September 11, 2025 • 23 mins
(Sept 11, 2025)
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk dead after being shot at Utah university event. A new era of American political violence is upon us. September 11th: One World Trade Center facts. The beginning of the end of NATO.
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk dead after being shot at Utah university event. A new era of American political violence is upon us. September 11th: One World Trade Center facts. The beginning of the end of NATO.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listen Saints k I AM six forty the Bill
Handles show on demand on the iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
FFI AM six forty Handle here. It is a Thursday morning,
September eleventh.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
A lot going on.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
First of all, twenty four years today we commemorate what
happened at the World Trade Centers in New York, and
so I'll tell you a little bit about that later on,
but yesterday, and this is a bigger deal than I
at first thought I sort of missed the importance of
(00:40):
Charlie Kirk. But then in retrospect, Amy was telling me
what's going on. I heard, you know, you have to
give him a lot of credit for, in fact putting
Donald Trump into the White House, not only the first
time around, but this last time. And he did that
by plugging into the feelings of the teenage conservative campus activists.
(01:07):
Prior to Charlie Kirk, everybody assumed that teenagers, that college students, specifically,
they were liberal.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Why go after a liberal crowd if you're a Democrat
and you are liberal. Well, it turns out that there
is a more than a fair number of conservative students
out there. And Charlie Kirk just pegged into that. He
was able to grab that quote political market, if you will,
(01:36):
and it made him a very big political force, rallying
the right on college campuses. And here we go another assassination.
He was killed yesterday at one of these rallies, and
ironically enough, talking about mass shootings, as he was killed
(01:57):
by a rifle bullet shot him in the neck and he,
I assume bled out at that point. We don't know
at this point the exact cause of death. We know
he was shot. And so that's a story in and
of itself. We've gotten to the point where now political
diatribes are at the end of guns. Right, Just crazy,
(02:22):
isn't it. Political arguments are at the end of guns.
So he created an organization called Turning Point and it
was a get out the vote effort for Trump in
the twenty twenty four campaign and trying to energize disaffected conservatives.
That's the other thing the Democratic Party just missed, how
(02:44):
the conservative movement is upset about what's going on in
a more in the United States, how they lost confidence
in the United States and what it stands for. And
Charlie Kirk was able to just put his I'm right
on it and it was very close to Donald Trump.
He's become or became a confident of Trump now a
(03:08):
very good friend. And he talked about the United States
in an apocalyptic state. He had a podcast, a radio
show on the campaign trail, and during a campaign stop
in Georgia last fall with Trump, he said, Democrats stand
for everything God hates. I mean, that's a tough one.
(03:32):
The problem is there are plenty of conservatives who think
exactly that. How many times have you heard the assassination
of Donald Trump? And thank goodness, the assassin missed, the
purported assassin missed.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
It was not just missing, It was not just luck.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It was God determining that Donald Trump was going to
stay here and save our country. Now, how about that
poor firefighter that got hit behind Trump? Well maybe God
I didn't have such a good feeling about him. And
he said at a rally, maybe the same one. This
is a Christian state. I'd like to see it that way.
(04:14):
And at one point he is screaming in Georgia and
he gets the chant going, Christ is king.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Christ is King.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And that was a political statement for him. A staunch
supporter of gun rights, he even said that the cost
of some killings in the United States is worth it
to keep the Second Amendment going. He started turning point
when he was eighteen years old. It was that early
(04:44):
on he was able to ascertain the political view of
the conservative right on college campuses, which obviously is enormous now.
