Vance’s Defense of Iran MOU is Not Helping Trump’s Agenda

This episode is brought to you by Claude by Anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter and finds connections you might have missed. For problems worth solving, get started at clod.a.ai slash Spotify. This episode is brought to you by San Pellegrino Chau. A gift from Italy to your home. San Pellegrino Chau is a flavored sparkling water made with real fruit juice. Finished with a pinch of Sicilian salt for a perfectly balanced taste. So which flavor will you choose? Peach, lime, blood orange, cherry, or maybe the all-new limoncello. Crafted in Italy with zero grams of added sugar. San Pellegrino Chau. Buy it now. Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan. It's the fastest growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmeade. All right. Hi, everyone. Brian Kilmeade here. Get ready for a big show. A lot going on today. We've closed out a very consequential week. By the way, you could always get the show on YouTube. We're very excited about it. YouTube.com slash at the Brian Kilmeade. And again, catch us streaming on the Fox News radio app. You get the Fox News app, and you'll see the little headsets there. You click on it. And it's become a TV show as well as a radio show, just about our guest stream on it. And we appreciate you being here today. There's a lot going on. And believe me. Don't look past this meeting, and that is the president delivers remarks at the FIFA reception. He's going to be a Trump Tower. I think he's familiar with that commute. He also, today is going to be a presence at the U.S. Iraqi Business Summit. What's the big deal? Well, Iraq's got a bunch of militias there, and Iran's controlling them. And they also want us to gradually move out. So we want to do more deals with them and make sure they're not dealing deals with Iran. So a consequential meeting. So let's get to the big three. Number three. We look forward to the final match on Sunday, and I know the president looks forward to attending, but I think the world saw that this president and this country is able to put on the greatest show in sports in the world. Yep, that is Karoline Leavitt. She was back, given the press briefings yesterday. World Cup comes to a close on Sunday. What it means to America, culturally, financially, and domestically, can you say $20 billion? Unbelievable. Number two. A majority of Democrats in this building refused to vote to send billions of dollars in weapons to the Israeli military. That is what is going on right now with Israel. Israel losing support in the U.S. and there is a fallout in the region and around the globe. Why I think it's abundantly clear, they remain our most loyal ally and should be treated like that. And although the Dems have abandoned them, the GOP should not. Number one. We came close to taking just about everything away from the Houthis once before. We didn't finish that campaign because they were willing to do what? They were willing to stop. And they know full well what's coming if they attempt to do this.

Yep, that is General Jack Keene with me this morning. Day six, and the game plan is clear, systematically militarily, take command of the strait. Iran knows it might use the Houthis as leverage to stop it. We'll play this out, and what it might turn out to be, President Trump's most effective military campaign to date, and one of his greatest accomplishments. He's choosing not to make this an all-in, all-hands-on-in, let's make this consuming type of war. He's doing it. He's systematically doing it. He also knows the poll numbers say, hey, we're tired of these foreign wars, but he also is attacking a war and an enemy that's not going away that's almost 50 years in the making that continues to be a threat in the region and arm itself up the best way it can and target the one democracy in the area that happens to be our primary ally, and that is Israel. They have to be stopped. They'll write about this retrospectively, but currently people are focused on... inflation. They're focused on the price of oil and gas, especially Republicans worried about the midterms because history is working against them. But what the president's doing now by going all in six straight days of intensive strikes going back to what we started in February March, I think is fantastic. Here is what General Jackine told me this morning. Cut for. For Iran, the Straits for Moose is a strategic asset. No matter what happens here, they will continue to want to take it back from us because it's number one. They don't have a nuclear power capability. They're not even close to developing a weapon now. This is their number one strategic asset. It gives them leverage over the Gulf states in a region, and they truly want to have an element of control here. And they are willing to fight us for it. And we have got to take it away from them and prevent them from ever getting it back under their control again. And here's what we're doing. We're blowing up the roads and bridges around there, leading to the port of Bandar Abbas. That's where they're beginning to set up infrastructures towards tolls on international waters in the strait that has so much oil and gas going through there. It's a key hub of looking the street, critical for controlling the waterway, and where the IRGC has a lot of their drone strikes and some of their weapons. That's what we're blowing up right now. These strikes mark the six great days of pretty consistent attacks. We are taking it apart. Time is not on their side. And we have blockaded them. We've stopped allowing them to make money on oil and gas. So the United States expanded the airstrikes. And they're contradicting the barges that are coming through. It looks like this morning around 5 o'clock Eastern Time, AM Eastern Time, they hit a tanker. I'm not sure. That's what's one of the reports have. Looking to follow up on it. What is Iran doing? They're retaliating, targeting Qatar, believe it or not, who's acting like a mediator in all this, hit Jim Jordan, actually aimed even for Syria. Incredible that they're doing this. It's random, but our bases are there. In Bahrain, they also heard air raid sirens, no sign of any legitimate damage. I wouldn't believe them if they announced it. So this is what we people have been saying. I believe you have to finish the job, Mr. President. You're elected to do it. You can't go halfway, call it talks, and they're surviving. We'll be winning. Cut five.

They broke the MOU within days of their president signing it. That's a reality. Why? Because this is at their center of gravity, this is their strategic asset. We should not fall prey to this recent and now diplomatic overture to make a deal again. They just want to stop us from taking their strategic asset away from them. We've got to get on with doing it. And we should. And this is what they said. If we start blowing up their bridges. They said, if you hit the power plants, we're going to tell the Houthis to start hitting you and shutting down the Red Sea or the variations, the ports around there or make it a threat so people stop going through it. What would that mean? Well, Saudi Arabia, for example, has reprogrammed through pipelines and shipping a lot of their transit, energy transit, something like 8 million barrels a day. If you stop it there and at the Strait of Ramuz, it could put the price of oil up to $150 per barrel. We're not going to allow that. So I asked Jack Keene about that. And he basically says we could finish off the Houthis once and for all. We almost did it last year. And they know it. And that's part of the reasons why they're not involved yet. But they are showing that they're looking to do something and go all in on stopping the straight. We will see how that goes. But they're starting militarily to move some assets around. The other thing I wanted to go over was what's happening. With Israel, JD Vance has added to the problems, showing a break for the GOP, making up stories about Israel, forcing us into a battle, making it clear he was not for the Iran war, but now he's trying to help out with the Iran war. He's already distanced himself in getting ready to run for president. Here he is with Joe Rogan, which, by the way, they wanted him on Capitol Hill, working the back rooms in order to get a second reconciliation package going. You know what he said? I'm doing Joe Rogan's podcast. I can't be there. Are you kidding? I mean, the president happy about that? Evidently, Mike Penn spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill. It's one of these offices as vice president. You're asked to me in two places. And usually people come from that world. So it's not bad, especially JD Vance had two years into his Senate seat and knows the back rooms there, knows the people. You would think you'd want to spend more time. Here he is with Joe Rogan talking about the Israeli government. Listen to this. And by the way, Everything he says about this to me is wrong. Cut 14. Beyond a shadow of a doubt that there have been people within the Israeli government who are trying to like actually shift us away from that policy because they want to continue the military campaign. There are some people within their system we know beyond a shadow of a doubt who are. manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely. Again, not towards any objective, but just indefinitely. Okay. That is not true. Now, are there people within the Kinesit that are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or squad-like characters on the fringe? Sure, I guess. I don't know. But.

But maybe he's not going to run. If he doesn't run, Marco Rubio steps in and he wins. If he does run, he's going to have a lot of trouble. And I think he's really going to have trouble learning the nomination. I know Ted Cruz, for one, I'm sure is running. Josh Hawley might be running. Marco Rubio will not run if JD Vance runs. But there are other people out there that certainly are thinking about running on the right and we'll see what happened. So this is the Brian Kilmeade, Joe. When we come back, we want to take some of your calls. I'll read some of your emails. Go to Brian Kilmeade.com for more or 1-8-6-6-6-9. Don't move. Strong opinions, backed by hard facts. Get the truth behind the spin with Brian Kilmeade. This episode is brought to you by Claude by Anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter and finds connections you might have missed. For problems worth solving, get started at clod.a.ai slash Spotify.

you listen, the more you'll know. It's Brian Kilmeade. So I'm going to be going to the World Cup game on Sunday, covering it for Fox and Friends. They're probably staying for the game. I would hope to. I thought the World Cup, I cannot believe it generated $20 billion. $204 games, 48 teams. They're probably going to expand it. But no one's ever seen anything like this. It's just what every once in a while, things just come off great. But it's usually one game. Well, that Super Bowl was great. The venue was fantastic. The broadcasting was great. And the game was awesome. This is nonstop drama. I mean, Cape Verdi, the small island off the coast of Africa, ends up almost beating Argentina tying Spain. I mean, how do you figure the U.S. team got on a heck of a run after that great start, had a terrible finish, but still had everybody talking about a 40 million people watched their last game, which was a field of 16. So now you have Argentina against Spain. And in terms of World Cup play, you couldn't ask for a better marquee matchup, the defending World Cup champions against the European champions who just beat the number one team in the world in France. In terms of drama, you have the coach of Argentina, was mentored by the coach of Spain. In terms of drama, Messi spent 20 years playing for Barcelona. He went over there as a 16-year-old, and he stayed with that team, and they're one of the best teams in the world. Spain loves the guy. So, you know, I'm going to have the hatred between the clubs that you had with, you know, Argentina and England and all the other things. In terms of, in terms of what the game is like and what's it like playing against Argentina, why they always seem to come back and win in the end. Ibrahimovich, who's done a fantastic job as a Fox Sports commentator, said this about playing against Argentina, cut 32. I played and I played against and weird. They play with a lot of emotion. They're passionate people, players, and when you play against them, you feel them. They're aggressive. They provoke you. You've got to keep cool. And they always give 100%. It's a loyal player, players. And when you have them with you, you know they're going to do their job. You know they're going to fight for you and fight for themselves. So it's not easy to play against them. But my thing was, when you smash me, I'm going to smash you back. Yeah, Ibrahimovich is a monster. He's like 6-2, plays like a madman, extremely confident. He comes off like that on camera too. I think he's a fantastic, whoever picked him. On Fox, absolutely nailed it because he's a great commentator. He comes off with like almost a funny swagger, but he does, has accomplished so much in his career. 99% of the games have been sold out. The average attendance is 64,500. Revenue is up 44% since 2022, the Cutter, the Cutter World Cup, which was considered a success.

