Transcription
[Music] So, Max, before we get into the ramifications of this assassination, uh, in terms of civil liberties and repression, let's talk a little bit about the article that you just published, uh, about Kirk's, uh, alienation or distance from the Zionist lobby. I know you've been writing about Kirk for some time.
>> Yeah, I've been writing about him since 2015, three years after he started TPUSA, which became the largest, most influential conservative youth organization in history. And at that time, he was at the forefront of a massive infusion of Israel lobby cash into his group through the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which was basically making him the property of Israel in exchange, in exchange for this sort of Fouian bargain. He was going to be at the top of the conservative youth grassroots or astroturf grassroots. And so all he, he could talk about race, immigration, all the social issues, and take the most extreme lines possible, say whatever he wanted, as long as he pushed this so-called Judeo-Christian relationship and, and, uh, constantly talked about the Judeo-Christian roots of the country and supported Israel and attacked BDS, the BDS movement, which was growing on campus at the grass, um, whenever he could. And so Charlie Kirk was actually at the forefront of many of the blacklisting operations that have targeted college professors as well as students. Um, like, he, he was, he was in the same circles as those who were behind Canary Mission, which is now being used to target, uh, green card holders and visa holders for deportation under Trump. So I was covering it early on before anyone had heard about him. He was like a babyfaced activist then, but he was obviously very hardworking, talented, a huge asset for them.
And flash forward to, um, July of this year, Charlie Kirk is the most influential conservative activist, period. He's on his way to possibly becoming the next president. Almost certainly would have become senator if, even though he's from Illinois. And he runs, I mean, TPUSA is, is major, but there's a crisis taking place. Charlie Kirk is under pressure from his own grassroots on the issue of Israel. Israel's exerting, under Netanyahu, so much control on Trump amid a genocide that the grassroots have turned against it. And if you look at recent polling, Yuggov polling, Pew polling, it, all of them show about only 25% of Republicans under 35 support Israel over the Palestinians. If you actually pay attention to what Nick Fuentes, who's the most influential, um, right-wing America First streamer says, they're, they're not just upset over Jewish influence. They're not just being anti-Jewish. They're actually upset by the same things that upset us. This, the, the deliberate starvation of, of civilian population unfolding in real time, and then watching their president just fold to a foreign apartheid state. And so this pressure was building within Charlie Kirk's camp. And Charlie Kirk himself was beginning to turn.
And it all exploded out in the open at the Student Action Summit, which I believe was in Tampa, Florida in July 2025. And that's where Charlie Kirk brought Tucker Carlson, someone who had already turned on this issue, on stage to not only talk about how Jeffrey Epstein was possibly a Mossad agent, um, but to call for those who had gone and fought for Israel, American Jews who had gone to fight for Israel's military rather than the US military, to be stripped of their citizenship. And he called out Bill Ackman, one of the most influential Zionist billionaires in the US, who is a Netanyahu cutout who had been sort of manipulating and bullying Harvard into submission. His money got Claudine Gay as president out at Harvard. He mocked Bill Ackman as a financial con artist. He literally called him a scam artist and questioned where his money came from. And the crowd was cheering and delighting in this entire spectacle. Megan Kelly from Fox was calling Jeffrey Epstein a Mossad agent. Then Charlie Kirk opened up the floor to a debate on the very issue of Zionism and brought on an anti-Zionist Jew, a comedian named Dave Smith, to debate a Zionist apparatchik at Newsweek named Joshua Hammer. And Dave Smith like mopped the floor with him. He's very effective. He, uh, was also talking about human rights abuses and the crowd was clearly with him.
And after this summit, Charlie Kirk was bombarded with furious text messages, phone calls. There may have been meetings as well, very tense meetings as well with his donors, the people who built him up. And they said, "We built you up. We can take all of this away from you if you don't stop this." And here, and, and they, we are laying down the law. And this offended him, alienated him. He was, uh, not used to being talked to like that where he, like, as though he were property. But, you know, when you join the firm, you don't get to leave. And at the same time, I was told by a friend, a longtime friend of Charlie Kirk, that he was frightened, uh, by the way he was being treated. Basically, a, a mafia was reading him the riot act. Um, and he wasn't the only one who was frightened. I was told that, and this, you know, the source is someone who knows people in the White House. Donald Trump's frightened. Donald Trump is afraid to defy Netanyahu. He's afraid about what can happen.