As Neil and I were talking about, one of the
things about Charlie Kirk is he was open to just
political discussions. He would take anybody on, He would take
any questions he believed in an open discussion with anybody,
(05:08):
much like Donald Trump does.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Donald Trump takes questions from everybody.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
He cannot fly on Air Force one or doesn't fly
on Air Force one without going back into the press
pool every time and talks to the reporters. Believe me,
Biden never did that. Obama never did that. Very few
and far between and then Charlie Kirk argued there was
no true separation of church and state, which you can
(05:36):
argue and forward that. He wrote, in today's America, the
Christian faithful are faced with a terrifying and broad array
of dangers and threats. We are menaced not by new
false gods, but by the return of demons from false
from long ago. He argued for a new conservatism. Advocated
(06:01):
for freedom of speech, but not normal, not the freedom
of speech that I think we believe in. He challenged
big tech, challenged the media, which is in no small
way very popular. But the bottom line, do I say this,
I think it's fair. He was a fanatic in terms
(06:24):
of where he thinks America should go. Yet look at
his success extraordinary. One point he is dead on. Not
only is it there's a huge swath of conservatives in
the on the college campuses. Now, the philosophy beforehand, or
(06:46):
the thinking was that there really weren't No, there weren't
really weren't any conservatives in the world of college campuses.
Certainly the professors are very left leaning. And he, as
I said, he was able to peg on, he was
able to can use the word infiltrate. But he's able
to see the conservatism that existed that heretofore very few
(07:06):
people did. And I want to make big a big
point about talk radio that we engage in every morning.
There is no such thing as liberal talk radio in
this country. It just does not exist, and it is
it is what n p r uh, Well, okay, I'll
(07:27):
buy that, but that's yeah, animal, Yeah, we're not talking.
I'm talking about what we do commercial based talk radio,
where we talk to people who buy products traditional radio.
There is no room for us who are not conservative,
who are not right wing. It's just the way this
(07:47):
country is going and it's been that way forever.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
And Charlie Kirk was able to expand on that issue.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
And the shame of it is he was shot and
that's well, it's the next topic. It's a new era
of political violence. It's here. What does this really mean?
And the problem is is this is how now there
is a discourse between fanatics and unfortunately there are too
(08:18):
many fanatics in this country. Are we entering in a
new era of American political violence? And we have been
here before nineteen sixty eight. We were here And one
of the issues is the polarization and this is basically
the major issue. How many conservatives are so upset they're quaking,
(08:45):
and when you have how many liberals looked at the
assassination of President Trump And I can't tell you how
many times I've heard they shot the wrong guy. It
was off by two centimeters or two It is a
question of where we are and the violence and can
(09:08):
we explain the violence? I think so I think, and
this is where the Republicans have done a much better
job of connecting with the electorate, particularly Donald Trump and
particularly Charlie Kirk. Even more so, Charlie Kirk was able
to plug into the satis dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction of the conservative
(09:36):
movement in the college population. And we didn't really understand.
We heard, are who are not uh politically to the
right wing. And here is what's happening when Americans are dissatisfied,
when we distrust the system. Where in many conservative circles,
(09:58):
for example, uh, the administration, the liberal administration, they don't
listen to us.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
We don't exist.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
How many times have you heard that America consists of
two coasts East coast, West coast and there's nothing in between. Well,
there's plenty in between. And those are called Americans who vote,
Americans who are active Americans who are dissatisfied what's going on.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And legitimately, so.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
You have large swaths of America that were ignored, that
were not treated well, that were given now not given
breaks at all, and at some point you just go,
we're done. And those people who can plug into that
(10:48):
read the conservative right, certainly not the liberal left, they're
going to react. Now, the vast majority react in the
voting booth as they go. And then you have the crazies.
And we don't know what the motive is with the
killing of Charlie Kirk. But I know what the motive is,
(11:11):
and I'll tell you what the motive is. It's political.
I do not believe this does not have political overtones
to it. I completely think that it is political. I
don't think it was a random act by a crazy person.
I think it's way beyond that. And that tells us
(11:31):
where we are. And the shooting of George Floyd that
showed where we were politically. The shooting, yeah, oh no,
I'm sorry. That's not the shooting. The killing of George
Floyd and how people reacted to it, and it was
(11:55):
a policeman that did it, and how people reacted so
violently on both sides. What happened in nineteen sixty eight
when you had the assassination of Martin Luther King and
Robert Kennedy, you know the reaction, and we're back to that.
