. And there never will be...
Because if they can tell you what to say. they're telling you what to think... There is nothing
they can't do to you because they don't consider you human... They don't believe you have a soul.
A human being with a soul, a free man has a right to say what he believes... Not to hurt other people,
but to express... his views. And by the way, that thinking. And not to pile on the Attorney General, who's a very nice person.
but that thinking that she just articulated on camera there... is exactly what got us to a place where some huge and horrifying percentage of young people
think it's okay to shoot people you disagree with to kill Nazis for saying things they don't like.
Why do they believe that? How did we get here? Is it the video games? Is it the SSRIs? Yeah, probably.
But what it really is is 12 and then 16 years of indoctrination in our schools at the hands
of people who tell them that, who say exactly what the Attorney General just said. Well, there's free speech, which of course,
we all acknowledge is important. So, so important. But then there's this Thing called hate speech.
Hate speech, of course, is any speech that the people in power hate. But they don't define it that way... They define it as speech that hurts people,
speech that is tantamount to violence. And we punish violence, don't we? Of course we do. They've been taught that
every year of their lives. And so naturally, most of them believe it. When Charlie Kirk is shot in the throat with a 30 out six on camera,
I doubt very many young Americans want to see something like that or actually applaud the death of a man,
a father, a husband. But they've been told for their entire lives in schools
exactly what Pam Bondi just told them. Well, there's free speech, but then there's also hate speech. And woe to those who engage in it because it's a crime.
That's a lie. And it's a lie that denies the humanity of the people you're telling it about.
And so any attempt to impose hate speech laws in this country, and trust me, there are a lot of people who would like them,
there are a lot of people who'd like to codify their own beliefs by punishing Those under the U.S.
code who disagree with their beliefs. Any attempt to do that... is a denial of the humanity...
of American citizens and cannot be allowed under any circumstances. That's got to be the red line, because again, when they can do that,
what can't they do? And this is something, by the way, that Charlie thought about a lot and that I had
occasion to talk to him about a lot. And I really don't want to make any of this about me because it
has nothing to do with me... But I did have reason to have these conversations with Charlie
a lot, many, many times over the past three or four months. And... this began at an event that he held in Florida in July,
the TPUSA M Fest event, Turning Point event. I often go, I always have the best time.
I always see Charlie ahead of time. We have a cup of coffee in a hotel room, talk about what's going on. In addition to being, of course, a conservative advocate,
he was also a conservative organizer and a coalition builder. And he was very involved in politics in a way that I'm not.
So it was interesting as hell, but it was also a way to learn what young people are thinking about, talking about,
because he was on college campuses all the time. And what is the state of a couple of big debates that are happening
within the Republican coalition, particularly around foreign policy. And Charlie's views on foreign policy, which I think are fairly well known now.
A lot of people lying about them were evolving, but had... really evolved.
And who knows why he reached the conclusions he did. I think his Christian faith informed... them mostly...
was also the experience of talking to young people... And his views were very much like theirs. He believed that the war on terror had been a net loss for the United States,
and it caused incalculable damage, not just economic and physical damage, but spiritual damage to the United States.
It was. It was bad. We got nothing out of it. We were only hurt. And he didn't want to see that again. And he felt very strongly about that.
And of course, I agreed. And so before that speech that I gave in July, we had a conversation about this
backstage... right before I went on. And I was fulminating and getting all red in the face like I often do,
to my shame. And I was mad thinking about this and thinking about the effort by the neocons in the United States to draw us in
to another... forever war... with Iran. Not a defense of Iran, of course. It's merely an acknowledgment that we've done this before.
This happened in Iraq, which, you know, we entered into at the behest of those same foreign policy strategists.
And... And it didn't work. And so I was going on at some length backstage with Charlie,
and I said. you know, probably not going to talk about that. I'm not going to torture you.
I know your donors hate this when I say that. And also, Epstein was in the news, and it was
clear to me that, you know, Epstein's probably not like a Mossad agent or something, but
Epstein clearly had contact with Israeli intelligence and American intelligence and French intelligence, But the only one you're not allowed to talk about is Israeli intelligence.
But it's. It seemed true to me, and I had done... some work on that, and I knew a bunch of people pretty close to that story, so. So I thought that.
And I said that to Charlie, and I said, but I'm not going to say that because I don't want to make your donors mad. I know it's just going to be like an endless
flurry of texts telling you to stop or you're gonna lose a bunch of funding. And he looked at me, I'll never forget it,
and said, go all the way... Do it. Go all the way. I said, man, I. You know, a lot of things I can talk about. I don't need to talk about that. And he said, do it.
So I did it... By the way, I think that that conversation hit a Mic on. And so did I. Probably exists somewhere on somebody's server,
but that's, I think, a faithful rendition of what he said. And by the way, I'm not trying to blame him for my remarks.
You can agree or disagree with those remarks. But I'm saying this only because I was
shocked and sickened by the reaction of the ghoulish and really repulsive reaction of the Prime Minister of Israel,
Benjamin Netanyahu, to Charlie's death. Basically made it all about him and all about his country,
immediately... trying to take the energy, the sadness, the grief that people felt over Charlie's murder and redirect it towards support
for whatever project he's involved in. And by the way, Benjamin Netanyahu is not the same as the nation of Israel at all.
Bibi is despised by many people in Israel, and if you know people who live there, you know that that's true.
There are huge divisions within the Israeli government. I mean, there are certain parts of the. The intel world... in Israel that do not support some things
that Benjamin Netanyahu has done recently. So it's not the same as attacking Israel, attacking Bibi. But I.
I don't think I've ever seen anything lower than his attempt to hijack Charlie's memory and use it for his own political ends,
particularly because what he said was completely untrue. Charlie didn't hate Jews. He loved Jews.
He had tons of friends who were Jews. He loved the state of Israel, love going there. He did not like Bibi Netanyahu. And he said that to me many times, and he said to people around him
many times... he felt that Bibi Netanyahu was a very destructive force. He was appalled by what was happening... in Gaza.
He was, above all, resentful... that he believed Netanyahu was using the United States to prosecute
his wars for the benefit of his country, and that it was shameful and embarrassing and bad for the United States,
and he resented it. Didn't hate Netanyahu. He wasn't out there with a placard saying that.
But he certainly expressed that to me and a lot of other people. And there's no question
that Bibi's defenders... on the Internet will call me a liar or a kook, but that's a fact. And enough text messages exist that I think
it can probably be verified in pretty short order. Not that it needs to be, because that is true.
Shortly after that speech, there was a very intense attack on Charlie and to some extent on me. Not that I really...
noticed, but on him, I have no donors. He had $100 million... worth of donors. And so, because he was involved in a different project from just yapping on the Internet,
which is what I do for a living, he was dependent to a great extent on his donors. Of course,
it's a nonprofit, and they went after him and tormented him. Not all, of course. Many were supportive, but
the ones who were offended by my speech, and there was a small, very intense group who were tormenting Charlie Kirk,
until the day he died. Two days before he died, he lost a $2 million donation... because
he had publicly pledged to bring me to the next Turning Point conference in December. And he told me over the past couple of months he was losing a lot
of donations over that pledge. They put out... a flyer basically saying that I was going to be at this event giving a speech...
And so he would text me and say, man, I'm really taking a lot of heat for this, and people are really mad.
The American... Jewish Committee called in a statement, Charlie Kirk, an anti Semite and quote, dangerous.
Charlie Kirk, an anti Semite. He was not an anti Semite.
He was the opposite, and he was not dangerous... He was a great lover of people and a purveyor of peace.
He was the opposite, and he was very stung by that. Those of us who've been called names for a long time are a
little bit harder to offend. Charlie was deeply offended by that and expressed some of those feelings on
Megyn Kelly show and in other places, but that did not let up. The reason I'm telling this story
is because he called me and then came to see me at my house about this topic. And
I said to him every single time, look, it's. You know, I've got my own way to communicate my views...
This is actually not the most important issue to me. There are lots of things I can talk about. I don't need to come to Turning Point.
I can take a year off, no problem. I hated... seeing how much he was suffering.
The hassle he was getting... from people... And I was being attacked, too, by the way, was a huge effort.
I wasn't fully aware of it, actually, because I don't go online that much, but there was a huge effort by people, some of whom I know and have helped.
And like Seth Dillon, the Babylon Bee, for example, someone who had his own problems with free speech,
who was famously canceled. I like Seth Dylan. I had him on a couple of times. I had dinner with him to show support.
Seth Dillon was out there demanding that Charlie Kirk take me off the roster, pull me off stage... Because I had said things that Bibi didn't like or that he
didn't like or whatever. Shocking that someone whose whole Persona is wrapped up in the idea
that we all get to speak. And if you don't like it, make a more compelling case
that that person... and many others like him were advocating For me getting pulled off the stage...
because they don't like what I'm saying. This is a trend and one that we should be really concerned about.
It's not just about Israel, by the way, at all. The trend is really simple. People with power don't want to hear disagreement.
They don't want to be challenged, ever. That's why we have free speech. To acknowledge that even
those of us... or people with less power still have a right to talk because they're human beings.
You don't own them. So time after time, Charlie would call me or come to see me and let me know,
wow. Or show me text messages. These people are really mad that you're speaking. And I always have the same thought, like, I feel pretty moderate, actually.
I've never been an Israel hater, obviously, I'm not an anti Semite... I just don't want more wars and I don't want a foreign country
humiliating my country and telling us what our laws have to be. I mean, this seems like pretty basic America first stuff.
And he would say, I totally agree with you, you, but they want you off the stage. And I would always say, no problem.
And he would say, no, it's important. It's a matter of principle.
I want you to be there... Great. By the way, I'm not
accusing anyone of being involved in that murder. I'm not trying to... mutter darkly or imply... anything.
We don't. There's a lot we don't know about who murdered Charlie and why. But I. I don't know. And I'm not gonna pretend that I do.
But I think it's important to say that out loud because it's a fact. And there are many liars out there trying.
Bibi Netanyahu, number one among them, shamefully, who are trying to distort the truth,
a truth that I know and can prove. And the last thing I'll say about Charlie is that his views were changing...
on topics that had nothing to do with foreign policy. You know, the famous kind of red line third rail.
Can't talk about it. but it's possible that the subject that makes people even matter...
in Washington, New York and LA than... having... non conventional foreign policy views is having non conventional economic views.
Man they really don't like that at all. And Charlie's views on economics. And on the way that wealth is distributed in the United States
Were changing fast. Really changing fast and hardening. Not because he was a socialist. Hardly.
He was about as much of a socialist as I am. Not at all. But because he lived here and he spent a lot of time with young people.
And he couldn't help but notice because he was an observant and honest person. That they're not thriving at all.
And that the chances they'll have lives comparable to the ones they had growing up are very small.
Most of them won't have houses. They won't own anything. They'll be in debt. And for that reason, they won't get married or have children.
And so the people who are born here Won't continue their legacy in the United States.
It's the end of our civilization. And the root of a lot of this is spiritual, but the root is also economic.
And it raises a question, a basic question of fairness. And I tried to address this in the speech that I gave for Charlie in July.
I don't think I did a very good job, and it was misinterpreted. But I invoked Bill Ackman.
And the point I was making had nothing to do with Bill Ackman being a criminal or even being an Epstein friend.
I mean, I don't really know anything about that. I don't know much about. I'm not accusing Bill Ackman of a crime.
And I'm not accusing him of, you know, being a sex creep or Mossad agent or anything like that.
I don't think that. I don't know that for sure. And I wasn't trying to say it. What I was trying to say is
that Bill Ackman is not creative, not particularly intelligent. Bill ackman is worth $7 billion.
So you have to ask, like, how. and it seems to me...
that Bill Ackman is rich for the same reasons that a lot of other people I know are rich... Because he's hyper aggressive...
and he's well connected. And my only point was. If you live in a society that awards the spoils to people on the
basis of those two qualities... Like the most aggressive. The best connected people get the richest.
That's a dysfunctional society. There should be a reward for creativity and.
And decency and hard work, steadfastness, following the rules. Like you should have to add to the sum total of your society,
you'd think. It's not an argument against the free market. It's the argument against Whatever we're living through right now,
this is really dark and ugly. And if people like bill ackman are getting the richest, what has bill ackman done?
Shorted the market or something? Talk down herbalife. I mean, I'm not even saying that should be illegal. All I'm saying is,
if that's one of the richest guys in your society, you've got a very sick society.
I don't think bill ackman's like a drooling idiot or anything. But, like, when was the last time. You heard bill ackman say something constructive or creative?
Like, never. So it's just bad. And it's not just about bill ackman, of course. I mean,
he's just a minor player in the life of the world. But he's a kind of metaphor for how off track we've gone.
And that doesn't seem like a socialist point. Once again, I'm hardly a socialist, and neither was charlie kirk.
That seems like a christian point... Fairness is at the root of. Of the christian story.
People will be judged not by who their parents were or by how they look, but on their hearts, on themselves, on choices that they made.
That's fair. So again, fairness is essential to the gospel. And it's essential to any working
society. In a fair society, or a society that... its citizens believe is fair,
People will comply voluntarily with the rules. Because they don't think the game is rigged...
But in a society in which bill ackman. Bill Ackman makes $7 billion. And like, the smartest, hardest working, most interesting,
creative young people, you know, can never own a home in a society like that.
You're going to get mamdani as mayor. You're going to get a lot of bad things. Because people will opt out of the society.
Because they know it's not fair, it's rigged. That's the only point I was trying to make.
