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Charlie Kirk is the Founder and President of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country with over 250,000 student members, over 150 full-time staff, and a presence on over 2,000 high school and college campuses nationwide. Charlie is also the Chairman of Students for Trump, which aims to activate one million new college voters on campuses in battleground states in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. His social media reaches over 100 million people per month and according to Axios, he is one of the "top 10 most engaged" Twitter handles in the world. He is also the host of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which regularly ranks among the top news shows on Apple podcast charts.
Josh Hammer Escapes Iranian Missile Attacks with Six-Month-Old Daughter and Praises Trump's Historic Victory
Josh Hammer shares the harrowing experience of evacuating his family from Israel during Iranian missile attacks, including taking his six-month-old daughter Esther to bomb shelters and undertaking a three-and-a-half-day evacuation journey organized by Governor Ron DeSantis. Hammer praises President Trump's strikes on Iran's nuclear program as one of the most astonishing victories by any U.S. president in his lifetime, accomplished in just 37 hours without American casualties or troops on the ground. He argues that Trump's actions represent a nationalist realist doctrine that neutralized a threat that has plagued the Middle East for decades, while defending Israel's strategic importance to American interests and addressing why younger generations are becoming more skeptical of supporting Israel.
Josh Hammer describes his family's terrifying experience in Israel when Iranian missile attacks began. The strikes started on a Friday afternoon as the Jewish Sabbath was coming in, exactly as everyone had anticipated. Hammer had to interrupt his Shabbat Friday evening prayers to rush his wife and six-month-old daughter Esther to a bomb shelter. This became a recurring ordeal over the next several days.
While the media covered the IDF and Mossad's tactical successes during the initial hours of operations inside Iran, what received less attention was that Israeli air defense was letting too many missiles through. Although most missiles were being intercepted, enough were getting through to create dangerous conditions. The situation became particularly dire when Israeli media reported that two people in a neighboring town died from a direct ballistic missile blast, even though they had gone to a bomb shelter. Hammer explains that these bomb shelters were built primarily with Hamas rockets and mortars in mind, not the 2,000-mile hypersonic ballistic missiles Iran was launching.
The Three-and-a-Half-Day Journey Home
Realizing the gravity of the situation, Hammer researched evacuation options and discovered a program that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had partnered with an organization called Greybel Rescue. Florida State Senator Jay Collins served as their point of contact to coordinate the evacuation.
The journey home took three and a half days and involved multiple stages. The family took a bus to the Jordanian-Israeli border, which Hammer describes as total chaos with many people trying to cross. They spent the night in Amman, Jordan, then flew from Jordan to Cyprus, which served as a hub for people fleeing the conflict. After spending a night in Cyprus, they boarded a DeSantis-chartered flight from Cyprus to Tampa. Governor DeSantis was waiting for them at the airport and held a press conference, asking Hammer to join him despite coming off a 13-hour flight with no sleep at 5:30 in the morning.
The Biblical Coincidence
Hammer points out a striking coincidence: the Iranian missile attacks began on June 13, 2025, which was his daughter Esther's six-month birthday. He had dedicated his book "Israel Civilization" to Esther, and the biblical Book of Esther takes place in ancient Persia, modern-day Iran. The fact that Persians were launching rockets at them on his daughter Esther's birthday had an almost divine, biblical element to it.
While acknowledging the horror of the situation, Hammer notes they had some advantages. They were staying in a house with a spare bedroom on the basement level next to the bomb shelter, so they moved their sleeping quarters there. This meant when sirens went off at 3:00 in the morning, they could immediately rush next door rather than navigate through the entire house with just 90 seconds to two minutes of warning time. He also reflects that having a six-month-old was easier in some ways than having older children. During the evacuation, he witnessed two Christian families from Texas visiting holy sites in Israel who had children aged three to seven, and watched the parents struggle to keep them entertained throughout the journey. The first State of Florida evacuation mission included 300 people on those buses.
Trump's Historic Victory Over Iran
Hammer describes President Trump's neutralization of Iran's nuclear program as one of the most astonishing victories from any U.S. president in his lifetime. He emphasizes the magnitude of this accomplishment by noting that for his entire adult life—he is 36 years old—the Iranian nuclear program has been a recurring thorny debate and a sword of Damocles hanging over the Middle East, the United States, and Western civilization.
The questions had always been: Do we reach a deal like Barack Obama did in 2015? Do we bomb them? Will it lead to a forever war and regime change? Or do we just let them acquire nuclear weapons? In approximately 37 hours, from B-2 bombers taking off in Missouri, flying to Iran, dropping 14 bunker busters, launching Tomahawk missiles from nuclear submarines, and returning home without a single shot fired at a B-2, Trump single-handedly changed the face of the region and arguably the world.
Trump neutralized the deadliest current threat not just to the Middle East but potentially to Europe, as Iran has ballistic missiles that can travel thousands of miles. They have also been working on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could potentially reach the Americas and the Western Hemisphere, though they are not there yet. In one action, Trump brought more peace, stability, and security to the Middle East and the United States than any recent predecessor.
Iran's Threat to America and the West
Hammer emphasizes that the entire purpose of Iran's current regime—their raison d'être—is to eliminate what they call the "little Satan" (Israel) and the "big Satan" (the United States). He dismisses the "why do they hate us" debate, arguing it simply does not matter. The fact is they literally do hate America and Israel, and this regime has demonstrated this hatred through decades of actions.
