Stephen K. Bannon, Todd Benzman, David Rodriguez, El Nino, and more! War Room is a podcast on economics and politics. Hosted by Stephen K. Baldwin and Senior Editor-in-Chief Sarah Abdurrahman.
00:00:28.000I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
00:00:33.000Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
00:00:37.000If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
00:00:43.000War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
00:00:52.000They can't sit at home for 50 grand a year anymore, can they?
00:00:55.000I don't know. I think you should ask the Democrats that you have on the show what their thoughts are.
00:01:04.000Because there's definitely been, over the last decade or so, a movement towards trying to facilitate helping people
00:01:11.000so that if they decide that they don't want to work, they want to stay home and be creative,
00:01:16.000or they want to stay home and write music.
00:01:18.000Listen, I get it. We all want to relax.
00:01:21.000But the point is, are we really training the workforce to be less aggressive?
00:01:26.000I know that work ethic used to be a big deal back in the day, but times have changed, definitely.
00:01:32.000You know, there used to be a time where, you know, the rule of law and signing your name at the bottom of a contract used to mean something.
00:01:38.000These things don't mean much anymore. And in terms of the market, everybody's all hot on wages.
00:01:43.000All right. Wages, what? Just barely above 5%, which means January, February, March, April, May, June, July and August.
00:01:49.000We're all higher year month over month wages on a year over year basis.
00:01:54.000We're all higher. It's only the last two months that they've drifted a bit.
00:01:58.000Now, what they can hang their hat on is pre-COVID, we're at 3.1.
00:03:02.000He's got a huge exclusive at Daily Mail, but he's ahead of even the New York Times.
00:03:06.000That magnificent footage we had on the show last night with Todd Benzman was very haunting of a massive incursion across the El Paso sector.
00:03:15.000It was like from Nicaragua, the largest, I think, caravan that's ever come across at one time.
00:03:20.000One thousand people at one time and not stopped just processed here exactly on the other side.
00:03:27.000We've got Todd Benzman is going to join us.
00:03:29.000We have the David Rodriguez, El Nino, the boxer, the firm that helped us with to build the wall down in El Paso.
00:03:37.000He's going to join us that he's never seen anything like it.
00:03:39.000This is this is, as Cortez would say, as bad at hombre as you've got.
00:03:44.000And he says, Steve, right now, I don't feel safe with my parents being in the city of El Paso.
00:03:50.000We've also got a new lawsuit that was filed by Sonny Borelli, Gunny Borelli and folks in Mojave County.
00:03:58.000And we're going to have that explained to us later in the show by Christina Bob.
00:04:03.000MTG going to join us for the second hour. But let's start. Let's go back.
00:04:07.000I want to start with Cortez before I get to Todd.
00:04:11.000We're working out some technical issues with Todd Benzman. Let's let's go to Cortez.
00:04:15.000As Steve Cortez, walk us through this assessment today, because they were, you know, they were pulling out the punch bowl when it was first announced.
00:04:22.000Of course, Steve Leisman and all the liberal, all the should come liberals, radical Democrats over at CNBC had their party hats on.
00:04:29.000Tell us what reality is today. Well, so here's the reality.
00:04:32.000The inflation has cooled a bit from the scorching pace of the summer.
00:04:37.000And this is something that we have talked about quite a bit here on war rooms that I have written about that inflation may indeed have peaked.
00:04:43.000It doesn't mean inflation is at all going away. But if it has peaked, it's peaked for the worst of all reasons.
00:04:48.000And that is so much demand destruction. In other words, we are going into such a deep and lasting recession that prices will indeed stop ascending at the pace at which they were previously vaulting higher.
00:05:00.000So the news that came out today is CPI at seven point one percent core CPI at six percent.
00:05:06.000I think context is incredibly important here, Steve.
00:05:09.000And to provide some context, I'd like to show some charts here.
00:05:12.000Let's show where relative to history, where are we now?
00:07:18.000It means that you are actually making more money in real terms, meaning adjusted for inflation, adjusted for the things that you need to buy in your life.
00:07:25.000Because if your paycheck is going up, but the prices of the goods and services you need to live your life are going up more, you are getting poorer every single month.
