Breaking News from Pod Save America - MAGA FREAKS OUT in Charlie Kirk Fallout

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Tommy & Ben explain why leading voices in the MAGA movement like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly are enraged at comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the baseless conspiracy theory that Israel is behind Kirk’s assassination, and what it all tells us about the intra-MAGA civil war on foreign policy. Then talk about Trump’s bizarre suggestion that the United States might re-invade or re-occupy Afghanistan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk has kicked up this huge debate in the United States over political violence and freedom of speech. And it has also exploded tensions from both sides of a major split within the MAGA movement about foreign policy and support for Israel. This is all stemming from a few different things. First, there are baseless, crazy conspiracy theories alleging that the Israeli government killed Charlie Kirk. We'll get to that, but they're nuts. And then there were some just kind of gross comments made by Israeli Prime Minister Bibianenand Yahoo. after Kirk's assassination that outraged a lot of influential Trump supporters. The controversy has gotten so bad that on Thursday, Netanyahu felt the need to release a video

addressing the allegations. Here's a clip. Somebody has fabricated a monstrous big lie that Israel had something to do with Charlie Kirk's horrific murder. This is insane. It is false. It is outrageous. Charlie Kirk was a giant, a once-in-a-century talent who defended. defended freedom, defended America, defended our common Judeo-Christian civilization.

He encouraged me to make the case directly to the American people about how vital Israel is to U.S. national security. He told me, the Holy Land is so important to my life, it pains me to see support for Israel slip away. Now some are peddling these disgusting rumors, perhaps out of obsession, perhaps with Katari funding. Okay, so on Wednesday's Pod Save the World episode, Ben and I previewed this fight. Like, there were some early rumblings that we played for you guys. There was the genuinely crazy stuff from Candace Owens that we won't revisit right now. We also talked about how Tucker Carlson kind of hinted at his anger with Netanyahu during an interview he did with J.D. Vance. But we wanted to hop back on for this Pod Save the World YouTube exclusive because since that recording,

Rage at Netanyahu has exploded in the Maga Media world. We'll play you a sample in a minute. So, Ben, let's divide this into chunks. I mean, first, there is the accusation that Israel was behind the assassination itself. The second piece is just this broader anger at Netanyahu for trying to co-opt Charlie Kirk's legacy and then speak for him from beyond the grave. And then finally, like, we'll talk about what this tells us about the broader fight over

the MAGA foreign policy and what it is. So, Ben, just on this first claim that, like, Israel was behind the assassination, I mean, first, there's no evidence to support that claim. Second, we've now seen text messages from the shooter that get at the actual motive. Third, I mean, the political risks to Netanyahu of assassinating, like a close ally of Trump is astronomical. And I don't see any upside. Like, did I miss anything else that would knock this idea down? No, I mean, like a lot of conspiracy theories, it's a combination of a lot of conjecture, right?

Or Charlie Kirk was changing his views on Israel. Or Charlie Kirk had soured on Netanyahu. things that may or may not be true. We didn't know Charlie Kirk to state the obvious, but we'll talk about that in the next piece of it. Some of it is the kind of conspiracy theories. One destination for them is often Jews or Israel, right? And that's the uglier version of anti-Semitism.

And I think one of things, frankly, I want to name here, Tommy, is that, you know, there's been so much discussion and outrage about anti-Semitism in the form of protest against Israeli policy. you know, on college campuses, some of which, you know, sometimes you see any Semitism on the left that goes beyond that, right? But this is actually the dangerous, historically dangerous form of anti-Semitism when you have kind of a far-right paranoid mentality about, you know, kind of Jewish conspiracies. Yeah, it's literally the blood level.

