Bannon's War Room - December 30, 2023


Episode 3281: New Years Eve Special: Looking To 2024


Episode Stats

Length

53 minutes

Words per Minute

145.01952

Word Count

7,754

Sentence Count

490

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

23


Summary

Stephen K. Van Zandt and Ben Harnell join me in the War Room to talk about the most important things of 2019, and to reflect back over the past year and look forward to 2020. We'll also hear from the team at Real America s Voice and our great production team here at The War Room.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind,
00:00:11.600 should old acquaintance be forgot and old lang syne.
00:00:24.200 For old lang syne, my dear, for old lang syne,
00:00:37.200 we'll take a cup of kindness yet for old lang syne.
00:00:50.200 And surely you'll buy your wine cup, and surely I'll buy more,
00:01:02.200 and we'll take a cup of kindness yet for old lang syne.
00:01:14.200 For old lang syne, my dear, for old lang syne,
00:01:27.200 I will take a cup of kindness yet for old lang syne.
00:01:39.200 We, too, have been all in the stream from morning sun till night.
00:01:52.200 For old lang syne, my dear, for old lang syne,
00:02:04.200 For old lang syne, my dear, for old lang syne,
00:02:17.200 We'll take a cup of kindness yet for old lang syne.
00:02:29.200 And there's a hand, my trusty friend, and he's the hand of thine.
00:02:43.200 For old lang syne, my dear, for old lang syne,
00:02:57.200 For old lang syne, my dear, for old lang syne,
00:03:09.200 We'll take a cup of kindness yet for old lang syne.
00:03:23.200 We'll take a cup of kindness yet for old lang syne.
00:03:37.200 For old lang syne, my dear, for old lang syne.
00:03:41.200 For old lang syne.
00:03:42.200 For old lang syne, my dear, for old lang syne.
00:03:49.200 This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
00:03:54.200 Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.
00:03:59.200 Here's one time I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
00:04:03.700 The people have had a belly full of it.
00:04:05.500 I know you don't like hearing that.
00:04:07.000 I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.
00:04:09.840 It's going to happen.
00:04:11.120 And where do people like that go to share the big line?
00:04:14.500 MAGA Media.
00:04:15.840 I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
00:04:21.260 Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
00:04:25.060 If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
00:04:31.240 War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Vann.
00:04:37.000 Okay, it's Saturday, 30 December, year of early 2023.
00:04:42.180 We're also, this is our New Year's Eve special since the team at Real America's Voice.
00:04:47.220 And of course, our great production team here at the War Room.
00:04:49.780 We let them have Sunday off, the Sabbath.
00:04:52.820 So this is also our New Year's Eve special.
00:04:58.200 Tremendous moving voices there from Dublin that welcomes in a ring at the new year.
00:05:03.980 So we're going to talk about the most important things of this year as far as trends, analysis, things that are happening that lets you reflect back over the year.
00:05:15.180 Hopefully, spend a few moments reflecting back over your own personal life over the year, and particularly how it became intertwined with this effort to save this republic, which is what this show is about, as essentially a platform to help unite you in your task and purpose of saving this country.
00:05:39.320 I want to start internationally.
00:05:41.740 We're going to actually go, if everything goes according to plan, we're also going to go to southern Mexico.
00:05:48.300 We're going to talk about the invasion of our country.
00:05:50.280 In fact, we're going to stay with the most important things, the financial collapse of our country, the invasion of our country.
00:05:59.980 Also, talk about the geopolitics of the world today, and particularly how you guys have been right in your determination to make sure that the country always puts America and our citizens first.
00:06:14.880 Against all the lies, misrepresentation, spin, all of it that's been handled to you.
00:06:21.060 Ben Harnwell in Rome, and I know we want to go back and talk about the most important things that happened and how they happened, but I do have to – I think I want to start here at where we are and then work back because I do agree with you upon further review, as we talked about the show, that this Politico story from the other day, and now it's been picked up by so many others, of how the Biden regime – and this is how, to me, cuts to the core of their evilness.
00:06:49.800 Of how they're now trying to – with words, trying to soft-pedal a new strategy, which is to hopefully hold on – the Ukrainians to hold on to Kiev, given the fact that they've lost the war that the Biden regime got them into in the beginning.
00:07:08.320 I want to go back to that, particularly given your knowledge of the EU and British politics.