We're back to this incredibly reactive, dissatisfied group of people,
(12:19):
and unfortunately, we're going to see more of this because
that's where we are, because you know what it's I mean,
the politicians are all screaming exactly the same thing. This
is file, this is horrible, This is terrible, This shouldn't happen.
And most of us, who were somewhere in the middle
and not completely to the left or the right, believe that.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
But there are a lot.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Of people you secretly talk to, people who are telling
you their real feelings.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
You'll see both sides of that, all right.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Twenty four years ago today, the attack and the destruction
of the World Trade Center buildings, the two build things
that were iconic and became in many ways after the
Statue of Liberty, the semblance of or at least uh,
you know, the a what's the word I'm looking for?
(13:16):
I guess it became after the after the statue, just
a acknowledgment of who we are, as fair to say, movies, television, Uh,
there it was, you know, were there they were, the
World Trade Centers and coming down. It was just absolutely
(13:37):
horrific for all of us. Two incidents that I think
put KFI on the map. One was the O J case.
Uh that was covered and it was extraordinary and certainly
in the history of kfi UH. The other one was
the World Trade Center the attack, and I think the
attack on the World Trade and Center was more important
because it affected every single American very deeply. And by
(14:01):
the way, if you were at all interested, there's the
audio of me covering this KFIAM six forty slash bill
because as I was on the air watching this live,
as we were discovering what happened, and it was, needless
to say, extraordinary, describing the towers being hit, describing the
(14:24):
towers coming down, describing the attacks as a terrorist attack,
describing that the United States was under attack, which had
not happened since well a couple of times. The World
Trade Center once was attacked in the basement, and a
few other times, but nothing like the destruction of these buildings.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
And some of the facts about the World Trade Center.
It opened.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
The museum actually opened in twenty fourteen, and it ended
a chapter in New York City history. Was built in
remembrance of the victims of that attack. It was not
just rebuilt, which it wasn't. For example, there are two
large square spool pools which everybody knows, everybody has seen.
(15:13):
Each one has that waterfall coming over the edge, and
those are in the exact spots that the twin towers stood,
the exact footprints, and if you go there, which I
have gone there a couple of times, it's very tranquil.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
New York is very.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Loud, very bustling. You hear a lot on the streets,
people yell at each other. Walking into that area is
a trankful, quiet place, and you know it's a very different,
different place. Each of the victims' names inscribed on the
sides of the pools, and not in alphabetical order either,
and people leave roses next to the names of people
(15:53):
they knew. Michelle knew that I was going, and she
had asked me to bring flowers to someone that was
very close to her family, and I found that person
and I put flowers there. It has one hundred and
four floors seventy one office space, and the General Service
Administration is in there, and Conde Nass is in there,
(16:15):
fifty five thousand square feet of retail space, connections to
eleven New York subways, so it's very much in a
live building.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
It's not just a memorial.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
They were able to pull off a couple of extraordinary
things with a Royal trade center in remembrance of the attack,
and that is a very trankful, tranquil spot in which
people could contemplate what happened and see the names of
their loved ones. And at the same time it's a
bustling center and putting those two together is not easy.
(16:48):
Go to memorials all over the world and find and
see if this happens any place. It stands at seventeen
hundred and seventy six feet. You think, now there was
a whole argument, is that the tallest building in the country,
Is it not?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Is it the tallest in the Western Hemisphere? Is it not?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Well, there's a spire and that's not an active, usable space.
But they wanted to bring it up to They want
to bring it up to the level of the tallest building.
And twenty thirteen it was officially declared the tallest building
in New York America the Western Hemisphere. And you haven't
heard of this organization, the Council on Tall Buildings and
(17:31):
Urban habitat exactly Neil is going, what the hell is that?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
And in terms of building.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
This building for eight hundred metric tons of structural steel,
forty nine thousand cubic yards of concrete, I mean far,
far more than with the building code recognizes and demands.