And I was told that during one of Netanyahu's, or several of Netanyahu's recent visits to the US, I think he's made four visits this year, which is unprecedented, listening devices were planted by Israeli agents on the Secret Service's emergency response vehicles, uh, Stingray, maybe Stingray devices, some kind of listening device, electronic surveillance device. This was found by the Secret Service. It was told to the White House. Obviously, the White House kept it under wraps, and this has, you know, made people nervous inside the White House and the national security team. And this is not something unprecedented. Politico in 2019 reported, citing three former US officials, that Israel had planted Stingray devices around the White House to spy on Trump's cell phone communications. Uh, Boris Johnson, the former Israeli PM, wrote in his memoir that Netanyahu went to use his personal toilet. And afterwards, British, his personal security team found a listening device in his toilet. Like immediately afterwards, Tony Blair told his own team, "Do not, when you go to Israel, do not speak about anything sensitive in government buildings or cars." So the, I don't think I'm being fed a bunch of conspiracy theories here.
And what I reported based on background sourcing matches up with the things that Charlie Kirk said in public that he was being bombarded by what he called Jewish stakeholders, uh, meaning his funders, and that he felt that he could not express his own views anymore as an American, and he was starting to move in public. So consider the consequence of a figure like Charlie Kirk, who's on his way to basically inheriting the mantle of Trumpism at some point, and who controls a large segment of that movement. Taking the base away from the Judeo-Christian relationship, taking it away from rock-solid support for Israel as Israel is in a seven-front war carrying out genocide. And Netanyahu believes that he has this short window of time to basically carry out regime change in Iran. It would have been catastrophic. And I also learned from multiple sources that Charlie Kirk actually took it upon himself personally to go to the White House and personally lobby Trump against bombing Iran back in June, and that he was shut down. Trump angrily rebuked him because Trump is simply afraid. He's completely controlled at this point by Netanyahu.
So, am I saying that Israel killed Charlie Kirk? How would I know that? There's no evidence for that. But how am I going to not report this fascinating background about where the conservative movement and the Republican party itself are going on the question of Israel, when I'm learning all of this after his death, and there are so many unusual aspects to the investigation, so many mishaps by the FBI, and such strange behavior by the Israeli government and Netanyahu himself since Charlie Kirk's killing, that it has fueled speculation by millions of people online that there may have been an Israeli role. I mean, why wouldn't they speculate when Israel seems to assassinate everyone that defies it in its own region and has, uh, even dispatched thousands of pagers to like low-level Hezbollah members and their families to assassinate them. It's, it, it's something that we would expect in this atmosphere. But I am not making any claim, direct claim, that Israel assassinated him. What I'm saying is I think they would have taken him out. The Israel lobby would have taken him out for sure, but they would have prefer, they would not do it, need to do it physically. They could just defund him and then castigate him as they are doing with figures like Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson, who have turned against them. But so this is just a fascinating, I think, a fascinating look, and it won't be my last one, at, uh, Charlie Kirk's final days and the political pressure he was under.
>> How much money was he getting, number one? And number two, can you talk about Netanyahu's reaction and his, because you write about it in your piece, his interactions with Kirk?
Well, this is something that was not known to the public, and I, I, I, I, I hope to be having to, to be able to report this out in greater detail, but I was told that by a friend of Kirk, someone close to Kirk, who was speaking to them in his last days, that Netanyahu actually came in and personally offered to re-up Kirk's TPUSA organization with a massive infusion of Zionist money. Um, and his budget all at its height was something like $80 million. I mean, we're talking about a lot of money. You just watch the Student Action Summit that became so controversial. There's nothing like it on the left or even within the Democratic parties associated organizations. It's very flashy. Look at Charlie Kirk's final moments. I mean, he was, it looked almost like he was running for president. Um, it looked like a Trump rally. And look at the amount of, he had enormous amounts of former Navy SEALs and special forces guys around him, like executive security. You have to have a lot of money for that. So, you already had the money, but he was at the, at risk of losing much of it. And Netanyahu comes in and says, basically, uh, come to the dark side. Stop talking about this, and we will take care of you. I will call my cutouts, and they'll have everything handled. And Charlie Kirk refused. Um, and that was what I, what I'm learning is that was not the first time he refused someone close to Netanyahu in recent months, and it left him feeling cold and anxious, and even in the words of the friend, frightened.