00:07:33.000And that, unfortunately, is the reality right now for the 20th straight month for almost the entirety of Joe Biden's tenure in the Oval Office.
00:08:38.000OK, but the half two items of life more than twice that much.
00:08:41.000Twelve point five percent year over year inflation.
00:08:44.000Steve, this is simply crushing to people of modest incomes to middle and lower income workers in the United States.
00:08:51.000When you combine real wages, which are crashing with the with the continued inflation in these half two items, their financial situation is in a crisis stage.
00:09:01.000And that is simply what the numbers tell us.
00:10:19.000He's not somebody who ever did anything consequential in the private sector.
00:10:22.000He's not somebody who worked in interest rates or worked at a small bank, the kinds of practice, practical experience that might be beneficial to a Fed chair.
00:10:30.000He and like Janet Yellen, his predecessor before him, is really just more committed to narrative than economic reality.
00:10:37.000So we'll hear a lot of double speak from him, which is typical of economists and typical, unfortunately, of a lot of Fed folks.
00:10:44.000And so you'll hear him say on the one hand, on the other hand, he'll give us the back and forth.
00:10:48.000But the rubber meets the road regarding interest rates.
00:10:51.000The reality is the Fed is going to continue raising interest rates.
00:10:54.000The Fed needs to continue to raise interest rates.
00:10:56.000But right now it's the worst of all worlds.
00:10:59.000And the bond market agrees with me, by the way.
00:11:01.000That's why we have an inverted yield curve.
00:11:03.000What I mean worst of all worlds is we still have very problematic inflation into a recession.
00:11:09.000So normally into a recession, into a slowdown like this, what the Fed would be doing is the opposite.
00:11:15.000The Fed would actually be accommodating the economy and financial markets.
00:11:19.000We have the opposite scenario right now because we have created stagflation in this country, something the United States has not experienced since the 1970s, where growth slows but prices stay extremely high.
00:11:31.000It's again, it's like putting the economy in a vice.
00:11:34.000And regular Americans, even if they don't follow economics, even if they don't follow financial markets, they realize this, you know, right?
00:11:40.000They realize that their pay can't remotely keep up with the prices of the goods they need in their lives.
00:11:45.000And so this is their reality on the ground. It's why they're so incredibly dissatisfied with the economy.
00:11:50.000If they talk about getting back to 2% inflation and that's still his, you know, that's still his target.
00:11:58.000That means you've got to, it's got to eventually you've got to not just have demand destruction.
00:12:04.000Demand destruction has to roll over to more unemployment because think people are selling less the services business and wages drop that way.
00:12:12.000Correct. They, they've got to get their focus. They got to get wages under control. They got to keep doing this 2% seems like a tough target to hit.
00:12:20.000Would you agree? And that, that would look like all the way through 2023, you're going to be doing this.
00:12:24.000Oh, absolutely. Listen, I mean, we're not even in the neighborhood of 2%, right?
00:12:28.000I mean, coming from nine to seven again is welcome, but we're not in the neighborhood of 2%.
00:12:33.000And to your point, Steve, yes, the only way to actually get to 2%, given the systemic inflation that is so embedded in our system, the only way to get there is for this recession that we're already in.
00:12:45.000And by the way, according to polling from CNN, 75% of Americans believe that we are currently in a recession.
00:12:51.000So the only way to get there is for this recession that we're already in to massively intensify and for the layoffs to accelerate.
00:12:58.000Now, sadly, I think that's coming, you know, and that's why, again, weeks ago, I wrote this article.
00:13:03.000Folks can find on my sub stack where I said, I do believe actually inflation has probably peaked, but not for any good reason, right?
00:13:09.000Not for any good reason, not because of good policy changes.
00:13:12.000No, because that inflation tipped us into such a deep recession and there is such a free fall in the Chinese economy, which is so crucial for global inflation, that those two forces are going to cool inflation a bit.
00:13:24.000It still remains a systemic problem, but it's not quite as pernicious as it was during the summer.
00:13:30.000I've got up on getter and everybody can go to getter to my, to my feet.