But the Times also worked out. The President of the United States is going to have a presser today. And on Sunday, he's going to go to his first game. Politics have almost totally stayed out of it, except for, I guess, somebody in Argentina, one of the players held up the Falkland Island sign. They feel like it belongs to them. Remember, the England had a mini war against them, too. So it's just been great, and the next game is New York, New Jersey. Here's the problem that nobody expected. The fires in Canada have cast a poisonous shadow in the air. Literally, I mean, you walk outside, you feel it in your lungs. If you're going to go play in that, I don't know how you do it. Do they got to make it later in the day if they find out the wind's going to shift? Perhaps. But if I looked out right now from New York City to Giant Stadium, it would be blurry. It would be obscured. I tried to fly in on Wednesday night. They delayed my flight for three and a half hours because they had to delay the number of planes landing in Newark at LaGuardia Airport. Now, in Newark, it was better. That's New Jersey. But in LaGuardia, it was, they had to, evidently you land a plane every 12 minutes. They put us to 30. So that knocked every plane off its scheduled, knocked us for three hours. But they told me it was because of the smoke. I wonder, of course that's going to affect the game. You thought elevation was going to be challenging. Man, it would affect the game if you're going to run around and you're going to feel like you're choking. I think that would be pretty significant. Meanwhile, the mayor of New York City, he's got another fortunate moment because he's got, you know, you got the Knicks made him look good. You brought a lot of revenue in. I'm glad for the city. And then you have. The World Cup, obviously. And then you have Taylor Swift. This all brings money and attention to New York City. And he's going to benefit now because New York City's got the final. Why do they have the final? They had to put together great bids, yeah. But the person that brought the World Cup here that's more responsible than anyone else, that's President Trump in his first term. And one of the regrets he had, he said, by the time he gets here, I won't be president, now he's obviously president. The other thing he did to get the Olympics. Remember, Barack Obama flew across the country, across the world, in order to put our bid in for the Olympics, and we didn't get it. It was embarrassing. And we got the 94 World Cup, but they thought we commercialized, commercialized it too much. So they didn't give it back to us for a while. The president got it back. We had to split it with Canada and Mexico for a while. But now all attentions in New York setting. We come back. I'm going to talk about the media, its coverage. Also, the media and its coverage on other things like the President of the United States with Howie Kurtz. Listen to the Brian Kilmeade.

This episode is brought to you by Claude by Anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter and finds connections you might have missed. For problems worth solving, get started at clod.a.ai slash Spotify. We're interested in it. Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmeade. This has been a spectacular World Cup in all respects. The play on the field has been, and the pitch, if you will, has been great. The stars have shown. The TV audience of 40 million viewers of the U.S. Belgium game just shows how much interest there is in this country, all of which I think is going to lead to an exponential continued growth of the sport at all levels. Alan Rothenberg, who brought the 94 World Cup here, I think he did the 84 Olympics. He kind of handled the soccer. He actually started the LA Aztecs for the owner of the team Jack Ken Cook at the time, I believe his name was. who ended up owning the Redskins. And then he launched the MLS. So he watched this whole thing and knows from a business perspective how successful 94 was. And this has surpassed it. Even if you're not a sarcophage, just look at business. It's very rare when you have something of this magnitude come off this well, almost better than your thought. Howie Kurtz joins us now. Fox News, political analyst, host to Media Buzz, a meter on that's his podcast. Howie, is it amazing that we just have a good story? A good story on the field and off the field and the economic portion of the World Cup is also a good story. Giving everything else that's going on in the world wars and, you know, demonization. It is nice to have a good story. It's been good for ratings. And it seems to me that, Brian, that. You keep waiting for something to go wrong. And, you know, it's just a complete and total win, even for all the teams like the U.S. team that got booted out early. Yeah, I mean, the U.S. team, I guess, did a little bit better than expected, but the way they left has got a bad taste in everybody's mouth because they seemed to unfold in the controversy with the red card. President did nothing wrong. The Prime Minister of England, by the way, Keir Starmer called up and said, you're trying to move the start time on the Mexico City game. Forget it. You can't do that. It gives Mexico an advantage. I don't know what his point was, but they didn't move it. Yeah, yeah, he's out of office now, maybe because of that. So. So that's why it's successful. And then Sunday is going to be the culmination, the drama. So before it started, you saw the stories. Tickets are too expensive. Nobody's coming to hotels. America's not liked. No one's going to come visit the World Cup. All of it was erroneous. In fact, the one that was struggling initially the most was Kansas City. And people thought, oh, these Europeans don't want to go to, you know, this rural community.

And they love Kansas City. They seem to love the culture. And they said it's 99% sold out, even the knockout games. Well, nothing like exceeding expectations. So how matter much, you know, the World Cup is always a major event. You know, when I was growing up in Brooklyn, Brian, we didn't play soccer. I mean, we played Little League baseball. We used to play touch football in the street. We had to stop when the cars came. But now, you know, in this generation, my kids, other families I know, soccer is huge. It is really exploding. And the World Cup, I think, is just. going to cement that as the worldwide sport. Yeah, I want you to hear what some of the people are saying. They went down with the mic with the cameras to Times Square to talk to people that would look like they were soccer fans with tourists. Cut 30. So we took to Times Square to ask people what their favorite things are about America. Burger, pizza. Who are you rooting for? Algeria, the best country in the world. And what's your favorite thing about visiting America? America is great for all the beauty that it comes with, right? Beautiful people. Have you had like any special American food? Pizza and beer is what we stand for. We just got a couple of double cheeseburger smashed. The street food, especially, the hot dog in the street, yeah? What's your favorite thing about America in general? When you visit? In America? Time square? I just love the environment, the people here. They are so friendly, so it's a good place to be. This land is huge, and you have so much possibilities that we don't have in Europe. So, yeah, you have a great country. So it's just, I mean, that's pretty much the feeling. People, like, we're not putting them on tours. We're just saying, come to the game, and they seem to like the country. Yeah, I hadn't thought about the geopolitical implications, but yeah, it's been a great advertisement for America and how we can put on a massive event like this. And so you're right. It really has broken through, you know, in a time when we have 5,000 other things we could be paying attention to. Everybody's into the World Cup. So the other thing, let's move over to politics, Howie. Are you surprised what has emerged on the left? So you look at... The party in power, they always take a pounding in the midterms. And the thought the Democrats would do that to coast to take back the House, which they're barely in the minority, and have a shot of the Senate. What do you think the rise of socialism and the DSA has done to the political landscape as we are sitting here in July knowing we got a few months to see what shakes out in the primary process? I guess the technical term is catastrophe. I mean, we're talking here about a relative handful of socialists who are getting a lot of attention in these low turnout primaries started out with Zohran Mamdani in New York and that spread to other places as well. I mean, it kind of encapsulates.

how the party is moving more and more to the left. And even though some Democrats, who we would just call liberals, but they're not socialist, don't want to be tarred with that brush, it's happening. And there seems to be a litmus test now, which I didn't think I would see in my lifetime, where... You have to be against Israel. And that's where the party is moving as well. So if you would ask me a month ago, I would have said, yeah, you know, look, no matter how the Democrats screw this up, they're going to end up controlling the House. Now I'm not so sure because of, you know, these socialists, it's not just that they're in favor of socialistic policies. You could argue, you know, social security socialistic and programs like that. It is that they make the party look. like they they're not in charge anymore and the people who uh And also they've said horrible things, not just about Israel, but, you know, defund the police, defund the prisons. I'm not so sure that they're now a lock to take over the house. It'll be close. You know, it's just interesting because now in Maine they've got to scramble to replace Graham Platner. But instead of doing what South Carolina is doing with Lindsey Graham to replace him ever as tragic passing last weekend, they're doing a vote. They're doing a primary. And they're going to do it in August. In Maine, they said, we're just going to get 600 delegates together. We're going to go pick somebody out. We can't really have a say. And then eight random people got on stage and that was it. But you're not, you're watching for entertainment. It just sounded like you're going to vote if you're in Maine. That's still the Democratic weird way of handling the primary process. They got Kamala Harris the job, that Joe Biden kept the job. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to run against them. The party pushed him out. We found out later was controlling the DNC and made sure that Bernie Sanders didn't win. They don't seem to have learned their lesson here just to put the power in the power with the people who are in the party. Well, a lot of Democrats are fed up, and there is this sort of strong anti-establishment trend because, you know, a lot of Democrats feel, particularly like working class Democrats, that they've been made, all these promises are made, and nothing ever changes. So there is that. sort of stream of resentment toward the Democrats. And look, the media played a very big role in creating the myth and overlooking the obvious flaws, the Nazi tattoo and so forth of Graham Platner. And now they're stuck. And, you know, there's a bunch of hacks. jockeying for position on this. And I don't know. I think the odds of them beating Susan Collins now I've gone way down. And without Maine, there's no way. I never thought they were going to take over the Senate anyway. But now I think there's definitely no way that they're going to win, you know, six of the contests of all six that they need to win. You know, it's interesting because they got this guy, Abdul El-Sayed, running for the Senate seat against Mike Rogers, who's a formidable candidate, barely lost.

to Elissa Slotkin last cycle. And he's from the FBI military background, was on the select committee on intelligence, just a solid, not a big Trumper, not anti-Trump or just a solid Republican. And I think there's a bit, you know better than me, but there seems to be a panic on the left to make sure that Abdul El-Sayed does not win the primary. Suddenly, he's got an endorsement, you know, from Gary Peters, who he was going to replace. And also Chuck Schumer, they also want to see. The other candidate win. Yeah, well, good luck with that. I mean, a lot of politics is about enthusiasm. And, you know, most voters are busy. They've got jobs, kids, and all of that. And they're not going to be studying a bunch of position papers. I will say this for some of these candidates that, you know, they have charisma and they know how to connect with people. But when you take the next step and look at what they stand for and what they've said in the past, and in many cases not taking it back, including Zohran Mamdani, who still has not renounced the... from the river to the sea, meaning wipe Israel off the map. It's hard for me to believe that the Democrat Party has. has pushed itself or been pushed so aggressively to the left. And I think it shows you they have not learned a lesson of why they lost everything in 2024. And that's a problem. You mentioned the DSA. They're proud to say they want to get rid of the Senate. They're proud to say they want to get rid of the presidency. They're proud to say they wanted to fund the Department of War. They're proud to say they're going to increase taxes on billionaires and they're successful and give people a 32-hour work week and pay them like they're working 40. So here's here's some of the explanation. Tell me if you feel better about it when a Sheikh Sadiq weighs in on C-SPAN, cut 42, about why to get rid of the Senate. The Senate is a very undemocratic institution. A state with a small population has the same representation as a state that has 500,000 people against the same representation as a state that has 40 million people. We do believe that government should be proportional to the population, and that's a very basic core principle. So the House of Representatives is more democratic that way, and we just don't see the point of the Senate. Has he put an ounce of work into finding out how even the Constitution Convention took place, the Federalist Papers? Maybe you'd have an answer to that. But I find that astounding. It is true, but it was the compromise that enabled us to adopt the Constitution and for George Washington to be sworn in, which was that, you know, small states got.