Like that's kind of what it is. And it's a reminder that we've actually taken our eye off of this kind of far-right anti-Semitism because it's been, I frankly think, co-opted oftentimes to go against critics of Israel. And now we're seeing the kind of more conventional traditional form manifests in some of this, not all. Because again, some people on the right are just critics of Israel, too. So in the same way as with the left, some people are allowed to criticize Bibi Nainzahu and how he's responding to this and the Israeli government. And so we have to be able to differentiate on the right, as we do on the left, between people who are just making baseless claims

that have no evidence and people that have an actual difference with Israeli government policy or the way in which the Israeli government, frankly, you know, injects itself into American politics quite frequently. Yeah, absolutely. We'll get to those broader policy and political disputes. That's just worth knocking down this kind of insanity. It's notable that even like Nick Fuentes, who is a neo-Nazi, like far-right guy, like a gropeer to the right of Charlie Kirk, he's just worth.

he's been telling his audience, like, guys, the idea that the Israelis would kill Charlie Kirk is crazy. Like, what are you talking about? All right, Ben. So here's a good example, I think, of some of the outrage from the MAGA media and just a mega political world at Netanyahu for statements he made after Charlie Kirk's death where he was trying to co-opt Kirk's legacy and speak for him. You're going to hear from Tucker Carlson first and then Meg and Kelly. 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. 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. He did not like BB Netanyahu, and he said that to me many times, and he said to people around him many times. He felt that BB 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. 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? 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. He was out of line, Tucker. Okay. So Tucker's claims, and clips from that episode were tweeted and shared by people like Roger Stone by Matt Gates, like very close Trump allies who are incredibly influential in the MAGA world. It was also notable to me, Ben, that Netanyahu in his video referenced people being sponsored by Qatari money, which I think is an allegation you often hear tossed at Tucker Carlson. I'm not really sure why. It seems completely baseless as far as I can tell, but he's often accused of taking money from the Qataris. But Ben, as we said in Wednesday's show, I thought then that this was a pretty big. political problem for Netanyahu. Since that time, it is only growing. I mean, these are like top, top, like people with millions of followers on social media, people who are in the Trump

orbit, who are seen as real, like true believers, real MAGA, and they are furious. Yeah, and we should say, I mean, I actually think they have a right to be. And look, I don't agree with these people about many things, most things, certainly. But I do know that Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly knew Charlie Kirk a lot better than Bibi Nanyahu. Right. You know, whatever the actual precise facts are of Charlie Kirk's views on Israel in his last weeks and months. And there was something weird about it, Tommy, because the day it happened, the day of

the assassination, I was kind of struck by the fact that, you know, Bibi was out of the gate immediately, but not just him, like all these Israeli government ministers are tweeting or Ben-Gavir, right, the kind of hard line, the worst in terms of the far right of the Israeli government. And it did feel like they were just trying to kind of wrap their arms around the anger they knew that was coming to kind of align their cause with the kind of memorialization that they knew was going to happen for Charlie Kirk. What I take away from that, first of all, is how important the American right is to the

Israeli right. because they know they've alienated the entire world pretty much with what they're doing in Gaza. They're losing the Democratic Party and don't seem to care because they don't really want the Democratic Party anyway as their partner. They see where things are going there. And so they need MAGA. They need the far right to be able to continue what they've been doing, which is this kind of indiscriminate bombing of all these different countries and what has been widely found to be a genocide in Gaza. And so there was something desperate about their reaction in addition to being, you know,

I do also think not entirely appropriate, right? This is let people mourn about this, you know. And it was inevitably going to trigger people, which it did. I should also add, Tommy, to just add to how this was a bit grotesque, you saw Netanyahu tried to kind of wrap his messaging around Trump's. So Trump, in this, I think, very dangerous way has been talking about how we have to go after the radical left in this country, and we have to go after the funding networks of the radical left in this country. That's bad enough. Netanyahu was saying, we have to go after the radical left and the radical Islamists, and we have to go after Qatari funding, right? So he was kind of using the same language about his enemies. And that's utter bullshit. Look, there is nothing to suggest that there was some Islamists. Islamist connection to this. It's just not true. There's nothing to suggest at a Qatari funding for the fact that Tucker, if he's mad that Tucker Carlson might take Katari for money, maybe he should call Donald Trump because Donald Trump took billions of dollars of Katari money when it came to the airplane and some of the other investments that came from Qatar too. So like we see this is not a hard thing to figure out as bullshit. It's so bizarre. I'm with you. Like look, I don't agree with Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson on most things. But for it. It's just, it It was so strange for Netanyahu to come out of the gate and just shamelessly try to use this man's death for his own political purposes.