And charlie, not surprisingly, made it much more eloquently. I thought... in an amazing interview. The last interview I did with him
late July of this year. Here's part of it. We know how to create wealth, but we don't know how to create it for
the generation that needs it most. If you look at the economic conditions, you would think the other conditions surrounding it Are like abject poverty.
These are the problems that, like, third world nations have. I know our young people can't afford stuff. And they have to finance their basic necessities.
And yet we're the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. On the planet. We have a $37 trillion... GDP.
We have the greatest companies and we have all this stuff to brag about. And yet all of our problems would beg the question...
And it's like this inherent contradiction. We're super wealthy on one side, like a powerhouse juggernaut, and we are
like an economic nightmare on the other side. How did that happen?
So if there is such a thing as the left in the United States, if it still exists, you would think a message like that
would at least get a hearing, a respectful hearing. like, hey, what about wages?..
What about the ability of young people to just buy a little house with some lawn in some subdivision? Like what?
Isn't that kind of what they say they want? Empower, you know, the most vulnerable, the people who try hard and play by the rules.
They called him a Nazi. They didn't care that Charlie Kirk in real life spent his...
time trying to stop... war. trying to, you know, figure out how young people could buy a little house somewhere.
Aren't those like left wing goals? they didn't care at all.
In fact, they hated that because they're for war, because they're for death, because they're for the inequality he described
because it leads to a volatile society that empowers them. Of course. they're not
a check on power. The professional left, the trans community. they're the shock troops of power.
Charlie Kirk was a check on power. Charlie Kirk, inspired by his Christian faith,
stood up to people fearlessly to say what he thought was true.
And for that, I will always love and admire him. I want to go down to someone else who loved and admired him and knew
Megyn Kelly
him well and played a pretty, I think, important role in the final months of his life. And that is my old friend... Megan Kelly.
Megan, thanks so much for coming on. Oh, Tucker, thanks for having me.
That was a barn burner, man. You hit on some really important big points. I don't even remember what I said, but I meant it.
So I just want to start. So you had this experience... last week that I, you know, I've always prayed. I never have... You were...
on live... You were live when... the news came in that our friend had been shot in the throat and your reaction...
was captured for all time on camera. And I just want to start by... playing it. I thought it was just an incredible moment that said so
much about you and about him. So here it is.
Oh, well, looks like we don't have the Well in it. You said the line that stuck out to me. Your first reaction was
he was Sent by God... That's the first thing you said you'd not heard this news before.
Why was that your gut reaction to his shooting?
Because I had spent so much time with him over the past few years, just on the air. Tucker. I never went out to dinner with Charlie.
I didn't know him quite like that, like a. Like a personal friend. But I'd had him on the show...
more than 15 times. I'd been on his show repeatedly. I'd been to multiple Turning Point events and,
you know, talked with him backstage quite a bit. Just done a lot with him professionally, a lot...
And, I mean, I wonder if he's been on anybody's show as much as he was on mine over the past couple of years.
And I got to know his thoughts on virtually everything. And I saw what people are seeing now,
how they were all... infused with his Christian faith, that he was a truly happy warrior,
that he gave almost everyone the benefit of the doubt, that he had a much more
positive and optimistic outlook on humanity than I do, and I think. Than you do. I mean, I think we're a couple of cynical mofos.
yes yes And... Charlie...
wasn't. Charlie was. He was like an angel. This picture that the left is
his painting of him in the news is totally foreign to my understanding of Charlie or to anything I've known.
And I watched Charlie on his show, too... I know, I know. The things they say he said that were controversial,
they just fundamentally choose to misunderstand and misinterpret him. I mean, he was.
You need look no further than Erika... in order to see... that he was real. Like her goodness, her love, their love story,
her... strength in the wake of his death... That's the woman he loved, and that's a woman who loved him.
Why? Because he was some devil figure?.. The opposite. These two
were as wholesome... as you could find. And everything he said was from his love of humanity and his belief
that they could do better... I mean, I. Much more like, no, they can't. Let's move on without them.
Like, we've gotta, you know. And Charlie, I mean, in all of these college campus exchanges,
whenever. Talking about most people, he would feel... like everyone... was... Could be redeemed.
And if he could just get to them, if he could just talk to them, if he could just buoy them up with hope,
they would. They would do better. They could see themselves as Charlie saw them, as God sees them. And I just ran into that optimism and that positivity from Charlie so often
that I really did see him as God's Messenger Tucker as an angel sent to us.
And it's like, we didn't deserve him. I feel like he's gone now because we.
We didn't deserve him. Man, you are too deep for cable news...
No wonder you left. That's just such a beautiful summation and so insightful. I'm not sucking up.
I mean it. That's. I wish I had said half of that in my open. So. But why is that so provocative?
I've been thinking about this since he was murdered. Like, what? Of all the people that we know in our business,
you know, the kind of. Let me give you my opinion. Business. I think it's fair to say he was the kindest. I mean,
for real. And in private, too. He. Even people he was really mad at, he would always say, well, I try, you know,
I understand where that person's coming from. It's like, wow, He. His decency was a challenge to me, who struggles to be...
that. Why?.. Why. Why was that so offensive to people?
Because it was power. It's. It's so much more powerful, frankly, than
negativity. Negativity and anger. it's infectious. You know, it's a contagion. It.
yeah It's like a magnet for people. Whether they like him or not,
they're drawn to him. And he was converting people, so he was a huge threat.
That's really, like. I've been asking myself this question a lot over the past week. You know,
let's take the accused shooter in this case. And let's say, okay, this. This was. yes
It was motivated... exactly as the authorities say. And he was. He thought Charlie is, quote, too hateful.
And this is a guy who's into furries and he's into trannies, and he's living with one. And, you know, all the things.
Why would Charlie have been targeted by this guy for that? Why would it be Charlie? You say all the same things.
I say all the same things. Most of the people in our space and in conservative or independent media say those things... Why?
Why Charlie? And... sadly, I think it's this factor. It's this
magnetism from him, this positivity, this aura, like that. This angel like, aura around him
that was so incredibly threatening, way more threatening... than the rest of us because
it was powerful... and it was winning people over. It was converting people at a rapid... rate.
And not just any people, but young people, you know, the people who had never been converted before. The people for whom
people who talk like you and talk like me had never even tried. They weren't Even players on the field, it was.
They were seeded in the whole battle... And he said, no, no, no, no, no, we're not seeding them. I'm going to start at 18
to speaking to them in a way that they can hear and understand me. And I'm going to practice it... You know, for the past
13 years, he practiced. He went out campus after campus. In the beginning, he wasn't as good as he was.
In the end, he was good, but he wasn't as good. And so it was a skill he developed over time that made him more and more threatening,
more and more effective. And you look at the... numbers just in the presidential election,
it's not an overstatement to say that Donald Trump has Charlie to thank for his election in November 2024,
swinging the youth vote by nine... points... Yeah, we've never seen anything like it in the past hundred years.
You don't swing the youth vote toward a Republican... Nothing in modern presidential politics.
So he was... a really integral, hugely important player, even though he was so understated...
and projected zero ego. So you didn't see him like that. He didn't have sort of the swagger of that...
In most of his public appearances, he was quick to subjugate himself to whomever he was talking to,
but he was way more important than he ever let on. yes And I think that's why
he was perceived as such a threat. That's why him saying the things others... would say carried an extra layer of threat
yet both to this shooter and to Charlie's many different detractors... And I just want to add as a period to this,
as a footnote, I guess, to this, Tucker, you have a lot of it, too. And it is the reason why Charlie
is not the only one who's been threatened or was threatened to cut ties with you
or not. Platform, you. I, too, have gotten that, especially since you've been more outspoken on Israel.
And I... couldn't care less the amount of pressure they put. Like what? What are you talking about?
This is madness. Why would you want to silence such a powerful, important voice just because you disagree with them on one subject,
one on which we've all watched you sincerely evolve as you grapple with principles you've been espousing
for years, like America first, like what's happening to Christians, like what's best for us and our kids here?
How do I keep them safe? That's my... number one priority. And I've been just absolutely disgusted and recoiled from people
who have tried to pressure me on it. it of course, never happened... But I know from speaking to Charlie, he felt it, too.
You've heard it from Charlie. That he felt. And there is a layer here of
nefarious pressure to have certain narratives go only one way.
yes That must be called out and must be fought. Well, I should have said in my open...
that when Charlie was denounced as anti Semitic and, quote, dangerous by the American Jewish committee you were too...
That. That. That was a press. I don't know if you've ever even seen it. And I just remember when I read that at the time,
thinking, okay, these are like two of the most pro Israel, basically pro Israel people, like,
on the Internet. I don't understand. So I do. I. Maybe we should have this offline, but let's just have it now.
I don't get that. Why would you attack. There are definitely people who hate Israel, who are not anti Semites or people in Israel who are anti Semites.
There's a whole range... And then there are, like, people who have, like, you know, religious reasons for wanting to blow up Israel.
right Those are all threats... Why would they be attacking you and Charlie?
And honestly, I feel like me. I mean, what is that? Why attack people who
are pretty reasonable, who don't want to get into a fight on the topic, who just want to, like, have their country thrive?
Why denounce them as dangerous anti Semites? What is that? And let me just underscore for your audience
what I had said. I mean, the sum total of what I had said when they started coming for me,
just to show the absurdity of this, I had said on Piers Morgan... that Israel was losing the PR war,
that they had lost the Democrats and the independents and were starting to lose the Republican Party in America.
And it was time to wrap it up. Which was... a quote from Donald Trump, who had said it a year earlier when he was still a candidate...
Time to wrap it up. That's what I said about Israel. And then at Turning Point... at the Student Action... Summit
with Charlie, we talked all about Epstein and my appearance there. It was all about Pam Bondi, frankly.
And we talked about whether he might possibly be an asset for someone. right And I said he might be... And Israel, yeah, would make sense to me. Didn't know.
But that's one of the things we should consider and look at. And that will conclude the list of things I said about Israel that after two years
of going on the air and defending them and every... week turned some weird crowd into,
she's an anti Semite. So, I mean, f these people, because it's a lie. It was even...
more of a lie about Charlie, who had said even less than me. He had said nothing, like absolutely nothing.
And they use those terms about him because he was on the other side of me when we had that discussion.
And because he hosted you and because, and because he had the nerve to invite Dave Smith
in a debate because he allowed one side to be represented and he had the Israel side fully represented too...
So this was just such an unfair accusation. And I don't know why you know these very ardent advocates don't accept friendship when you offer it,
when you've proven that you are genuinely a friend. I've said openly, Tucker. there's no, I am not I don't want to debate.
I'm on their side. There's no reason to put somebody on this show so they can convince me that Israel's right. I'm on their side.
I agree with that... But in response to those comments and then ultimately having Marjorie Taylor Greene on where...
we criticized aipac, I mean, who, who defends a lobbyist group? They treated me like I was Mehdi Hassan.
Not everybody, you know, but like the loudest Israel Defenders and the, and to turn around and call Charlie Kirk an anti Semite
is such a disgusting smear... Then you're right. He's young. You know, he, he was young... and wasn't used to being attacked like that
by people who supported him and people whose donations are actually really important to the ongoing existence of his organization.
And it took a lot for him to say no to them and it took a lot for him to be honest about the fact that
his opinions had evolved. And let's face it, Charlie was like an unofficial spokesperson for the youth of America,
in particular conservative youth. And I don't know if people have checked, but they no longer support Israel and everybody under 30 is against Israel.
Charlie was 31. no And so as a friend, he's, he's saying to them as. Same way I, as a friend, I'm saying,
I am telling you, you've lost Dems independence and you're starting to lose Republicans.
You need to wrap it up. You've had a two year... long leash. I know you want your hostages back, but...
this cannot go on until you have every hostage. That's just not going to, you're going to lose every friend you have.
And that's what he was saying because that's what he was hearing from his... constituency.
And so what he did to them was brave and noble to the donors who were very, very pro Israel, it was brave and it was noble.
He did not deserve to be smeared over it. of course And look, I, like you, have... zero
belief that this had anything to do with his death. But it's part of the larger narrative that you're making,
that he... was a truth teller, that he was a fearless truth teller, and that there were a lot of pockets
when he turned to them and said those truths that grew extremely uncomfortable...
And whether it was some too online. disgusting, messed up 22 year old... in Utah
or, you know, somebody who couldn't stand his messaging that was very frank around...
race or around Islam, whatever, take your pick. He said the
hard truths on all of these things... I think a lot of people have to have a really ugly conversation with themselves now in the
wake of his death about whether they added to the hate surrounding him. And for... Benjamin Netanyahu really tormented Charlie...
We talked about it many times. He tormented Charlie and his advocates tormented Charlie. For him to run around saying that Charlie died for Israel is just too much.
It's just disgusting. And as his friend, I feel morally bound to say that. no That that statement was out of line No, I agree with you.
And I never talk about Bibi Netanyahu. I don't really, I don't think much about him. I don't. no
I just don't. I had the opportunity to interview him a couple months ago and I, I declined. I'm just, I'm just not. No, I just don't want to.
I didn't want to platform him. I didn't actually, frankly want to do all the work that I would have to do to...
sufficiently interview him in a way that would be, you know, tough, as I do when I have any foreign leader in my crosshairs.
I just wasn't interested. I, whatever. For him to do what he did was... wrong. It was deeply, it was a moral
wrong... to sit out there and read part of Charlie's letter and try to have the final say on Charlie's pronunciations about...
Israel. And he knew that they weren't the full story. And he's a foreign leader. He's not an American leader. So how dare he?