00:13:36.000I've got a story on the American recovery act thing.
00:13:39.000I put it up there this morning about the, you know, the train dollars of American recovery act.
00:13:43.000They're just, they're, they're spending like drunken sailors on all this, you know, a new weight room in the, in the community center.
00:13:51.000But there seems to be a disconnect between the fiscal part of this and the monetary part.
00:16:12.000We've got push factors and pull factors.
00:16:15.000We have added millions of dollars, billions of dollars since 2014, 2015 to help the Central American countries, help those countries over there.
00:16:26.000But now we're seeing that there are people coming in from different countries besides the Central American countries.
00:16:32.000So we have to address the push factors.
00:16:37.000You've got to have not only the money, the personnel, the equipment, the technology, but you've got to have also the right policies at the border.
00:16:47.000And if you give the impression that the borders open, it doesn't matter if you have all the technology, all the border patrol agents, because all they're going to do is catch them when they come in, process them in some sort of way, put them to either report to a nice office later or to the immigration courts.
00:17:06.000And right now, the immigration courts are overwhelmed.
00:17:09.000I've added literally hundreds of new judges over the year over the years and look what's happened right now.
00:17:16.000We've got the highest number of backlog cases for the immigration courts.
00:17:20.000So I would say the equipment, the technology, the personnel at the border, the funding part, working with the other countries so we don't play defense on the one yard line, but on their 20 yard line, and have compassionate, dignified policies, but strict policies that follow the law so we don't give the impression that the border is open.
00:17:41.000As long as the border, they have the impression that the border is open, they're going to keep coming.
00:17:46.000And right now, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people that are still waiting across, waiting for Title 42 to go away.
00:17:55.000So the invasion of the country, which I think is going to be the first article of impeachment on Biden, I've said this from the beginning, it's getting worse.
00:18:02.000There you had a Democratic congressman, and he even admits, you've got these policies as open border, you're not going to stop this human tidal wave.
00:18:10.000And it's not just that we have an open border.
00:18:13.000The system is set up to process you into the country as quickly as possible on the scam of asylum.
00:18:42.000Otherwise, you've got the whole thing.
00:18:44.000You've got to stop at the first country.
00:18:46.000The system, this is a system just to invade.
00:18:49.000It is set up by the radical left NGOs and the radicals in the administrative state to exacerbate an invasion of the United States of America.
00:19:54.000Well, first, let me just point out that that huge number that crossed in El Paso within the last couple of days,
00:20:04.000that corresponds to a caravan in the far south of Mexico that had formed of 2,500 that the Mexican military put on buses.
00:20:17.000They called this a rescue, but they put them on buses in what I've often called an ant operation.
00:20:24.000These ant operations where they bring them up to the border in different dispersed groups.
00:20:30.000I'm not, I don't know for a fact that this is one of that groups, but the timing sure fits.
00:20:37.000So I think that this is a Mexican military operation to clear them out of their south because they're a big problem in the southern provinces and everywhere else, too.
00:20:49.000And they want to make this an American problem.
00:20:52.000That said, we are close to the end of Title 42.
00:20:56.000We've talked about that many times on your show.
00:20:58.000But I just want to point out that Title 42 is best understood in terms of the asylum process that you just described.
00:21:09.000It's going to open access to that asylum process by everybody who crosses the border now instead of 60% or 40%.
00:21:23.000Lately, it's been about 40% of everybody who crosses the border still gets kicked back under Title 42.
00:21:30.000Now it should be 100% of everybody who reaches the border gets access to this asylum system where all they have to do is say, I intend to apply for asylum at some point.
00:21:45.000And we are processing them immediately into the country into the six year long wait lists, which basically means you're in here forever.
00:22:58.000Well, if you want if you want unimpeded entry by if you want no impediment whatsoever between the United States and 700 million people in the world that live in extreme policy poverty.
00:24:30.000Nobody passed anything in Congress that said the basic architectonics of our asylum system has been waived.
00:24:38.000The system should still be and still is if implemented, if acted upon legally, is that you've got to claim it in the first country that you go to.