And it has led to this bizarre fight like spilling out on social media where seemingly everyone's final conversation with Charlie Kirk was about Israel. And we were like wrestling over what he thought. Like on Wednesday Ted Cruz tweeted, I'm getting really tired of Tucker and his cronies falsely claiming Charlie agreed with me that Israel is terrible. And the problem in America is all the damn Jews. I knew Charlie well. and indeed the very last conversation we had was how deeply concerned he was about the rising toxic wave of anti-Semitism on the right. Like, okay, Ted Cruz.

And then J.D. Vance tweeted later that day, to my friends on the political right, I understand the feeling that people are putting words into Charlie Kirk's mouth. At some level, I agree and share your frustration. Try to remember a lot of people love Charlie. It's natural for them to debate his views and his legacy. In fact, I think Charlie would welcome that. But for now, let's celebrate our friend, remember his impact, and save the debate for after his funeral. I mean, like the vice president of the United States is weighing it in this kind of weird, oblique way about this controversy. But that shows you how important this is.

And again, people want to know why we're following. This is hugely important because guess what? Whether we like it or not, these people run the entire country and they're going to control our foreign policy. They're going to control our politics, the right wing, the far right wing of this country. And in that ecosystem, we know that these types of influencers are incredibly important people. Like, they're as important as cabinet officials are in normal administrations. They really are. And that's why you saw J.D. Vance having to do that.

And I will say, like, we call that, you know, obviously the dangerous absurdity of people who've taken this all the way to somehow implicating Israel and what happened. But there's also something kind of distasteful about people just insisting, like Ted Cruz, you know, no, no, no. Like, he, you know, the last conversation I had was, you know. It's weird either way. It is possible. Charlie Kirk has recorded like hundreds of thousands of hours of audio. Just listen to the guy. That's exactly my point.

It is possible to hold different thoughts and to say, hey, review the tape. Charlie Kirk had different views about Israel. He loved some things. He was frustrated with Nanyahu. By the way, who isn't frustrated with Nanyahu? He didn't like what's going on in Gaza like a lot of people because of how it was getting worse. The fact that he didn't support the war in Iran, not surprising. That's a part of the MAGA wing of foreign policy.

There's a big debate about that. So the inability to even tolerate, you know, just come out and say, look, you know, Charlie, you could say, I didn't agree with him on everything on Israel if you want to or something. But like everybody has to insist that he agreed with them 100 percent when that's a literal impossibility. And this man sat behind a microphone every single day. We could all just go listen to his views. And I've been listening to him. And it's kind of interesting to hear how he was kind of talking it out in front of his audience. Right.

And he kind of evolved. Yeah. I mean, there was this clip that was. going around Twitter yesterday that someone sent to me, and it was Charlie Clark talking about a trip to Israel for the embassy opening, which meant it was 2018, but that wasn't readily apparent to most people who were just watching it and talking about a great leader Netanyahu was. They were like, aha, look, Ted Cruz is right. And, you know, Tucker is wrong.

It's like, well, actually, bozo is like this is from seven years ago. But also, it does speak to his evolution and how much tape there is out there. Also, Ben, I don't know if you saw this. This is a bit of an aside. Netanyahu gave this speech like a day or two ago. I'm not sure exactly when. where he urged Israelis to become super sparta. And what that meant was essentially become entirely self-sufficient.

And like, you know, which also means isolated from the world. Like basically make your own weapons, have limited trade, like create your own commodities, like be kind of cut off from the world. And the stock market tanked because obviously all these businesses were like, well, that's not a good climate for us to grow and do whatever. And he also talked about how like Islamist minorities and Western countries are leading them to pressure governments. And like, it was just this crazy speech that just spoke to how paranoid and isolated Netanyahu is

because of his own choices. But because of his decision to protectuate the war in Gaza because he knows it's the only way he can keep himself out of jail, basically. But that would also sort of help you, I think, understand the mindset that would lead him to do something as ghoulish as like kind of leaping on the legacy of Charlie Kirk and trying to make it his own. No, because it's plain the degree to which they're becoming a pariah state, right? In their own region, they've bombed all these countries.