Now it's important to keep in more that when the
towers went down, those buildings met every code that existed
(18:06):
in New York, and there was an argument about where
they built strongly enough. Did they have the ability to
withstand this kind of attack. We don't even know if
this could stand this kind of attack, but the building codes,
they've gone far in excess to the building codes, which
they did not do when the towers went down. Developers
(18:29):
designed it to basically be one of the safest buildings
in the world, fireproof, additional staircases for first first responders
much more than needed, exceeds all of the building in
safety codes seventy three elevators they travel as fast as
twenty three miles an hour. And that I was twenty
(18:49):
three miles an hour. That doesn't seem very fast. We'll
let me give you an idea ground floor to the
one hundred and second floor in less than sixty seconds,
making it one of the fastest elevators in the world.
It's also sustainable, recycled construction debris and materials. It generates
power internally constructed to collect rain water to care for
(19:15):
the plaus's greenery, and one of the most poignant aspects
is one of the trees that was planted around the
memorial lived through the attack on nine to eleven. It's
known as the Survivor Tree, and that was recovered from
the debris and replanted on the site of the One
World Trade Center, and today it's recognized as simple of
(19:36):
rebirth and survival. This was I think the argument is
fair to say the worst attack on our ground in
the history of our country. And out of this comes
and I believe everybody understands this and believes it an
extraordinary response and the remembrance of what happened. Okay, now
(20:00):
here's the story about NATO, and the question is is
NATO dead and what is NATO about. Of course, it
was the North Atlanta Treaty organization to fight against the
invasion of Russia into Western Europe. So a bunch of
countries got together, I think, led by the United States
and one of the articles and now there's twenty eight members.
(20:20):
I believe Article five, if one country is attacked, all
countries are attacked. Well, it looks like one country was
attacked and that is Poland.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
With the Russian drones.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
So that means what that means all countries in NATO
do nothing. That's what NATO really means. Now, NATO does nothing.
It is not a viable force anymore. And Putin knows
about it. The President is probably our president is probably
(20:56):
the strongest president in terms of protecting NATO that's out there.
And he has moved some ships into the Middle East
as oosed and closer to Western Europe or closer to
Europe as somehow showing that the United States is still
a force. In reality has no interest. He wants Europe
(21:18):
to take care of itself. It's that simple. He wants
the United States to stay away from any of these
fights because he is an isolationist and the plan is
for Europe to build up its forces. So in case
of a war with Putin, guess what happens. They do
(21:38):
it without the United States. NATO is gone for the
most part, and there's good and bad to it. The
good part of getting rid of NATO and those that
believe what the President is doing is we're not getting involved.
I mean, we'll supply arms like we do to the Ukraine,
but we're not getting involved. And here is where Putin
(21:59):
is a lot smarter than any nation, and certainly a
lot smarter than President Trump. The only quote attack on Russia,
other than what Ukraine is doing and its defensive, defensive
move the only attack is sanctions, of which the president
won't do against Russia.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
He talks about it. Matter of fact.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
He he went ahead and sanctioned UH went ahead and
sanctioned UH. What India because it was buying it was
buying Russian oil, but didn't sanction Russia.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
And Putin has two choices. One he's gonna lose a war.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
There's no question if there if if NATO came in
and fought Putin, it would win. There's no chance that
Putin could fight NATO, not even close or threatened nuclear war,
and of course with no intent, because if he does
unleash a nuclear attack, well he goes into the bunker,
(23:02):
of course he does, so he's not going to be hit.