The Iranian regime started with the hostage crisis at the American embassy that ended Jimmy Carter's presidency. They funded Hezbollah to murder 241 Marines in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983. There was the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s. Qasem Soleimani supplied IEDs that murdered American service members in Iraq in the 2000s. The list goes on. This regime has significant American blood on its hands.
Hammer argues that if you can accomplish the goal of depriving this genocidal, maniacal, anti-American regime of the world's deadliest weapons at an infinitesimally low cost, why would you not do that? This operation was a demonstration of American military prowess and, most importantly, the Trump Doctrine at work.
The Trump Doctrine: Nationalist Realism
According to Hammer, the Trump Doctrine is neither neoconservative nor isolationist. Trump is a nationalist realist—a Jacksonian, a term that gets used sometimes. He is not looking to start wars. The Iran operation was not about starting a war but rather ending one—specifically, ending the Iranian regime's four-and-a-half-decade-long war waged directly and through various proxies against America and its allies.
Hammer describes this as a historic display of statesmanship that makes him proud to have voted for Donald Trump. He marvels at the fact that just two weeks prior, if someone had said Iran would have no nuclear weapon, no U.S. troops would be killed, no U.S. troops would be on the ground, there would be no permanent war, no talks of war in Congress, and the news cycle would be moving on, it would have been an incomprehensible accomplishment. Yet that is exactly what happened.
Addressing the Intelligence Leak Narrative
When asked about liberal narratives suggesting Trump's strikes on Iran were unsuccessful, Hammer dismisses these claims as completely false. While Trump stated the program has been "obliterated" and Hammer cannot personally verify that claim not having been to the Fordow nuclear facility, he expresses complete confidence that the leaker spreading contrary information is full of lies.
Hammer points out that the leak has all the markings of a "Natasha Bertrand operation." Bertrand is the Politico reporter who published the leak story, and her name should sound familiar because she was the same reporter who in 2020 first sought to dismiss the New York Post's bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation, citing the letter from 51 deep state intelligence officials including John Brennan and James Clapper.
Beyond the suspicious source, Hammer offers another reason for confidence: Israel's assessment. While acknowledging that every country should conduct its own evaluation and that the U.S. should not blindly trust what Israel says, in this particular situation Israel's position carries significant weight. The Iranian nuclear program represents a literal existential threat to Israel. The fact that Israel agreed to the Trump-imposed ceasefire almost immediately with virtually no questions asked indicates they are very satisfied that this existential threat has been severely neutralized, if not entirely eliminated. This has all the hallmarks of an anti-Trump deep state intelligence community leak.
Young People's Changing Views on Israel
Addressing polling showing that young people's views of Israel have declined, Hammer offers his analysis of why this is happening, particularly among Generation Z. His best guess is that for those who grew up in a post-9/11 environment—he was only 12 years old when 9/11 happened—there is a conflation between U.S. support for Israel and the forever wars that constituted the failed regime change wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, Hammer argues this is a flawed line of analysis for multiple reasons. First, there is a narrative that Israel convinced George W. Bush to invade Iraq, but nothing could be further from the truth. In 2002, both the President of Israel at the time, Shimon Peres, and the leader of the Israeli right, Ariel Sharon, literally told George W. Bush not to invade Iraq. They warned him that toppling Saddam Hussein would turn Iraq into an Iranian province overnight and destabilize the region. So that narrative has always been debunked.
Israel's Strategic Value to American Interests
Hammer presents what he considers a more important argument, which he advances in his book "Israel Civilization" in a dedicated chapter. It is imperative for young Americans, young conservatives, and young Christians to understand that Israel serves the American national interest in the region by often doing America's dirty work when it comes to pruning the jihadist excesses of groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Katib Hezbollah, the Houthis, and all the various proxies of the Iranian regime.
Israel's actions against the Iranian regime itself during the first days of the 12-day war did tremendous damage, making it possible for U.S. B-2 bombers to conduct their mission with Iranian missile defenses and radar completely obliterated, without a single shot fired at them. Hammer, a sports fan, compares what Israel and the U.S. accomplished to an alley-oop in basketball—like the early 2000s Kobe Bryant to Shaquille O'Neal plays. It was essentially a tag team operation to neutralize a hegemonic threat from a regime that chants not just "Death to Israel" but "Death to America" as well.
All of this serves the purpose of trying to stabilize the Middle East, which makes it easier for America to pivot to China, which represents the nation's biggest long-term threat. Educating the next generation about these strategic realities and the nuanced, complicated position that Israel occupies—a country surrounded by barbarians and a death cult—is critical work that needs to be done in the coming months and years.
Upcoming Debate at Student Action Summit
Hammer will be participating in a debate at the Student Action Summit, where he will face off against Dave Smith. Charlie Kirk will serve as moderator. While Kirk acknowledges he has big disagreements with Dave Smith's worldview, he notes that Smith seems like a well-intended person and that it's important to debate out these differences. The event will feature some of the boldest voices in the conservative movement, including Secretary Pete Hegseth, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Brett Cooper, Secretary Kristi Noem, Riley Gaines, Brandon Tatum, Jack Posobiec, Megyn Kelly, and Greg Gutfeld, among others.
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