In this episode of the War Room, Steve and his guest, Cortez Blanner, discuss the current economic, political, and geo-political crisis that we are in, and why it is the most dangerous moment in American history.
00:02:43.000By the way, that whole crisis, though, bring us to the precipice then, of course, was totally necessary because the Soviets literally had nukes 90 miles away from the United States.
00:02:52.000This is a completely dissimilar situation.
00:02:55.000But the but the reality of the danger is the same.
00:02:58.000And then to connect that to the economy at the same time that we are at the brink of perhaps World War Three and the United States position as global superpower is just so threatened from a geostrategic standpoint.
00:03:10.000At the same time, our financial condition continues to massively and quickly deteriorate because of the policy mistakes of Joe Biden and the Republicans in permanent Washington who have enabled and unfortunately allowed this kind of destruction of our of our of our prosperity in this country.
00:03:29.000Steve, and just to give you a data point, it's not just my hey, hey, hey, hey, hang on, hang on.
00:03:33.000Hang on. Well, before you pivot, because I know you're going to pivot the economy and we need this.
00:03:37.000You go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis, we didn't have a shooting war like World War One in the Eurasian landmass.
00:03:42.000So where that where that it's a proxy war, this is the this is U.S. versus Russia.
00:03:46.000Don't don't let that's U.S. versus Russia with the little pimp Zelinsky now dictating to us what the terms of the off ramp are right.
00:03:54.000Right. But more as importantly, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, as it was, we were a different nation financially.
00:03:59.820We had a pristine balance sheet. We're a manufacturing superpower.
00:04:04.080And just for people to remember, it was only 15 years after World War Two.
00:04:11.580Russia was still devastated with, what, 65 million war dead.
00:04:15.000Leningrad said all these all these places devastated because they didn't get a Marshall Plan.
00:04:20.160They shouldn't have because of the because of the Bolsheviks, the murderous dictatorship that that was suppressing the Russian people.
00:04:27.600So so it's a totally different. But Kennedy played from strength, from massive strength, a superpower and manufacturing.
00:04:35.200We were the arsenal of democracy. That's how the war was won.
00:04:37.900We were a manufacturing superpower. We had a totally clean balance sheet.
00:04:42.600The dollar was in the early decades of being the prime reserve currency after Bretton Woods.
00:04:47.600We were a superpower and played with we played with a with a with a with the full.
00:04:54.540We had a deck of cards that were going our way. Steve Cortez. Why is that different today, sir?
00:04:59.580Yeah, no, that's exactly correct. And that's also why, even though I myself have made a lot of comparisons,
00:05:04.340the present economic situation to the 1970s, and a lot of those comparisons are apt, Steve.
00:05:08.680But things are much worse now than the 1970s, because similarly to your point, you're talking, of course, about the early 60s.
00:05:15.540But same thing in the 1970s, the last time that we really grappled with runaway inflation in this country.
00:05:20.440And it was terrible for the United States and folks who are old enough have awful memories economically of that time.
00:05:26.260But we were actually far stronger for some of the same reasons that you cite.
00:05:30.580At that time, we still had a massive domestic manufacturing base.
00:05:35.160We were not being abused in trade by anyone in the world, certainly not by China, which was having trouble feeding itself at that point.
00:05:41.840And also to your point, we didn't have runaway debt.
00:05:45.460Right. We had not had an economy that had been financialized.
00:05:48.840We didn't have a country in an economy that was largely ruled by oligarchs.
00:05:53.080That is the reality of the 1970s. So as bad as the economy was then, I think most of us would take it in a second if we could somehow trade places.
00:06:00.280But of course we can't. We have to deal with the economic reality that we face today.
00:06:04.840And the harsh economic metrics continue to point downward, decidedly downward.
00:06:11.580And I don't project that to depress people, but rather to motivate people to take action.
00:06:16.860Just today, during your show, Steve, 10-year Treasury yield,
00:06:20.420which is the benchmark interest rate for the entire world, for all interest rates in your life,
00:06:24.700from your credit card to your home mortgage to your home loan to a business loan,
00:06:28.28010-year Treasury yield, as we speak during this show, hit 4% for the first time this year.
00:06:33.380We are at the highs of the year and haven't been there, by the way, since last November.
00:11:01.960That is reflective of the state of the U.S. consumer right now.
00:11:06.320That deteriorating consumer is intrinsically linked, of course, to the weakness that China has because it is still largely beholden to the U.S. consumer for its growth.
00:11:15.760So the global economy is in terrible shape.
00:11:17.900But focusing here on the United States, unfortunately, the trend is worsening, Steve, and rising interest rates.