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Part 2 of 2

You know, at best, you come out there, you say, I'm so sorry for this loss, my prayers to his family... That's it.
right He was out of line, Tucker and I, as not even a Netanyahu critic, saw it very clearly and talked about it today on the show,
too. Can I ask you about next steps? I'm always wary of people who want to. I just want to ask you about two issues.
One, are hate speech laws, which I'm paranoid about, but I think we should be.
And two is the effort by... one person in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene, to get the federal government to ban
sex changes for children, and she can't seem to get that done. So are we going to get...
hate speech laws, do you think? Pam Bondi seems to suggest we are. And two, are we ever going to ban
the mutilation of kids? So, on the hate speech
comments, that was an absolutely ridiculous comment she made today. I mean, it was absolutely foolhardy. There's just no way she doesn't know what she said is legally unsound.
She's. There's just no way she was Attorney General of the state of Florida and became U.S. attorney General and doesn't know that.
So it does worry me because does that mean she's actually pushing for a policy change?.. Because there's just no way she doesn't already know what she said is wrong.
There's been reams of Supreme Court precedent on it, and she knows that. So is this about policy change?
She tried to wiggle off of her original point as the day went on, as incoming came almost universally from the right,
that she had said something very, very wrong, constitutionally and vile
as a moral principle. We've been fighting against this for decades on the right. Like what, what is she saying?
She sounded like a Merrick Garland. She sounded like an attorney general Kamala Harris would have put in place.
And so she tried to pivot off of it as the day went on and tried to make it smaller. And, you know, all I'm saying is
violent threats, criminal threats... are, are going to be punished. Well, yes and no. It depends on the threat.
There's actually only a sliver of threats that, that is actionable... under the law. So you're getting closer, but you're not quite there.
You're. You're giving, again, still wide, too wide a berth... to attacking free speech. But, yeah, it is true that certain threats,
true threats, can be ruled unconstitutional. You could go after somebody. So she does worry me,
and, you know, I'm not. Trump was asked about it and he kind of made a funny joke about it going after the ABC News interviewer who asked him the question.
right But I think Trump will see that there's so much resistance to this on the
right that he won't let her do that. He won't let her push for it, and he won't let the Republicans... do it. I just have to think Trump
reads his base better than she does. Yeah, I agree with that. And speaking of reading your base, and I've got to thank the presidents for this,
I don't know why... Speaker Mike Johnson has held it up. But, I mean, we don't let kids get tattoos or smoke cigarettes,
but we do let ghoulish doctors who are getting money for doing it... mutilate children. Like,
why can't Marjorie Taylor Greene get a hearing on this legislation?.. I don't understand. I know I don't know.
I don't know the answer to that. I mean, like this, they, they chalk this up to, oh, it's a spending resolution. We're just going to continue,
you know, the spending that's in place until, right. It's like, okay, you're, you're funding mutilations of children... and not just the mutilations that are done with surgeries,
you're funding with these, you know, puberty blockers into cross sex hormones, sterilization of minors who cannot possibly consent to that.
And not just sterilization, but actually the end of all potential for sexual pleasure. How does a 12 year old understand
that he's sacrificing that with your weird experiments on him?.. It is truly a moral scorch, what we're doing to our children...
And I don't actually, I'm sorry to say I don't have a lot of faith that that's going to get a ban at the federal level,
which means it'll be left to the states, which means if you live in a blue state, it's, it's
go, you know, have at it, go ahead and mutilate children... and sterilize them and deprive them of sexual pleasure. exactly
They, because it makes you feel good. It's not dissimilar... to the left saying Trump shouldn't add additional law enforcement...
They shouldn't accept additional law enforcement where he wants to send it, because it's racist to let black... people live.
It's racist to let them live in peace, to not be carjacked in these inner cities which are predominantly African American.
That's what the left is telling us, that it's racist for Trump to send those troops... or even volunteer.
And they're saying the same, that what's good for children, what's, what's kind,
what's, you know, the honorable thing to do... is to let deranged parents chop off children's healthy body
parts and sterilize them, because that's what, that's what... an evolved person would do.
And so that, like, that's another thing that this angel sent to us would speak very frankly about
and threaten all these people who have a constituency, whether it's someone with a last Name Pritzker,
who actually has money invested in the transing of children. That governor's cousin is one of the big funders...
of all these school pushes on the trans issue. Or somebody who just... gets Jones out of saying they're, you know, gonna open the prisons and...
let black people not get arrested for the crimes because they just think that's beneficial, I guess,
somehow to other black people who are usually their victims, never mind the race of the victim. yeah
It's not beneficial to any of us... In any event. I don't have hope on that front. We're going to keep fighting... But if they don't ban it at the federal level,
which I don't think they're going to. we're never going to get all 50 states to ban it. I think it'd be worth reading a daily roll call of people
standing in the way of that, because... that's the kind of crime that historians will
reel in horror that we allowed. I think your remarks about Charlie at the beginning were like some
of the wisest I've ever heard. And I'm actually going to look at the tape because I was so impressed by what you said
and moved by it. So, Megan Kelly, thank you for taking time late at night to do this. I appreciate it.
Great to be with you, as always. Thank you. All right, well, we have
Scott Adams
someone joining us now who are just really, really grateful to have someone who has been famous for decades
for a different skill and in the last 10 years has really emerged as a consistent voice of wisdom
online and never interviewed him before, but really happy to, I don't think.
Scott Adams joins us now. Scott, thanks very much for doing that. Thanks for having me, Tucker. Yeah.
we talked once before. quite a Few years ago, and it was on FOX News.
And I've just erased that whole part of my brain. It's like CTE or something. I can't really... remember what I did there.
I think I'm ashamed of some of it. But anyway. tell us what you think
the lesson of Charlie Kirk's life and death are like. What. What strikes you Immediately
Well, you know, one of the big questions is how did somebody get to that place where it seemed perfectly reasonable for them to get a gun and.
And shoot a living human being? yes yes some people know in your audience that I'm also a hypnotist.
I'm a trained hypnotist. And so I tend to look at these situations through that filter.
And through that filter, you can see a really clear cause and effect, you know, starting around.
Let's say 2016, there was wall to wall Hitler, Hitler, Nazis. 24 hours
before that there had been other Republicans who had been accused of being Hitler.
But I think that everybody treated it like hyperbole, you know, oh, it's just, you know,
it's a, it's a political insult and it's the most common one, so you don't take it too seriously.
but imagine being a... young kid... and growing up when the, the news, the people in nice clothing...
would go on TV and they would say, in all seriousness, I, you know, he's basically Hitler, the Nazis are coming.
And you would, you would create yes a mass hysteria...
Now a mass hysteria would be worse than TDS or Trump derangement syndrome, because that would be sort of what happens to an individual,
you know, that could have tds. But if you have a lot of people who have TDS...
and they start talking to each other, pretty soon you've got a mass hysteria.
And the mass hysteria created this what I call a hit larian bubble,
meaning that a lot of people are living in what they think is a reality
that is just completely hiltlerized. They see... Hitler everywhere and they see it in Trump,
they see it in his lieutenants. And this is different. So this is not like what we've seen before.
All it takes to completely brainwash somebody to believe ridiculous things, even things that their observations would,
you should tell them are not true... All you need is people in good suits... who, whose
job makes them seem credible to say day after day, it's the repetition that matters.
Hitler, Hitler, Hitler... And you convince people that they're living in a hellscape and they
better do something about it. So, so the main thing I saw was that.
you know, once the bubble is formed. it's hard to get out.
You can't talk people out of it. There's no amount of information that will change their mind. Cognitive dissonance will
kick in... if you show them a counter example. And the weird thing about
Charlie, who I'd never met by the way. I didn't have the pleasure.
The weird thing is that when I started hearing all the accusations... and there were a lot of them,
I said to myself, well, I'll bet some of these might be a little bit true. So I started to look for the original quotes,
et cetera. None of them are true. And there were a lot of them.
They were all either a made up quote or a quote and a context and nothing else.
And when you hear people talking about it, especially the young people, they'll say things like
he was a bad... hater... person. but there's no example. So that's sort of the,
the sign that it's, you know, a mass hysteria because they can't give reasons and they don't seem too interested in the reasons.
They're just sure that something has to be done. Now, on top of that, for the young people, there's probably also an economic...
pressure, you know, that they might feel that... life doesn't have a positive path. So that,
that might be playing into this a little bit as well. But I do wonder what will happen.
And I predict that there's going to be another big bubble of psychological... distress
when the people who have said such bad things about him in public realize that none of it was true.
Because over time it looks like he's going to be talked about with so much... that we'll, you know, we'll finally have a complete body of
information... about him so we can understand them. And it won't happen to most people. Most people will just have cognitive dissonance...
They'll still believe he was, you know, Hitler Jr. But... there will be some people, you know, not, not a big percentage
who are going to realize that they did something so shameful... that it will haunt them for the rest of their lives
that, that they were part of saying something terrible about one of the best people that
we've witnessed. I mean, he, he genuinely was a high character person and you can see in everything he did.
So... there's something big coming up. But then... another thing that happened that was
fascinating to me... because I didn't expect it, which was... the Democrats have always had what I'd call a machine,
which is that since they worked with the media, they had the media in their pocket...
You would see it happen when they'd have some. Our message this week... are these words.
And then everybody would say the same words and then the media would just... pump it out.
So it was like this big, well functioning machine. And then they had the NGOs and all the funding tricks,
et cetera. But when Charlie Kirk... died, you could almost
feel this massive energy... being released. You know, he, he sort of controlled it. But
when it was released, you know, his, his mortal coil was no more. I feel like that energy just...
went into people and... suddenly tens of millions of people
simultaneously... said, what can I do? What can I do? Right now?
That's different. People don't say, I'm going to stop everything, tell me what to do...
I'm going to go to church. A lot of people did. I'm going to Say stuff on social media.
I'm going to hunt down the people who said bad things and cancel them. But I'm going to do something.
You know, we're, we're, we're going to figure out how to start another chapter of, you know, TP usa.
And all of that's happening, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down,
you know, the vigils, etc. If anything, the energy. it might be growing.
And I've never seen anything like it in my life. I've never seen the Republicans turn into their own machine.
And now it is a machine and it's going to be incredible. so
you know, I, I was thinking yesterday, it sounds like a joke, but it's quite serious.
The thing that protects the Democrats from, you know, also having some kind of problem like this
is that they don't have any leaders that are worth taking off the board. I mean, if you said to me
somebody's got a plot... to take Tim Walz off the board, I would say, oh, no, no.
If you're a Republican, you want to keep him there... because... he's not doing a good job.
You know, your Jasmine Crockets, your Chuck Schumers. I say, please... keep them right where they are.
They're doing a great job... Nobody needs to harm them. But on top of that.
I don't believe that Republicans, conservatives ever even think that way.
I've never heard one say anything suggesting violence, like, not even in just a casual conversation.
The joking way. You might do it in private, nothing like that... And I think it has to do with the fact that
overall, the conservatives, the Republicans, MAGA people tend to look at Democrats... almost...
as if they're clowns. They say things that literally make me laugh. No joke.
I, I sound like Biden there, but I literally. that frightened me a little bit.
I literally will watch the news and watch Republican, you know, prominent people talking
because I think it's funny. And... when they watch, when the left watches the right,
they think they're watching monsters. yes So you can imagine how somebody want to kill a monster,
but nobody wants to kill a clown. Well, maybe somebody does, but, you know,
so far, Republicans have not wanted to kill any clowns. And I do think.
well, first of all, the cancellations we're seeing, I have a little bit of mixed feelings about it because my point
of view is that the people involved who are getting canceled are themselves brainwashed...
And I don't mean that... in sort of the. I don't know, the
hypothetical way or anything. Like, I mean, actually, literally, they've been exposed to the strongest brainwashing you could have,
which is about eight years of wall to wall Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler... And you know, Charlie's one of the generals.
So if you can't get to the Hitler, you're thinking, well, you know, maybe, maybe one of the generals would be less protected.
And that was the case. But I feel a little bit bad for them because they're,
they're... victims too. But at the same time, the way society works, you can't let them get away with that.
So, you know, there has to be some, some reckoning... And I am enjoying, I have to say, being a canceled person myself.
I am enjoying the schadenfreude or the, you know, the, the catharsis
of seeing that it can go both ways, at least for now. And by the way,
I do think that the violence goes in both directions, but I don't think... that there is an equivalent
to a massive machine... that's been creating a situation... that guaranteed there would be violence.
If you just keep saying Hitler and you're selling it... not as hyperbole, but you're selling it as absolute fact,
the people who don't have access to... alternative theories are going to believe that
and they're going to act on it. So. And I like the fact that there's a little mutually assured
destruction. The, the left is getting to see a little bit of payback, reminding that the, that the
Republicans aren't going to take infinite abuse. You know, there's going to be a point where it's going to come back.
I kind of like that. But I just, you know, overall, I wouldn't be proud of it.
You know, the, the cancellations, I do believe that they're, they're brainwashed victims.
but I do wonder. so may Yeah, go ahead. Well, I thought your description of brainwashing
seems accurate. It's very distressing to think that could happen in our free republic,
you know. the free and brave United States. I thought the people were more independent minded than that.
So that's sad. It's probably just human, though. A weakness that we all share,
the susceptibility to propaganda, but that why would you want... to hypnotize a population or a portion of it?
Like, usually there's a goal in mind. What's the goal here? power
Democrats know that they can win an election that way. If they had better ideas and better policies and charismatic leaders,
I imagine that's what they'd go with. But Trump enters...
the contest... and you have the most charismatic leader with
sensational Ideas according to at least his base. What are you going to do?
He's the common sense guy. Are you going to say we really do want the border open,
we... really do want a little bit more crime in our urban centers? What are you going to do?.. You don't have
any kind of a rational... attack to the common sense president who's been here before and
knows how to get this stuff done. So it's just all they have. And I don't know that it's, I don't know that it's intentional...
that they did it so hard that it guaranteed violence. I don't think violence was the intention...
I think just... winning elections was the intention. Yeah, that sounds right.
So thank you for this. By the way, last question. Where, where do you foresee this going?
Well, you know, it's, it's unpredictable because the cognitive dissonance will cause people to
think in a way that's non standard. That's, that's exactly what it is. So there might be a lot more of that coming,
but one of the things that's going to happen is it might be the, the last. what would you call it?
The last straw that makes the entire Democrat... situation collapse... Because if you look at their situation, they're running out of money.
They don't have good leaders, they don't have ideas that can, you know, beat the competing ideas,
and they don't have momentum. They don't have the podcast world. You know, the conservatives have that pretty nailed down.
Basically. They have the right, the best talent for just about everything... right now.
Just an amazing amount of talent in the, the right side of the world.
But then you add on top of that the, the emotions and the feelings that people got because of
Charlie Kirk's death. And... that was probably the only thing missing
was, no matter what, I'm going to get to the voting booth. You know, you could have a hurricane
and conservatives are going to crawl through glass to get to the voting booth.
So I suspect we will see a number of votes from the Republicans like we've never seen before.
It could be sensational. Scott Adams, I really am grateful that you took time to do this.
You look great. Thank you very much. god speed Thanks, Tucker. Thanks.
Cenk Uygur
I got a text earlier today from someone I sort of know saying Cenk Uygur. Why, why is he on your show?
The Young Turks guy? Isn't this a tribute to Charlie Kirk? Why would you have some like, screamy lefty on your show?
Well, precisely because Charlie Kirk's life work was speaking
with... not just two but with people he disagreed with very vehemently. I thought that our next guest,
who's run the Young Turks for probably almost 20 years now, I think you can correct me if I'm wrong,
who is one of the most visible daily broadcasters on the left, the fact that he had this kind of amazing exchange with Charlie Kirk.
Well, a couple of them, but one pretty recently, I thought it'd be worth hearing what... he thought.
So it is with pride that we announced our next guest. Thank you. Thank you, Cenk for coming on.
No problem, Tucker. Thanks for having me on. I. I think it's important that we have a moment like this where we try to bring the country together.
Amen. I. I so strongly agree. You had this kind of... famous exchange with him.
I think it was 2018 at Politicon, and it got super heated and bitter and it was like, I don't know if things were viral in 2018,
but it was viral. And then you came back to a TP USA event, and I was amazed and impressed
both that he invited you and that you came and you still disagreed on some things. But it was.
I mean, the tone was completely different. Can you explain that? And better and great, I thought.
yeah So first of all, in 2018, that was the Politicon that I debated you.
Okay Sorry we got along pretty well, as I remember.
We did. We did. And Charlie was debating my nephew, Hassan. okay
Hasan Piker And... But I couldn't help myself because that's who I am. And I. In the middle of their debate, I said something to Charlie
when I... wasn't on stage. I was in the crowd, and he yelled at me. I live like a capitalist every day Cenk by the way,
some people then thought that it was a racial slur. No, that was just my name. He was just slightly...
mispronouncing it. So then actually something happened in between
that moment in Turning Point USA America Fest. So
we were at the RNC in 2024, and Charlie came by at our booth and said,
hey, do you guys want to talk? And we were a little bit taken aback by that.
We're really surprised by it... And... Ana and I. Ana Kasparian, my co host on the Young Turks.
Talked it over and said, yeah, yeah, we would like to talk... And so he came on the show... and so we had our disagreements. So for the.
yes It's interesting that you have me on here. You know, partly for the reasons that,
you know, your friend texted you about how. Well, that's strange. Right. Left and right. And.
And so I don't agree with Everything that you, Megan and Scott... said about Charlie I'm sure.
Right. But, but I think that's what makes it more interesting.
So the willing that, the willingness to talk to us, even though we were... so entrenched on different sides. yeah
Right? And so then when we started the conversation, what wound up happening, it
surprised us. So did we still have our disagreements about the black pilot line, this, that and other thing?
Of course we did. but when we started talking about corporate rule,
he agreed. And I remember, like, I want to go back and watch the first interview we did with
him at the RNC there because I was kind of shocked by it. It's like, really, you're also worried about
corporations having too much power and, and Right, because that,
Tucker, you could understand, that was a, that was a left wing position for a long time in this country.
It was but, but the battle has been joined. And so that is an
incredible development in American politics that mainstream media, I think, has chosen to ignore... because it seemed convenient for them.
Then we got into a specific topic which was banning private equity... from...
buying residential real estate... And the idea behind that is private equity is...
the biggest bankers in the world, Basically, they're the biggest financial institutions...
and they've started to buy all of our homes. Now that creates a huge... number of problems.
Number one, it drives up housing prices. That is why they are artificially high, because so much more demand has come into the market...
And I went to Wharton Business school. So this is not complicated though. This is Econ 101, supply and demand. right
And so secondly, what. The number one wealth creation asset that the American family has is their homes.
That is how we created the greatest middle class the world has ever seen. And they're taking that from us
and they're going to turn us all into renters... and then we're going to be indentured servants to them.
Okay... And the way that they are doing this is they are giving collectively...
billions of dollars to our politicians. So this issue connects, actually the, the money and politics issue connects to everything...
Connects to corporate rule. Compare. It connects to capitalism, by the way, which I want to get back to,
connects to Israel, because it isn't about... Israel or any other particular... lobby being
evil or dastardly or in charge. It's the money that's in charge.
And so if... Big Pharma, Pfizer, Johnson, Johnson, etc. Give money to our politicians,
well, then they pass absurd laws like we're not allowed to negotiate drug prices. Right.
What in the world? In capitalism, you're not allowed to negotiate prices.
Right, I know. And we talked about that. And he said, you're right, that that is absurd.
And we on the right already believe that, that it's absurd and that it's against capitalism.
Fantastic. So... look, you're right. We've been around a long time on the Young Turks. We're actually the longest running show in Internet history.
And in that time we've had, you know, we've been on for 23 years...
We've had... about 21 to 22 years of hardened battle. Fighting back and forth.
Fighting back and forth. And as anybody who's seen me online knows, I, I can get emotional,
I can get passionate. yeah And... I, I'm not a wilting flower. I fight back for sure.
Right. So what was amazing, though was all of a sudden I didn't have to fight back.
That on those issues, not every issue, and not on all the culture wars, but on these economic issues, we have begun to agree...
And why? Because the average guy is getting screwed. Yes.
Period. It doesn't matter if you're on the left or the right, you're both going to get screwed. You're both going to have higher housing prices,
you're both going to have lower wages, you're both going to have higher drug prices. And the people that brought you, that is the donor class.
And so when we agreed to that, then I said, okay, well, now conversation has become productive.
We're not just yelling at each other. For the first time ever, we are talking to one another.
And more importantly, we are listening to one another. So we did it again at the DNC and then...
Charlie invited me to America Fest... and I went there and... again, we disagreed on gun rights, we disagreed on
some trans issues. but we wound up agreeing... on... Dick Cheney and Mitch McConnell, for example.
Neither one of us like him, like. Either one of them. I agree.
And you know, Tucker, I'll say this, and there's a lot more to talk about in that context, but. If you told me...
you are going to go to a massive right wing conference in the year 2025.
and what's going to happen is... the crowd, in unison is going to boo Dick Cheney.
If you told me that when we first started the Young Turks and we're railing against Dick Cheney,
don't go in Iraq, don't go in Iraq. Cheney's lying. Right And people are yelling back at support the troops,
you're for Saddam and all this stuff. If you told me, oh, don't worry, in 20 some odd years...
