The Christmas Day strikes in Nigeria.
Tangle
Isaac Saul
4.7 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Thursday, December 25, President Donald Trump announced that the United States Africa Command conducted strikes on Islamic State (IS, or ISIS) targets in the state of Sokoto in northwestern Nigeria. According to a military official, a U.S. Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea fired over a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles, hitting insurgents in two IS camps. The strikes were conducted with the consent of the Nigerian government, and no civilian casualties have been reported.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. |
| 0:08.4 | Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. |
| 0:21.5 | And welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, |
| 0:27.0 | some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. |
| 0:30.8 | I'm your host today, senior editor Will Kayback. |
| 0:34.3 | Today we're going to be covering the U.S. military's strikes on Islamic State terrorists in |
| 0:40.9 | Nigeria, which took place on Christmas Day and which President Trump said were intended to |
| 0:46.7 | protect Christians living in Nigeria who have been the subject of terrorist attacks and threats |
| 0:53.1 | from the Islamic State and other militia groups |
| 0:56.0 | that are active in the country. Before we dive in, wanted to flag one recent piece of ours that |
| 1:02.2 | we think would be of particular interest as we close the book on 2025 and look ahead to |
| 1:08.0 | 26 and even the years beyond that. |
| 1:13.3 | You might remember it from about a couple weeks ago, |
| 1:16.6 | Isaac published a piece where he put some predictions down on things he thinks are going to happen in politics and U.S. news generally |
| 1:20.7 | between now and 2030. |
| 1:23.4 | If you missed it, we'll put a link to the piece in today's show notes. |
| 1:26.8 | It was also a podcast episode, so if you scroll back to our most recent Friday edition, you'll find it there. A reminder that it is a premium piece. So if you're not a Tangle member, you'll need to upgrade to access the full thing. But again, as we look ahead to the new year and we start to think about what the next few years in politics will hold. We think it's a great |
| 1:44.7 | piece to re-up and engage with if you haven't checked it out already. One other note is that if you are |
| 1:50.9 | interested in making your own predictions for the coming years, in our last Sunday edition, |
| 1:56.0 | we highlighted a tool that was actually created by a member of the Tangle community that allows you to make a series of predictions about the big stories that are going to play out over the coming years. |
| 2:06.1 | We'll also put the link to this in today's show notes, and we definitely recommend you check that out. |
| 2:11.5 | All right, for now, let's jump in with quick hits, and then we'll get into our main topic for the day. |
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