00:11:24.820That's a factor that no one in this country needs, which no one can afford 10-year yield back at 4%.
00:11:30.860When you combine that with the strategic national security risks that you are taking, you can see that Joe Biden right now is a commander in chief who, along with assistance from people like Mitch McConnell and Tom Cotton, Republicans in the Senate, is literally destroying America, putting our lives at risk in this escalation and smashing and squashing our prosperity.
00:12:36.320If we don't take this on right now, Cortez, this appropriations process, and take the hard line of the debt ceiling, that one penny increase, it's game over, right?
00:12:46.800And by the way, remember, the 10-year treasury runs your life.
00:12:50.080Where's the 10-year treasury as we speak right now, Brother Cortez?
00:12:57.920You know, Steve, there's sort of a phrase in foreign policy circles that the first question the President of the United States would ask regarding national security is, you know, where are my aircraft carriers?
00:13:06.100Where are America's aircraft carriers?
00:13:07.120That's sort of the first question that mattered.
00:13:36.660And when it pops up, it's going to do so in a way that you may not be able to correctly predict.
00:13:41.200Well, right now, yields are rising dramatically.
00:13:44.760Global bond markets are in revolt against the United States, against the Biden regime, against what Congress has done for far too many years, against what the Fed has done.
00:13:54.680The Fed seems to have found religion, albeit too late, but better late than never.
00:13:58.500The reality is, getting back to the fiscal side and your question about these upcoming debt ceiling negotiations, Steve, we simply have no choice.
00:14:05.600It's not just that I think it is politically expedient to hold the line, and it is, but it's bigger than that.
00:14:11.000It's that we are literally not going to have a choice.
00:14:14.320Because as these interest rates spiral out of control, we are already on a trajectory where the largest single expenditure of the federal government is going to be interest on the debt.
00:15:16.820To dig our country out of this mountain of debt, every single taxpayer in America would have to write a check for $247,000, and it's only going to get worse.
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00:17:36.460So you talk about this – we're talking about geopolitics and capital markets from everywhere from the Ukraine to Moscow to Beijing to now Tehran.
00:17:48.100I got Brett and Natalie going to show me in a second.
00:17:52.200You talk about home title lock and about the cyber warfare everywhere.
00:17:54.940And you got to go to home title lock and you got to check out.
00:17:58.680Just look at their services because you got to make sure that your deed, right, your ownership of your title, your ownership of your home is not somebody taking it electronically on a cyber attack and is now taking out a second loan, a home equity loan that you're going to have to pay off.
00:18:15.740But this cyber goes to many different aspects.
00:18:21.660Catherine Engelbrecht is really the person that's been on this voter integrity, really the voter election crimes bureau for longer than anybody.
00:18:32.200I've known her for, I don't know, 12, 14 years.
00:18:33.980She's been doing this from 2008, 9, 10.
00:18:36.440Catherine, this lawsuit, I guess you just followed, to me is a blockbuster because it ties in geopolitics, technology, electronic cyber attacks, unrestricted warfare of the Chinese Communist Party into one suit about the basic way we govern ourselves and who our elected officials are.
00:18:57.900If we can't get this solved, country's over.
00:19:00.560Walk me through what you guys have found, why this is more important than ever, and what are you guys doing in the courts of law?
00:19:06.440Well, what we filed on Friday was an emergency motion to inspect evidence, evidence that is being held in Los Angeles County, and they are meeting tomorrow.
00:19:18.360There's a hearing tomorrow in which we believe the court will determine whether or not they will release information that they have been holding since October,
00:19:27.800information that they seized when they raided the offices of an election software company in Michigan called Conic.
00:19:36.460And Conic is, as it says in our filings, is closely associated or appears to be closely associated with the Chinese Communist Party.
00:19:50.000And we have affidavits to support this, we have findings that support this, and as you say, this is at the core of everything that we are as a republic.
00:20:03.620By all appearances, Conic software, which is being used in some of the largest counties and states in our country, is developed in and run by and monitored from China.
00:20:15.320I want to go back to just the timeline here, because I think it's very illustrative.
00:20:21.460You guys had what I call the Arizona Sessions.
00:20:23.900You had a meeting or a gathering of concerned citizens, I believe, in Arizona, where in a thing called, I think, the Shed,
00:20:31.920and you gave an all-day presentation and presented some information on this.
00:20:36.360Then I think the CO went missing or something like that.
00:20:39.840There was all types of, you know, to track this guy down, to find out what went on.
00:20:45.360You guys kind of nailed it with your evidence and your investigation.
00:20:49.480Then the New York Times, I think, came out with an article that said,
00:20:53.020hey, we want to show what conspiracy theory wingnuts look like.