that crowd will be booing Dick Cheney... And that crowd will be booing Mitch McConnell because they realize
that the corporate class, the donor class, is in charge and they hate it. I would have said, oh, my God,
that must be a beautiful day in America. Well, so this is what I admire about you. You're.
You're totally sincere about your principles. Like you, You. You almost don't care what. Who's agreeing with you.
You believe in the idea, the principle. So you're willing to make... common cause with people you don't agree with in everything...
You're not partisan. And, and the second thing I should just. I just want to say it out loud is that young Turks, whatever you think of your politics,
has had a stated commitment to non violence from the very beginning. And you mean it. And I just. I just want to say that for people who don't know that,
and I want to thank you for that because I think it's really important. And... anyway. But so let me ask you, how were you treated
at Amfest, at Charlie's event? yeah By the way, thank you for saying that, Tucker.
And... the principle of nonviolence... extends through everything. So do not be violent to each other.
Violence is intellectual surrender. That's saying I can't win the debate with my mind, so I have to act like an animal and try to defeat that person physically.
But that means you're surrendering and you're giving up. It is. It's... the most immoral thing you could do.
It's also the weakest thing you could do. Yes, I agree. And, but that's on. Not just on an individual level,
that's also on a societal level. So when we go to war, that is, in a sense, weakness.
Saying we could not use our minds to resolve this issue. We could not resolve this issue as fellow human beings.
So now we're going to kill each other. So it. That is why we're anti war, and that is why
one of the most encouraging developments of my life is how anti war the right wing movement has become
so that another great day in America. So still plenty of things we disagree on. yes
But. But agreeing on anti war, agreeing on... how the donor classes is robbing both of us blind...
And those are huge developments. Right. So now, how was I treated at Amfest? I got to be honest with you.
And so the reason why I preface it by saying I got to be honest with you is because...
sometimes when we go and talk to the right wing and, and as you say, we haven't moved on a thing.
Right... So folks come to us and I Have a simple principle. Take the win. Okay,
take the win. Exactly. Like so. Okay, now you agree with me that
anti war is the right position. Is my correct answer that I still hate you?
No, that is not the correct answer. The correct answer is, oh, thank God.
exactly Right. And now we'll work on the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
But for now, at least, we had no agreements before. Now we have have a number of really important agreements,
so. But nevertheless, I had my share of critics on the left. You're. You're platforming him.
I went to his conference. I wasn't platforming him, he was platforming me. Right,
yeah And second of all, stop with all the nonsense talk of platforming people. Okay,
I agree. Just listen to one another, Talk to one another... That's not a bad thing, that's a good thing.
But what if you disagree? And of course you're going to disagree.
It's America... We're free. We have... no two human beings are the same. Of course we're going to disagree on some issues.
So if you can't handle that, then you can't handle politics, you can't handle media, you can't handle America.
Right. So, okay, so with that giant preface, I'll say the people there honestly were universally wonderful.
so they were. And so you could say, oh, well, you know, haha, that means jinxing...
with the right wing. No, I'm just telling you what happened. If they were jerks, I would tell you that they were jerks,
but they weren't. Okay... And I've got to say, like this cancel culture,
it's not exclusively left wing. No, I know. tell me about it. I mean, yeah,
the efforts that some people made to keep me from speaking at the next TPUSA thing.
People I agree with on a lot of things, by the way. I don't disagree with Seth dillon and everything,
Mr. Free Speech Guy trying to cancel me, but I was like shocked by it. Like they really
hassled Charlie and just drove him to, you know, to really fret and drove him to anxiety over this.
Oh, no, no. That impulse is a human impulse and we need to resist it. Yeah. So I love what you guys said about...
hate speech and how it's unacceptable to pass laws on that. Not acceptable. yeah
Under no circumstances. So. And this is what I... say on that topic.
Charlie says some things about Islam that, you know, having grown up Muslim, I'm atheist now,
but my family is Muslim. My background's Muslim. I'm proud of it. He said some things about Islam that I was not a fan of.
To say the least. So. I bet. So you know what I did in return? I made my case. So what?..
Right, like, what's. Why is it so, like, debilitating if someone says something that you find offensive?
I've said things that I'm sure others have found offensive. You have. Charlie has. Megan has. So
what? Then you say something back... Okay. We don't cancel.
We don't kill... And killing is... the most extreme form of cancel culture.
So I despise cancel culture. And I have the honor of being. Having been canceled by almost
every part of the political spectrum. I know Man, what an.
That was... That was really inspiring. And. And I'm going to text back the... person who texted me and say, did you watch that?
That was wonderful. And I so appreciate you're doing this. Thank you. And I hope you don't take too much abuse for it.
and I'm sure you will, but I guess you don't care, so. Good for you. Thank you. That'll bounce off me so quick.
Just say this one last thing, Tucker... The idea of making laws against hate speech
in honor of Charlie Kerr. No, I know, I know. Okay. That's like, if I passed away and they're like,
in honor of Cenk, we're all going to go on a diet. Tell me about it.
Or the Tucker Carlson. No Pizza law. No, I. I agree. I agree.
Come on. That is opposite of what I've did in my life... And... And regulating speech is the opposite of what Charlie did in his life.
So let's all keep talking to one another. Let's all keep listening to one another...
and hopefully... use this moment not to create further tragedy, but to begin to end the tragedies.
I'm proud to agree with that, you know, really, really strongly. So thank you for saying it... very much.
Fr. Josiah Trenham
Thank you Tucker Great to see you. Thanks. you to So we want to end tonight
the way we began by talking about... Charlie's faith... and the effect on all of us from a spiritual perspective
of his life and particularly his death. There were reports... that this Sunday church attendance was up dramatically
as people suddenly felt stirrings within them that this, you know, had cosmic significance and that God is
real and this is a reminder that he is, which he is. Josiah Trenham is a Christian minister,
and we are honored to have him now to put this in a broader spiritual context.
Thank you very much... for coming on, Father Trenham So how would...
How would you say we should think about where this goes from here?..
Like, people seem to have a heightened spiritual awareness in the days after Charlie Kirk's murder.
How should we proceed? Well, thanks a lot, Tucker, for having me on...
I appreciate your, your... interest and desire to bring a priest into this conversation...
I think it's valuable. I would say up front.
we should be very careful to make any... sort of conclusion from this during this very intense time of mourning.
You know. we christians we Christians have a tradition, 2000 year old tradition on how to
respond to death. And we take our time, we take our. This is day seven.
This is day seven... Usually for 40 days, we mourn very, very seriously.
In the orthodox tradition, for instance, when a bishop or a major leader of the church dies,
he's not replaced until the 40 days is done. And that's not just out of respect...
for the person in this case. Mourning charlie. Really
processing... what his loss means is very necessary to do, and it takes time to do that.
And we're not going to be able to make... good decisions about the future with out
calming down and... processing what we've gone through. So this is the time I think that we should be very careful.
We should mourn. We should consign all bad memories
to the memory hole. Bad experiences is what we do for our loved ones when they die...
There's no benefit in remembering the bad. We instead honor the good and try to imitate the good...
We try to. in the person's name, do good.
So this is... my first thought, is really we should mourn. We should be who we are.
And this is what Christian people do. We should take our time about this.
I'm unfamiliar with this. I'm embarrassed to say I don't know enough about it, but I sense that it's rooted in something important and wise.
Can you explain a little more why 40 days and what Christians have done traditionally during that 40 days?
What does it mean to mourn seriously? Yeah... Well, I share your. Your sense of
it not being something common anymore, which is why I'm presenting it, because it is so
universally human, actually, and it's not just Christian. The number 40, of course, is humongous.
In the Holy Scriptures, it's absolutely humongous. And the 40 days of Christ
fasting, for instance, in the desert, 40 is a very important
length of time that allows us to truly not make immediate reactions that would be...
that we would regret. And right now, everything is so raw.
Everyone who knows and loves Charlie, like you. this is a very dangerous time.
It's a very dangerous time. You're being very courageous and you're actually processing this with people who have known and respected Charlie which
is fantastic thing to do. But a lot of people who are in the conservative political movement are.
Are raging... They're very angry. I was watching a clip from Matt Walsh...
yesterday, and I saw that Matt was just out there saying that he is just overcome with
anger. I think that's understandable. Yes completely understandable. I have felt that.
I'm sure. I'm sure. But for us to respect our. This, this Christian tradition...
to pray, typically in. In. In the Orthodox and the Catholic tradition, Both during the 40 days,
we do good in that person's name. We actually take... Do alms, we do charity
in that person's name. In fact, you're doing that. Maybe you weren't intentionally trying to do it in a traditional Christian way,
but that is what you're doing by trying to help Erika and support her... I was very,
very happy to see that you're doing that because it's. It's what we do. It's what we do in this period.
We usually also pray for the person. We don't think that a person, when they die.
Bing. They've made the transition to the next life instantaneously. There are some in the Protestant tradition who think that.
Not all Protestants think that, but there are some. But the vast majority of Christians, Catholic, Orthodox and some,
like the Anglicans, we actually pray... for... the souls of the departed. And we think
we use the image of the story of Lazarus and the rich man from the Gospels,
where Lazarus is the poor beggar. He's neglected by the rich man. And when he dies, what happens?
An angelic escort comes and picks him up and... takes him on the journey to the bosom of Abraham.
For us, that is a journey... This process is a journey... of... Of for Christians, of going towards the kingdom of God.
But we don't think that... it's instantaneous. And so we're collaborating. It's part of what our funerals are too.
Our funerals are us gathering around the person... and asking the Lord...
in his great mercy to receive our brother or our sister and... place them in paradise
until we can see them again. And we're also learning the lesson of sobriety.
We're learning the lesson of death. We have to think about death and stare it in the face...
Because one of the great reasons we are so undeveloped, spiritually speaking, as a nation,
is because we... don't face death. One of the reasons that we have an incredible revival going on
all over the United States right now is because of COVID Covid... faced... It caused us to face death.
We had been Hiding it. You know, we've moved our, our old people, our parents and the sick into old folks homes and hospitals and they die there,
usually not surrounded by their family members... And then some Christian traditions now even do funerals without the body.
That is just nuts. It's just nuts. And it steals.
It steals from us. The very, very important process of mourning
and facing death and it changes you, you know, in the Orthodox tradition. In the Orthodox Christian tradition,
the funeral service was written by one of the great theologians of the Church. His name is St. John of Damascus.
He lived from 650 to 750... An incredible hymnologist, incredible scholar. He actually was
a very important political figure at the time that Islam, his, his father and grandfather
governed the city of Damascus. And when it was taken over by Islam in the seventh century,
the Muslims left the Christians in place for about 50 years because Muslims were Bedouin peasants.
They didn't have cities, they didn't have development, and they couldn't run a city like Damascus.
So they let the Christians do it for about a half a century. And then about 706, that was it. And no more Christians in leadership.
And he became a monk at that time, John of Damascus. And he wrote this incredible funeral service
for one of his dear brothers. And it's used to this day for the last 13 centuries.
And it's a deep reflection on the misery of death... where John is looking into the grave...
and he is contemplating how horrible it is for a Christian person to die and to see his soul be removed from his body,
which is what death is... It's the separation of the soul from the body. It no longer animates the body and it's lifeless
and, and to see the body decay. And he says it happens to the rich and to the poor exactly the same way.
All of the human, you know. differentiations that we make to honor the rich and to...
neglect the. All gone, all gone, all normalized, all brought to the dust by death.
By death. I don't mean to belabor this, but I think it's important for us. It's important, of course, for the immediate family,
for all of Charlie's close family and friends to take their time, not expect that they're going to be able to just bounce back
instantaneously and get right back at turning points work. No doubt they will...
eventually, but I hope... that they'll take the time right now to... pray,
to mourn. to... think deeply about the future and about how they can honor Charlie's name.
This is my hope. I think that's such A profound thing to say.
And anyone who has been... present at the death of loved ones, I think can confirm...
that it's one of the most... powerful and obviously crushingly sad, but also beautiful and inspiring...
things. I mean, it absolutely changes you. And... it's hard to remain an atheist after something like that.
And we have been robbed of that experience. So what are the signs of hope that you see
now? You know. I would say
before hope. the, the sorrow of what has happened to Charlie is so illustrative of a
descent into a level of violence that at least in my lifetime, and I'm, I'm only two years older than you,
I was born in 67, I think. You were born in 69, yes. You're a San Franciscan. I'm a Angelino, born and raised in Los Angeles.
I have never seen anything like this, Tucker. I have never seen anything like the violence that,
that exists today in our towns... When I grew up in Pasadena, I, as a young boy, I went walking...
to school. My mother let me stay out every night until... the lights went on.
When the lights went on, I had to be home for dinner. If I wasn't home for dinner, I was in trouble. But she had no worries.
She had no worries. No, in, in this last period, 10, 15 years especially...
violence has just absolutely exploded. You know. Charlie
reposed on 10th September. Of course, the next day was the horrible, you know, remembrance of 9/11.
He died on 9/10. We have 9/11. This coming December is going to be the 10 year anniversary of the terrible
terrorist attack right here... in the Inland Empire just 10 miles from when I,
where I am right now, when 14 people were murdered and 22 people wounded by a Pakistani Muslim couple
that thought that they would do something for Islam by... shooting... their co workers.
This is, they were from a mosque one mile from me right now. That mosque already had two of their
members... in prison... because of terrorist ambitions. My own parish, just
four months after that, was visited in the middle of a Sunday liturgy...
by a group of Muslim young men who thought it would be fun to bring bullhorns
in the middle of our service and come... outside the church and scream Allahu Akbar
at our, at our church. And then, and... this is of course...
Muslim terrorism. But now we also have this rise of... very, very serious leftist violence.
And the whole country, I think, is reeling... from the assassination attempts on our president...
and now... an attack on, on Charlie, who wasn't a politician at all. So I would say that
if we're going to look for hope, it can't be Fake. It can't be fake. We have to assess where we are.
And violence has. as a sin. Violence has a very special,
serious place. You know, if you read the patriarchal histories in the opening books of the Bible,
if you read Genesis, for instance, chapter six, this is the account of God
regretting that he had made the human race. What could the human being have possibly been doing...
to make God... regret having made us? And... the consequence, Moses tells us, is that he sent a worldwide universal flood.
Moses articulated the reason, the reason God did that and had to start over with Noah.
And in fact, he made Noah a second Adam. He gave the same commission to Noah that he gave to Adam. Be fruitful and multiply.
Fill the earth, Rule it and subdue it. Why did he do that? It says, because...
the world had become full of violence. When you attack another man.
When you attack another man, you attack God. Because every human being, as you were just saying so beautifully,
is made in the image of God. And so to attack a human is a direct divine offense.
Violence is extremely serious... I'm not surprised that we have this level of violence in a culture that...
murders unborn children at the rate that we do and have sustained it for the decades that we have.
yes Really. Is any violence surprising? Do we have.
Do we have hope? That's what you asked me, so forgive me, but that's the background. That is how black it is.
Yes, that is how black it is. Do we have hope? And what's the future?
I would say that from without a. Without a belief
that... God is merciful and that he loves the human race and that there's no sin
so great that if we repent of it, he will not send his love and forgiveness.
Without that belief, certainly we have no future... The statistics are horrible
for our country. We are so captured by... an ideology... that is hopeless. Atheism,
strict secularism, which is running our country now, it is extremely hopeless.
yes And... without a major reconsideration on the... part of our people, a return
to classic... American virtues, a recovery of Christian faith.
Without that, certainly we're doomed. But we know from Christian history
that... repentance is possible... And it usually takes... in a national sense, in a personal sense...
It's up to us to repent and to believe. In a national sense. It takes leadership.
Leadership that is willing to... address the important... things at the heart of national...
catastrophe. We have been living through... national catastrophe. We have lost our faith in God.
All of our institutions have been captured by... strict secularism.
Our law is godless. Our ins. Our. Our Universities
exclude... God. our
country is, has gone down a very, very serious... deep hole... If we're going to get out, if we're going to have hope as a nation,
we need leadership, leadership in the likes of... George Washington. I think our forebears,
our forebears are ashamed... My grandparents and America, they're ashamed of where we are.
Tucker, as a nation, our relationship to faith, our explicit commitment to God are excluding him from everything
that's important in America. We have to repent. And we need someone give us God, someone like a King David.
Give us someone like my patron saint Josiah, who was the last great king of Israel, who himself lived at a terrible time.
His father and his grandfather were both awful kings who had completely apostatized,
abandoned the heritage... of Israel, led the people to copy the pagan practices of the surrounding nations.
And forgive me, we're way worse than pagans. I, I always tell people,
look, don't call... the secular nonsense that's going on in America pagan. That's an insult to the pagans. The pagans...
believed in the divine order. They believed in the gods. Okay? We don't believe that there are gods. There is one God.
But the pagans at least knew they were accountable to the divine order, they were accountable to the gods and that they had to live with respect
to the wishes of the gods to call... America, which has no reference. Most of our leaders make no reference to God at all.
they may They act as though they are not accountable to God's law. And I think that's far,
far worse than paganism and a full blown insult to pagans to call it pagan... Unless we have a leader who's going to address
this. It needs to be addressed right directly. We need to repent
and we need to recover our faith. If we do that. times of refreshing will come... from God.
We can be changed, a new day can arise. But it's not going to be with a little fix.
It's not going to be with a little something here or a little something there. I've never seen.
I've been a priest for almost 33 years. I've never seen
the radical... interest in faith that we're seeing right now.
I'll tell you if I use my parish just as a little... example. I have maybe, I don't know,
little more than a thousand active parishioners that are here regularly. and over the years of my ministry,
I've catechized, I've instructed and prepared people for baptism. You know, maybe 20, 30, 40. A really great year would be 40 people.
I have over 200... people in catechism, right?
And this is happening all across the country. People are
moving towards God, moving towards faith. If this continues and it translates
into lives that are rooted, lives that are... where faith is
important. where true repentance has happened, where this
quest for just biological life, as though that somehow the sum total of value
is rejected. You know, if you study the scriptures, there's three types of life that are described in scriptures...
There's biological life. In Greek, it's called βίος, from where we get biological, right?
There's the life of the soul. Many Americans don't even know that that exists. That's called psyche...
It's the life... It's the most noble part of you, right? Even the Greek pagans, to use this again,
knew that the body is like a chariot and the soul is like the charioteer leading the person in nobility, said that the body does virtue,
the body does something beautiful, right? If you don't think you have psyche, if you think you're just a body...
and you don't have a soul, which by the way, is the worldview of the major tech titans of our
country. This is why someone as noble... as Elon Musk is becoming
would stand up and speak to... To the protesters in England when they were saying,
what can we do? What's our future? And he said what? He said technology and AI.
I promise you, Tucker, technology... is not going to save us. No, it is not going to save us.
And to say that is such is so hopeless. If we are soulless and we have greater technology,
then the soulless are going to use that greater technology to oppress us. Of course, we need.
We need to affirm what all reasonable human beings... in civilized countries, except... the modern
nuts, secular west. If we don't recognize that a human being is more than his body,
he has more than βίος. More than biological life. He has the life of his soul. psyche And then there's something that's most important,
which is... eternal life. Aionia Zoe, it's called in the scriptures... eternal life. This is the life of God's kingdom...
These are the three fundamental lives. Two of them we have stopped talking about for many decades,
and the consequences have been tragic What a. What a wonderful...
explanation. Charlie Kirk was very interested in orthodoxy, as I'm, I'm sure you know he was.
And he was knowledgeable on it too. I'm not, but I know that, but I'm interested. But he was very interested in it.
Were you aware of that? He... He interviewed a friend of mine, Father John Strickland,
who's a very respected Orthodox priest and a Russian scholar who. Who's published extensively on Russian history.
And Charlie was very interested in that. And I watched that interview and a few comments that he made afterwards in which...
he actually got very much into the mind of us Orthodox Christians and...
explained why so many people are converting to holy Orthodoxy. And I thought actually he was... spot on,
Very much spot on. He said people are becoming Orthodox because they want something that is
time tested. They want something that's substantial. They want something that actually... informs culture...
Something that isn't just a plaything and can be categorized over just here or Orthodox Christianity, traditional Christianity in general.
It is a lifestyle. It impacts everything because
Christ is king, and he's king over every aspect of our life and over civilization.
This is common knowledge. Europe, of course. You take a train through Europe...
Every town you go through, you're going to go through a town... that has the best land given to the church, and the church is going to be the highest building.
Because everyone knew if you don't enthrone worship at the center of your community, if you don't make the heavenly attachment to your earthly life,
you're... You're robbing yourself of significance and you're trivializing yourself
to just be limited to time. The best thing that can happen in America is that people
go to church, root themselves in the one holy, catholic and apostolic church, because the river of life comes from the altar,
out the doors of the church, and vivifies society. And do we ever need to be vivified today?
Beautiful, Father. Thank you. And before you go, I'm going to spell your name
for anyone who's made it to the end of this. I never do this, but I think what you said is... so wonderful that I know that people are going to want to follow up.
J O S I A H Trenham T R E N H A M Senior pastor and director
of your church... So... I know that people will want to know... more about you, and
now they can. So thanks very much for joining us. I appreciate it. Keep going, Tucker. Keep going.
Thank you very much. Well, we're gonna. And. And we're gonna.
We will keep going. We'll see if this format works. I kind of like it. Thanks a lot for joining us. For an hour and 50 minutes,
we'll be back soon.