equal representation and but of course the house being much bigger um it's a very different story i for one i'm very much looking forward as i know you are brian too reading joe biden's memoir which is going to come out two weeks after the midterms because you know the democrats really want to go back there and relive the biden presidency right but howie they did get a victory because they told him you have to release it after the election Oh, yeah, that would have been even more of a disaster from the Democratic point of view. Look, any president or former president can do a memoir if he wants, but it's just going to remind a lot of people as we head toward 2028 after these midterms that Biden's term, as we could all see him deteriorating. Now we know why he was kept away from the president. Then we could just see that whole debate again is not going to help the Dems. Yeah, before we go, when we talk about 28, I know the Democrats going to have like 12 guys, 12 men and women up there, maybe more. And the Republicans had that too in 2016, had two separate debate stages. But I think on the right, people are assuming the vice president, JD Vance, is not going to get much of a challenge, especially when Marco Rubio made it clear. If he runs, I'm not running. But I think he's going to get a challenge when I see that he chose the Joe Rogan show instead of going to Capitol Hill a couple of days ago on Tuesday to work this second reconciliation package and other things. And then when you see some of the controversial things that I think they're controversial about Israel, you know that he made it clear that we screwed up when it comes to the Epstein files. I'm president. I don't know how pleased he is about that. And then he came out and basically made it clear through different channels, not denying it, he's four against the Iran war or whatever we're calling it now. Howie, do you believe that there's going to be people outside? I know Ted Cruz has basically told me he's going to run. But do you think that he's going to get significant challenge on that debate stage? I wouldn't say significant challenge. I think, well. With the backing of Donald Trump and let's assume that Marco Rubio goes on the ticket as number two, that's a pretty strong ticket. But it all depends on at that point in time, you know, a million years from now in 28, whether or not that's seen as an asset or not. In other words, like it or not, they are tied to the Trump record and Trumpism. But if I had to bed, then it's so far down the road, of course, Brian, I would say JD Vance is going to be the nominee. Right. Who do you think would likely get on stage? Do you think Ron DeSantis gives it a shot? You think Nikki Haley tries it again? I mentioned Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley. Do you think some of them would say, you know, that's the aspiration I have? You know, once you're bitten by the presidential bug, the fever doesn't go away. So I could see somebody like Nikki Haley trying again. Ron DeSantis, I think, had his shot and, you know, very effective governor who proved to be not a very good campaign or very closed. His wife actually has a much brighter personality. I've talked to her as well. So it all depends on whether or not somebody thinks they have a shot or look.

Let's say you run and you lose. And you get a cable contract or a book contract or something. Like it never hurts to be on the stage, even if you're going to get your ass woke. Glenn Youngkin is another guy that'd be very formidable if there wasn't. And I remember Reagan waited for George H.W. Bush to endorse him. Famously, I read that Eisenhower waited on Nixon. He was his vice president, waited for him just to basically lock up the nomination, said you got to go win it yourself. I wonder what, you know, Trump does everything unorthodox. How do you think that he would handle this? I think what matters most to Donald Trump at this point is he's not a guy who sits around a lot thinking about his legacy, but I think he would be very invested in every possible way in seeing the groundwork that he will have laid in two different terms, obviously separated by the Biden term. go forward. And the last thing he's going to want is for any Democrat to come in and start reversing all the executive orders and all that. But of course, that's another question. Do the Democrats run against Donald Trump, even though we can't be on the ballot or not? So I'm pretty good raising questions today. Yes, you are. 28 is a bit down the road. It's hard to have all the answers right now. Yeah, I think November 10th, we're talking about 28 like it's the next day. Howie Kurtz, thanks so much. Check out his podcast. It's the media buzz meter podcast. Thanks, Howie. Have a great weekend. You too. You got it. Hey, listen to Brian Kilmeade. We come back your turn. 1866408-7669. You go to Brian Kilmeade.com. Just click on comments. This way I can hear from you. Learning something new every day on the Brian Kilmeade. This episode is brought to you by Claude by Anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter and finds connections you might have missed. For problems worth solving, get started at clod.a.i slash Spotify.

Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kilmeade. Hey, welcome back, everybody. I'm just getting some emails and going through it. Dale writes me and says, I've written before. I'm not a fan of JD Vance. He find himself serving. I will stay home before ever contemplating a vote. And I voted for Trump three times. He thinks Donald Trump Jr. should run. Also about JD Vance. This morning on Fox and Friends, you talked by the vice president, appears to be increasingly coming out of his anti-Semitic closet. We can't change the beliefs of people that they're going, that they're entitled to. But discretion does form better part of valor and going public on Rogan's show is really poor judgment. I think so too. I think you got a job to do. You tell Joe Rogan, I just need another date. A date on a Friday, for example, when Congress isn't in session. That would make, that would make sense about the communist agenda. writes me and said, look at the 1963 legislation by the Honorable Year Long of Florida on the 45 goals to infiltrate communism in America. Then look at how many how many have taken place. A constrictor does not kill you quickly, but with a small squeeze with every breath. I got it. And this is what I worry about. This cycle, maybe they don't get out of the primaries, except for some of them are going to win the general over in the very blue cities like New York and now in blue districts over in Colorado. But I worry we begin to get used to it. And then more and more people who are so-called moderate say, I can't win unless I bring up some of these socialist ideas, unless I vilify landlords and billionaires and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. And I'm just going to do that. And I'm just going to slowly get used to this type of mindset. Where as much as democracy matters, so does free enterprise matter. It really does. It's a whole part of that ethos of America.

This episode is brought to you by Claude by Anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter and finds connections you might have missed. For problems worth solving, get started at clod.a.ai slash Spotify. Atop, Fox News headquarters in New York City. Always seeking solutions, never so in division. It's Brian Kilmeade. Hi, everyone from 48th and 6 in Midtown Manhattan. Heard around the country, around the world. This is the Brian Kilmeade. Our first time in studio, Jonathan Hunt's going to be here. I've talked to him in Los Angeles. He doesn't like to talk to me in New York for the most part, but he kind of roped into it because we have something in common. We cannot believe how great this World Cup is, and we spent our whole lives playing soccer. Of course, he was in England where they invented the game. So I imagine it's like imbued. For me, it's more of a choice. It's an unfathomable choice. choice considering it was in the 70s when there's really nothing going on except the NASL and was a hot league for a while. Howard Coselle famously said soccer is the sport of the future and he was one thing he was very wrong about that. The future could be now though. After we speak to Jonathan, I also got Keon Taj Bakash and he is a visiting professor of international relations at NYU and he recently got out of jail in prison in Iran, thanks to Joe Biden writing, I think, a $6 billion check. And he has a great perspective because a lot of his relatives are still there about how effective the U.S. campaign has been. So before we get to Jonathan Talk World Cup and more. Another area of his expertise is the Middle East. So let's get to the big three. Number three. We look forward to the final match on Sunday, and I know the president looks forward to attending, but I think the world saw that this president and this country is able to put on the greatest show in sports in the world. True. Karoline Leavitt on the money. She comes back as press secretary yesterday. World Cup comes to a closed Sunday, what it means to America culturally, financially and domestically, and what it could do for U.S. soccer if they spend their money right. Number two. A majority of Democrats in this building refused to vote to send billions of dollars in weapons to the Israeli military. And Democrats are proud of that, 103 in the House, voted to cut off Israel. Unthinkable just a couple of years ago, Israel losing support in the U.S. and there's a fallout in the region and around the globe. Why, I think it's absolutely and abundantly clear they remain our most loyal ally in the world. Number one. We came close to taking just about everything away from the Houthis once before. We didn't finish that campaign because they were willing to do what? They were willing to stop.

And they know full well what's coming if they attempt to do this. Yep, day six. And the game plan is clear. Systematically, militarily take command of the strait. Iran knows it. It might use the Houthis, as you heard Jack Keene just mentioned, as leverage if they could stop action in the Red Sea. We'll play this out, what it might turn out to be, President Trump's most effective, risky and rewarding military campaign. You know, you just told me how many times, Jonathan, you've been in the Middle East in Israel. for long periods of time. Yeah, since 2002, I've been going there. So can you explain knowing that you know about Israel and what they've been up against since the attack on October 7th, the change in sentiment towards them here? I think it's inexplicable. I think they have... lost the PR campaign, certainly, why that has happened is much more difficult to explain. But I think you look at what's going on in American colleges. You look at the anti-Israel sentiment there, the anti-Israel sentiment being put forward by a lot of professors in American colleges. And, you know, I've seen it with my own kids, to be perfectly honest. They are persuaded by that. It's the trendy thing to do, I think, to be anti-Israel. And it's deeply sad because it's not borne out of a recognition or an understanding of the situation on the ground. I think it's tragic what the anti-Semitism we're seeing here. Are you surprised that JD Vance has to have trouble pushing back on it. In fact, subtly, I think he's playing into it. Listen to him with Joe Rogan, cut 15. And then can I just say one other thing about this? Because there are people, you know, you see Mike Pence, who's sort of a super hawk, my predecessor. who say this, there are people, you know, who are super hawkish in the American system who have attacked the deal. And frankly, in some ways, have tried to derail the deal. And what I always say to those people is, what is your proposal? What is your actual argument? And he went on to say a lot of that pushback is from elements in the Israeli government. But the deal is, in my view, it's a terrible deal. The MOU is an absolutely awful deal. Yeah. And for people to criticize for him to think that he's not open for criticism on a deal that he just parachuted into is crazy. Yeah, I would agree. The MOU was a terrible deal, remains a terrible deal. And that was, you're just speaking for our Gulf allies and Israel when you said. Right. I don't think you can. You can trust the Iranians on anything. And the language in the MOU was loosely written. I don't know where we go from here, because to make the Iranians understand there has to be change, you have to do, I think the only option at this point is to do more militarily. And I don't know that the president and the American people for that matter, have the stomach for that. You know what the president is doing is not trying to sell it, just do it.