00:36:20.160Natalie Winters, you've done research since, you know, your teenage years at the University of Chicago.
00:36:26.520You focused on the, the, the, the, the, the, essentially the cover up by the global elites and particularly the American elites in covering for the, the infiltration of our nation at every level by the Chinese Communist Party.
00:36:38.340And this is where Gallagher, brother, you are so dead wrong, smearing and besmirching.
00:36:44.080One of the greatest Americans in the history of this country, and that would be Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin.
00:36:49.800Okay, because we'll go back, I'll take on anybody in the world, let's sit down and go through what McCarthy did and what McCarthy said and what McCarthy proved and how McCarthy helped save this nation, right, by the infiltration of communists and Marxists in the highest levels of the United States government and throughout the thing.
00:37:08.420We need more of that today, Gallagher.
00:37:23.040For a year, a year and a half straight, I think I broke at least one story a day, in some cases maybe two or three, about how deep the CCP infiltration went here in the United States, right?
00:37:35.380It's no secret that they've always preferred the strategy of infiltration as opposed to invasion, right?
00:37:42.280Subdue the enemy without actually making them fight.
00:37:45.360That's the kind of art of war strategy that they engage with.
00:37:49.300And I think last night's hearing is sort of like how we should have been approaching China 10 years ago.
00:37:56.500It doesn't really, I think, link the threat that the CCP poses to their American counterparts in the ruling class, which is really the horrible combination that makes the CCP so lethal.
00:38:08.220It's sort of the equivalent of a gain-of-function research, I would say.
00:38:12.000What that committee needs to do, if I may humbly suggest, they need to subpoena all of the American lobbyists and lobbying firms and law firms who, in the last 10, 20 years, have worked on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:38:29.400You can evidence this through the Foreign Agent Registration Act filings.
00:38:33.040But specifically, the groups that have worked on behalf of the United Front, which is China's political warfare department.
00:38:40.820This is how they systematically compromise America's elite.
00:38:45.340And believe me, there are only about 250 registered foreign agents from China in the FARA database.
00:38:51.080I can guarantee you there are a lot more off the top of my head I'd throw in Hunter Biden.
00:38:55.460But if you start with the people who registered with FARA, I'm talking groups like the China United States Exchange Foundation, and really get to the bottom of the journalists that they were taking on trips to China, the talking heads, the academics, the think tankers who were taking private trips to China, taking private dinners with the Chinese Communist Party.
00:39:14.020That's how you begin to kind of piece together what exactly the Chinese Communist Party has done over here, because they have very systematically, it's the idea, the concept of strangling us with our own systems.
00:39:26.760And what I mean by that is that they've weaponized our own free market against us, and particularly they've weaponized our own, I would argue, free press or free media, although arguably it's free, but they've really capitalized on that.
00:39:39.540And it's so funny, because I think the Chinese Communist Party, right, as Catherine was talking about before, they spend billions of dollars a year to influence our elections in terms of curating politicians, putting out blueprints and papers and policy proposals, indirect foreign lobbying, direct foreign lobbying, the engagement with which they're doing with our election systems, right, these election machines, that's just their insurance policy, right?
00:40:06.780Donald Trump slipped through the cracks in 2016, so they just want to make sure that doesn't happen again.
00:40:12.780But the election aspect of it is sort of the 11th hour of what the Chinese Communist Party does to infiltrate and influence our political system.
00:40:24.360Natalie, how did they get to all your research, all those stories you've done, all the great work at National Pulse, your social media, all of it, how did they get to you?
00:40:31.080Natalie G. Winters on Twitter, Instagram, and Getter.
00:40:34.880I'll be publishing a story on warroom.org shortly, and make sure to come say hi at CPAC if you're around.
00:40:41.700Yeah, Natalie will be riding shotgun with us at the studio, so make sure we're going to be doing it at CPAC.org.
00:40:54.58022 years old, in her, as a teenager, she was putting out the best stories out there on the infiltration of our nation by the greatest enemy we've ever had, right?
00:41:12.560The greatest enemy we've ever had, and the reason it's the most existential threat to the Chinese Communist Party, because they've infiltrated in life.
00:41:20.180Dave Bratt, your assessment and thoughts on this topic, sir?
00:41:28.140She's been saying this for a couple of years.
00:41:29.940Now she's being validated by everyone, and no surprise there, but the war room always comes through.
00:41:37.720And today I'm going to make some remarks on inflation stuff we've all said for the past year or two.
00:41:44.800And if anyone would have listened to the war room and the receipts, they wouldn't be surprised with the uptick in inflation and the idea that it's not going down rapidly.