[admin]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/keystone- ... -blunders/
Keystone Kash Throws Acosta Under Bus for Epstein Blunders. The FBI director blamed the former U.S. attorney as he faced a grilling over the botched Epstein files release.
by Sarah Ewall-Wice
Political Reporter
Daily Beast
Updated Sep. 17 2025 2:29AM EDT
Published Sep. 16 2025 12:59PM EDT

A federal judge ruled in February 2019 that the non-prosecution agreement approved by Alexander Acosta, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act (CVRA) of 2004 because Epstein's victims were not notified about the deal before it was finalized.

The court found that prosecutors, including Acosta, broke the law by concealing the agreement and failing to consult the victims, thereby denying them their right to be informed and to provide input on the plea deal.

While the agreement was later deemed illegal due to this violation, the Department of Justice's internal review concluded that Acosta exercised "poor judgment" but did not commit professional misconduct or act out of corruption.

Acosta defended the deal as necessary to ensure Epstein served jail time, arguing that without federal intervention, Epstein might have avoided incarceration entirely.

Google AI

FBI Director Kash Patel stated during congressional testimony on September 17, 2025, that he has not reviewed all of the Epstein files, acknowledging he has been too busy with other responsibilities despite being the director of the FBI.

When pressed by Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Eric Swalwell, Patel confirmed that he has never spoken to President Trump about the Epstein files, either regarding Trump's name appearing in them or about the files in general.

Patel also said he did not know how many times Trump's name appears in the documents.

-- Google AI, 9.17.25

FBI Director Kash Patel threw former U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta under the bus for the handling of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s case and became defensive as he faced heat on Tuesday over the botched release of documents.

Patel appeared on Capitol Hill to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the first time since his confirmation in January.

In anticipation of being grilled about Epstein, the FBI director addressed the Epstein crisis during his opening remarks.

“I know that there’s a lot of talk about Epstein, and I’m here to testify that the original sin in the Epstein case was the way it was initially brought by Mr. Acosta back in 2006,” Patel read.


FBI Director Kash Patel appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify on September 16 as he faces heat over the investigation into the murder of Charlie Kirk and the handling of the release of the Epstein documents. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The FBI director blasted the limited search warrants and claimed that investigators did not take as much material as they should have seized.

“If I were the FBI director then, it wouldn’t have happened,” Patel declared.

He said that in 2008, Acosta allowed Epstein to enter into a non-prosecution agreement, which prohibited anyone from ever seeing the material again without court permission as well as block future prosecutions.

Despite slamming Acosta, who went on to become Donald Trump’s labor secretary during his first term, Patel argued that the FBI, at the direction of Trump, has turned over information it has been legally able to do so and will continue to work with Congress.

Acosta is set to appear before a House panel to testify about the Epstein case later this week. He approved the 2008 deal that allowed the disgraced financier to avoid hefty federal charges and instead plead guilty to Florida state charges of soliciting a prostitute.


Trump's first labor secretary, Alex Acosta, negotiated the 2008 plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein. He will meet with House investigators on September 19. Mark Wilson/Getty

Despite the president campaigning on the release of files and early indications by the administration that it would follow through, the Justice Department and FBI instead released an unsigned July memo stating there was no so-called client list.

When pressed about that memo, Patel became immediately combative.

Ranking member Dick Durbin asked Patel why the memo, which indicated there would be no further prosecutions or files released, was unsigned.

“Would you’ve preferred I used autopen?” the FBI director shot back with a smirk.

Durbin appeared confused at the defensive response and repeated, asking why it was unsigned.

Patel said the memo had the insignia of the Department of Justice and the FBI. He claimed they were trying to get transparency for the American people and accused the last three administrations of not doing so. He did not mention that included the first Trump administration.

“We conducted an exhaustive search of everything related to the Epstein cases, and we produced what was legally and permissible able to be produced to Congress.”

The Justice Department has only recently started turning over Epstein files to Congress in response to a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee.


FBI Director Kash Patel called reports that the FBI went through documents for references to Donald Trump "baseless" and became combative when asked why he had not signed the FBI memo that said there would be no further prosecutions or a client list. Davidoff Studios Photography/Davidoff Studios/Getty Images

Durbin cut off Patel’s increasingly defensive response to ask him if he personally directed the investigation to review Epstein documents for any reference to Trump, a known Epstein associate, who has been facing mounting questions over their relationship.

Patel claimed Durbin had cited reporting that was “baseless.” The FBI director argued they conducted an investigation of the Epstein case files at the direction of the president to provide all “credible” information. He was specific to say the FBI was working with Congress to turn over “all documents we can.”

When pressed on who took the lead on drafting the memo essentially declaring the case close on Epstein and indicating no more information would be released, Patel evaded answering directly. He said Attorney General Pam Bondi led the Justice Department, and he led the FBI.

It was not just Democrats who brought up the Epstein case. Senator John Kennedy also questioned Patel over the case when it was his turn to ask questions.

Patel told him that he had not reviewed all the Epstein files but had seen a “good amount.”

“Who else did he traffic these young women to?” Kennedy asked the FBI director about Epstein.

Patel went back to criticizing Acosta for limiting the investigation with the 2008 deal. He said it limited what they could speak publicly about.

“You’ve seen most of the files, who if anyone did Epstein traffic these young women to besides himself?” Kennedy cut in.

“Himself. There is no credible information. None. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday, that he trafficked to other individuals,” Patel insisted.

He repeated however, despite a report that the administration had some 100,000 pages of Epstein documents, that the information they have is “limited.”

Kennedy asked him to clarify that there was no one. The FBI director confirmed that was what he was saying based on the case files the FBI has.

The senator pressed Patel over the release of documents in response to the House subpoena.

The FBI director said they were releasing “as much as we can” but insisted they were “limited by different court orders.”

In an effort to get the Epstein crisis back under control, the Justice Department sought permission to release grand jury testimony, but in every case, judges rejected their efforts, noting that the grand jury testimony was limited and nearly all already public, whereas the Justice Department had other material that was not grand jury testimony.

Patel on Tuesday suggested the administration would release everything it could legally, but he did not commit to releasing all documents.

“This is not going to go away,” Kennedy warned pointing that the American people want to know about those other than Epstein who abused the young women. “I think you’re going to have to do more to satisfy the American people’s understandable curiosity in that regard.”

Patel responded by slamming the Obama and Biden administrations for not releasing information while touting the first Trump administration renewing charges against Epstein.

“I know it’s a little complicated to understand, but what exists in the Epstein case files was a direct result of the limited search warrants, from 2006 and 2007, which hamstrung future investigations because of the non-prosecution agreement,” the FBI director insisted.

“I am not saying that others were not trafficked and others were not involved,” Patel said.

He claimed they have released “all credible information” and argued that the information not released so far was that which was “not credible.”

Patel acknowledged his response was not going to satisfy a lot of people, but he argued if they wanted the investigation done right, then Epstein should not have been given a “get out of jail free card” when he was.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Political Reporter [email protected]

[admin]

Explosive Hearing: Jamie Raskin GRILLS Kash Patel on Epstein Files & Trump Allegations
CNN-News18
Sep 17, 2025

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, attacked FBI Director Kash Patel in his opening remarks, saying that his actions have brought “danger” to the country.

“Seven months in, it’s impossible to overstate the destruction, chaos and demoralization you’ve brought to the FBI and its workforce, and the resulting danger your actions have caused to our country,” Raskin said.

Raskin called Patel a “fairytale knight,” saying that he needs to recognize that he’s running one of America’s top law enforcement agencies.

“Your supporters had hoped that you would graduate from imagining yourself a romantic fairytale knight to actually running America’s premier federal law enforcement agency,” Raskin said.

#JamieRaskin



Transcript

Brennan and continue to try to undermine
President Trump. That I yield to the
ranking member for an opening statement.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
welcome. Director Patel, you and I have
not had the opportunity to meet. And uh
alas, you failed to respond to the eight
oversight letters I've sent you over the
last seven months. Um so we do have a
lot of questions piling up for you. But
I want to start with a word of praise.
The first FBI director was Jay Edgar
Hoover who uh steadfastly refused to
hire women, African-Americans, and other
minorities as agents. And although he
was a closeted homosexual who lived in
domestic partnership for decades with
Clyde Tullson, he also participated in
anti-gay crusades, he aggressively
promoted what we would today call white
Christian nationalism. and he would
undoubtedly be turning over in his grave
to see as one of his successors a first
generation Indian-American and a proud
Hindu. So I congratulate you on being a
breakthrough in this sense and being a
beneficiary of the civil rights movement
that opened up the FBI and the federal
workforce to lots of people who never
would have been hired in its first
decades. Alas, you shared Jay Edgar
Hoover's dangerous obsession with blind
loyalty over professionalism and
effective public policy. For Hoover, it
was blind loyalty to him in keeping his
secrets. For you, it's blind loyalty to
Donald Trump in keeping his secrets.
During your confirmation, it was widely
noted on all sides that your primary
qualification was your unwavering
loyalty to Trump. Unlike other
directors, you had no work experience at
the FBI, but you had made over a
thousand media and political appearances
in support of Trump's campaign. Your
Senate confirmation vote was 51 to 49,
the closest in history, with your
opponents warning you were not qualified
and had no interest in actually
developing the qualifications for the
job. I hoped that they were wrong. Uh,
alas, they were not. While most other
new FBI directors drew on their
experience as FBI agents, you didn't
have that. But you did write a
picturebook trilogy for children ages
five and up based on your experience
clashing with President Trump's
political enemies. In your book, you
describe your literary alter ego, Kash
the Knight, as a wacky, easily bored
wizard carrying out King Donald's
vengeance by driving his enemies out of
the kingdom. In the books, King Donald
is besieged by the evil Hillary Queen
Town, but saved in the end by Kash. Then
Catch goes on to catch mules, who are
stealing the 2020 election for the great
King Donald from Sleepy Joe. And then in
the third book, Kash takes down the
dragon of the Jalapenos, nicknamed the
DOJ. Your supporters had hoped that you
would graduate from imagining yourself a
romantic fairy tale knight to actually
running America's premier federal law
enforcement agency. Alas, just as we've
learned how dangerous it is to put a
science denying antivaxer in charge of
our public health, we've learned how
dangerous it is to name as director of
the FBI, a man who thinks of himself as
a fairy tale knight who keeps a
firebreathing dragon named DOJ at home
to forcibly drive villains out of the
kingdom. When Charlie Kirk was
assassinated, while his killer was still
on the loose, you decided you didn't
need to be at FBI headquarters in
Washington to work with your team while
the chaotic manhunt unfolded. You spent
your evening dining in a swanky Midtown
Manhattan restaurant and tweeting out
false information that the subject of
the shooting was in custody, a statement
you had to retract one hour later.
Your performance was so disturbing that
even the mega base was alarmed. Culture
warrior Christopher Rufo who just a few
months ago sat in your chair as a
Republican witness observed that you
performed terribly and he called for
your ouster. The FBA FBI might be able
to survive your delusions of grandeur
and the explosively volatile temper that
was on display yesterday in the Senate.
But the intractable problem is that you
are running the FBI not as a law
enforcement agency charged with keeping
the American people safe, but as a
political enforcement agency working
directly for the president's vengeance
campaign. 7 months in, it's impossible
to overstate the destruction, chaos, and
demoralization you've brought to the FBI
and its workforce and the resulting
danger your actions have caused to our
country. You've been systematically
purging the FBI of its most experienced
and qualified agents, division leaders,
and experts in counterterror, counter
intelligence, and cyber security.
Precisely the people who have the
expertise you lack and which the FBI and
the country need. They've been expelled
from the ranks of the bureau simply
because they did their duty
investigating crimes, including those
committed by the mob that attacked the
capital on January 6, 2021, and beat the
hell out of more than 140 police
officers, or simply because you
suspected them of being insufficiently
loyal to Donald Trump. You illegally
sacked Brian Driscoll, the former acting
director of the bureau and a decorated
counterterrorism expert who worked at
the FBI for nearly 20 years. According
to Driscoll, Driscoll, you told him,
"Your own job, quote, depended on the
removal of agents who worked on the
cases against the president, regardless
of whether the agents chose to work on
those cases or not." You added, quote,
"The FBI tried to put the president in
jail, and he hasn't forgotten it. You
forced out the leader of the Salt Lake
City field office, Metab Say, just weeks
before Charlie Kirk's assassination,
depriving the FBI of an experienced
counterterrorism expert described by her
colleagues colleagues as absolutely the
best and legendary. She would have led
the FBI's manhunt had she not been
fired. When Trump decided that rounding
up immigrants with no criminal records
was more important than preventing
crimes like human trafficking of women
and girls, drug dealing, terrorism, and
fraud, you ordered the 25 largest field
offices to divert thousands of agents
away from chasing down violent
criminals, sex traffickers, fraudsters,
and scammers to carry out this
immigration crackdown. Director Patel,
you treated the men and women at FBI
with disrespect and paranoia. You've
assembled a roving band of freelancing
henchmen within your office and charged
them with conducting unauthorized
investigations, targeting and harassing
career FBI employees. Amazingly, you
forced senior leadership to repeatedly
take polygraph tests to prove their
political loyalty and pushed out leaders
who refuse these demeaning exercises.
And now we're seeing one very clear
reason why you want to build a political
FBI, the Epstein files. You want an FBI
blindly loyal to Trump and to you as his
enforcer so you can continue your cover
up of a massive international sex
trafficking ring with more than 1,000
victims betraying all of the survivors
of the sexual violence. Before you got
into this job, you called for full
release of the Epstein files, telling
podcaster Benny Johnson that the only
reason the list was not released by DOJ
and FBI was quote because of who's on
that list. Upon your confirmation, you
promised that quote there will be no
cover-ups, no missing documents, no
stone left unturned, and anyone from the
prior current bureau who undermines this
will be swiftly pursued. This spring,
you ordered hundreds of agents to pour
over all the Epstein files, but not to
look for more clues about the money
network or the network of human
traffickers. You pulled these agents
from their regular counterterrorism or
drug trafficking duties to work around
the clock. Some of them sleeping at
their desks to conduct a frantic search
to make sure Donald Trump's name and
image were flagged and redacted wherever
they appeared, whether an email, a text,
a letter, an interview, a photograph, or
a video. In May, Attorney General Bondi
reportedly told Trump that his name had
indeed appeared multiple times
throughout the Epstein files. And not
long thereafter, in July, you and the
attorney general released a memo
claiming that quote, "No further
disclosure would be appropriate or
warranted." In a few short months, how
did you go from being a crusader for
accountability and transparency for the
Epstein files to being a part of the
conspiracy and cover up? The answer is
simple. You said it yourself, because of
who's on that list. Donald Trump's
relationship with Epstein over the years
is well documented. A week ago, the
oversight committee released Trump's
disturbing birthday book, Note to
Epstein, written over a drawing of a
woman's naked body, referring to a
quote, "Wonderful secret." The oversight
committee obtained the note from the
Epstein estate, not from the FBI,
raising questions again of whether the
FBI has been withholding documents.
While you're unleashing the FBI to cater
to Trump's desire to shut down the
Epstein inquiry, the first nine months
of the Trump presidency have seen a
spate of political violence and domestic
terror events. We saw deadly attacks on
political figures on both the left and
the right, the brutal assassination of
Minnesota Democratic House Speaker
Melissa Hortman and her husband in the
attempted murder of Democratic State
Senator John Hoffman and his wife who
miraculously survived a combined 17
gunshots. We saw an arsonist set
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's
residence on fire. And of course, last
week, we saw the horrific cold-blooded
assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah
that has shaken the nation. One minute
after Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck,
um a 16-year-old shooter in Evergreen,
Colorado, radicalized by white
supremacist ideology online, opened fire
and critically wounded two other
students at Evergreen High School. We've
seen lethal anti-semitic violence,
including the murder of two young
Israeli embassy staffers just blocks
from the capital and then in the attack
on a gathering of Jewish people in
support of hostages held in Gaza in
Boulder in June. We've seen continued
mass shootings at schools like the
domestic terror incident at a Catholic
school in Minneapolis last month which
killed two children and wounded 18
others. And in August, a man fired more
than 500 bullets at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, killing
a police officer who was a Marine
veteran and a father. People like
Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk should
be able to participate in politics as
elected officials or active citizens
without being shot down in cold blood in
the United States of America. People
should also be able to go to elementary
school, to middle school, to high
school, to work, to the mall, and to
church without being shot down in
explosions of gun violence. The
important position of the FBI requires a
leader who puts public safety and
national security and the rule of law
first. I'm afraid, Director Patel,
you've given us reason to believe.
You've used the powers of the FBI to
serve Donald Trump and his agenda of
partisan retribution. You've broken your
promise not to do that. You've betrayed
Jeffrey Epstein's victims and survivors.
You've turned your back on the career
law enforcement officers of the FBI, and
as a result, you've le you've left all
of us less less safe than before. Mr.
Chairman, I yield back.
Gentleman yields back. That opening
statement may have been longer than any
book director's ever written or anyone
else has written. Um, without objection,
all of the opening statements will be
included in the record. We will now
introduce today's witness. Mr. Patel has
been the director of the FBI since
February of 2025. He previously served
as chief of staff at the Department of
Defense, deputy director of national
intelligence with the National Security
Council and also as a congressional
staffer as a federal prosecutor where he
focused on national security cases and
he also worked as a public defender in
the state of Florida. We welcome our
witness, appreciate his work, and thank
him for appearing here today. Will we
begin by swearing you in? Director,
would you please stand? Uh, raise your
right hand. Do you Do you swear or
affirm under penalty of perjury that the
testimony you're about to give is true
and correct to the best of your
knowledge, information, and belief. So,
help you God.
Let the record reflect that the witness
has answered in the affirmative. You can
be seated as you are. Um, you know,
you've been through this. You've been
through this yesterday. Did a fine job.
Please know that your written testimony
will be entered into the record and it's
entirely accordingly. We ask that you
summarize your testimony. Uh, director,
you may begin.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, ranking
member Raskin, and members of the
committee. I want to begin today by
discussing the appalling assassination
of Charlie Kirk. It's important for this
FBI to be transparent without
jeopardizing our investigations. So, a
little bit of the timeline's important.
Charlie Kirk was unfortunately
assassinated on September 10th. We
immediately the next day released images
early in the day in local time in Utah
to start the public partnership in our
manhunt for the assassin and culprits.
At um approximately 5:00 p.m. local
time, I arrived on the ground and walk
the crime scene myself. And we flew
multiple FBI assets in and out to
process DNA simultaneously while
bringing in evidence response
technicians, hostage rescue teams, and
other experts to assist state and local
law enforcement with their
investigation. At 800 PM local on
September 11th, the FBI collected and
populated and promulgated at a press
conference a video of the suspect on the
grounds. We also released enhanced
images. Due to that release that I
directed and ordered, the suspect
involved was apprehended and in custody
at 10 p.m. local time. That's less than
2 hours after we did the video release
and the photo release. So within 33
hours, that individual suspect was in
custody. and his family, who has since
been interrogated, specifically stated
two FBI interrogators that because of
the video that the FBI released at my
direction and because of the photographs
that they released, they identified
their son. They confronted their son
when he swung by their home and that's
what led to his apprehension. Uh we are
still the FBI has that investigation
ongoing and it continues to be ongoing
and I want to thank the state of Utah
and the state and local authorities
there and I also want to thank the
attorney general and President Trump for
directing resources to allow us to
conduct that investigation as we have.
Um under this administration the FBI has
arrested more than 23,000
violent criminals. 23,000 in 7 months.
That's twice as many year to date last
year. We've taken over 6,000 firearms
off the streets. 6,000 guns are no
longer in the hands of criminals. In 7
months, we've identified and found and
located 4700 child victims. That is a
35% increase year-to- date last year. We
have arrested 1,500 child predators.
That is a 10% increase year-to date last
year. In just 7 months, we've assisted
our partners with countless
counterterrorism operations around the
world. We've captured at the FBI four of
the most top 10 wanted fugitives in the
world in 7 months. To put that in
perspective, that's as many as my
predecessor nabbed in the entirety of
the Biden administration. We got four.
We got more coming. On top of that, in
two weeks, thanks to the help of the
CIA, we collected and captured one of
the individuals responsible for the
horrific Abigate bombing that led to the
murder of 13 service members. We did
that in two weeks. They didn't do it in
the four years of the entire priority
prior administration. Nationwide, we've
been executing our operation summer
heat, the FBI's national
focus on targeting violent crime based
on intelligence-driven operations. asked
the citizens of Seattle, Miami, Memphis,
Charlotte, Chicago, New Orleans, um, to
specifically highlight New Orleans and
Nashville. There has been a 250%
increase in violent crime arrest in
those cities alone and other mid- major
cities that I've just listed. In just a
few short months, we have already
unleashed a thousand FBI personnel
across this country. Every single state
across this country is getting a plus
up. This is a fiction that the FBI is
short or that we are compromising the
men and women in the field. They do not
need to be in Washington DC. So, we're
sending them into the field to each and
every one of your states. Because of
that, crime is at an all-time low.
We had to do it because of the explosion
of crime. And maybe the most important
stat for Americans to realize, in just 7
months, we are on track to produce the
lowest murder rate in modern US history
by double digits. Those are results not
of mine. Those are results of the men
and women of the FBI. If you want to
criticize me, bring it on. But do not
attack the brave leaders in the field.
We are also working 247, 365, and on the
opioid epidemic that is killing more
than hundreds of thousands of people a
year. We have seen 1,600 kg of fentanyl
off the streets so far in 7 months.
Year-to- date 25% increase. To put that
in perspective, that's enough to kill a
third of the American population. 120
million Americans. 100,000 kilograms of
cocaine and meth gone off the streets.
Earlier this year, I highlighted in
Cincinnati, Ohio, how we're getting
creative to chase down those that were
willing to do harm to our citizens. Not
just by striking at the heart of the
fentanyl producers, but the fentanyl
precursor companies in China. And we
indicted for the first time multiple
companies and individuals, not just in
America, but in mainland China that are
producing the ingredients that produce
and make fentanyl that kill our
children. And we're going to keep going.
Counterterrorism work, cyber attacks,
and foreign adversaries are something
the FBI must never sleep on. And we are
not sleeping. in the counter
intelligence space alone this year year
to date 30% increase in
counterintelligence arrests from the
DPRK, Russia, Iran, and China. And I
want the American people to know in this
setting, there's a lot of work that the
brave men and women of the FBI are
doing, we just can't get into. But they
don't stop. Our cyber threats,
ransomware attacks, those harming our
children online. We've nearly a 20%
increase in indictments arrests in 7
months alone this year. We're going
after those that in harm our malware,
infrastructure systems, telecom systems,
and energy structure. Combating salt and
vault typhoons are just a little bit of
the examples we're doing. Maybe most
importantly, under the counterterrorism
and domestic terrorism umbrella are
neist violent extremist and those that
label themselves 764
who wish to go online and convince
children to maim and mutilate themselves
and commit suicide. And we are producing
record numbers of arrests under that
umbrella organization. We even stopped
an individual in a 764 network who
wanted to conspire to kill an adolescent
girl. He is now in custody. Transparency
remains one of my main priorities at the
FBI. And this is what I've done in my
seven months at the helm. We've produced
more than 33,000 pages of documents to
Congress to a variety of committees,
including, I believe, 12 uh 7,500 to
this committee alone, if memory serves
me correct. To put the 33,000 in
perspective,
my predecessor in 7 years produced
13,000 pages in total to the United
States Congress. His predecessor in four
years produced 3,000 pages in total. I
repeat, I have produced 33,000 pages in
seven years to this Congress and will
continue to do so. I'm dedicated to
restoring the trust and the mission and
the integrity of the FBI and we cannot
do so without congressional oversight
and I promise you I will continue to do
so. On the Epstein case,
the original sin on the Epstein case was
how was handled by Mr. Acasta when he
first brought the case in 2006 7 and 8.
The original case had a very limited
search warrant, had a very limited
search window, had a very limited
investigative window. I was not there
when those search warrants in that
investigation was launched. I would not
have done it that way. They were limited
to only 3 to four years of
investigations from 97 to approximately
2001 and 2002 to 2005. Mr. Acosta allowed
Mr. Epstein to enter into a plea
agreement where he served weekend jails
for trafficking minor women. He also was
allowed to leave jail to go home on the
weekends. Plus, he allowed a defer a
nonprosecution agreement to be signed as
part of that plea deal, prohibiting
future investigations from that
prosecution and from that evidence and
prohibiting the collection of further
material. That is the original sin. We
are working with Congress to produce
more than any administration ever has
material on Epstein. And I welcome the
challenge to tell us that we are not
being as transparent as the law allows.
We even went to court and asked the
judges to lift those prosecutorial
agreements and to lift those court order
seals and they denied us three times.
Congress is welcome to do the same and
join the fight. And I'd lastly like to
focus on operation that the president
led in DC. Because of this, we are
taking this fight in DC to every single
city across the country. 2100 arrests in
the last month alone. DC has seen a 60%
decrease in gun crimes, 75% decrease in
carjackings, and 53% decrease in
homicides in our nation's capital. And
rightly so, we're bringing that fight to
the streets of America. I want to thank
you for your support, and I'm proud to
be the director that leads this FBI into
a new headquarters building that they've
needed for decades, saving the taxpayer
three and a half billions of dollars and
also providing our workforce a safe
environment. If you don't know the
calamity that is the Hoover building, I
invite each and every one of you to walk
around. I'll give you a tour myself and
you can see where the cement falls on
the heads of our our employees that is
only to be saved by netting just to give
you an example. Thank you for support to
our mission and um I do want to
highlight one thing about DC.
It's because the FBI gathered sources
and evidence that we were able to
through our source network identify the
horrific murder of the DC intern Eric
Tarpinian. and I've spoken to his family
and um you know we are working to bring
them justice and Mr. Chairman in my 16
years now my 17 years of government
service if anyone has any questions
about my service bring it on.
Yeah. Thank you director. We will now
proceed under the five-minute rule. The
chair recognizes the