And since they bombed Qatar, one thing to build on what we said in the last episode two is we now have Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Qatar signing a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. Now, that's notable for a couple of reasons. One is that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And so that tells you that those countries want a nuclear deterrent against Israel attacking them. That's how much this is disintegrated. The Abraham Accords was supposed to be the Gulf countries in Israel kind of being the new security order. That is a sign that the Abraham Accords are unraveling, essentially, because those countries are saying, instead of the Abraham Accords being our security blanket, we'd rather have Pakistan, with all of its dysfunction, be that.

That's the degree to which Netanyahu is alienated, even countries that he had been courting before the last couple of years. At the same time that we see public opinion shifting overwhelmingly in this country around the world. But the problem is he has no way to stay in power, as you said, Tommy, other than Israel being a prior state. So he can't mend bridges. He's burned the boats behind him. He's burning the bridges behind him. The problem for Israelis is he's burning the bridges behind Israelis, too. And so long as he's prime minister, they're just going to keep going in this direction.

And that is not a recipe for success in the 21st century to become Sparta, like a militarized city state from ancient Greece. Yeah. And by the way, Sparta was ultimately annihilated and disappeared. So, yeah, not the best comparison. But, Ben, you know, like this is more, this is about more than just like Netanyahu being an asshole because it is exposing, it's been exposed before, but it's exposing again, this bigger fight that has been brewing within the MAGA movement over kind of isolationism versus the traditional neocons.

And between those who think, you know, that's kind of de facto position is, well, the U.S. should just support everything that Israel does versus conservatives who are like, I don't know, man, this Gaza thing seems bad. and I don't want to go to war with Iran. And like, I don't know why we're letting BB Den Yahoo drive U.S. foreign policy. And I think here's another clip from Megan Kelly that gets at the heart of it. 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.

Everybody under 30 is against Israel. Charlie was 31. And so as a friend, he's saying to them, as same way I, as a friend, I'm saying, I am 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. So let me just unpack what Megan's talking about there. So Ben, there's obviously like a policy piece to this, right? Like the neocons are out. The global war on terror is believed to be a failure.

by most people. The war in Iraq was a catastrophe. Gaza has been declared a genocide. Like, Dick Cheney's name literally gets booed at TPSA events. Like, that's kind of how far the youth of the party is moved. But then there's another piece of this in listening to that full interview with Megan is outrage at the way pro-Israel groups in some individuals do politics around these issues in the U.S. And I listened earlier this morning to an interview Megan Kelly did with Charlie Kirk on her show in August, where she and Charlie, too, were talking about talking about being furious at getting called, being called an anti-Semite. And she was called an anti-Semite because she said what we heard there, that it's time to wrap up the war in Gaza.

And she also just, like, had a conversation about how Jeffrey Epstein had ties to the Israeli government, and that is a thing that is discussed in the world. And I don't know, like, it's true. And she, you could just tell by listening to her that it radicalized her, because she said, quote, the more you tell me I can't criticize Israel, the more likely I am to do it, you don't own me. And you and I have experienced it, too. We experienced it all the time. The ADL called me an anti-Semite because I said I didn't want Netanyahu to drag us into war with Iran. That did not silence me. It made me enraged. And it made me want to tell anyone who would listen that Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, is a liar and is doing a horrible job running an organization that

used to be a proud one in our country's history. And I think is doing real, like lasting damage to the cause he says he cares about, which is combating anti-Semitism. And the question is why. And so you heard a lot of that anger and pain there. Look, as someone who's been called an anti-Semite in all kinds of names over the years, Mike Pompeo called me an anti-Semite, you know, the free press, you know, delighted in calling me Hamas. The President of the United States tweeted a picture of me and I think that included a graphic that called me a Ma'amah. I mean, this is all you can do. You're going to lose people. I find it deeply offensive that they throw these charges around. I found it deeply offensive for years because the tactic is so clear. It's meant to silence any criticism of the Israeli government. That's clear as day. And, you know, welcome to the club, Beg and Kelly. I mean, you know, now you know what a lot of people have gone through. And the reality of this is it is a losing strategy. In the short term, it may feel like you shut. some people up or you intimidate some people or you rally your people to your side. But meanwhile,

