Max Blumenthal Reports: Charlie Kirk and the Israel Lobby | Transcript

Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom
Streamed live on September 16, 2025

Max Blumenthal (with Anya Parampil) investigates recent claims that Charlie Kirk, the high-profile conservative commentator and founder of TPUSA, had begun pushing back against pro-Israel influence—and as a result, was being pressured, intimidated, and even offered funding by Israeli leaders or wealthy Zionist backers in exchange for staying in line. The conversation centers around these allegations.

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NAPOLITANO: Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, September 15th, 2025. Max Blumenthal is here with a report of his latest investigations on the events leading up to the murder of Charlie Kirk. Max, you’ve been doing unbelievable investigative reporting. What have you learned?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, following my September 12th report, which provided background about the mounting pressure that Charlie Kirk was under from pro-Israel forces, from Netanyahu‘s cutouts in the United States, I gathered more details. The piece hit like a sledgehammer. I think it spoke for a lot of people, particularly within the conservative movement, which is changing among the youth on the question of Israel. More people started coming out, more people started talking, and people were talking to me.

These were people who had knowledge of a tumultuous, stormy meeting held in the Hamptons during the first week of August. According to multiple sources with intimate knowledge of this meeting, it was convened by the billionaire ultra-Zionist financier Bill Aman, who is close to Netanyahu and his network in the United States. Charlie Kirk was summoned along with an array of young, vapid, very avaricious conservative influencers who seem to be in Israel’s back pocket, to set a very pro-Israel tone for this meeting.

According to one source, Charlie Kirk was hammered by Aman and others for allowing Israel critics—very prominent conservative voices like Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, or the anti-Zionist Jewish comedian Dave Smith—to appear at his events. In fact, Charlie Kirk was planning to host many of these same figures again in December. He had just added to his TPUSA major event, America Fest, the premier critic of Israel in Congress. I didn’t say Republican critic, I just said premier critic because that’s what she is now: Marjorie Taylor Greene. That reflected his shifting views.

Aman, according to multiple sources, held this meeting to basically bully Charlie Kirk into submission. Kirk walked away, according to one person, feeling like there was an attempt to blackmail him. He refused any offers of funding and also refused the offer to travel to Israel and meet with Netanyahu. Netanyahu disclosed this letter in the immediate wake of Kirk’s death but didn’t say whether Kirk had refused or accepted. I’ve learned since that he refused.

Beyond that, he was becoming so alienated by this crowd of pro-Israel enforcers that he was moving away from the Protestant church. This is what I’ve been told. Candace Owens just disclosed this on her livestream. Kirk was a Protestant—an evangelical Christian—as a young conservative voice.

NAPOLITANO: He was a Christian nationalist by his own words.

BLUMENTHAL: Yes. And he was pushing the idea of this Judeo-Christian alliance, which was like music to the ears of the pro-Israel funders. But now he was starting to attend Catholic mass with his wife Erica and moving in a different direction—what Candace Owens called a spiritual transformation.

The Catholics just don’t have the same conceptualization of American Christian nationalism and the Judeo-Christian alliance. This has never been, I don’t think, reported before. So he was undergoing a transformation: a singular figure in the Trump world, irreplaceable, a unique figure in that world. And he was moving on this question, and there really wasn’t anything they could do to stop him.

I mean, I’m sure there would have been attempts—there already were—through figures like Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin on Fox News to attack him and suggest maybe he should be removed. But you can’t just remove someone like that who has built this entire gigantic infrastructure around himself. So we really don’t know where things would have gone.

But these two stories together, I think, paint a picture of a wider history of where the conservative movement itself is going and the kind of astroturfing from pro-Israel influencers trying to prevent that.

NAPOLITANO: This will undermine Trump’s support on this issue substantially. So his good buddy, the vice president of the United States, is a Catholic convert. Candace Owens is a Catholic convert. Mrs. Kirk is a born and raised Roman Catholic. This probably terrified the Christian nationalists, the Mike Huckabee types, and their wealthy American—mainly New York—Zionist financiers. Do we know from your sources what Kirk himself thought of Netanyahu? Did he feel intimidated by Netanyahu?