00:24:49.000Not come all the way up across the world, whether it's from Africa or whether it's from the Caribbean or for others from Ukraine.
00:24:56.000This has nothing to do with race or ethnicity.
00:24:59.000The Ukrainians or the Ukrainians, Eastern Europeans are abusing this, too.
00:25:03.000Hey, the Irish abuse it up in up in up in New York City in Long Island.
00:25:25.000They're talking about twenty thousand a day.
00:25:27.000That would be two army divisions, ladies and gentlemen, per day.
00:25:31.000I haven't heard that that last part, but the intelligence community is providing assessments of twelve to eighteen thousand a day.
00:25:41.000What you're looking at there on the screen, that is the latest Mexican visa that is being handed out to thousands and thousands of the immigrants down in Tapachula.
00:25:53.000Now, if you were to show up at the Canadian border with one of these, you would be immediately repelled.
00:26:00.000But in the United States, they just throw them on the ground and you come in and we don't check with the Mexicans to see if you had one.
00:26:08.000These are what the Mexicans are handing out right now in Tapachula to anybody who crosses their border.
00:26:15.000It's their shortcut straight to the U.S. border.
00:26:21.000I found this one on the ground across from Yuma.
00:26:25.000But just just to reiterate, Title 42 to understand this, the elimination of Title 42 is that it's very inextricably connected to our asylum system.
00:26:39.000This whole thing is about our asylum system.
00:26:42.000When Trump was in office, he implemented a safe third country policy, which basically said, if you cross if you're El Salvadoran and you cross through Guatemala and don't apply for asylum there, we're deporting you back to Guatemala.
00:27:04.000But the very first thing the Biden administration did on day one was eliminate that to make this asylum process available.
00:27:12.000We could be looking at anywhere from 4.4 million a year at the bottom end, according to the intelligence community, to 6.2 million a year once Title 42 goes away.
00:28:59.000By the way, Cortez, we haven't even had opportunity to talk about the SBF, the Democrat money launderer, just the random event that he was going to get hammered today by the House Financial Services.
00:29:12.000The Republicans were there, had thousands of questions about his money laundering operation to fund Democrats and what I think Elon Musk said was a billion dollars that he did.
00:29:23.000Of course, they arrested him last night.
00:29:28.000Let me get your thoughts on this invasion of the southern border, Steve.
00:29:31.000I got David Rodriguez from, by the way, I've now got a Colombian boxer from the south side of Chicago and I got a Mexican boxer from the mean streets of El Paso.
00:30:00.000What's not fun is the situation at the U.S. border.
00:30:03.000You know, and by the way, you mentioned I grew up in a tough neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.
00:30:06.000America has a lot of tough neighborhoods.
00:30:08.000Coming from a tough neighborhood is not a legitimate reason for asylum in the United States.
00:30:14.000So these people, these masses of people who are coming from Central America, they're coming from Guatemala and from El Salvador and from Honduras.
00:30:22.000Steve, those are tough places, but they are not places of systemic oppression.
00:30:26.000These are not legitimate asylum seekers.
00:30:30.000They are economic migrants who are abusing the generosity and goodwill of the United States with the assistance, with the explicit assistance of American leftists, especially the NGOs that are funded by George Soros.
00:30:43.000So this open border situation, by the way, to connect the dots between both of your previous two segments, to connect the dots, open borders are always a terrible idea for the United States, for our national security, for our street safety, for our rule of law, our sovereignty.
00:30:56.000But it's a particularly awful idea in a time of economic stress.
00:31:01.000In other words, I showed that chart of real wages declining now in the United States for 20 straight months.
00:31:06.000Given that situation, given that crisis, that economic crisis in this country, the worst idea possible is to import millions of new workers to compete unlawfully and unjustly in the labor market against American citizens.
00:31:22.000That's the reality of what is happening at the border right now.
00:31:24.000Also, just one final point I'd like to make, please, on the border is I'd like to pay tribute to the brave men and women of customs and border protection who are real bad hombres guarding the front door of America doing incredibly hard work, dangerous work.
00:31:37.000And their lives, their jobs have been made so much more difficult by this open borders madness of Joe Biden.