********************

WATCH: Raskin tells FBI chief Patel ‘you’re not keeping your word’ on releasing more Epstein files
PBS NewsHour
Sep 17, 2025

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., criticized FBI Director Kash Patel’s performance as the head of the nation’s lead law enforcement agency Wednesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

Before Patel became the agency's chief, “you railed against it covering up Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking ring,” Raskin said. “Let me refresh your memory with this.”

Raskin played a compilation of Patel's interviews.

In one clip, Patel is heard challenging the FBI to release more information related to the convicted child sex offender.

“Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are,” Patel said in 2023 on right-wing commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast.

Raskin said this clip showed that Patel emphasized the president and the FBI director's “complete authority” to release Epstein’s client list.

In another clip, Patel told Blaze Media CEO Glenn Beck that the FBI director had “direct control” of Epstein’s so-called “black book” of contacts.

In a separate hearing Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patel told lawmakers that he’s reviewed most of the Epstein files and that there was “no credible information” that Epstein trafficked to other individuals.

“You were sworn in as director more than 200 days ago. Now the black book is under your direct control,” Raskin said. “So why haven't you released the names of Epstein's co-conspirators in the rape and sex trafficking of young women and girls?”

Patel said the Trump administration has “released more material than anyone else before,” adding that prior Democratic administrations also had opportunities to release this material, but didn’t. These statements echoed what he shared with senators Tuesday.

Raskin asked why Patel he had changed his position, regarding his comments in those interviews before he became FBI director.

Patel said that “everything that has been lawfully permitted to be released has been released.”

The two devolved into a back-and-forth. Patel said that court orders limited what could be released and nodded to his words to senators Tuesday that there was an “original sin” that undermined the case from the start, namely a plea deal approved by one of his predecessors that made it harder to access materials in the case.

Again, Patel lambasted the Obama and Biden administrations for not doing more.
“If you want to blame me, that's fine,” he said. “But now you're blaming the men and women who conducted this –”

Raskin cut him off.

“I'm not blaming anybody other than you,” Raskin said. “You're not keeping your word.” Watch PBS News for daily, breaking and live news, plus special coverage.



Transcript

Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman. Director Patel, before you join the
FBI, you railed against it for covering up Jeffrey Epstein's human
trafficking ring. Let me refresh your memory with this clip. Has
Epstein's list, they're sitting on it. That doesn't seem like something
you should do. You're protecting the world's foremost predator. That
seems like an evil thing to do, regardless of who may be embarrassed
in the release of that list. Why is the FBI protecting the greatest
pederist, um, the, the largest scale pederas in human history. Simple,
because of who's on that list. So you've finished that December 2023
interview with the challenge to the FBI in harsh words for Republicans
in Congress for not getting the Epstein files out to the public.
You see this clip. Boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are
Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are.
You said you emphasized that the president and the FBI director each
had complete authority to release Epstein's client list. You said
Epstein's black book is under the direct control of the director
of the FBI. Look at this clip. This way off the topic, but who has
Jeffrey Epstein's Black, Black Book FBI.
but who
That is that that I mean there's that's under control of the director
of the FBI. All right, so you were sworn in as director more than
200 days ago. Now the black book is under your direct control. So
why haven't you released the names of Epstein's co-conspirators in
the rape and sex trafficking of young women and girls.
The Rolodex, which is what everybody colloquially refers to as the
Black Book has been released. Oh, no, you're talking about what the
journalist got 5 years ago. No, that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about what you were talking about there, the Black
Book under the direct control of FBI director. We have released more
material than anyone else before. The Biden administration, the Obama
administration had the exact opportunities to release this material,
and they never did. And if you are selling the men and women of the
FBI going after child? Hang on, you said we're not going after child
predators. 15 00 child predators arrested this year. 35%. I reclaim
my 4700 child. Chairman, I'm going to reclaim my time if you could
instruct the witness. Um, why have you changed your position? There
you were saying it's under the direct control of the FBI director,
and all of it should be released. Why, why do you change that has
been lawfully permitted to be released has been released. And as
I told you, the investigation was limited. And let me make something
crystal clear. I never said Jeffrey Epstein didn't traffic other
people, other women, and they're not other victims. This is the investigation
we were given from 2006, 2077, and 2088, and the search warrants
from 2006, 207, and 208. That's what we're working with, have you
released all of the stuff that the FBI has seized from Epstein's
house, the computers, the emails the file cabinets, the documents.
What about the financial records? Have you released all of that?
Everything the court has allowed us to court are you talking about?
Three separate federal courts have come in and said we're talking
about the evidence you've got. It's got nothing to do with what those
courts have. Do you have any idea how the law works. Do you want
me to break the law in a federal judge's order? No, I want you to
follow your own word, Director Patel. You said up there it was under
the direct control of the FBI director. He had the black book I have
direct control over We have gone to court. You haven't complete your
sentence. Everything you have direct control over, you said, have
gone to court and everything we have direct control over complete
your sentence. You said everything they're releasing. You'd like
to complete his answer. You, you began the sentence. Everything you
have direct control over I, and then you stop that sentence. You've
released everything that you have direct control over. I have direct
control over and can lawfully release. If you're not familiar with
the court orders, that's not my fault. I look at that. I'm perfectly
familiar with them, but how did we prosecute um Gallaine Maxwell?
She was, she was prosecuted with the investigatory material that
was collected from 2001 and 2005 because of the non-prosecution agreements
and the court orders on the investigations and search warrants. We
were not able to develop new information, and oh by the way, Jeffrey
Epstein was out for 12 years, and the Obama and Biden administration
did nothing to look at his work, his pedophile network. If you want
to blame me, that's fine. But now you're blaming the men and women
who conducted this. I'm not blaming anybody other than you. You're
not keeping your word. You said that you would release all of the
materials under direct control more information on Epstein than I
have. Has anyone much more Comey did right, much, much more.
I'm excuse me, much more has come out in the days since the American
people and Congress have been demanding it, but it's coming out in
dribs and drabs. Why don't you just release the entire file as you
promised to do. I literally just told you there are multiple federal
court orders. I'm not going to break the law to satisfy your curiosity.
You didn't join us when we filed court to release the court orders.
You could have. You have lawyers. You could have shown up. You didn't
do that. That's a tiny fraction of the material we're talking about.
It is tiny fraction. How do you know that? Have you seen everything?
It's all misdirected the

****************************************



WATCH: Rep. Pramila Jayapal Gets Into a Heated Exchange with Kash Patel Over Epstein Victims | N18G
CNBC-TV18
Sep 17

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https://radaronline.com/p/jeffrey-epste ... -document/

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Trump’s FBI Director CRUMBLES During House CROSS-EXAM
Katie Phang
Sep 17, 2025

Kash Patel gets slammed by House Judiciary Committee Democrats today, just underscoring his incompetence for the job as FBI Director. Katie Phang highlights some of Patel’s most egregious statements about the Epstein Files & critiques the sham questioning by Republicans.



Transcript

Hi everyone. As you can see, not my
typical studio recording setting, but
I wanted to come on because I wanted
to talk about this insanity that
happened today with Kash Patel
testifying before the House Judiciary
Committee. As you know, Cash Patel
ringing in day two of showing how
absolutely incompetent he is to be able
to hold the job of director of the FBI.
Now, I know most of us probably have
certain ideas about the type of person
who should hold that job and and and the
role that that person plays. And I can
tell you whatever you think it is, it's
not Kash Patel. And I don't know if
you've been seeing clips during the day
posted on the media. But I'm going
to go through a few of them with you
right now to show exactly how bad Cash
Patel is at what he's doing, but more
importantly, how much of a partisan hack
Kash Patel is. He is truly the Trump
administration DEI hire. Because if
you're going to use that standard from
the Trump administration that DEI hires
are incompetent, incapable of doing
their job, um only um doing what
somebody tells them to do and that
they're not qualified because listen, I
don't think that that's the definition
of DEI. But if you're going to use that
Republican DEI standard, then that is
exactly what Kash Patel is. He is the
Trump administration's prime example of
a DEI hire. And of course, it doesn't
hurt that he happens to be a minority.
So then Donald Trump can say, "Oh, look.
I'm checking off that box." But here,
take a quick listen because there were
some really heated moments today between
Patel and some of the Democrats. And I
just want to run through a couple of
them. So take a quick listen to this one
between Eric Swalwell, congressman from
California, and Kash Patel.

Director, the first time you saw Donald
Trump's name was in the Epstein files.
Did you close the files or keep reading?