the much larger majority is getting completely sick of this bullshit. And the reason it's the only strategy is they can't win a debate about what the Israeli government's policies are, right? I mean, we went through this to the free press. They can't defend the fact that people are starving in death in Gaza. They can't defend the fact that tens of thousands of children have been killed. So what do they do? They try to find some pictures and say that some kids had pre-execis. existing conditions and then call anybody, you know, who raises questions about how fucking weird that is, calls us any Semites or Hamas, right? This is a losing strategy. And if you, if you still support Israel, you should know that this might stem the dam, right? Like you might stop the dam from breaking for a

little more time, but the dam is breaking. The water is coming through because of what this Israeli government is doing, not because of what people think about the Jewish people or even what people think about like the founding of the state of Israel. Like this is above all about the conduct and policies of the Israeli government and the tactics that APAC and other organizations and people like Jonathan Greenblot have used in this country to try to shut people up who just have genuine concerns about policy, which by the way, I don't expect them to agree with me. I'm not like demand. They're the ones who are demanding that you have to only take one position, which is blanket support for whatever the Israeli government does. And that's the key, I think, the blanket support. And that and that was

what's so frustrated them is like, Charlie Kirk's like, I love Israel. Like, I want Israel to win. Both them kept, both of them kept saying that. I want Israel to win. We've defended Israel, but that got them nothing, right? Like, Charlie Kirk felt like they attacked his moral character for, like, hosting a debate over, uh, Israel policy that included this comedian named Dave Smith, who's an extremely harsh critic of Israel. Um, and he's like, last time I checked them American, I can say whatever the fuck I want. And like, why is it that I have less space to criticize the Israeli government on social media than Israelis do? Like, that doesn't make any sense. And Megan Kelly's like, Like, you have to, they, you know, she said, you have to see it exactly as I see it and support

everything or you're against us. This is sort of the mindset of the people yelling at her. And she made the point. She's like, look, I've been bullied by the best of them. You're not going to, you're not going to quiet me, which I took as a not so subtle reference to Trump. But to your point on, like, approval bend. I mean, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has a poll out today that looked at approval

in America of what's happening in Gaza and in U.S. support for Israel. The top line is 37 percent of Americans say the U.S. Israel too much. That's up from 30% last year. Only 10% of Americans say the U.S. is not supporting Israel enough. 43% of Democrats said the U.S. supports Israel too much. That's up from 40%. 42% of independents now say the same thing, which is an eight point increase from 2024. 40% of Americans say the U.S. is not providing enough aid to civilians in Gaza, which is up 10 points from last year. And then 40% of Democrats and independents think the U.S. provides too much military aid to Israel, along with 20% of Republicans.

So the trajectory there is not great for Netanyahu. And if he's going to become a Sparta with only the U.S. to rely on, like, he's losing as big as benefit. And there's nothing to suggest that that trajectory is going to change. That's the important point, right? There's no break in this, given they're moving further in Nagaza. They're bombing more countries. They're moving further to the right.

They're preparing to annex to West Bank. That's the thing. There's some people, I think, who've been quiet about all this stuff, who are just kind hoping for the war and gods at end and things to revert to some quote unquote normal. That's not happening. Yeah, that's right. Final thing, Ben, Donald Trump did a press conference today in the UK with British Prime Minister, Kier Starmor. I haven't watched all of it, but this clip, this kind of aside from Trump caught our attention. Let's listen. We're going to leave Afghanistan, but we're going to leave it with strength and dignity. We're going to keep Bagram, the big airbase

that one of the biggest air bases in the world. We gave it to him for nothing. We're trying to get it back, by the way. Okay, that could be a little breaking news. We're trying to get it back because they need things from us. We want that base back. But one of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it's an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. So, Bagram, big base in Afghanistan, I find it very hard to believe, Ben, that the Taliban government would allow the United States to reoccupy a part of the country since it's sort of like their whole existence over the last several decades was. pushing the occupiers out of Afghanistan. So what is Trump talking about there? Are we about to

reinvade Afghanistan to get a base back for some reason about China, garble, garble? This is one of the craziest ideas that I've heard recently, and we've heard a lot of crazy fucking ideas recently. I mean, first of all, yeah, like I don't know how or why the Taliban would let the U.S. do this. Maybe the U.S. is offering to like lift sanctions and do a bunch of things. and so it's not like totally impossible, but it's a horrible idea. It's like putting the U.S. back in the middle of Afghanistan on a base, like not that far from Kabul, right? It just how many ways could that go wrong? What purpose does it serve?