00:31:43.000He has yet to mention the agent who perished just days ago.
00:31:47.000And I think we should pay tribute to him.
00:32:15.000You did dangerous work to protect America.
00:32:17.000And there's a lot of folks like him who are still on watch, still trying to guard the front door of America.
00:32:23.000Their job has been made almost impossible by Joe Biden.
00:32:27.000There's no time to speak about Agent Gonzalez, a patriot given his life for his country because they're too busy, is slobbering over themselves on Brittany Griner, a woman who hates her country.
00:35:44.000I didn't have my phone fast enough to catch it because I was driving, but it almost caused a massive accident.
00:35:49.000Uh, Todd Benzman is, is, is David right?
00:35:53.000Or is this the border patrol really been pulled off back to processing centers just to process these people, uh, these illegitimate economic migrants, because they're not, we don't have asylum for economic migrants.
00:36:05.000Is there, is there, this is why, by the way, on Capitol Hill, remember what they're talking about is two to four million.
00:36:27.000Uh, I have border patrol friends in a big Ben sector and Tucson sector who are telling me that they are being redeployed from their own sectors to the El Paso sector to help with the processing, uh, going on there.
00:36:44.000Uh, I want to, so, so yes, so now you've got to, now you're going to have other busy sectors left.
00:37:05.000Uh, one thing that I want to point out about El Paso that is, uh, different than a lot of the other sectors right now are the, the runners and gotaways.
00:37:17.000Uh, I have sources who are giving me the data for the gotaways, uh, there.
00:37:22.000And just in the last eight weeks, we've had almost 60,000 gotaways caught there.
00:37:29.000And remember, there are no border patrol agents on the ground who are able to count gotaways.
00:37:35.000You have to be able to look at footprints.
00:37:37.000So that's just the ones that they happen to catch.
00:37:42.000The problem with gotaways and runners is that a large percentage of them are presumed to be criminal aliens, uh, or people that would be pushed back under 42.
00:37:54.000It is a madhouse at the, we build the wall project.
00:37:58.000You know, that it goes right up the mountain, right past that, that mountain is where they're pouring through all over that mountain running.
00:38:07.000And, uh, your other guests there just described a military type tactic.
00:38:12.000What they're doing is, uh, they're, they will gather up in formations all along, uh, areas of the border, mostly on the New Mexico side.
00:38:22.000And when the helicopters go away or when there's a shift change, they bonsai run.
00:38:27.000So there are these bonsai charges all day, all night, hundreds and hundreds of runners going on there.
00:38:34.000I will give the Texas, uh, Abbott one bit of credit here, which is that when border patrol is gone processing like this, the only thing that stands between those runners and the interior are these DPS helicopters and agents on the ground who at least are able to catch the runners.
00:38:56.000And check to see if they have criminal histories and, you know, what type of criminals are crossing the criminals get caught.
00:39:03.000Uh, and I, full, full, full disclosure, I, you know, I worked for Texas DPS for almost 10 years.
00:40:13.000Uh, El Nino, uh, the mayor, the Democrats that, uh, that control El Paso, the mayor Abbott's bad enough, but in the city, the city is basically saying nothing either.
00:45:42.000Um, and then you've got the fiscal side, which is in the history of the country, the biggest deficit, you know, Biden's up there.
00:45:51.000I've done deficits, all lies and misrepresentation, misrepresentation, the biggest deficit in the history of the nation, $250 billion in one month.
00:46:01.000And one of the reasons the, the spending from last year is still out of control, but as we said, and they keep giving you happy talk, the tax revenues definitely dropping, right?
00:46:11.000The, the tariffs and fees and other things are dropping because of less activity in the, in the, uh, in, in, in, in, they don't, they keep lying about that.
00:46:20.000About $250 billion, a quarter of a trillion dollars in one month, Steve Cortez, sir.
00:46:27.000Yes. Uh, listen, I, you know, I'm glad that the wall street journal, albeit late, at least address this issue to put that in context, by the way, $250 billion deficit in a single month compared to November of last year of 2021, it's $57 billion higher.