I have reviewed not the entirety of the
files. So I have --

So you haven't reviewed all of the
Epstein files
personally?

No.

You're the director of the FBI. This is
the largest sex trafficking case the FBI
has ever been a part of. Buck stops at
the top and your testimony today is you
have not reviewed all the files.

All righty. So, how many of you would
think that if your job as FBI director
that you would have actually spent the
time reviewing the entirety of the
Epstein files? As we can see, Patel is
saying that he actually hasn't done it
himself. He said, quote, "Personally, I
haven't reviewed the entirety of the
Epstein files." So, what does that mean?
He's either actually getting the
information from somebody else who has,
which again is a I think absurd filter
to be using if you're supposed to be
answering questions in front of
Congress, if you're supposed to be
reporting to the president of the United
States, and to frankly if you are
supposed to be telling the American
people in the interest of quote full
transparency, which is what you've
promised cash Patel, then you really
should have looked at the entirety of
the Epstein files.

So now we know that
Patel has no basis grounded in fact to
answer the questions that he is being
asked today. So if that's the case, why
not just say I cannot answer these
questions because I have not personally
reviewed these files. No, what he's
doing is he's cherry-picking information
and he's cobbling together to be
able to serve his dear cult leader so
that he doesn't look bad. Actually,
frankly, both of them, Patel and Trump.

Now, moving on. Here's another exchange
between Patel and Swalwell. Now, this
one's a little bit longer, and it's
pretty funny because Patel refuses
refuses to tell Congressman Swalwell
how many times Donald Trump's name
appears in the Epstein files. Take a
listen.

You said you don't know the number of
times Trump's name appears in the files.
So, it could at least be a thousand
times. Is that right?

The number is a total misleading factor.
We have not released anyone's name. We
have not released anyone's name in the
file that has not been credible. Could
it at least release every piece of
legally permissible information? You can
characterize the numbers however you
want it.

Claiming my time, director,
it sounds like if you don't know the
number, it could at least be a thousand
times, which --

it's not.

Is it at least 500 times?

No.

Is it at least 100 times?

No.

Then what's the number?

I don't know the number, but it's not
that.

Do you think it might be your job to
know the number?

My job is to provide for the safety and
security of this country. My job is not
to engage in political innuendo so you
can go out to the sticks and get your
22nd hit in your fundraising article and
keep going reclaiming your time because
the people of California are being
underserved by your representation
is not implicated.

Why not release
everything that involves --

we have released everything the
president and anyone else's side that is
credible and lawfully be able to be
released.

Some of you may be saying,
"Well, obviously Katie, if he hasn't
reviewed the entirety of the Epstein
files, how can he possibly be able to
say how many times Donald Trump's name
appears?" But you know what Patel has
never denied today? He has never denied
the reporting that the FBI has tasked a
lot of people to go and scour the
entirety of the Epstein files to flag
every single time that Donald Trump's
name has appeared. And we know that that
has happened according to all of the
media reports. So, if that's the case,
don't you think somebody would have
reported back to the director of the FBI
that Donald Trump's name appears x
number of times? It's remarkable though
because if you hear Congressman
Swalwell, he gives a range. He gives a
number. And of course, Patel's like,
"No, it's not that. No, it's not that.
No, it's not that. But I know it's not
that, even though I don't really know
what the number is. Get the fuck out of
here."

Moving on. Here's another clip I
want you to listen to again between
Congressman Swalwell and Kash Patel. I
want you to listen really carefully
here. Why? Because you're going to see
that Kash Patel continues to refuse to
acknowledge whether or not he has spoken
with Attorney General Pamela Joe Bondi,
about how many times, and whether or not
Donald Trump's name appears in the
Epstein files.

Attorney General that Donald Trump's
name is in the Epstein files --

and we have released where President
Trump --

simple question. Did you tell the
attorney general that the president's
name is in the Epstein files?

During many conversations that the
attorney general and I have had on the
matter of Epstein, we have reviewed --

The question is simple. Who
did you tell the attorney general that
Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein
files? Yes or no?

Why don't you try spelling it out?

Yes or no? Director,

use the alphabet.

Yes or no?

No. ABC.

It sounds like you don't want to tell
us? Did you tell the attorney general
that Donald Trump's name was in the
Epstein files?

Why don't you try serving your
constituency by focusing on reducing
violent crime in --

So, here's the thing. There is no
confidentiality. There is no privilege.
nothing like that that should cloak or
hide or allow them to remain secret.
These communications that they are having.
There's no claim of confidentiality
that's going to protect these
conversations that are being had between
Pamela Joe Bondi and Kash Patel. And
according to Cash Patel, he's had a lot
of conversations about the Epstein files
with Bondi. And yet, he can't actually
answer this question directly,
obviously, because Patel is trying to
play a game. He's trying to play
something fast and loose. He doesn't
want to be committed and tied down to a
specific answer.

Here's another thing
that was quite notable about Patel's
testimony today, especially throughout
Eric Swalwell's questioning. Patel
keeps on using the following words. You
probably picked up on it if you were
following the hearing today. "Credible."
Legally permissible. He keeps on saying,
"We have released the information that
is credible. We have released the
information that is legally
permissible."

Number one, I'm going to
call out Patel and say both of those are
lies. One, there is no legal standard of
credible. There is no legal standard of
credible to be able to filter out
information and not turn them over in
their entirety to the American people.
We also know that the Republicans are
trying to play that game at House
Oversight. Recall House Oversight issued
a subpoena to the Department of Justice.
Comer and other Republicans tried to
insert the adjective "credible" that the
files that were going to be turned over
from the DOJ despite efforts by
Congressman Robert Garcia as well as
Congresswoman Summer Lee. They wanted
the entirety of the files. But Comer and
other Republicans were like, "No, no,
no. Only the "credible" information is
going to be turned over by the DOJ. In
the end, the Democrats won, but now
we're hearing it again. It is a party
line that is being done by the
Republicans right now to justify the
limited amount of information that is
being turned over. That is not what the
subpoena asks for that was served on
DOJ. A lawfully issued and served
congressional subpoena that has been
served on DOJ. So for Cash Patel to keep
on saying, well, credible information's
been turned over. Credible by whose
standard? Credible by whose definition?
Oh, credible when it doesn't implicate
Trump or other Republicans or other
buddies of Trump. Is that what you
define as credible? Cash Patel? Legally
permissible. What kind of is that?
He's not a lawyer. And as you heard
today, Patel would often say, "Well, I'm
not a lawyer, but you might, you know,
or or I can't answer that question
because I'm not a lawyer. You'll have to
ask DOJ." No, no, no. Legally
permissible. The only thing is this.
You're going to see redactions for the
protections of the victims, the
survivors, whatever. But that's it. No
other redaction should be happening
here. If your name is in the Epstein
files, even if it is there quote
innocently, your name should be exposed.
End of story. Now, another super heated
exchange happened between Congresswoman
Pome Gopal and Cash Patel. And when I
tell you it was heated, I recommend you
go and watch the entirety of the
exchange. But listen to this particular
one and then I'll have some comments and
thoughts on the other side. Are the
victims
of the Jeffrey Epstein horrific
trafficking ring, are they credible?
Any person with information about
ongoing sexual trafficking,
I'm asking you if they're credible.
Ma'am, I'm commenting on the evidence we
have, but we have routinely asked for
people to come forward with more
evidence and we will look at it. And the
evidence that we have was the same
evidence that the Biden and Obama
justice departments had. They
determined, not me, they determined that
that information was not credible.
Patel refuses, repeatedly refuses to
answer the question as to whether or not
the Epstein victims and survivors are
credible. It's a disgusting punting
that of accountability that Patel is
doing here. And now here's the thing
though, and it trails off a little bit,
but if you heard it, he says very
clearly, Patel says very clearly at the
end of that clip that the Biden and the
Obama DOJ's, departments of justice,
didn't find them to be credible. That's
another lie. That has never been the
findings by the Biden DOJ or the Obama
DOJ that the Epstein victims were not
credible. So for the FBI director Cash
Patel to make that statement is such an
egregious, disgusting indictment of the
credibility and the trustworthiness of
these Epstein victims and survivors. And
if I were them, I would go after him. I
would go after him because that's
disgusting. And then here's another clip
that I wanted to play for you between
Gyipol and Patel. And let me tell you
something. If you also listen to Patel,
what he's trying to do here is he's
again dodging this idea that he's going
to address the credibility of the
victims, but then listen what he says as
to who authorized the indictment of
Jeffrey Epstein. Take a listen.
Victims credible.
The victims not.
I'll tell you what happened in the last
Trump administration.
Credible or not, you
victims credibly came forward and you
know what happened? President Trump
authorized the indictments of Jeffrey
Epstein called Biden, not Obama.
President Trump called the entire thing
a de a a Democratic hoax.
So I would like to ask the
gentle lady's time is expired. I gave
her the additional 45 seconds she
requested. The gentle lady yields back.
The gentleman from New Jersey is
recognized for his you would meet with
the women who were sexually
and raped and groomed at the ages of a
lady from Washington
years old. Are you going to cover up?
Are you going to continue
from his powerful men including those
that might be on this committee?
Okay, so I'm not sure if you heard this,
but according to Cash Patel, Donald
Trump quote authorized the indictment of
Jeffrey Epstein. Okay, last I checked,
Donald Trump, not a US attorney, not the
US attorney, not the attorney general,
none of those things. So why is Donald
Trump quote authorizing indictments? Not
only is that a egregious misstatement of
law and procedure, it's just a lie, but
Patel is trying to do something here,
right? He's trying to elevate his boss,
his cult leader, into some status that
makes him seem like Donald Trump has
been trying to pursue justice for the
victims of Epstein when clearly we know
that he hasn't because Donald Trump is
the sole gatekeeper for the information
about the Epstein files. Trump is the
reason why we don't have the entirety of
the Epstein files having been released.
But then Gyipol, man, she freaking
brings the heat. And what does she say?
As you heard her say, she was demanding,
"Why will Patel, not we with the
victims, why will he continue the cover
up?" And then, did you hear what she
said? Cover up for rich and powerful
men. Maybe even men on this committee.
Let me tell you something. men on this
committee. She freaking went there and I
am glad because there are politicians
that are implicated in the Epstein files
and they themselves should not get a
pass as well for their culpability in
dealing with Epstein. I mean look this
is just a sampling of what happened
today and I was a little bit of a
captive audience because I was on a
plane flying from the east coast to the
west coast. I find myself to be in Los
Angeles right now. Um, occupied LA, um,
which is just horrible and illegal and
violative of the Possi Komitatus Act. Um,
but I was able to watch a lot of this
hearing today. And, you know, I'm glad
because the total kind of show
exchange that was going on today was was
so dumb. It was the Republicans trying
to blame the prior administrations for
their failure to be able to turn over
these files, even though that's not the
case. Remember, it's Donald Trump who
sent on the campaign trail. He made a
pledge on this campaign trail that he
was going to turn over the entirety of
the Epstein files. And then we actually
have people like uh Congressman Jamie
Rasin who did an effective job of
splicing together all of Cash Patel's
own promises and claims that the FBI
director is the person who's holding on
to the black book, the client list of
Epstein. And when questioned, he's like,
"Oh yeah, it's just the Rolodex." And
no, no, no. Rascin was not going to let
that go. Rascin made it clear that
according to Patel, it's actually a
separate book that is kept. So, I mean,
look, maybe maybe Patel and others have
just been blowing, you know, smoke up
other people's asses about what's going
on here, but if you're going to say it
and then you're going to take a role
like the director of the FBI, you better
be ready to have to answer questions
about whether or not you're being
credible and whether or not you've been
telling the truth about the scope of the
evidence, about the extent of the
evidence, about where the evidence is,
etc. Right? Here's the other thing. What
what really is a huge takeaway today is
this. The Epstein files are not a hoax.
So even though Donald Trump wants to run
and say that the Epstein files are a
hoax, what we're hearing today is the
Epstein files are not a hoax. The
Republicans want it to go away. And the
Republicans today also made it seem like
there's been some pogram or persecution
of Catholics and Christianity, etc. by
prior FBIs. I mean, it was a total
indictment of prior FBI um FBI um
iterations under different directors um
including Chris Ray, who was a Trump
pick, right? But according to the
Republicans, there was something foul
and and a miss with those prior FBIs.
Here's the thing, the fish rods from the
head down. And I'm sure there are plenty
of people that are working for the FBI
that are doing a fantastic job to the
best of their abilities. And you know
what? Look, I'm glad I'm glad if there
are palpable reductions in crime and
that and that public safety is improved,
etc., but I'm not seeing that to be the
case. The same day that Charlie Kirk was
shot, there were two kids that were shot
in the school. And that's why I
appreciated Congresswoman Sydney Cam
Loger. She walked through all the
examples of domestic terrorism at the
hands of white supremacists that have
been happening. We also heard that from
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. She made
it very clear that this FBI doesn't give
or any type of, you know, uh, you know,
reassurances that they're going to
prosecute the crimes that are actually
the ones that are impacting people.
But Cash Patel, he'll be breaking bread
at Rouse when his good friend gets shot
and killed and he doesn't leave
immediately to be able to go fix it or
investigate it. Kind of makes you
wonder, right? Anyway, I wanted to touch
touch base with y'all, check in with
y'all. I'll see y'all tomorrow. But in
the meantime, if you got some free time,
go and take a listen to these. Uh there
are some clips that are available on
C-SPAN and it's totally worth your time.
Check it out because Patel Patel is
going to go home now and he's going to
sit there and worry about his little
note cards that he wasn't able to uh you
know quickly get to to be able to answer
these questions. Be mad, be outraged,
demand accountability. I'll see y'all on
the other side. Katie Fang here. We
launched the Katy Fang News Channel in
partnership with the Midas Touch Network
so we could bring you the latest in
legal and political news. Straight, no
chaser. So, if you're a fellow truth-
teller, hit that subscribe button and
share the word about this channel so we
can build a high-information America

[admin]

Billionaire Bill Ackman convened stormy Israel ‘intervention’ with Charlie Kirk, sources say
Max Blumenthal
September 15, 2025
https://thegrayzone.com/2025/09/15/bill ... rlie-kirk/

[x]

A month before Charlie Kirk’s killing, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman arranged an intervention in the Hamptons during which sources say he and others “hammered” Kirk for the conservative leader’s growing criticism of Israeli influence in Washington. Kirk came away fretting about Israeli “blackmail,” sources say, as he contemplated a Catholic conversion.

On September 11, one day after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman took to Twitter/X to trumpet his relationship with the late conservative operative. “I feel incredibly privileged to have spent a day and shared a meal with @charliekirk11 this summer. He was a giant of a man.”

[x]
Bill Ackman @ BillAckman
I feel incredibly privileged to have spent a day and shared a meal with @charliekirk11 this summer. He was a giant of a man.
12:41 AM Sep 11, 2025

The Grayzone has spoken to five people with intimate knowledge of Kirk’s meeting with Ackman, which was held in early August. According to one source, Kirk was left upset after the gathering turned into an “intervention” where he was “hammered” for his increasingly skeptical views on the US special relationship with Israel, and for platforming prominent conservative critics of Israel at his TPUSA events.

Since publishing this report, The Grayzone has learned from one attendee of the Hamptons event that Ackman convened the influencers under the auspices of a discussion about Zohran Mamdani and the supposed threat he posed to the West if elected mayor of New York. But the meeting went off the rails when Ackman personally confronted Kirk about his views on Israel. The public face of UK Lawyers for Israel, Natasha Hausdorff, joined in the argument, and began “screaming” at Kirk, according to the attendee.

When his hosts presented him with a detailed list of every offense he supposedly committed against Israel, Kirk was “horrified,” said one person. Ackman also allegedly demanded Kirk rescind his invitation for Tucker Carlson to speak at his upcoming America Fest 2025 in December.

“The whole thing was a disaster,” said an attendee.

The Grayzone reported on September 12, citing a longtime associate of Kirk, that Netanyahu had offered to organize a massive infusion of pro-Israel money into TPUSA, and that Kirk refused. Another longtime friend of Kirk has told The Grayzone that the conservative activist also rejected an offer Netanyahu delivered two weeks before his death to meet with him in Jerusalem.

Kirk, according to one person with inside knowledge of the meeting with Ackman, said he left feeling as though he’d been subjected to “blackmail.”

In a series of text messages with The Grayzone, Ackman described these account of his meeting with Kirk as “totally false.” He pledged to release a public statement providing his own account of the event, but refused The Grayzone’s request for clarification or further details. He would not accept phone calls from this reporter.

“I think I can easily put this to bed,” Ackman promised, “I have receipts as they say.” He did not abide when asked to provide the so-called “receipts.”

In an apparent bid to reinforce the pro-Israel tone at the Hamptons meeting, Ackman hosted a coterie of pro-Israel operatives and conservative influencers at the off-the-record engagement. One was Instagram influencer Xaviaer DuRousseau of Prager U.

Reached by phone by The Grayzone, DuRousseau sounded flustered when asked about his presence at the meeting. He repeatedly demanded to know how this reporter obtained his number, and eventually hung up, refusing to answer questions about the event.

Several Instagram posts by DuRousseau show him and his friend, conservative influencer Emily Wilson, in the Hamptons on August 8 outside Topping Rose House, a posh hotel and restaurant in Bridgehampton, New York.