BLUMENTHAL: Yes, absolutely. I think the reason that anyone initially started talking to me was that Netanyahu came out while Charlie Kirk’s body was still warm and started lying about him and trying to recast him as his best friend.

Now, it’s true: Charlie Kirk was, until fairly recently—certainly before October 7th, 2023—the most important gentile asset that Israel might have had today, possibly more important than Trump. Because Charlie Kirk was preaching the pro-Israel gospel to young people, and he was potentially on his way to becoming president or senator—someone very important to Israel.

So as soon as he started to make some noises after October 7th about Israel’s misdeeds, but particularly about Israel’s malign influence in Washington, and then he experienced the pressure from pro-Israel donors like Bill Aman, Netanyahu enters the picture. And Charlie Kirk, according to a longtime friend of his who I spoke to, considered Netanyahu a disgusting bully who was a manipulator and was fundamentally dishonest.

This stands in complete contrast with the picture Netanyahu has tried to paint in not just one, but I think five or maybe six tweets since Charlie Kirk was killed. And additionally, I think it’s important to recognize what Netanyahu was doing. He was trying to do the same thing he did after 9/11, when the Israeli publication Ma’ariv reported in 2008 that Netanyahu said, “9/11 is good for Israel.”

He thought he could exploit Charlie Kirk’s killing in a way that benefited Israel by pushing a narrative of religious warfare and Islamophobia inside the U.S. He blamed Islam, radical Muslims, and the left for killing Charlie Kirk before the suspect was even known, before anyone had even been caught. And so the truth and the reality about Charlie Kirk’s relationship with Netanyahu turns Netanyahu’s whole sectarian, militaristic narrative on its head.

NAPOLITANO: Here’s Charlie Kirk in August talking to Megyn Kelly, my friend and former colleague, about the people that are attacking him. Chris, cut number 14.

CHARLIE KIRK [ON THE MEGYN KELLY SHOW]: I think I have a bulletproof résumé showing my defense of Israel both on campus, on social media—to a great, you know, let’s just say, mockery and scorn at times—because I believe it. […] However, Megyn, you’re hitting on something very potent and important. Now, let me first say I don’t want to judge an entire group, because there have been many people in the pro-Israel world that have been very sweet, very kind, very nuanced. Very “Charlie, you know, you’re with us, you don’t have to agree all the time.”

However, and I will say this, the behavior by a lot, both privately and publicly, is pushing people like you and me away. […] My moral character is now being put into question, Megyn. Not my decisions—not like, “Hey, are you doing this? Is it smart or is it dumb?” But no: I am a bad person if I do this. And it’s—I could go… I mean, you saw it, Megyn. It was trending on Twitter, thousands of tweets and text messages.

And if I were to be charitable and generous, I will say the people that are attacking me are in a hyper-paranoid state because they’re at war, and war tends to make things black and white, and you’re a hammer looking for a nail. So I’m trying to be charitable, Megyn. Literally, I’m trying to cut as much slack as I can.

Right. I have less ability sometimes online to criticize the Israeli government without backlash than actual Israelis do. And that’s really, really weird, isn’t it, Megyn? That’s not right. […]

Personality types like you, myself, and Tucker—the more that you guys, privately and publicly, call our character into question, which is not isolated, right, Megyn? It would be one thing if it was one text or two texts. It is dozens of texts. […]

When the hostile reaction is that now Megyn and Charlie are enemies… boy, I’ll tell you, you’re going to—you’re not going to—I won’t say lose, but you will weaken and just basically deflate two of your strongest advocates if that continues.

NAPOLITANO: Right about the time that he was summoned to the Hamptons by Aman and company.

BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, I believe that was August 6th when he said that. I struggled to pinpoint the precise date of the meeting, but it was right around that time because I managed to dredge up Instagram photos from some of the influencers who I confirmed to be at the meeting, especially photos by someone named Xavier de Rouso, who I’d say very few people watching this have probably heard of.

NAPOLITANO: No, I never heard of him.

BLUMENTHAL: I hadn’t heard much about him before. I reached him on the phone like everyone else who attended this meeting that I reached. He was flustered, freaked out by my call, immediately went silent. He was in a kind of a state of panic. They’re all nervous about being identified with this meeting. Xavier de Rouso is an employee of PragerU, which is this conservative indoctrination outlet that focuses on youth, including young people.

NAPOLITANO: This is another Christian nationalist gaggle.

BLUMENTHAL: Run by Marissa Strain, who is a Jewish Zionist who served in Israel’s Unit 8200 cyber-spying division.

NAPOLITANO: Oh boy.

BLUMENTHAL: Xavier de Rouso was sent with Israeli government money to a Gaza humanitarian foundation site two weeks after that meeting in the Hamptons where he mocked the famine in Gaza in very disgusting fashion—said Hamas leaders are on Omnic because they’re getting so fat off all the food they’re getting. That’s his role. That’s the role of many of the other influencers who are sent there. That’s what Charlie Kirk was surrounded by there along with Bill Aman who apparently organized this entire thing, who has since, since October 7th, been strong-arming his way through institutions across this country to bully them into pro-Israel submission, and apparently his next target was Charlie Kirk because of what Charlie Kirk was doing at TPUSA—specifically allowing Tucker Carlson to come on stage—and referring to Bill Aman as a Jeffrey Epstein associate who was a scam artist and a charlatan who had made his money through nebulous means. And so it all kind of fits together.

NAPOLITANO: Why do you think Netanyahu felt the need to go on national television and expressly deny that Israel assassinated Kirk? I mean, who does that?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, why—why do millions of people— I mean, you see it all over social media. They think Israel had some involvement because of the way they’ve been conducting themselves around the world in the region. Netanyahu is not just waging a seven-front war; he’s carrying out an assassination spree in broad daylight all across the region including inside a U.S. ally. And you have this record of Charlie Kirk which backs up everything I heard on background going out in public and you can see he’s anguished, he’s angry, he’s almost like on the verge of going crazy because he’s under so much pressure from Netanyahu’s cutouts in the United States. So people are taking the reality and taking it to another level where it becomes an unsubstantiated theory. I have no evidence that Israel had any role in Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but they’re taking it there because of what they know about Israel and its capabilities and its ruthlessness, along with the fact that the official story just keeps collapsing and is so murky and filled with contradictions that no one knows really what to make of any of this.

NAPOLITANO: Did you learn from your sources if Kirk believed that President Trump was frightened of Benjamin Netanyahu?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, I don’t know what Kirk thought and I’ve never met him even though I’ve been following him for about 10 years. One of my sources knows people in the White House—the Trump White House is very accessible, I should say. I’ve gotten sources in there, very good sources, and I can tell you some of the things they’ve been saying. This one particular source said—this is something I’ve been hearing around Trump’s circle for years—that Trump was always afraid of assassination because of all the attacks he was under, because he was always compared to Hitler and so on. Then he faced a real assassination attempt. So of course he’s afraid of that. He’s very afraid of Netanyahu and his capabilities. And during one of Netanyahu’s many trips to Washington this year, Israeli agents placed electronic devices on Secret Service emergency response vehicles on two separate occasions. This is what a source told me with very…

NAPOLITANO: Did the Secret Service arrest these Israeli agents?