00:46:42.000Why? Because, you know, I mentioned earlier that the U S consumer is in a financial vice.
00:46:47.000Well, so is the U S budget. All right. Right now, the, the national federal budget is also in advice, uh, for folks who watched happy days, who sort of grew up watching that show.
00:46:55.000Like I did. It's the Malachi crunch. If you remember that when pinky Tuscadero, the Malachi brothers hit her car from both sides.
00:47:02.000That's what's happening right now to the U S budget. What I mean by that is you mentioned tax revenues are plunging because of the Biden recession. That's the reality.
00:47:11.000But at the same time, that would be bad enough at the same time, Steve, the financing costs of the existing federal debt.
00:47:18.000Those financing costs are skyrocketing because of higher interest rates.
00:47:22.000The wall street journal also reported that finance costs have gone up 53% year over year this November versus last November.
00:47:30.000So you have tax receipts plunging and you have finance costs, interest on the debt surging.
00:47:35.000That is creating an absolute crisis for the U S budget. And guess what?
00:47:40.000Deficits suddenly matter again. They really matter. Just ask our friends across the Atlantic and the UK, how much deficits matter.
00:47:47.000So this is also going to be a priority item for the incoming U S house.
00:47:52.000I think the first order of business is securing the border.
00:47:54.000I think the second order of business should be unleashing American energy because that is the quickest, most effective solution to try to address this exact problem that we're talking about.
00:48:03.000This inflationary spiral that is causing not just pain on main street, but also massive stress on the U S federal budget.
00:48:10.000And here's what they're talking about up on Capitol Hill right now.
00:48:13.000They're talking about the defense authorizations. Now in the Senate, it's got all this wokeness in it, but it's got a six, I think 5% increase.
00:48:19.000It's it's $850 billion. Okay. Just for that. And that didn't include really everything.
00:48:24.000Eight 50. You've got the, uh, the, the omnibus bill that they're talking about and they're trying to pull every trick in the book to, to, to get it.
00:48:32.000It would only be two weeks, two weeks until the Republicans get it. That is, I don't know, somewhere in the two trillion, totally unfunded.
00:48:40.000I don't think that's even counting financing costs. Okay. That's the fiscal crack that you're addicted to this spending.
00:48:47.000Right. Then you've got the amnesty builder up there talking about. It's not too many people. It's 4 million people.
00:48:52.000And what is that going to add to it? The, the, the insanity. And this is why with the McCartney, we have MTG in here.
00:48:59.000Do they have the titanium backbone you need to confront Biden on even before the investigations of DOJ and FBI and all that, which has to happen on the, on the emergencies and crisis, the invasion of the Southern border.
00:49:14.000Right. And this economy that's basically in a free fall predicated upon their radical ideas on energy, Steve Cortez.
00:49:23.000No, exactly correct. And listen, this is why this speaker battle, this campaign effectively of who should be the speaker is so important.
00:49:30.000And it's good that we have a very contested race because we are going to need a leader with, with boldness, right.
00:49:37.000And to will stand up, but you're exactly correct to make the point, Steve, to, to some extent, it won't matter what the house wants to do in January.
00:49:44.000If the Senate caves now in December, right.
00:49:47.000In other words, what we cannot allow the Democrats to do, and they are trying furiously to do this is to effectively handcuff that incoming house GOP majority,
00:49:56.000bypassing a budget that is so big and extends so far into the future that the power of the purse is simply not relevant.
00:50:02.000Come January, when we take that gavel away, thank goodness from Nancy Pelosi.
00:50:06.000So we need to hold the line in these coming weeks and these coming hours and days.
00:50:10.000Even this is an incredibly important week right now that we're in other lame duck session.
00:50:14.000And then hold the line now and then really advance our agenda come January, particularly on the border and the budget regarding energy.
00:50:22.000Before I let you go, the schizophrenia of a monetary policy that's trying to be somewhat restrictive,
00:50:29.000although in a fiscal policy that is once again unfunded $2 trillion in discretionary spending that you just got to print money for it.
00:50:38.000The schizophrenia doesn't allow you to get to a solution at the end.
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