Then he comes out of the bunker and there's nobody
left to govern. The post apocalyptic movies are no longer
movies anymore. They become documentaries. And it all has to
do with this myth of NATO. And Putin has read
(23:25):
this completely and perfectly. I tell you, Putin is no
dumb guy, not even a little bit. And he is
far more sophisticated than is President Trump or any of
the leaders out there. All right, kf I am sixty.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Catch my Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
You're listen Saints k I AM six forty the Bill
Handles show on demand on the iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
FFI AM six forty Handle here. It is a Thursday morning,
September eleventh.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
A lot going on.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
First of all, twenty four years today we commemorate what
happened at the World Trade Centers in New York, and
so I'll tell you a little bit about that later on,
but yesterday, and this is a bigger deal than I
at first thought I sort of missed the importance of
(00:40):
Charlie Kirk. But then in retrospect, Amy was telling me
what's going on. I heard, you know, you have to
give him a lot of credit for, in fact putting
Donald Trump into the White House, not only the first
time around, but this last time. And he did that
by plugging into the feelings of the teenage conservative campus activists.
(01:07):
Prior to Charlie Kirk, everybody assumed that teenagers, that college students, specifically,
they were liberal.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Why go after a liberal crowd if you're a Democrat
and you are liberal. Well, it turns out that there
is a more than a fair number of conservative students
out there. And Charlie Kirk just pegged into that. He
was able to grab that quote political market, if you will,
(01:36):
and it made him a very big political force, rallying
the right on college campuses. And here we go another assassination.
He was killed yesterday at one of these rallies, and
ironically enough, talking about mass shootings, as he was killed
(01:57):
by a rifle bullet shot him in the neck and he,
I assume bled out at that point. We don't know
at this point the exact cause of death. We know
he was shot. And so that's a story in and
of itself. We've gotten to the point where now political
diatribes are at the end of guns. Right, Just crazy,
(02:22):
isn't it. Political arguments are at the end of guns.
So he created an organization called Turning Point and it
was a get out the vote effort for Trump in
the twenty twenty four campaign and trying to energize disaffected conservatives.
That's the other thing the Democratic Party just missed, how
(02:44):
the conservative movement is upset about what's going on in
a more in the United States, how they lost confidence
in the United States and what it stands for. And
Charlie Kirk was able to just put his I'm right
on it and it was very close to Donald Trump.
He's become or became a confident of Trump now a
(03:08):
very good friend. And he talked about the United States
in an apocalyptic state. He had a podcast, a radio
show on the campaign trail, and during a campaign stop
in Georgia last fall with Trump, he said, Democrats stand
for everything God hates. I mean, that's a tough one.
(03:32):
The problem is there are plenty of conservatives who think
exactly that. How many times have you heard the assassination
of Donald Trump? And thank goodness, the assassin missed, the
purported assassin missed.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
It was not just missing, It was not just luck.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It was God determining that Donald Trump was going to
stay here and save our country. Now, how about that
poor firefighter that got hit behind Trump? Well maybe God
I didn't have such a good feeling about him. And
he said at a rally, maybe the same one. This
is a Christian state. I'd like to see it that way.
(04:14):
And at one point he is screaming in Georgia and
he gets the chant going, Christ is king.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Christ is King.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And that was a political statement for him. A staunch
supporter of gun rights, he even said that the cost
of some killings in the United States is worth it
to keep the Second Amendment going. He started turning point
when he was eighteen years old. It was that early
(04:44):
on he was able to ascertain the political view of
the conservative right on college campuses, which obviously is enormous now.