00:41:53.580As the Wall Street would like it to, and the analysts, the community who have been wrong, along with the Fed analysts, for the past months.
00:42:02.660I tell you, we're going to have – let's get ready for a break.
00:42:07.680We're going to have eight minutes with Brad and he'll say he can go through his things on this.
00:42:11.980And I want to come back with Biden calling out the war room and particularly Russ Vogt.
00:42:17.780When Russ Vogt walked through the plan the other day about how we're going to get this under control.
00:42:22.380As Dave – Brad, Dave was going to be on earlier in the show, but he had some stuff come up, so he had to come on later.
00:42:27.700As he notifies, says, hey, I've got to come on at 11 o'clock hour.
00:42:31.140At that very moment, the 10-year Treasury hit 4 percent.
00:42:37.440On 3 November of 2020, the election, it was 0.86 percent.
00:45:33.220And we've made a ton of progress since we started talking about it on the War Room.
00:45:36.280It's incumbent on Republicans to say, no, we're not going to pass your debt limit until you get rid of the woke and weaponized government that you're currently presiding in and furthering by a number of the things that we heard last night.
00:45:50.960Well, the former Trump budget director, who's now advising them, that is Republicans in the House, on their fiscal strategy, has a plan to slash over $2 trillion for Medicaid.
00:46:04.660And so, well, whether it gets passed, that's the plan, OK?
00:46:10.160He wants to end Medicare expansion under the Affordable Care Act and then additional deep cuts that could lead to nearly 70 million people losing critical services.
00:46:54.000That's just in these appropriations plans, cutting it, and it rolls out for $2 trillion over the 10-year budget.
00:46:59.320But it's also going to be defense cuts.
00:47:01.000There's going to be other woken, weaponized cuts besides that.
00:47:03.520And this is going to be a battle for the ages.
00:47:06.000And we're going to make sure that the Republican, the neoliberal, neocon aspect of the Republican Party does not crater on this and exacerbate the managed decline of our beloved republic.
00:47:16.880Dave Bratt, sir, talk me through how you can't hide from the math here.
00:47:21.560Inflation is actually eating us alive.
00:47:40.460They can extract huge concessions on this crazy overspending that's at the center of all the catastrophes we're facing.
00:47:49.440And so the war room, when you hear the House members wimp out or the Senate wimp out, they're wimping out.
00:47:55.580We have a unique leverage point to use.
00:47:58.120And so what you didn't hear from the president is that we have inflation.
00:48:03.100The latest print is inflation up unexpectedly.
00:48:06.380It's sticking around longer than we thought.
00:48:07.960I'm going to explain that today, which causes higher interest rates, which is hurting all of you on the home front and on the car front and on every other front.
00:48:16.420And Steve just mentioned the 10-year just hit a new high.
00:48:19.300And then you've got a slowing economy going into recession.
00:48:23.140And the question is, do we achieve a soft landing?
00:48:25.720Or as we've been saying on the show for quite a while, there's some surprises coming.
00:48:29.960And add to that the war scenario on top of all that.
00:48:33.240But I just want to review a couple main points that are very confusing on the economics front.
00:48:43.240If they have a high inflation rate, the interest rates go up, and they have to pay high, high interest rates now on an upcoming $50 trillion debt.
00:48:55.340Steve's been hammering that additional $20 trillion in debt on top of the $32 trillion.
00:49:00.820So in 10 years, we got debt of $50 trillion.
00:49:04.080The Fed funds rate is going up to $5 trillion and beyond, and they're going to have to keep increasing that rate now.
00:49:12.520I don't think there's much debate on that at all.
00:49:14.900So I just said the Fed does not want inflation.
00:50:07.220And I put this up because we posted this six months ago on The War Room.
00:50:12.400And I just wanted to show The War Room always gets our story straight.
00:50:15.320And so this is put out by Deutsche Bank, Jim Reed, six months ago.
00:50:22.120And it basically just says if you crack 8% or 9% inflation, which we did, then you should expect to have at least 6% inflation for two years, which we have.
00:50:34.580And you should also expect heightened inflation, 4% or 5%, for the next six years.
00:50:51.300On top of that piece of information, which I was shocked, Larry Summers, right, the president of Harvard, big brain, smart guy, president of the World Bank, top notch economist.
00:51:04.280And when they choose to be right, they can be right.
00:51:07.460But Larry came out of the same point on this Deutsche Bank report and said, yes, the folks that are saying the inflation rate is going to come down quickly are wrong.
00:51:17.380So the folks that want to take economics serious and look at the data, we're going to have inflation with us at a higher level than everyone thought for years to come.
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