And first, you know, take a pause, see if we get a deal, took a pause, thought he had a deal a couple of times. I think he does talk to people that sound reasonable. And Steve Witkoff, who he really likes, says the foreign minister is ready to cut a deal and makes Fahidi and the IRGC look at the unreasonable ones. Where if you listen to people that really know how the Iranians operate, there's really no difference. They just use that as a way to get a better deal. Yeah. They're playing for time as they always do. Because they know it gets closer to the midterms. Right. And what strikes me as. The terrible thing here is that the only talk we have now is about the Strait of Hormuz. It's like everybody's forgotten the nuclear issue, which is the whole point of the thing in the first place. Now we're just talking about getting ships through the straight. It's crazy. Right. And one thing that General King did bring up to me this morning is because now they're getting a nuclear program, getting a nuclear bomb is further away. Yeah. Since 2025 Nighthammer. Then we keep hitting it. We don't have any control of the pickax. The pick actually, because it's so far underground, but I may wonder if there's a game plan for that. But the goal is now is to physically, militarily take back the straight. From what you know about the topography there and knowing that how easy and convenient. Drones are. Do you think that's possible? I think it's really difficult without putting troops in much more in harm's way on Kag Island, etc. That is a huge stretch of coastline. I think it's about equivalent to the entire west coast of the U.S. in terms of the length. That's how you control that completely. And you can keep taking out Iranian assets along the strait there. But all they need are these tiny boats. So you've got a multi-million dollar tanker. Are you really going to take the risk if Iran says we will? All they need to do is say, we will blow you out of the water. That's all they need to do. It's the threat. None of these companies want to take the risk. Yeah, if you can show, no one's been hit. I don't think in three or four days. And then if you show the damage has been done, perhaps they would be able to insure it. Let's talk about the World Cup. You're going to be covering it Saturday and Sunday. You're going to be out there. You've been covering it for the last three and a half weeks. And you grew up playing soccer. I did. And how was the U.S. done? U.S. did very well early on. The capitulation against Belgium was terrible to see. They just did not come. I think with their minds in the right place. So it's been great for U.S. soccer. I wish they had. gone at least one round further because I think that would have really made a big difference. And it was the mindset against Belgium. Two things. A couple of the players said after that game, we all thought we were going to be going to L.A. tomorrow for the quarterfinals. If you're going into that game...

With that mindset that you've already run one and you're on your way to L.A. wrong mindset at elite sport. So I think that was a problem. I also think they were affected a lot more than anyone will admit by the Balagan red card controversy. And I think in a way it would have been better for the US if that red card had stood because they had the moral high ground then. They had the sense of injustice fueling the fire for them. Instead, with the red card, the suspension rescinded, it all flipped to Belgium, that moral high ground. they ran on that fuel and they were determined to win. And I think that made a huge difference on the day. So do you think that we reevaluate youth soccer in this country? Everyone plays, but we don't achieve on the men's side. And they talked about sitting up an academy system. They would be free, get the next young David Beckham, pull them out, get him in an academy, but don't charge the family. We should have enough money to be able to do that. For sure, we should have enough money to be able to do that. And that is, you know, my, my daughters both played youth soccer. It's expensive. It's really expensive to do that and as you keep moving up a level. So, yeah, they need to change the way it's run. And I think an academy that you take the kids in and if they've got the talent, you are not looking for money from the families is a great idea. So let's talk about the final. You have Argentina looking for the first, be the first repeat World Cup champions since 1962 against Spain, the European champions. Right away, I feel like Spain goes in the favorite. Do you? Spain would be my favorite. I picked Spain before the tournament began to win it all. I waive it a little bit when France were playing so well. But yeah, I think Spain has enough. They won't do the... stupid substitutions and backing off that England did in the semi-final against Argentina. I think they've got enough. They play beautiful soccer. They know how to keep the ball. They will have a plan for keeping Messi off the ball. But I say Spain without 100% conviction. Because any team that has Messi, as they've shown again and again in this World Cup, you give them six minutes at the end and they're behind and they can still win it. But what is your takeaway, Jonathan Hunt, of... why Cape Verdi gave him such a hard time and why Egypt almost beat him? Because I don't think Argentina are a great team. They're a very good team. I don't think they are a great team until Messi decides it's time to be a great team. So if he decides that in the final on Sunday, they have every chance of winning. If Spain can come up with a plan to close him down, I do not believe the rest of the Argentinian players around him have the ability to do it without messy functioning at the highest level. And now Spain had this vaunted defense that many people thought it wouldn't be as strong, but it has been as strong. One goal they've conceded in the entire World Cup so far. So they've been incredible. Their midfield, Rodry, I think, is probably the best midfielder playing in international soccer right now. So they're great. And then we still are waiting for Laminia, 19 years old, the messy to be in a way, to fire on all cylinders.

If he does that, Spain, I think, could probably be unstoppable. And right now, you're going to get 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The pregame starts at 11 a.m. Eastern time. I'll be out there for Fox and Friends, and you'll be out there all day. And, of course, doing the recap at night. But you've got to feel like the ratings are going to be through the roof. Oh, I'm sure they will. I mean, it's a marquee matchup. Like you say, reigning world champions against the current champions of Europe. It's the game, I think, that if anybody thought about what do we want at the end, that's the game you would have chosen. It's going to be box office. And the ratings have already been through the roof for so many games. Fox Sports has done an incredible job in their coverage. Rebecca Lowe, my fellow English person, has been incredible, I think, Zlatan. Alexi and Tieri all amazing. Tieri, I think, is going to go somewhere else at the end of this, is my prediction. What do you mean? I think Tieri might be the next manager for France. Really? You heard it here first. Without any coaching experience. He has some coaching experience. And he just has, I think, the best soccer brain out there right now. And I think if he's not, then France are missing an opportunity. I think he would be a great national team manager. So if you look for a coach, to outcoach another coach, you would think the teacher would out coach the student and Scalani. was a student. He said as soon as he was done playing, he went to Spain to a coaching academy. And his coach was Luis Deli Fuente. Is that how you say it? Yep. So that was his coach. Yeah. And they've been friends ever since. I know. Think about that. What are the chances? I know. It's great. What are the chances of so many things here that? You know, what are the chances of? Messi having given a bath to a zero-year-old. Explain that. So there's this photo out there. It was taken in 2007. There was a UNICEF charity shoot. They were looking for babies in the Barcelona area. Lamin Amal's mom put him up for that. He got the job sitting in a bath and a 20-year-old Messi is giving him a bath. It's a weird photo to have chosen anyway. But that full circle moment, they had no idea that Lomino Mal was going to become a prodigiously talented soccer player when he was. I think he was five. five months old at the time. Right. I don't think they'll reenact it. I don't think they'll react. Let's hope not. That would be troublesome. We'll see what happens. And lastly, this will be Messi's last World Cup game, correct? You've got to think. He's 39 years old. So you've got to think this is his last World Cup game. And, you know, while I would like Spain to win, because Argentina knocked out England, you could not begrudge Messi another World Cup if he does win it. 44? Are you kidding? Yeah, I mean, that would be crazy. It would be crazy. I mean, the dude is showing no signs of slowing down in this World Cup. He's amazing. I know it is. And the other thing, the last twist would be where did he star most of his career in Barcelona? Yeah. So people of Spain love the guy. Yeah. It's hard not to love him. Right. I mean, he seems like a good person. Yeah.

And, you know, that's the difference. Ronaldo from Portugal has always been in that conversation of the best of all time. But I think you have to put personality in there in character. Messi is such a good character. So at the end of the game, we saw Bellingham, one of the best players in the world. kind of lose his mind a little bit. Could you describe what you know has happened after England lost? Bellingham is a great guy, but he does have a short fuse. And there were a couple of the – that was a tough game. Argentina were going in hard throughout the game. And then some of the Argentina players were taunting the English players towards the end of it. Bellingham is not a guy who takes kindly to that. He whacked one of the Argentinian players who'd been celebrating in their faces around the back of their head. Bellingham needs to tone it down a little bit. Let his actions do the talking on the field. One of the words I heard, he went up to Messi and says, what is it like to be taken care of by the higher-ups? And Brinaldo is better player than you. Yeah, well, that's, I mean, come on. Both of those things are stupid. I think there's all this conspiracy theory about FIFA wants Messi to win again. You know, no, Messi is a genius. He turned that England game on his own. Nobody in FIFA, no referees were influencing that. And yeah, Bellingham needs to grow up a little. Right. The cross. It wasn't the goal. It was he went outside and crossed the ball after it hit the post. On his right foot, which is not his favorite foot either. It was the most perfect cross you could ever see. So England had put on basically 11 defenders, and they left a man unmarked in the box. Who are they thinking? And you were saying, too, that tied at 1-1, if it went into overtime, you have no forwards left. Right? So what do you think? Yeah, it was the most stupid decisions by Thomas Tuchel. But he's German. I think he ultimately wanted England to lose. Jonathan, see you out there on Sunday. We'll watch you covered your weekend. Cannot wait. John, thanks, Brian. Thanks so much. Back in a moment. Giving you everything you need to know. You're with Brian Kilmeade. This episode is brought to you by Claude by Anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter and finds connections you might have missed. For problems worth solving, get started at clod.a.i slash Spotify.

Breaking news, unique opinions. Here it all on the Brian Kilmeade. This time, the country elected Donald Trump. And well, remember that warning about the barbarians at the gate? Well, the barbarians aren't at the gate. They are inside, including at the highest levels of government. The president and his cronies are abusing government powers to punish political opponents. Yes, punish political opponents. No, they're trying to straighten up the school system by giving everyone choice. That's Randy Weingarten, a true vile individual whose results for this collective education of the country has gone out of a way to grow the union and hurt the students. It's a remarkable dichotomy. You only think consistent about anything she touches is that inner city kids will pay the price and with lower grades. I mean, if you look at math, There's about 32% that are reading when it comes to reading and math on grade level. It's crazy in fourth and eighth and twelfth grade. That's why everyone wants to be in a charter school. That's why when you get into a charter school if you're a working class parent, especially single parent, you feel like you hit the lottery because it gets you out of the public school system that she is ruined through putting the union first. But it's Donald Trump that's a barbarian, really, that wants to bring back education that wants to give power to the states to change education. for the better and give kids a school choice. Take that $8,000 and you pick the school you want to go to. That makes everybody better.