As Neil and I were talking about, one of the
things about Charlie Kirk is he was open to just
political discussions. He would take anybody on, He would take
any questions he believed in an open discussion with anybody,
(05:08):
much like Donald Trump does.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Donald Trump takes questions from everybody.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
He cannot fly on Air Force one or doesn't fly
on Air Force one without going back into the press
pool every time and talks to the reporters. Believe me,
Biden never did that. Obama never did that. Very few
and far between and then Charlie Kirk argued there was
no true separation of church and state, which you can
(05:36):
argue and forward that. He wrote, in today's America, the
Christian faithful are faced with a terrifying and broad array
of dangers and threats. We are menaced not by new
false gods, but by the return of demons from false
from long ago. He argued for a new conservatism. Advocated
(06:01):
for freedom of speech, but not normal, not the freedom
of speech that I think we believe in. He challenged
big tech, challenged the media, which is in no small
way very popular. But the bottom line, do I say this,
I think it's fair. He was a fanatic in terms
(06:24):
of where he thinks America should go. Yet look at
his success extraordinary. One point he is dead on. Not
only is it there's a huge swath of conservatives in
the on the college campuses. Now, the philosophy beforehand, or
(06:46):
the thinking was that there really weren't No, there weren't
really weren't any conservatives in the world of college campuses.
Certainly the professors are very left leaning. And he, as
I said, he was able to peg on, he was
able to can use the word infiltrate. But he's able
to see the conservatism that existed that heretofore very few
(07:06):
people did. And I want to make big a big
point about talk radio that we engage in every morning.
There is no such thing as liberal talk radio in
this country. It just does not exist, and it is
it is what n p r uh, Well, okay, I'll
(07:27):
buy that, but that's yeah, animal, Yeah, we're not talking.
I'm talking about what we do commercial based talk radio,
where we talk to people who buy products traditional radio.
There is no room for us who are not conservative,
who are not right wing. It's just the way this
(07:47):
country is going and it's been that way forever.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
And Charlie Kirk was able to expand on that issue.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
And the shame of it is he was shot and
that's well, it's the next topic. It's a new era
of political violence. It's here. What does this really mean?
And the problem is is this is how now there
is a discourse between fanatics and unfortunately there are too
(08:18):
many fanatics in this country. Are we entering in a
new era of American political violence? And we have been
here before nineteen sixty eight. We were here And one
of the issues is the polarization and this is basically
the major issue. How many conservatives are so upset they're quaking,
(08:45):
and when you have how many liberals looked at the
assassination of President Trump And I can't tell you how
many times I've heard they shot the wrong guy. It
was off by two centimeters or two It is a
question of where we are and the violence and can
(09:08):
we explain the violence? I think so I think, and
this is where the Republicans have done a much better
job of connecting with the electorate, particularly Donald Trump and
particularly Charlie Kirk. Even more so, Charlie Kirk was able
to plug into the satis dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction of the conservative
(09:36):
movement in the college population. And we didn't really understand.
We heard, are who are not uh politically to the
right wing. And here is what's happening when Americans are dissatisfied,
when we distrust the system. Where in many conservative circles,
(09:58):
for example, uh, the administration, the liberal administration, they don't
listen to us.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
We don't exist.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
How many times have you heard that America consists of
two coasts East coast, West coast and there's nothing in between. Well,
there's plenty in between. And those are called Americans who vote,
Americans who are active Americans who are dissatisfied what's going on.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And legitimately, so.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
You have large swaths of America that were ignored, that
were not treated well, that were given now not given
breaks at all, and at some point you just go,
we're done. And those people who can plug into that
(10:48):
read the conservative right, certainly not the liberal left, they're
going to react. Now, the vast majority react in the
voting booth as they go. And then you have the crazies.
And we don't know what the motive is with the
killing of Charlie Kirk. But I know what the motive is,
(11:11):
and I'll tell you what the motive is. It's political.
I do not believe this does not have political overtones
to it. I completely think that it is political. I
don't think it was a random act by a crazy person.
I think it's way beyond that. And that tells us
(11:31):
where we are. And the shooting of George Floyd that
showed where we were politically. The shooting, yeah, oh no,
I'm sorry. That's not the shooting. The killing of George
Floyd and how people reacted to it, and it was
(11:55):
a policeman that did it, and how people reacted so
violently on both sides. What happened in nineteen sixty eight
when you had the assassination of Martin Luther King and
Robert Kennedy, you know the reaction, and we're back to that.