And also I want to introduce another thing that's in line with the theme of what we're talking here today, Tommy. We cannot overstate this. Donald Trump would not have gotten elected president of the United States without his opposition to the Forever War, whether that was sincere or not. Remember, that's how he dismantled Jeb Bush on the debate stage way back. So hopefully we have viewers who were young enough that they don't even remember that. But he essentially was the hollow rot of the neo-conservative core of the Republican Party that he exploited. And then he exploited against Joe Biden because he said Joe Biden got us into this war in Ukraine and Joe Biden did this and that overseas.

Donald Trump ran promising to end these wars to end our engagement for our wars. He is now bombed Iran. He has now increased our support for Israel and what it's doing in Gaza. He's not ended the war in Ukraine. He has renamed the Department of Defense, the Department of War. He's bombing boats in the Western Hemisphere. He's threatened to take back the Panama Canal. He's threatened to invade Greenland. He's threatened to invade Canada. Now he's threatening to kind of reinvade or occupy Afghanistan. Where is the America first and the ending of Forever Wars in any of this shit? And at a certain point, this is like for Democrats, this is one of his biggest weak spots right now because his own people don't agree with any of this stuff, right? So we have to be willing as a Democratic Party to not do what we normally do, which is be like Kamala Harris, like we're a lethal military and we're going to be, you know, we're going to have, we're the Cheney legacy. No, no.

And I mean, it's not, I don't, I'm really not picking on Kamala Harris because I think she was kind of. No, you're talking about a mindset like post-Iraq war that has just not gone away with Democrats that we need to like overdo it. it to look tough and to look credible. And even if that sounds hawkish and putting weird language into Kamala Harris's DNC speech about the lethality of the military that, like, would never normally come out of her mouth and everybody, I think, kind of heard that and instinctively do it. But you're right.

I mean, yeah, we're blown up, like, I think we're up to three now, random boats off the coast of Venezuela, the may or may not have drugs in them. You see, J.D. Vance was making a joke at a rally about like, oh, I wouldn't go fishing in that region if I were there and it's like I know he's making a joke and trying to be funny but it's like he's talking about human beings who are getting blown up on these boats and it's also the livelihood of these fishermen if they can't go out in the water so like it's not that it's like it's just a fucked up policy man like it's extra digital killing of people you think are drug dealers but you don't really know that and it's a manifestation of their broader authoritarianism right

I mean and this is I mean when you become authoritarian at home you actually tend to get into wars abroad, right? Like, just look at history. That is what happens to people. And so, again, I'm not suggesting, like, I don't know what's going to happen in Afghanistan, but this is both a bad idea and bad politics for Trump. I don't know what to make of this comment. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's one of his crazy musings that he just decided to say it loud. But more recently, a lot of these kind of comments have been backed up by an actual plan. And I imagine every reporter in that press corps is like currently digging to try to figure out what it is. But boy, I've heard some bad ideas out of the Trump administration. But reinvating Afghanistan, that might be number

And one quick thing, with the Chinese nuclear weapons comment, what, putting aside, like, an hour, what, an hour drive, I don't know, like, I guess he's talking by plane, but like, are we going to bomb the Chinese nuclear weapons? Yeah, that would start a nuclear war, right? So what exactly is gained by that? Do Americans want to have a nuclear war with China? Like, I don't, he said it like as if it showed how smart and tough he is. It sounded terrifying to me. Like, I don't. I don't want to care whether or not we can, like, bomb China from Afghanistan? What does he, what does he correct cooking up there? Yeah, it sounds like you read a briefing about the location of some Chinese nuclear infrastructure, like seven years ago and just, like, kind of references it all the time in ways that don't really make any sense, or as you said, would lead to a really bad outcome. All right, we're going to leave it there.

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