The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmeade. For Iran, the straits for moves is a strategic asset. No matter what happens here, they will continue to want to take it back from us because it's number one. They don't have. a nuclear power capability. They're not even close to developing a weapon now. This is their number one strategic asset. It gives them leverage over the Gulf states in a region, and they truly want to have an element of control here. And they are willing to fight us for it, and we have got to take it away from them and prevent them from ever getting it back under their control again. General Jack King with me on Fox and Friends an hour ago. And he says this is Operation Freedom that stopped in 36 hours because the Saudis didn't want us using their bases. They were nervous about the retaliation. And now he said, screw that. We're going back. You saw that we tried to talk and you saw the results. I don't know the inner workings. That story will come out soon, I imagine. So now we're in day six of extreme and strategic bombing in Iran. Joining us now is Kian Taj Bakash. He's a visiting professor of international relations at NYU. Iranian-American scholar and former political prisoner released as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and author of the Iran Crisis Notebook, and you could see that on Substack. Kian, how do you feel about the six-day strategic hit to take back to Strader-Framuz? Is it working? Well, good morning, Brian, and thank you so much for inviting me on your show. Well, I, you know, I don't have up to date, obviously, military intelligence to be able to assess. whether it's going to meet its final objectives. But the first thing I can say as a civilian and as an expert on Iranian and U.S. foreign policy is that for American interests, it was the right thing to do. That is to say, it was... Clearly, the MOU that was signed in June was not to the advantage of the United States. It was a, let's say, some kind of Hail Mary. I mean, I've written in my, in my ex.com post, I do refer to it as a disastrous document. I think it was a misstep. And I think that President Trump is trying to now, trying to address or redress that misstep because whatever goodwill the United States extended, either naively or not naively during that MOU, was not reciprocated by the Iranian regime. And so there really is no option.

for U.S. strategic interests to continue the pressure, both kinetically and economically and in across the whole military options like cyber and other kinds of psychological and perhaps even support to Iranians inside the regime. I think you told us that, Kian, and I thought so too, but you're the expert. You live there. You were in prison there, essentially. You were. Yes. I couldn't believe how bad the MOU was. I thought, okay, maybe in the end, if it ends up good, we're not going to remember what the MOU was, but they're allowed to trade oil right away for 60 days to begin to set operations to take over the straight. I could easily have read it that way, even though the American intention was they said not to write it that way. So JD Vance was asked to defend it, and tell me what do you think of this. Cut 15. And then can I just say one other thing about this? There are people, you know, you see Mike Pence, who's sort of a super hawk, my predecessor, who say this. There are people, you know, who are super hawkish in the American system who have attacked the deal. And frankly, in some ways, have tried to derail the deal. And what I always say to those people is, what is your proposal? What is your actual argument? So I wanted you to take him on. So he was defending his MOU. So what do you say, Keon? Yeah, well, look, I think there really is no defense of the MOU. It was a complete misunderstanding of the Iranians. I mean, Brian, I think we talked about this earlier. Listen, and I wrote about it in my substack, day one in which the Iranians, I mean, I'm not nitpicking here. When I know the Iranian mindset when it comes to negotiations, when the Iranians asked the U.S. to change the location. of the talks that ended up in Oman, I said to myself, it's over. When the Americans accepted that, I said it was over. What the Iranians were doing was setting the parameters. They were testing JD Vance and his team about how far they could manipulate him and push him. And it was in my view, and I warned this in public. I mean, I'm not a senior official with the – I don't have the ear of the officials. But if anyone had asked me, I said, please do not – And I think I may have even said this on your show, Brian. You do not send the second most powerful politician in the world who represents the entire American people. You don't send him to meet a fourth level Iranian politician in Islamabad where... He has been drawn that, you know, why Islamabad? It was decided by the Iranians. Why Pakistan? Because the Iranians knew that the Pakistanis were against Israel, that the Pakistanis would support them. Look, the Pakistanis have supported Iranian nuclear program. They gave them the secrets, the Kan Q network years ago. It was a Pakistani rogue scientist that gave Iranians nuclear secrets.

AQaeda? Yes, that's right. That's right. AQ Khan. And they were in touch with the North Koreans. And then the Pakistani, so the very acceptance of the vice president to even go along with the Iranians in changing the location. And then even more embarrassing. And I warned this, Brian, over again, is that we should never accept. This is undignified for the great superpower of the United States. We should not accept a childish arrangement where the Iranians say we will not meet you face to face in public and it'll be like, you know, you're in this room and I'm in this room and we send little notes to each other. All of this, Brian, was an attempt by the Iranians to see how far they could push around the American delegation. What they saw was the Americans went all the way. They changed it. And then there was this other indignity. Remember the first night that they were supposed to go to Switzerland? You know, JD Vance, our vice president was sort of on the tarmac. And then the Iranians said, well, you know what? We're not coming. And that he had to say, well, I don't know. Maybe I'll just hang around on the tarmac until the, you know, until the Iranians let me know when it's good to come. We should be setting the parameters. We should be setting the location. We should say we will not meet with anyone except in public and face-to-face. What are we? We are untouchable. We are the American. So I think the whole thing was a disaster from the beginning. And then the actual content of it was even more shocking. And I think that it came from the fact that, unfortunately, that delegation led by JD Vance was inexperienced and also naive. and did not have good, you know, advice. And then, unfortunately, in this, in this very disturbing, I think, conversation with Josh Rogan, I mean, there are two things about that. First of all, to peddle anti-Israel, typical, almost anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about well-funded secret groups that are trying to undo my MOU. No, by the way, you're quoting him, Kian. You're quoting him. Yes, I'm quoting him. And then what I wrote in X.com was not about the content. I said, my goodness, Mr. Vice President, take responsibility. He said, and I quoted him, and he said, He said, and I quoted this exactly in my ex.com post, what used to be called Twitter, I said, you know, what he said was this. He said, what really bothers me is when American politicians allow themselves to be influenced by foreign forces. And I pointed out very simply, I said, you know, come on, Mr. Vice President.

Can you hear what you're saying? If you allow someone to influence you, be a man and take responsibility. Own it. You don't have to do it. In the first, in President Trump's first term, the Israeli prime minister and his own inner circle, including people like Ambassador John Bolton, who writes about this in his memoir, they went to President Trump and they said, I think we should launch regime change and military operations against Iran. And President Trump said, no, I don't agree with that. And then in his second term, he was open to it. That is to say, it is the U.S. president's responsibility in the end to decide what advice. what influence he's going to allow to, you know, to influence him and to shape his decisions. It's our decisions. We are the superpower. And so I was just very disturbed by the, by the entire approach and the lack of, and the lack of ability to take responsibility. Yeah. And to say that, okay. We were essentially played by the MOU and it was going to unravel and it did unravel. Right. And I could say, you know, there's a misinterpretation on rule number five and number 14. Now it's not the way we, and you could say that. But the bottom line is they left open the management of the straight to Oman and Iran after the 60 days. And they weren't even waiting 60 days. They were shooting at chips for not listening to them right away. So I want you to hear what General Keen said. And I thought this was conventional wisdom. But I love to your perspective of going inside the Iranian mindset. This is what cut 11. I've never bought the fact that there's that much of a division. The guy that was ahead of the political side of his gavel buff, look at his best friend in life is Kassim Soleimani. They join the IRGC together. They became generals together. He then moved to the diplomatic side and moved away from the military side of the IRGC. Kazimani went on to fame, obviously, and became established a professional relationship and a personal one with the Ayatollah, and nobody in between. And he ran, obviously, the entire foreign policy instrument of supporting the proxies. I believe these guys are much more on the same page than people think. They are committed to what Iran has always stood. So when people say, I'm talking to the foreign minister, I'm talking to the speaker, much more moderate than the IRGC, which is led by Fahidi, I think. That's why we're done. And they're dealing with them, as if they're the good guys and the bad guys of the IRGC. The general king does not buy it. He thinks they're speaking from the same hymn book. Brian, I cannot believe we're falling for the same.

play that the Iranian regime has been using for 25 years. I've been writing about this. I've been talking about that. I've stood. I have been in many meetings with people like Ghalybuff, the previous foreign minister, the deputy minister, the IRGC when I was in prison and being interrogated. I was interrogated many hours by very senior. I couldn't see them because I was blindfolded and facing a wall or sometimes I think I once was possibly, I can't prove it, but I think I was. interrogated either by Gassim Soleimani's deputy who was, who was sat behind a one-way mirror. And he wanted to know, and he wanted to ask me who in the White House and the CIA and all those things I was in touch with. And I said, you don't really believe that I'm a member of the CIA, do you? And he looked, I. I heard a silence, and then the person who was sitting next to him that I could see by the wall, he said, look, actually, we don't believe you're a member of the CIA, because if you had been, we would have killed you already. And he was absolutely serious. He said, you would be dead. And so, you know, I cannot believe that this play is still going on. And a lot of it has to do, Brian. with, unfortunately, I wrote a very long critique of these so-called Iran experts, who I have referred to uncharitably as the useful idiots of the Iran think tank world. They're the ones in Washington that peddled this distinction between hardliners and think over and over again. And I cannot believe that we're still falling for it. Look. Look, I'll tell you one simple thing. I told this on national TV, and no one seemed to take this seriously at the time. When JD Vance went to Islamabad, I said, where is the photograph? There was no evidence up to this day, Brian. I, you know, it's like a scoop, but I'm a scientist. I'm a political scientist. I look for evidence. Where was the photograph of JD Vance and Ghalybuff in the same room, let alone shaking hands? There wasn't. Now, I'm not being a conspiracy theorist. What I'm saying is that two things are possible. One is actually they never met in person. Second. Second, if they did meet in person, why on earth would the American delegation not, you know, agree to keep that photograph hidden? And the reason is because of a very simple rule.

that unfortunately, American policymakers who have unfortunately not enough knowledge about the complicated psychology of Iranians and the Middle East. Look, Brian, in the Middle East, what politicians say to you in private, in English, is meaningless. It's only what they say in their own language. publicly that is meaningful. So interesting. That's the exact opposite of what you would think. Well, so listen, that's why the Americans who don't have experience get caught out. It's exactly the opposite of the way political culture works in Iran. In the U.S., politicians lie in public, and then off the record, they'll tell you the truth. It's exactly the opposite in Iran. And JD Vance fell for this. He talked about, side agreements, gentlemen's agreements. This was just nonsense. I could have told him, please. Waste your time. Don't buy that. It's unbelievable, Kiann. You're 100% right. Kian, Taj Bakish, visiting professor at international relations at NYU. And of course, you were helped political prisoner as part of the 2015 around nuclear deal. You were able to get out. And author of the Crisis Notebook on Substack. Kian, always great to talk to you. Hopefully, have good news to talk about soon. This is Brian Kilmeade. Giving you everything you need to know. You're with Brian Kilmeade.