We're back to this incredibly reactive, dissatisfied group of people,
(12:19):
and unfortunately, we're going to see more of this because
that's where we are, because you know what it's I mean,
the politicians are all screaming exactly the same thing. This
is file, this is horrible, This is terrible, This shouldn't happen.
And most of us, who were somewhere in the middle
and not completely to the left or the right, believe that.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
But there are a lot.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Of people you secretly talk to, people who are telling
you their real feelings.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
You'll see both sides of that, all right.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Twenty four years ago today, the attack and the destruction
of the World Trade Center buildings, the two build things
that were iconic and became in many ways after the
Statue of Liberty, the semblance of or at least uh,
you know, the a what's the word I'm looking for?
(13:16):
I guess it became after the after the statue, just
a acknowledgment of who we are, as fair to say, movies, television, Uh,
there it was, you know, were there they were, the
World Trade Centers and coming down. It was just absolutely
(13:37):
horrific for all of us. Two incidents that I think
put KFI on the map. One was the O J case.
Uh that was covered and it was extraordinary and certainly
in the history of kfi UH. The other one was
the World Trade Center the attack, and I think the
attack on the World Trade and Center was more important
because it affected every single American very deeply. And by
(14:01):
the way, if you were at all interested, there's the
audio of me covering this KFIAM six forty slash bill
because as I was on the air watching this live,
as we were discovering what happened, and it was, needless
to say, extraordinary, describing the towers being hit, describing the
(14:24):
towers coming down, describing the attacks as a terrorist attack,
describing that the United States was under attack, which had
not happened since well a couple of times. The World
Trade Center once was attacked in the basement, and a
few other times, but nothing like the destruction of these buildings.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
And some of the facts about the World Trade Center.
It opened.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
The museum actually opened in twenty fourteen, and it ended
a chapter in New York City history. Was built in
remembrance of the victims of that attack. It was not
just rebuilt, which it wasn't. For example, there are two
large square spool pools which everybody knows, everybody has seen.
(15:13):
Each one has that waterfall coming over the edge, and
those are in the exact spots that the twin towers stood,
the exact footprints, and if you go there, which I
have gone there a couple of times, it's very tranquil.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
New York is very.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Loud, very bustling. You hear a lot on the streets,
people yell at each other. Walking into that area is
a trankful, quiet place, and you know it's a very different,
different place. Each of the victims' names inscribed on the
sides of the pools, and not in alphabetical order either,
and people leave roses next to the names of people
(15:53):
they knew. Michelle knew that I was going, and she
had asked me to bring flowers to someone that was
very close to her family, and I found that person
and I put flowers there. It has one hundred and
four floors seventy one office space, and the General Service
Administration is in there, and Conde Nass is in there,
(16:15):
fifty five thousand square feet of retail space, connections to
eleven New York subways, so it's very much in a
live building.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
It's not just a memorial.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
They were able to pull off a couple of extraordinary
things with a Royal trade center in remembrance of the attack,
and that is a very trankful, tranquil spot in which
people could contemplate what happened and see the names of
their loved ones. And at the same time it's a
bustling center and putting those two together is not easy.
(16:48):
Go to memorials all over the world and find and
see if this happens any place. It stands at seventeen
hundred and seventy six feet. You think, now there was
a whole argument, is that the tallest building in the country,
Is it not?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Is it the tallest in the Western Hemisphere? Is it not?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Well, there's a spire and that's not an active, usable space.
But they wanted to bring it up to They want
to bring it up to the level of the tallest building.
And twenty thirteen it was officially declared the tallest building
in New York America the Western Hemisphere. And you haven't
heard of this organization, the Council on Tall Buildings and
(17:31):
Urban habitat exactly Neil is going, what the hell is that?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
And in terms of building.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
This building for eight hundred metric tons of structural steel,
forty nine thousand cubic yards of concrete, I mean far,
far more than with the building code recognizes and demands.