BLUMENTHAL: They found the devices, and this is what I was told by a Trump insider. I can’t call up the Secret Service and ask them to confirm this; they just wouldn’t even acknowledge it. It’s not something that’s going to happen. But there’s a precedent. In 2019, three high-ranking former U.S. officials told Politico that Israel had done the exact same thing—placing Stingray cell-phone surveillance devices around the White House and other sensitive locations throughout Washington to surveil Donald Trump’s phone communications. Who would get access to those locations? You can’t just send some Mossad operative up in there; he’s not going to get access. But Benjamin Netanyahu has access and his own security team. In 2017, a British paper reported that Netanyahu went into Boris Johnson’s personal toilet and left a listening device; British security found it. That’s in The Telegraph, which is a pro-Israel publication. I wouldn’t just dismiss this—there’s a strong precedent, and it frightens people inside the White House when you have a foreign intelligence agency carrying out a genocide that can fund campaigns through cutouts like Bill Aman. Netanyahu is calling into the White House demanding personnel changes all the time, from what I’ve heard. You think you can defy them and not provide them weapons when they are in this war they consider existential? No. So it stands to reason that Trump is afraid, and that’s what I was told by an insider with access to Trump.

NAPOLITANO: You think more is going to come out on all this? You’ve been researching this since Charlie was murdered for four days now.

BLUMENTHAL: After I put out the first story, more information came in that dovetailed with rumors on social media and provided details. I think this is uncovering a history of the U.S.–Israel special relationship that’s collapses because when you lose someone like Charlie Kirk politically—if he refuses funding, refuses Netanyahu’s offer to back his organization—you’ve lost the game.

NAPOLITANO: Did he refuse to fly to Israel and meet with Netanyahu?

BLUMENTHAL: That’s what I was told, and Candace Owens, who was closer to Charlie, said on her livestream that he rejected the offer. Netanyahu delivered a video eulogy and held up a letter he said he sent inviting Kirk to Israel two weeks before his death. Why would you do that if Kirk refused? How much of a sick sociopath do you have to be? Bill Aman, the day after Kirk was killed, tweeted he had a meal with Kirk this summer and that Kirk was a giant of a man. That’s deranged when the reality was this was described as an intervention where Aman hammered Kirk and put him under pressure. We’re dealing with sociopaths here.

NAPOLITANO: Max, you’re second to none when it comes to the skullduggery you go through, your courage, and your understanding of these interrelated factors. I can’t thank you enough. If more comes out and you want this audience, let us know.

BLUMENTHAL: Let me say one thing I’ve been hearing from a Trump administration source: they don’t feel they’re hearing enough from the FBI. The FBI is not being transparent. That’s how a lot of Americans feel. The longer that goes on—

NAPOLITANO: Transparent over what?

BLUMENTHAL: They’re not sharing information. They want to see video of the muzzle flash from the roof and see where the shot came from. Since that’s not forthcoming, the public is becoming more conspiratorial, and this will fester until we get answers. We need a real investigation into this and into the Ryan Ruth assassination attempt, since he was connected to Ukraine and its international legion and was having meetings on Capitol Hill. It’s strange how that was buried, as were the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting.

NAPOLITANO: Do people in the White House fear that Robinson did not pull the fatal trigger?

BLUMENTHAL: I think anyone not getting answers in the administration has suspicion and questions. I’m content to believe the official story if it’s proven with evidence. But where is that? Also, I have no evidence Israel played any role; I’m not saying that. Consider how the public will react in a digital panopticon where everything is filmed and we still have missing angles.

NAPOLITANO: So about two hours ago, Dan Bongino told Fox News they’re looking for an accomplice.

BLUMENTHAL: I don’t even know who to trust. Do we trust this podcaster guy? But yeah—

NAPOLITANO: He’s a podcaster guy, but he’s number two in the FBI. He’s certainly unhappy, but he’s there.

BLUMENTHAL: Cash Patel said there was a manifesto left by Tyler Robinson but it disappeared or was destroyed; they’re going to try to forensically reconstruct it. Everything could come together by tomorrow, but right now there isn’t enough to clearly convict a lone-wolf shooter, and the public will develop its own theories.

NAPOLITANO: Thank you, Max. Thanks for all your work.

BLUMENTHAL: Thanks a lot, Judge.

NAPOLITANO: Of course.