talk show that's getting you talking. You're with Brian Kilmeade. We look forward to the final match on Sunday and I know the president looks forward to attending, but I think the world saw that this president and this country is able to put on the greatest show in sports in the world. And we are a kind people. We are hardworking people. And we have the best country on the planet. People just seem to love it too. And $20 billion later, they're saying, you know what? This World Cup has been a huge success. And I'm sure Mexico and Canada did great too. We were all worried about the cartels, the other, you know, in Mexico and you should be. And then in Canada, I didn't hear any buzz about it, but I'm not in Canada. They did great. And the Canadian team did well. They got knocked out in the same round as we did using an American coach. But I would also add that when you look overall, we've got to take that money and you've got to grow the game. And I think we've got to find a way. You get that to youth soccer, getting some inner city fields built, and start going beyond that. They also have a major academy in Atlanta, and I think that could be a great place for kids to develop. From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest-growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmeade. Hey, so glad you're there. It's a lot going on. The president's going to be in New York City. Today, he's going to go to Trump Tower and kick off the final weekend of the World Cup, which he brought here, along with FIFA, said, okay, run it. It's been better than anyone thought. I think that Andrew Giuliani deserves a lot of credit for that, too. And all the venue operators and FIFA knows how to run things. Let's be honest. Whatever you want to say about him cost too much. He thought the tickets were too expensive. They got to control too often. People say there's corruption around it. I haven't seen it this time around. I think the biggest controversy is going to be the VAR and how you use videotape replay. But that's for a different time. Shannon Bream standing by, Tommy Laren's going to be with us at the bottom of the hour. So let's bring in Shannon now. Shannon, will you, for one, be sad when the World Cup comes to an end? Because I know your husband's a big soccer guy. 100%. And listen, I was not a huge soccer fan. Please forgive me. I know it is the center of your life. But the World Cup has definitely won me over. I mean, the excitement. I got to go to one of the matches. I mean, it's just I'm not soccer's number one fan, but I've definitely been moved into the I will watch this moving forward column. That's nice. So it's going to come to an end on Sunday. You're going to be doing your show from there? I'm not doing my show from there, but we are going to check in with Jonathan Hunt, who will be there. We hope the weather improves for you guys a little bit up there and that people get to have just an amazing blast of a time. Good, yeah, Jonathan Hunt was very, you know, he was saying, I got this network spot coming up. I go, Witt Network, and he said, Fox, and I said, do you know the person? And she said, Shannon Bream. And I said, I know Shannon Bream. He did not believe me that I know Shannon Bream.

Listen, I don't know if you should brag about that, count that as a plus or a minus. I mean, not everybody's going to put that in the win column for you. It's a plus. But I'll be at that game, too, doing some coverage on Fox and Friends. It's a cable outfit. I've heard of it. Yes. And then hopefully we'll see a good game at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. How nice of it to get this game over with early so we don't have to stay up late at night for people who do morning shows. I mean, you get up at 2.30 and I think that it's awesome. Or maybe early than that, 2 o'clock, I don't know. But I think it's fantastic that you have such an influence on FIFA that you were able to get the game in the afternoon. Yeah, and I got a red card reversed. The rest of the country for doing that. And I got a red card reverse. I really blew up in my face. It really didn't work out too good. But we'll see how that goes. I have often given you red cards. Right, which you sit me out for two days, which comes off my personal time, which doesn't work after me. Well, listen, then you're doing 10 less jobs than the normal 50 you do every week. So let's talk about what's happening with Iran. I love this military plan that we're putting together to stop talking to Iran. I found the MOU was a train wreck. And I feel it's so the only thing they understand is something no other president's done. And that is systematically, physically, militarily open the strait. That's when they're a process of doing. But by the time you hop on the air on Sunday and me Sunday night, are we going to see the Houthi rebels trying to close the Red Sea? Yeah, that's a great question because obviously it seems like the concentrated strikes that we're doing right now are aimed at cutting off the RRGC's ability to restaff, resupply. Because they're the holdup in this whole thing. Obviously, you control the straight. Iran has enormous leverage. But you're right. I mean, do the Houthis try to get in on this act and come at it from another angle? Because if you can control those, then their leverage is gone and the conversation is over. Yeah, I want you to hear what Jack Keene told me this morning about the Houthis getting involved. And he's almost saying, I dare you. Let them try to do that because he doesn't feel it's going to be profitable for them. Here's what he told me this morning. And that is cut number six. We came close to taking just about everything away from the Houthis once before. We didn't finish that campaign because they were willing to do what? They were willing to stop interfering with the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, which Batman Dab leads to it. And they know full well what's coming if they attempt to do this. And it would likely bring the Israelis back into this and major combat operations again. So that's their choice to make, certainly. But we can deal with that if they execute them. So he's saying don't panic if it happens. Now, immediately the price, a barrel of oil could double. But he thinks we could just wipe them out because we almost did the last time. Now, think about it.

Why aren't the Houthis involved already? What do they have to lose? If they felt impervious, they would have been rocking everybody. There's got to be a reason. Well, and the thing is, this has gone on for decades, this funding that flows into Iran or allowing them to evade sanctions in some cases, you know, waivers, those kinds of things. Where does this money go to all of their proxies? And that just means that they have built a network across the region and beyond. I mean, they have the ability to strike other places, too, that is on their team, that is going to be backing them and doing whatever they have to, to try to keep them intact moving forward. But it's because of decades of money and infrastructure that has flowed to these proxies. That means we're not just cleaning up the problem with Iran. It's all of these other offshoots from Iran. I want you to hear what the Iranian... military spokesperson said yesterday. Cut 13. And in no way will we allow the United States as a foreign and extra regional country to interfere in the Strait of Hormuz. This is Iran's invalienable red line. It might be more valuable than a nuclear weapon. And guess what? We're interfering the straight of her moves. We've already introduced, turned around three ships and took out one. We're telling them they can't trade anymore. Yesterday we took out one of their so-called ghost fleet. So we are sending this message. And I think that at first you thought Trump should explain this to everyone. And now I think it's to his advantage. He knows the war is not popular. He thinks it's necessary. I agree with him. But so he thought, I'm going to low bullet. I'm just going to do my thing. I'm not going to talk about it. And I think that's smart. Just judging by how he wants this over with soon, but he's got to turn up the heat in order to finish it off. First of all, were you surprised that the Iranian guy's English was so good? I was. Some people think he's a translator. Some people do, and some people believe that. Listen, the fact that is, I think he's tried to do the diplomatic thing. The problem is that even when we were trying actively before any of the kinetic action began months ago to do the diplomatic thing, they weren't even willing to come to the table about things like their ballistic missiles, which we now know can reach all these European capitals and go much farther than we thought. So at some point you have to ask yourself a question, what is the point of diplomacy with them? They're not... honest, they're probably not going to stick to these agreements. Then I do think you're right. The president's gotten to this point where, listen, this is the show of force, the total destruction is the only thing that they understand. This has been 47 years of yelling death to American death to Israel. Maybe it's time for change in strategy. Well, the Iraqi militias, sympathetic to Iran, sponsored by Iran, have put a $10 million bounty on the president's head. We know they have posters in there downtown in Tehran, which has no water, but they have a poster of the president in a casket. And now we're really turning up the heat. I think they're trying to kill. I think they put somebody else on their kill list might be. I forgot who it was right now. But important. But, I mean, they're not backing down on their rhetoric and what they want to do.

But I also think it's interesting that we're not just doing it financially. We're not just doing it militarily. We're doing it financially. Victoria Coates talk about what the Treasury Secretary is doing, cut 12. I think that economic piece that you mentioned, that's why what's happening with Iraq is so important. Iraq was their safety valve, as was Dubai. That's all getting cut off. Secretary Scott Bessent is going after all of those sort of luxuries of Iran connecting into the international financial network through its partners and allies, through its partners in the region. That's now all going away. And so what we see, it's not just going to be a game here of days and weeks, but what we see in Iran over the next, what we might say year, year and a half might be very similar to what we saw at the end of the Soviet Union. So let's keep an eye on that. What do you think? Yeah, it's a critical piece of the puzzle. And the sad thing is that we know it affects the people of Iran and the messages constantly. Listen, we're not about that. We want to free you from this theocratic, you know, dictatorship nightmare that you're living in. But the sanctions often hurt real people before they really start to hurt the people at the top. But the minute you give waivers and the minute you take your foot off the gas on that, it is the same story over and over again with them, rearming, reconfiguring. propping up their proxies in an endless cycle that you got to go on all fronts. And it seems like this administration is willing to do that. So who do you have on Sunday? So we've got bipartisan senators joining us to talk about all this stuff. We've got Katie Britt and Jeanne Shaheen. There are a lot of places on foreign policy where they do overlap, and they're working on this Russian sanctions bill that was to be Lindsey Graham's legacy at this point. So we'll talk with them about where the potential off-ramps are, how this thing ends. We've also got Congressman Mike McCall, who's just been in Ukraine and was ordered a special medal by President Volodymyr Zelensky. You know, is he going to be kind of the Volodymyr Zelensky whisper in the interim while we figure out who comes next and kind of that special role that Lindsey Graham was playing? Yeah, and we had Mike McColl on last weekend from Kiev, and we had to readjust the interview because then we found out Senator Graham passed away, which was just stunning. I thought the, did you think the sanctions bill was coming up this week? Is he going to come up next week? I think it's probably next week. And, you know, there's been talk about whether Iran gets added into that mix. You know, everything is so difficult to get done through the hill. And I think that they really want to get this thing done in a bipartisan way that would honor what Graham was trying to do. So I think that they're going to thread that needle really carefully, probably in the next few days. All right, Shannon Breen. Thanks so much. We're going to be watching. Oh, Sunday night. Yes, Sunday night, but first I'm going to be covering the World Cup and you're going to have that on your show, right? Are you wearing a soccer outfit? Do you think I should? Do you think I should? Pretend like I'm in the game. But are you, well, who's your team? My team lost in these rounds of 16. I'm this pro-American guy, you might have met. I mean, I'm saying now that you're down to these two. Can you pick? Or is it two-so- I would like to see Argentina win, but Spain is the better team. Okay. All right. Well, if you consider Argentina the underdog, I don't know that they can be. They're so good. Then that's who I'll go with because I like an upset. I like a surprise. All right. Listen, Shannon, I'd introduce yourself to your husband because I know he's been MIA for three weeks. Go get him. Bye. All right. Listen, Shannon had to run. Correct? Yes.