Now it's important to keep in more that when the
towers went down, those buildings met every code that existed
(18:06):
in New York, and there was an argument about where
they built strongly enough. Did they have the ability to
withstand this kind of attack. We don't even know if
this could stand this kind of attack, but the building codes,
they've gone far in excess to the building codes, which
they did not do when the towers went down. Developers
(18:29):
designed it to basically be one of the safest buildings
in the world, fireproof, additional staircases for first first responders
much more than needed, exceeds all of the building in
safety codes seventy three elevators they travel as fast as
twenty three miles an hour. And that I was twenty
(18:49):
three miles an hour. That doesn't seem very fast. We'll
let me give you an idea ground floor to the
one hundred and second floor in less than sixty seconds,
making it one of the fastest elevators in the world.
It's also sustainable, recycled construction debris and materials. It generates
power internally constructed to collect rain water to care for
(19:15):
the plaus's greenery, and one of the most poignant aspects
is one of the trees that was planted around the
memorial lived through the attack on nine to eleven. It's
known as the Survivor Tree, and that was recovered from
the debris and replanted on the site of the One
World Trade Center, and today it's recognized as simple of
(19:36):
rebirth and survival. This was I think the argument is
fair to say the worst attack on our ground in
the history of our country. And out of this comes
and I believe everybody understands this and believes it an
extraordinary response and the remembrance of what happened. Okay, now
(20:00):
here's the story about NATO, and the question is is
NATO dead and what is NATO about. Of course, it
was the North Atlanta Treaty organization to fight against the
invasion of Russia into Western Europe. So a bunch of
countries got together, I think, led by the United States
and one of the articles and now there's twenty eight members.
(20:20):
I believe Article five, if one country is attacked, all
countries are attacked. Well, it looks like one country was
attacked and that is Poland.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
With the Russian drones.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
So that means what that means all countries in NATO
do nothing. That's what NATO really means. Now, NATO does nothing.
It is not a viable force anymore. And Putin knows
about it. The President is probably our president is probably
(20:56):
the strongest president in terms of protecting NATO that's out there.
And he has moved some ships into the Middle East
as oosed and closer to Western Europe or closer to
Europe as somehow showing that the United States is still
a force. In reality has no interest. He wants Europe
(21:18):
to take care of itself. It's that simple. He wants
the United States to stay away from any of these
fights because he is an isolationist and the plan is
for Europe to build up its forces. So in case
of a war with Putin, guess what happens. They do
(21:38):
it without the United States. NATO is gone for the
most part, and there's good and bad to it. The
good part of getting rid of NATO and those that
believe what the President is doing is we're not getting involved.
I mean, we'll supply arms like we do to the Ukraine,
but we're not getting involved. And here is where Putin
(21:59):
is a lot smarter than any nation, and certainly a
lot smarter than President Trump. The only quote attack on Russia,
other than what Ukraine is doing and its defensive, defensive
move the only attack is sanctions, of which the president
won't do against Russia.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
He talks about it. Matter of fact.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
He he went ahead and sanctioned UH went ahead and
sanctioned UH. What India because it was buying it was
buying Russian oil, but didn't sanction Russia.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
And Putin has two choices. One he's gonna lose a war.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
There's no question if there if if NATO came in
and fought Putin, it would win. There's no chance that
Putin could fight NATO, not even close or threatened nuclear war,
and of course with no intent, because if he does
unleash a nuclear attack, well he goes into the bunker,
(23:02):
of course he does, so he's not going to be hit.
Then he comes out of the bunker and there's nobody
left to govern. The post apocalyptic movies are no longer
movies anymore. They become documentaries. And it all has to
do with this myth of NATO. And Putin has read
(23:25):
this completely and perfectly. I tell you, Putin is no
dumb guy, not even a little bit. And he is
far more sophisticated than is President Trump or any of
the leaders out there. All right, kf I am sixty.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Catch my Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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