[x]

Two weeks after the meeting, DeRousseau was reportedly junketed on an all-expenses-paid trip by the Israeli government to visit a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “aid” hub guarded by the IDF on the Gaza frontier. There, he recorded an Instagram video denying that the population of the besieged Gaza Strip was experiencing a famine.

The Grayzone received a similarly agitated response from Wilson, known online as Emily Saves America. Following a phone call and exchange of text messages in which this reporter asked her numerous times about her attendance of the meeting in the Hamptons, Wilson refused to comment. Instagram photos place her in the Hamptons at the same time as DuRousseau.

CJ Pearson, a leading youth coordinator for the Republican National Committee, immediately referred The Grayzone to his communications director when asked if he attended the Hamptons gathering.

The strong-arm tactics of the pro-Israel billionaires who helped fuel the growth of TPUSA were said to have contributed to Kirk’s alienation with evangelical Christianity, which emphasizes uncritical support for Israel as a bedrock principle. Several sources with access to Kirk said he had begun attending Catholic mass with his wife, Erika, and was considering a conversion before his death.

Bree Solsdadt, a Catholic Twitter/X influencer, has publicly corroborated this account of Kirk’s religious realignment. Kirk’s friend, the podcaster and former TPUSA personality Candace Owens, also alluded to the shift when she reflected that he was undergoing a “spiritual transformation” before his death.

Israel-centric influencer summit in the Hamptons

The Grayzone has obtained a partial list of attendees alleged to have been in attendance at the Bridgehampton meeting convened by Ackman this August. They include:

Seth Dillon – Dillion is the CEO of Babylon Bee, the conservative answer to the liberal The Onion satire outlet. Dillon and his crew have derisively mocked famine-stricken Palestinians and their supporters in the West, since Israel’s slash-and-burn campaign began in the besieged Gaza Strip. An evangelical Christian with Jewish heritage, he has claimed, “I did not cease having Ashkenazi blood when I put my faith in Jesus Christ (also a Jew).” Dillon did not answer calls from The Grayzone.

Xaviaer DuRousseau – DuRousseau is employed by Prager U, the premier right-wing “edu-tainment” hub targeting the minds of American youth. His boss, Marissa Streit, is a veteran of the Israeli army’s Unit 8200 cyber-spying division. A Black self-described former progressive, DuRousseau now appears firmly in the pocket of right-wing Zionist forces. During his Israeli government-funded visit to a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “aid” hub inside Gaza, DuRousseau falsely claimed the United Nations and Hamas were to blame for the hunger sweeping the local population. “If I were Israel, I wouldn’t even provide matching socks to Gaza, but here’s all the aid that y’all claim doesn’t exist,” he said in an Instagram video filmed in front of boxes of aid blocked from entering Gaza. “Instead of Hamas distributing the ramen noodles,” DuRousseau continued, “their leaders are eating it all and that’s why they’re on Ozempic.”

[x]
xaviaer and prageru original audio
Go to Gaza? BET ... WALK WITH ME.

DuRousseau vigorously defended his close friend, podcaster Emily Wilson, after she stated that “if everyone in the state [of Alabama]” wanted the return of chattel slavery, “go ahead, why do I give a shit?”

Emily Wilson aka Emily Saves America – Wilson is a Los Angeles-based self-described libertarian podcaster and social media influencer with over 500,000 followers on Instagram. On September 9, she recalled on Twitter/X how “a HUGE black guy” robbed her when she was 13. “I hate to say it but things like that just change the way you see certain people. After that I always thought, ‘oh, you guys just hate me,’” she reflected. This month, she and DuRousseau recorded a podcast in which they framed pro-Palestine activist Greta Thunberg’s hairstyle as evidence of her being “slow and short bus.”

“I don’t hang out with anyone really less attractive than me,” Wilson stated in a separate appearance.

Arynne Wexler – A former Goldman Sachs trader seeking cachet in the world of online influencers, Wexler is a vociferously Zionist, self-described “non-lib girl in a crazylib world.” In an interview with pro-Israel podcaster Dave Rubin, Wexler argued that “we need to bring bullying back” to enforce social norms, crack down on conspiracy theories, and stop the rise of antisemitism. Wexler has praised Ackman’s pro-Israel activism on multiple occasions. She did not answer calls from The Grayzone.

Natasha Hausdorff – The legal director of Zionist advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel, Hausdorff is arguably the best-known figure associated with the organization. She was described in one headline by Israel’s most widely-read newspaper, the Adelson-owned Israel Hayom, as “the British attorney who fights Israel’s wars.”

Nate Friedman – Friedman is a young ultra-Zionist influencer best known for New York City man-on-the-street confrontations with Palestine solidarity activists, whom he’s accused of being paid protesters.

Ory Rinat – Rinat was the former Special Media Advisor to Jared Kushner, the Trump son-in-law and advisor, before moving on to serve as White House chief digital officer during Trump’s first term. A Jewish pro-Israel operative said to have close ties Netanyahu’s government, Rinat now serves as CEO of Urban Legend, a PR firm which commands “an army of 700 social media influencers who command varying degrees of allegiance from audiences that collectively number in the tens of millions,” according to Wired.

CJ Pearson – The chair of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council, Pearson appeared in photos in the Hamptons alongside Wilson and DeRousseau. The Grayzone is awaiting further information from Pearson’s communications director.

[x]
CJ Pearson (left) with Emily Wilson, Xavaier DeRousseau, and an unknown person in the Hamptons

Bill Ackman’s war

As The Grayzone reported on September 12, Kirk was besieged with angry calls and messages from pro-Israel donors to his organization following TPUSA’s Student Action Summit this July in Tampa, Florida. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also phoned him, according to a longtime friend of Kirk, and offered to orchestrate a massive infusion of pro-Israel money into his organization.

A longtime friend of Kirk told The Grayzone the mounting pressure had left him “angry” and “frightened.”

Kirk vented about the pro-Israel intimidation campaign in an August 6 discussion with Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News host who was also growing more critical of Israeli influence in Washington.

“It’s all of the sudden, ‘Oh, Charlie: he’s no longer with us.’ Wait a second—what does ‘with us’ mean, exactly? I’m an American, okay? I represent this country,” Kirk complained.

“The more that you guys privately and publicly call our character into question—which is not isolated, it would be one thing if it were just one text, or two texts; it is dozens of texts—then we start to say, ‘whoa, hold the boat here,’” Kirk continued. “To be fair, some really good Jewish friends say, ‘that’s not all of us’… But these are leaders here. These are stakeholders.”

He went on: “I have less ability… to criticize the Israeli government than actual Israelis do. And that’s really, really weird.”

Kirk delivered his comments around the same time as the tumultuous meeting in the Hamptons with Ackman and the crew of pro-Israel influencers.

A month earlier, Kirk had opened the stage at his TPUSA Student Action Summit for a cathartic outpouring of frustration and rage about Israel’s political hammerlock on the Trump administration. At the conference, speakers from Carlson and Kelly to the anti-Zionist Jewish comedian Dave Smith slammed Israel’s blood-soaked assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, branded Jeffrey Epstein as an Israeli intelligence asset, and openly taunted Zionist billionaires like Ackman for “getting away with scams” despite having “no actual skills.”

The mockery by Carlson was particularly galling for Ackman. One day after TPUSA’s conference, Ackman staged a 4,000 word Twitter/X meltdown defending his financial acumen, while insisting that he earned his vast fortune because, “I inherited good genes.”

In fact, the 59-year-old manager of the Pershing Square Capital hedge fund had presided over a precipitous decline in his own personal fortune through a series of bad bets. Between 2015 and 2018, amid a bull market, Ackman’s fund tallied embarrassingly negative returns that cost him an eye-popping $12 billion in losses. His “holy war” to short the multi-level marketing company Herbalife backfired, resulting in a devastating squeeze that cost him heavily. Ackman’s financial mishaps forced him to slash one fifth of his staff in 2018.

The billionaire also took issue with Carlson’s contention that he had been part of convicted sex offender and late Zionist financier Jeffrey Epstein’s “constellation of people.” Yet Carlson’s remarks were grounded in fact. Indeed, Ackman’s wife, the celebrity Israeli designer Neri Oxman, had gifted an artistic orb to Epstein after he plowed $125,000 in donations into her Media Lab at MIT. She was invited to lunch with Epstein on several occasions, according to the Boston Globe, and complied with MIT’s requirement to keep her gift to Epstein confidential.

Ackman has significantly elevated his public profile by leading fellow Zionist billionaires in a ruthless crackdown on post-October 7 Palestine solidarity activism in the US. By leveraging his fortune, Ackman helped dislodge the political scientist Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University, his alma mater, accusing her of adopting an insufficiently draconian policy toward students protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza.

After weeks of pummeling from Ackman, GOP members of Congress, and pro-Israel media, Gay finally quit when conservative activists produced evidence that she had plagiarized in her academic writing. While Ackman claimed victory, he howled with indignation when Business Insider returned the favor with a detailed article which documented multiple cases of plagiarism by his own wife, the designer Oxman. According to the outlet, Oxman “stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars and technical documents in her academic writing.”

Ackman responded by announcing that he would fund a plagiarism review of every MIT faculty member. He also delivered a 77-page lawsuit threat to Axel Springer, the publisher of Business Insider, accusing them of publishing claims “designed to cause her harm, principally because the reporters do not like me, my support for Israel, and my advocacy.” He quickly dropped the lawsuit, however, claiming he did so because Springer is “an important advocate against antisemitism.”

In May 2024, the Washington Post revealed Ackman as a leading member of a Whatsapp group of 50 ultra-wealthy Zionists coordinating counterinsurgency-style actions against student anti-genocide protesters at Columbia University.

According to the report, the millionaire cabal sought to buy off Black celebrities as propaganda puppets and dangled bribes before New York City Mayor Eric Adams to deploy the NYPD against student protesters. “Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted,” the Post reported.

This June 14, as Israel reeled at the Iranian response to its unprovoked assault days earlier, Ackman launched his next campaign: “@Israel needs our help to destroy Iran’s nuclear threat to the world…” the hedge funder declared on Twitter. “Israel does not have the equipment and armaments to complete the job. We do, and it does not require boots on the ground.”

Multiple sources, including a Trump administration official, have revealed to The Grayzone that Kirk personally visited Trump inside the White House to lobby him against attacking Iran. Trump “roared” at Kirk, one said, and shut down the conversation.

A month later, Kirk allowed the simmering rage within the conservative grassroots over Israel’s stranglehold on Washington to pour out at his TPUSA summit. Soon after, he was summoned to the Hamptons for a face-to-face with one of Netanyahu’s most influential allies in the US. Before Ackman and a cast of avaricious young influencers under Israel’s sway, he defied the billionaire power broker, then returned home to prepare for what would be his final speaking tour.

Following Kirk’s killing, Ackman ponied up a $1 million payout for anyone who provided information leading the capture of the shooter. That money may wind up with the father of the suspect, Tyler Robinson, who reportedly turned him in.

[admin]

Rep. Jasmine Crockett: Trump Pardoned Rapists & Pedophiles — And Republicans Call It Law & Order
Rep. Jasmine Crockett
Sep 18, 2025 #JasmineCrockett #Oversight #RuleOfLaw
In Oversight, Rep. Jasmine Crockett opens with a lightning round on what’s lawful vs. lawless—ignoring court orders, impounding congressionally-directed funds, fake “emergencies,” sending troops without an invite, revoking birthright citizenship, violating due process, racial gerrymanders, and yes…trying to censor Jimmy Kimmel. “Free Jimmy Kimmel,” she says—because the First Amendment isn’t optional.Then Crockett laid out the most damning truth of all: Trump pardoned rapists, child predators, and violent insurrectionists who attacked our Capitol. Men convicted of forcible rape, child pornography, domestic violence, and assaults on police officers are now walking free — not because of justice, but because of Trump.

While Republicans push sham crime bills and try to strip second chances from young people, Crockett reminded them that the real threat to law and order sits at the top: a twice-impeached, 34-count convicted felon who turned the U.S. government into a safe haven for predators and criminals.

This wasn’t just about calling out hypocrisy. It was about putting on record what’s really happening: corruption, lawlessness, and a Republican Party that would rather protect the powerful than protect the people.



Transcript

A lot to cover. So, I'm starting with
the AG. I want you to tell me whether or
not it's lawful or lawless. Ignoring
court orders.

That's lawless.

Impounding congressional funds

violates the law.

Invoking emergency powers when there is
no emergency.

Unlawful.

Sending troops without an invite.

Violates the law.

Covering for pedophiles. I just threw
that one in there. Okay, I'll move to
the next one.
What about revoking birthright
citizenship?

Violates the 14th amendment of the
constitution.

How about violating due process?

Violates the fifth and 14th amendment of
the constitution.

How about what we see happening with
redistricting that would in some way
minimize if not delete the voices of
people of color as they are going
through and illegally going through
this process. Is there a constitutional
amendment that you can think of that is
associated with that?

Probably many,
but it is unlawful and unconstitutional
and unamerican.

Thank you. As well as can you tell
me if it is lawful or lawless to violate
free speech?

That's lawless.

Okay, sounds about, right cuz you know,
we had to have a conversation about
Jimmy Kimmel. So, I'm going to say free
Jimmy Kimmel for sure. And hopefully
we will deal with the FCC chairman.

But the reason that I wanted to go
through that long list, and that was
actually not even the half of it, is
because since this administration has
come in on January 20th, they have
engaged in some form of every single
thing that I said on that list, even the
part about covering for pedophiles. So
my question is, why are we sitting here
today? Number one, they already passed
their bootleg laws. And it's clear that
even the bill author is not well
informed about what his bill does
because as has already been stated, at
the at the age of 18, you are an adult.
So this idea that somehow 21 year olds
were now somehow juveniles under DC law,
is that accurate or inaccurate?

It was inaccurate. Misunderstood
the way the law works.

Correct. could not understand how to
read the law, and decided that they were
going to rewrite the law and mess up the
law. And to be clear, we were talking
about judges being able to have enough
discretion to decide whether or not they
were going to give someone an
opportunity maybe to clean their record,
such as the bill author was given that
opportunity under Florida law because
his second felony was picked up when he
was 21 to be clear. So he was older
than 18. And under this law, if you were
under what? 25. So 24 or under, then the
judges had discretion.

Correct. But only in certain kinds of cases, not
the most serious cases. And in fact,
that discretion was, as we know,
exercised very rarely. And it would have
been an opportunity had the Congress
wanted to talk with the folks who are
involved in applying that law and seeing
how it works to understand that this is
not a law that's out of sync with other
states and it's working.

Thank you so much. And the reason that
it matters is because now the gentleman
from Florida is trying to become a
governor. And chances are maybe DC once
they get statehood could have had a
future governor that had a second
chance. But since they don't want other
people to have chances that they've been
given, they want to just pretend like
they are bigger and better and better
than.

So I will move on because I am
frustrated that we are having this
hearing when we know that this
administration can't take care of their
own business. As we know, they
recently illegally bombed yet another
Venezuelan boat and we may be headed for
a war. We know that this particular
president has decided that he wants to
shake down people as relates to the
First Amendment because he has filed not
one lawsuit, not two lawsuits, but he
has filed numerous lawsuits. He filed a
lawsuit against the New York Times. He
filed one against the Wall Street
Journal, against CBS, against ABC,
against the Des Moines Register. He is doing
all of this because he wants to quash
any speech that is not appreciative or
allowing him, which is pretty much
anything that's factual.

So, let's talk
a few facts about these January 6 felons
that should still be incarcerated
because they went through the process.
But because they were doing things on
his behalf, of course, he wanted to let
them go. So they released more than a
thousand people who participated in the
insurrection on this government, many of
whom who had previous criminal records,
like Mr. Theodore Mindenorf, who was
convicted of predatory criminal sexual
assault of a child, or Mr. Peter
Schwarz, who had 38 prior convictions,
including one where he beat his wife by
repeatedly punching and biting her.
Trump also pardoned Mr. David Daniel,
who was convicted of production and
possession of child pornography. Trump
also pardoned Mr. Daniel Ball, who quote
threw an explosive device that detonated
upon at least 25 officers during the
capital riot. He also had a record for
quote domestic violence by
strangulation. I'm not done. Trump also
pardoned Mr. Andrew Taki, who sent nudes
to an undercover law enforcement officer
who was posing as a 15-year-old girl.
Mr. Casey Hopkins also received a pardon
from Trump. And Mr. Hopkins was
convicted of forcible rape. According to
court records, he quote have forcible
intercourse with the victim, choked her
to the point of impairing her vision,
banged her head into a wall, and
urinated into the victim's mouth as he
humiliated her.

These are the people
that he decided to release in the
streets of DC. So, if anybody does need
to clean up DC, I would agree it is this
man [Trump], because he is the one that is
causing half the crime that we have. Not
only is he participating in the crime,
but we know that he instigated the
insurrection.

And if I did say that I
had one issue with the Biden Harris
administration, it is the fact that they
did not move forward and make sure that
this man was put where he should have
been put, because the last time I checked
as a criminal defense attorney, and Mr.
Attorney General, you may have a
different experience. But I never had a
defendant that had 34 convictions for
felonies and did not spend one day in
jail. Never in my life. And the last
time I checked, the party of law and
order is the only one that decided that
they would be out of order, and decided
to nominate someone who was not only
indicted, but was actually convicted of
multiple felonies. That has never
happened in this country. And it is a
shame that we are dealing with it now.
And now he wants to tell y'all how to do
your jobs. Okay.