We are, just a quick note, on One Nation on Sunday night, I'm going to have Mike Rowan. I want to talk about these data centers that New York has now banned for at least a year. Really? Okay. I mean, you could have some demands, like they have their own power source, like to make sure they don't abuse the water table. But why ban them? You stop plumbers, pipe fitters, and electricians from getting jobs and all these other blue collar jobs. And also, if you want to be part of an enterprising economy, why not be part of the next industrial revolution? But other states are having. problems. I think 40% of the new data centers are now under protest. So I want to get the reality on that. I also want to talk about the latest with the round with the chairman of foreign relations over in the House side, Brian Mass. I think many people would think he'd be a great secretary of state too. I want to talk about the plan that's put in place militarily. And if he thinks it'll be effective as an army guide. We're also going to have Brian Johnson on. Brian Johnson, the guy that wants to live forever, not die, and he found out he has a terminal illness. He's doing all these extraordinary experiments for longevity. We'll talk to him about that. You might have heard him. I think you have. I'm pretty sure you have anyway. And then Tommy Laren's going to be joining us too, as well as Rob Blagojevich. Talk about the corruption in Chicago, what he went through, and what's happening right now. He also was let out of prison. Got pardoned by Donald Trump. He's a Democrat. You listen to the Brian Kilmeade back in a moment. Real talk, real guests, real insight, where curiosity meets conversation. It's the Brian Kilmeade. He's so busy, he'll make your headspin. It's Brian Kilmeade. I mean, as long as we continue to do that, you make that official. You make that part of our platform. That's my red line in the Democratic Party. And now you look at the number of people. I'm not surprised by that vote. But for me, that's honestly what I've expected. So that's who he's talking about, 103 or 102 Democrats in the House, not Hakeem Jeffries, but his whip voted to defund Israel. Now, they're in the minority, but they could be in the majority come, you know, win the election in November and take over in January. And that's what they're going to try to do. And of course, President will have to wheel and deal. And I don't know what's going to be happening there. But that's why the prime minister came out of Israel and said, we have to learn to manufacture our own weapons. I don't see it lasting. in America much longer. Now, Republicans are on board. John Fetterman says, if this continues, I'm going to do something extreme. Listen. My long-term concern has been with the Democratic Party, as I am a member of that, is that our party is going to back away and turn their back to Israel. If our party ever becomes and just make it official as the anti-Israel party, you know, that's when I would leave because that's been a moral clarity for me.

Since when you walk around, you know how much horrible, how many horrible things have happened over a number of years in Syria? When's the last time you saw a protest about human rights in Syria and the brutality of Bashar al-Assad? When's the last time you saw any problems about how Christians were being persecuted in Nigeria or the or some of the unrest in the killing of 40,000 innocent civilians over in Iran? And you walk in the street and you see people protesting because these horrible things going on in these countries. They don't happen. But for some reason, the Palestinian situation, when they were given Gaza and part of the West Bank, if you asked Bill Clinton, the Azul Accords, gave West Bank and Gaza to the Iranians, excuse me, to the Palestinians with the land bridge connecting both, Yasser Arafid wouldn't sign off on it. And then that became a terror haven and then the eruption and the attack on October 7th that cost over a thousand lives. So that's how we got here. Now we have people saying, oh, I feel bad for the Palestinians. What is your connection to fully understanding the region? My answer is you have no connection there. But now you want to blame Israel and it's rippling through colleges. Hakeem Jeffries did not vote yet to defun Israel. But you could see how it will change. Cut 21. In the dear colleague letter that I sent to the caucus, I laid out the position that I believe we as House Democrats will take as we move forward, anchored in several different principles, including our support for Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and homeland for the Jewish people, and at the same time, pressing the urgent need. to establish an independent Palestinian state that allows the Palestinian people to live with dignity, respect, and self-determination. And that needs to be dealt with urgently. Has he asked the Palestinian people? Because they want one state, and that's without Israel. They don't want the two-state solution. Hamas is still in control. They're in the process of being exed out. It would be great to get some support after the hostage deal was done and some follow-through with other people besides Jared and Steve Witkoff who can't do everything and shouldn't be asked to do everything. But this is the line that they believe will get people elected. Remember, Rahm Emanuel went there last week in order to say, Israel, we're going to cut you off. And then Ro Khanna went there and had an incident at the West Bank looks totally manufactured, would not coordinate with the government, went there and was confronted by settlers. Cut 22 is Ro Khanna and what he wants the new Democratic policy to be. Cut 22. I am voting yes on the Thomas Massie Amendment to zero out all aid to Israel. This includes zero aid. for offensive or defensive weapons. I just don't see how the United States can support aid to a state that is committed genocide. And frankly, I do not see how we can continue to support a state that detains Americans and an American congressman like me. Really like you? Total theater. He's ridiculous. A chameleon?

One thing about Bernie Sanders, not a chameleon. One thing about Nancy Pelosi, she is more practical, but she'll change. But this guy is ridiculous. He's from Silicon Valley, understands the need to be a capitalist and now as a socialist. He's appearing with Hasan Piker, a despicable podcaster, who loves the Cuban government and hates ours. Once Rick Scott killed, and then he goes over there with theatrically, he says he's detained by West Bank settlers. What a joke. And now he says you don't replenish the Iron Dome. Just let rockets destroy central Israel. Sickening. If any left-wing Democrats listening to us right now, if you give this guy a vote or think for a second that he's presidential material knowing he stands for nothing except for trying to get elected, you are really going to destroy the country. All right. When we come back, Tommy Laren joins us. She's getting set to co-host the big weekend show from 5D8 Saturday and Sunday. And we got One Nation Sunday at 10 p.m. And don't forget, coming up on October 17th. I'll be doing with the United States Tour in Westbury Music Fair, right in Long Island, as well as Rent Bank, New Jersey the day before and the 16th. Brian Kilmeade.com for tickets.

Truth you demand. This is the Brian Kilmeade. We're envisioning something more like a prime minister, which is the real head of state or the real executive power in most other developed countries. I don't like using that term, you know, willy-nilly. But if we're talking about what actually is democratic and what actually is... common sense. It makes a lot more sense to have that, especially when we know that the president has had the ability to, ever since Iraq, actually, like the ability to irrigate to itself, this power that is essentially like, yeah, we can have a paramilitary force that only responds to the president. That's fascism. Yes, thank you, Michelle. Michaela Branigan. She is the chairman of the DSA National Political Education Committee. And she said, would it be great to have a prime minister instead of a president? We also know part of the policy is no Senate. That'll be interesting. And of course, many of these others say no prisons. It's going to be a great country. I just don't know what country they would like to lead with me right now is Tommy Lairn, co-host of the Big Weekend Show. It's on five to eight Saturday and Sunday. Also host of Outkicks, Tommy Lairn is fearless, which I know is true. So Tommy, is it amazing to you that the DSA is not only proud of their impact. Now they're outlining their whole agenda. They also wanted to fund the military. Yeah. Well, when you were playing that, I thought that was Kamala Harris because it was a bunch of word salad. And speaking in a circle, I was trying to decipher what she was actually trying to say there. And it took a minute because it was as clear as mud as they say. I don't really think they know what their platform is. I think they just want to watch everything burn. Right. I don't think they love this country. I think they would love to see this country fail. Some of them are well-intentioned morons, I'm sure. But a lot of them just hate everything America stands for. And they want to rebuild it in the image of a third world nation. And it's up to us. to prevent them from doing so. They're well on their way, though, here in New York City and elsewhere. So do you think that Zohran Mamdani is the beginning or the end? Oh, it's the beginning. It's the beginning because it has to play out. And I'm one of those people who maybe because I don't live here full time, so sorry to you. But I'm one of those people that I think we have to let it play out in places like this. Let this be the testing ground for it. Here, maybe Los Angeles, Minneapolis, let them try this experiment. Don't bail them out. And I'm sorry for everybody, all the good people that have to be here. But it's got to play out. Because if you go in and you rescue the cities that are. turning towards the socialism and the communism, then no one actually understands that it's a failure. It's a failed strategy. So you've got to let it fail. So my fear is this is the beginning and the goal is to have federal power and take these ridiculous ideas and there's suddenly federal ideas. And that's what worries me.

So the 20 something's evidently not happy. The economy doesn't give them as much opportunity. I could you think and look at every generation. There's always some type of struggle, something going on, a war, a pandemic, a recession. Louisiana purchase caused a recession. We shouldn't have done it. Double the sides of the country. Was that, you know, did we blame anybody for that? This irritates me to no end when I hear that young people are, you know, disenfranchised by this economy. Is that partially true, perhaps? Yes, things are expensive. I totally get that. Rent in New York City is incredibly expensive. But when you see those same people who say, well, I can't afford a house and you see them buying every day an ice coffee from Starbucks, you see them taking fancy vacations where they document all their travels and their, you know, their PTO, they're going to use all their PTO, they're going to go to Greece, they're going to go to Mekanos, they're going to all these places. They want to go to Arawan and buy a $12 tonic water. They sit on their cell phone and make TikTok videos and they say, you know what, it's not fair to me because I can't afford a house. I don't know about you, Brian, but my parents, when they were just starting out, they had nothing. They had to work hard. They had to save money. They didn't go out to eat. They didn't splurge on vacations. They saved money so they could afford a house. So these young people, and many of them are millennials, most of them are Gen Z saying, but we can't afford things. No, you can't afford everything that you want. Right. Yet. At one point, but here's also thing not earning it and then blaming others and taking their money. Are you encouraged by the fact Washington State, for example, as a wealth tax? They put on the ballot, rescind the wealth tax. There's enough signatures, enough support. Now they get to vote to get rid of it because they already saw that they lost Starbucks. Gone, going to Tennessee. And now others are lining up to go. They just don't want to do it. They don't want to pay an extra 9% because they're successful as companies and as individuals. And now they put on the ballot to rescind it. I love that. I love it. Will it be successful? I don't know. You have to hope that the fair minded people outnumber the people who just think, oh, yes, the rich should pay more. How many voters are out there who maybe don't work? Maybe work very little. Maybe would love to be taken care of. How many of those people are voting? How many of those people are encouraged to register to vote and then vote? Right. You have to hope that the people who actually have a stake in the economy and having a good paying job from a lot of these companies that are leaving. You have to hope that they outnumber the people who want something for free. In those places, do they? I guess we'll see, but I don't have a lot of optimism. So the president's speech last night he mentioned when they got rid of transgenderism or trans for everybody. There's a little of exchange with a doctor that took place on Capitol Hill this week. It was flat out astounding. It was Representative Mary Miller, a Republican from Illinois, asking Dr. Sam Hargood, Hargood, you would think he's Chancellor at the University of California, San Francisco, head of the medical school. Very simple medical question. Has a non-biological woman ever had a baby? A transgender person can. That's not a biological woman. Has a non-biological woman ever had a baby? I would reiterate. It's ridiculous. We take care of transgender patients. This went on. I mean, we won't answer the question.