Um, this is something that many, I, I've had some conversations with other influential people in the right-wing influencer world since my piece came out. And basically, what they want me to know is that this is something they're all facing, at all of the major right-wing media organizations associated with Trump. That there is no space for them to criticize Israel. And, uh, yeah, one figure I could point to, I've actually been on his podcast, he's one of the top right-wing podcasters. Like, if you go to Rumble, which is sort of the YouTube alternative because so many right-wing voices were being banned there. And even us, Chris, like more on the left, we get like demonetized left and right and suppressed.
>> So we, we've even turned to Rumble. But you go to Rumble, like Tim Pool is one of the first, if he's live streaming, that comes up right away. And so he gets enormous amounts of views. And, you know, I went on his show right after October 7th, and he gave me the floor and let me speak my mind. Uh, Tim Pool was summoned to a meeting with Netanyahu during one of Netanyahu's visits under Trump's second term at the Blair House, where Netanyahu is staying, with just a few other right-wing GOP affiliated influencers, like media influencers. And, and he was not allowed to talk about what happened. I think one of his co-hosts or guests brought up the meeting on his podcast, and he, he was, you could see he was extremely nervous, extremely anxious. And it's like, was he captured somehow by, by Netanyahu? I mean, the pressure that Netanyahu himself is personally bringing on the right-wing podcast world really shows his anxiety about the rebellion that's taking place among the youth.
And after my article came out, which got over 100,000 views, just unique views on our website, then I did another, I did an interview with Tim Dillon, who's a very popular comedian, about this, uh, which has erupted. It's like 600,000 views now, just exploding across social media as people were already talking about this issue. Netanyahu tweets, takes to Twitter X for like the sixth or seventh time since Charlie Kirk's killing to declare that Charlie Kirk was a true friend of Israel. And this time, it felt like Netanyahu was overcompensating and was afraid of the truth getting out, which is that, as Charlie Kirk's longtime friend told me, Charlie Kirk had grown to hate Netanyahu, as every US leader has.
>> Remember the open mic with, uh, Macron and Obama where they're complaining, the hot mic, like in 2012 or something, and they're complaining about Netanyahu and they're like, "You, you think you have trouble dealing with him? He calls me every day." That's where Charlie Kirk was. He thought he was a disgusting bully and manipulator. And so Netanyahu is worried that Charlie Kirk's base posthumously will start to take on that, uh, sentiment towards him. And you can see they're deploying Ben Shapiro everywhere they can. Ben Shapiro is like the, the leading media asset for Netanyahu in the United States. I feel, he just feels astroturf to me. Um, he even jokes on Twitter about having six million followers, but he seems so sort of unlikable and talentless, and he's pushing a kind of warmed-over, softened Trumpism that just doesn't feel authentic. And he was on, um, Fox News with the other major Zionist enforcer in the media, who Netanyahu helped personally credit with convincing Trump to bomb Iran, Mark Levin, just days before Charlie Kirk's assassination. And they were complaining about Charlie Kirk alluding to him allowing Tucker Carlson on stage this summer, and saying, "You can't have a big tent. You cannot allow these cooks in, and you can't be at the front of the church allowing a congregation of anti-Israel nut jobs into your into your realm." Then Charlie Kirk goes to the front of the church four days later. A sniper bullet hits him in the neck. And Ben Shapiro comes out 24 hours later and says, "We need to go on our own campus tours and pick up the bloody microphone where Charlie Kirk left it." The subtext is, "We're going to go on those campus tours and we're not going to allow this anti-Israel stuff to come into our quote unquote church anymore." [Music]