They know the answer, though, Brian. They just don't want to upset the very, very vocal minority of people who have this as their bread and butter issue, transgender for all, men can be women, women can be men. Cut off body parts at age six. They don't want to offend those people. They know good and well that there are two genders. They know good and well that men can't get pregnant and have babies and this, that, and the other. But they will not offend that very vocal minority, but especially in California. Because a lot of their fundraising and a lot of their beneficiaries depend on that. religious issue to them, which is LGBTQ. That's their religion. But is it still, didn't Trump give them an off ramp by telling him we're going to war with DEI and we're pulling back from this and transgenderism? They see it as a 90-10 issue. I thought that this was going to be the green light for scientists, people have met the medical profession, to take the off ramp. No, because this for them is a religion. They are never going to let it go. Woke never went away. It went dormant for a while, but you're going to see it come roaring back because now they're capitalizing on maybe some discontent with Trump in the economy, and they're going to bring back all the woke. It's not like they're just bringing in the socialism stuff. All the woke is going to come along with it, which makes no sense when you have someone like a Zohran Mamdani who is queers for Palestine but also Islam rules the day. That doesn't really make sense. It doesn't align, but for them, it aligns if it leads to power and control. So it was interesting. Tuesday was the last semifinal game. And guess where the mayor of New York City spent it? Rikers Island, cut 34. People who are incarcerated here on Rikers, that they two are a part of New York City. The World Cup has been a magical moment for the entire city. These are New Yorkers, and they will be New Yorkers when they get out of Rikers. They're New Yorkers today. I wanted to make sure that we can celebrate this moment together. Your thoughts about him doing that. You know, I wonder about all the people that are impacted by the folks at Rikers and whatever they did. You know, the way Zohran Mamdani talks about them is just they just ended up there, right? They didn't do anything to end up there. Made a wrong turn. Yeah, they just, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and all shucks. They ended up there. And so he must comfort them. What about the families of the people that they murdered, raped, assaulted, robbed, whatever they did. What about those families and their comfort in the World Cup, right? But this is what he does over and over. They want these people among us. I guess at least they're honest about it. They want them all out. And he wants to close it down. He wants them all out on the street. There's not a single person that these far left wackos want to keep in custody. They want them all out. One just got elected on that platform. Yeah. So I don't even know what to say about that. When you talked before about where do kids go if they want to buy a house, you know in places like North Dakota is one of the fastest growing cities, especially for young people. You know why?

You make it possible to afford a house. You get more for your money. So you could do that. If your job is portable and you're starting in your career, there are places you can do these things. Well, and I'm from South Dakota, and we just have a budget surplus, I think, of about $70 million. Right. So South Dakota can do it, North Dakota can do it, Wyoming, Montana, all these other places. A lot of other states that can do it that offer a lot. I would say my home state of Tennessee right now, Nashville. I mean, we're courting paramount. Come to Tennessee. Starbucks came to Tennessee. I mean, everything is moving to the places where money is treated best. And that brings opportunity. So we're going to watch you from 5 to 8 on Saturday and Sunday. But first, next and 15 minutes, you're doing what? I'm going down to our number. And what's going to be your lead story? Do you even know yet? Or are you prepared for anything? We are prepared for anything and everything we might be talking about. Listen, we're not supposed to say, I've been told we're not supposed to say diarrhea. But we're going to be talking about it. That's a good tease. We will not be talking about it using the term diarrhea. So I have to say it as many times here. Right. So that I don't say it down there. If you wanted to hold off on that, you could have. Well, listen, they said no using that word there. So I figured with Brian Kilmeade, it's safe. We can go. We can say the D word. Check out, Tommy, all weekend long and are now kicked. Tommy, thanks so much. You could say whatever you want here, unlike that of the show. illuminating, intriguing, inculcating. I know some of these words. It's Brian Kilmeade.

From his mouth to your ears. It's Brian Kilmeade. Would you be for expanding the number of teams about? Absolutely. As it was proven this time, there was a lot of criticism beforehand. Countries that... We're up to it. We're going to be coming in. Well, most of them really played very well, played competitively, scared the heck out of some of the big teams. But most importantly, if FIFA's mission is to spread the sport around the world, you now have additional countries that have a stake in it, if you will, and also will have some financial benefit from it to grow the sport. And 64, in some ways, it's cleaner because you'll get rid of the third place teams. going on into the knockout round. So I'm all for it. So he's for it and it's more money too, but I will say this. more games to win in order to get to the finals. And in theory, a lot of guys get banged up in those games. It can really worry out as opposed to a shorter trip. But I'm fine with that. I'm curious to see what's going to happen. I think they're in four different countries next time too. So they're spreading out the wealth. And we'll see how the time shift it will be. I hope Fox is able to retain it. That's my fear because now the streamers come in there with the big money. They start blowing everybody out. I hope people can, I hope Fox finds it physically. feasibly reasonable to be able to afford it. about the match of itself. Argentina against Spain. Spain comes in European champions, Argentina World Cup champions, and Argentina, I think, comes in as the underdog. Zlatan Ibrahimovich is one of the fantastic stars to emerge from the commentator desk. A great player in his day. He knows what it's like to play against Argentina. He brought that perspective yesterday. We thought we'd bring it back. Cut 32. I played and I played against and weird. So you... They play with a lot of emotion. They're passionate people, players, and when you play against them, you feel them. They're aggressive. They provoke you. You've got to keep cool. And they always give 100%. It's a loyal player, players. And when you have them with you, you know they're going to do their job. You know they're going to fight for you and fight for themselves. So it's not easy to play against them. But my thing was, when you smash me, I'm going to smash your back. Yeah, he's a physical player and he's very cocky. And that came across on camera. Him and Alexei Lauer is too great. And Terry Henri has been fantastic. He used to be on the Red Bulls, but he also played for Barcelona. Dan Dachich, who's a general sports guy who's really getting into soccer on outkick. He talked about the fact is people are going to bet on this game. And people are betting. It has a lot to do with, I think, the ratings. It's fine.

think between betting, the sports betting, and pot. I think of the two most negative things that happen fundamentally in our country, legalizing both pervasively over the last 25 years. Here's Dan Dackage on what he expects in the final cut 31. Hey, I'm not betting against Messi. You better play the full 90-whatever-plus minutes because Messi, you mentioned it in the introduction, man. Messi shows up late. Got a chance Argentina does to be the third team ever to go back to back. I'm taking messy. Spain is terrific, though. Spain's defense is unprecedented. You mentioned the ball control. They don't turn it over. Yeah, so their defense only let up one goal, but they did get tied by Cape Verde early on, and we'll see what happens if Argentina does something you haven't done lately, and that score early and force Spain to go forward a little bit in order to go for a goal. That leaves a vulnerability in the counterattack. But I overall believe that I hope Argentina finds a way to win. I think Spain wins. When they took the – I saw France play, and they look so good. I was in a giant stadium there for the game. And they won handily against Croatia, and it was just toying with them. And they got some world-class players there. And then for France to lose 2-0, and I watched that game. And I thought they would dominate it systematically, unsensationally, but consistently by Spain, they win 2-0 in the semifinal. Now, there's going to be a – I know we don't do this. We used to do this all the time, NCAA. There's a third-place game. It's going to be England against England against – against France. And that'll be a great game. So see if England can rehab themselves. It means a lot of money. Now, the winning team gets $50 million. So I imagine they probably get maybe 10 million each or 15 million each on the third place game. So there's incentive to win that game. I know everyone will be watching. That'll be big news, but not as big at 3 o'clock the next day. So that'll be important. So we'll see what happens. In terms of what the president's doing today, president's going to be giving up the way the trophy on the field. Mr. President, some advice. Give the trophy up, but get out. Because what happens is the team rallies around the trophy and then you get enveloped in it. Not good. So the FIFA president should give it to the FIFA president or vice versa who gives it to the captain and then get out of there. That's key. Karoline Leavitt knows this is going to be fun for the president. Cut 29. We look forward to the final match on Sunday, and I know the president looks forward to attending, but I think the world saw that this president and this country is able to put on the greatest show in sports in the world. And we are a kind people, we are hardworking people, and we have the best country on the planet.

And I think people love it. I don't think anyone's going to host better. I think the stadiums get 70,000 people and they're all over the place. People want to actually come here and they want to play. So I'll be out there. And my prediction, again, Spain's going to win. But Argentina, I'm pulling for them because I'd like them to end up on top. My hope is that when a 39-year-old, Lino Messi comes here at 35. And then takes the field at 39. And they said, you're going back to Major League Soccer, your game's going to drop because the quality of play, your opponents and teammates are going to drop. That's why you never go to America. And that's wrong. What happened is David Beckham went over, I think went over to Real Madrid after leaving Los Angeles. played a high level, and then you have Messi come back and have the fantastic tournament he had at the age of 39 years old. It shows you. You can come to America. It might not be the Premier League yet, but your game does not have to fall. What was also caution to me, too, is don't want too many international superstars because the goal is really to grow some American players. I think 22 Major League Soccer players were in this tournament. Hopefully there'll be a lot more. Meanwhile, quick note, coming up on One Nation on Sunday night, I got, I got Mike Roe is going to be with us leading off. I'm going to talk to. Brian Mast about what the way forward is when it comes to Iran. I love the military plan that we have together now. I think it's been remarkably effective, and I think it's going to be a major breakthrough soon. I want to find out what he thinks about that. Brian Johnson is a guy who wants to live forever, never die. He has a terminal illness. How's it going to affect his longevity experiments? And of course, Tommy Laron is going to bring us the media moments that really matter. And Rob Blagojevich, why Donald Trump got him out of prison.