00:07:13.660 We started the year – and remember, we had been against this from the absolute very beginning in February of the year before, January, February of 22.
00:07:26.780 We were adamant about where this was going to lead, and I'm very proud of this audience.
00:07:30.880 I'm very proud of the people we had on the show.
00:07:34.000 Our party line has not changed from the absolute beginning, and we have been one million percent right about this from the beginning.
00:07:41.300 But in the start of 23, and really the end of the first year, beginning of the second year, the media spin was hitting high – was in high volume on MSNBC and CNN about how there was huge momentum from coming out of Ukraine and Zelensky.
00:08:00.380 And Zelensky made the – his heroic trip to Capitol Hill where he was treated like Churchill.
00:08:08.100 And then all the talk was and all the buildup was for the spring offensive.
00:08:11.680 But go back to a year ago about how this thing was – I mean the Ukrainian propaganda forces were in high overdrive, given where we are in a year of which we told people we would be here.
00:08:26.060 And actually, I think it could turn out to be much worse.
00:08:29.380 Ben Harnwell.
00:08:30.960 Steve, good morning to you.
00:08:32.220 Well, look, if this is an end-of-year review, then let's do exactly what you just said a few moments ago and look at the trends and see how they played out.
00:08:40.400 And my analysis of 2023, if I'm going to put it in a single sentence, if 2023 was the year that pretty much validated everything that we had speculated on in 2022.
00:08:53.040 Now, end-of-year reviews, right, it requires a slight amount of humility.
00:08:57.060 I didn't get every single judgment call right.
00:09:01.980 I'm happy to admit that.
00:09:03.980 Two things I specifically got wrong.
00:09:06.920 Every single thing else, however, in the face of all the so-called experts, all the talking heads on mainstream media and on all the cable news, we called it, Steve, in real time on every single significant aspect of this.
00:09:21.640 And one of the ways we did this, I think, was because we refused something that we obviously were 100% on, along with the war room posse, is that we don't take the manufactured and synthetic narrative from the mainstream media and assume it's true.
00:09:38.240 We dissect it analytically with hypersensitivity and we take out from that, we extract from the totality of the mainstream media the data points, which can be externally verified, and we plot our own line between those data points.
00:09:54.760 And that is, we do the work ourselves, the heavy lifting ourselves, the analysis ourselves.
00:09:59.340 And that is why I think the war room posse and the war room, where we can be so proud of our analysis over this past year.
00:10:07.760 Now, let's start right now and work our way back, because there was, as you were mentioning, an article just a few days ago in Politico, which highlighted, I mean, it was somewhat of a buried lead, but it highlighted something that we had been saying was going to take place for the preceding sort of nine to 12 months.
00:10:30.220 This was the line pushed by President Biden and President Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, that the West will support Ukraine for, in quotation marks, as long as it takes.
00:10:46.320 And then what happened about two or three weeks ago when President Zelensky was over on his last begging mission to D.C.?
00:10:54.220 Hold on, hold on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't bury the lead, because we've got to get this right.
00:11:00.980 However long it takes, with whatever it takes.
00:11:05.700 It was both a commitment of duration and a commitment of unlimited resources.
00:11:11.020 This is what, this is the lie to the Ukrainian people.
00:11:13.820 The Ukrainian people were told, by the highest levels of representations of your government that you pay for, and EU, British, all of it, but particularly Biden came up with this, however long it takes, with whatever it takes.
00:11:29.700 So they made a commitment, not just open-ended, which is unheard of, open-ended as far as time goes, but also about the depth of resources that we were put in.
00:11:40.460 And with no conditions, I mean, this was an unconditional, unconditional full support, Ben Harnwell.
00:11:47.340 Steve, well, it was a lie to the Ukrainian people, and very much an endorsement of Professor John Mishama's thesis right back at the beginning that the Americans were going to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian.
00:12:01.760 That's pretty much an endorsement of his cynical, but absolutely accurate analysis.
00:12:09.580 But, Steve, it wasn't just a lie to the Ukrainian people, a disastrous, catastrophic lie to the Ukrainian people.
00:12:17.520 It was a lie to the people of the United States.
00:12:19.860 It was a lie to America's NATO allies or NATO satellites, whichever term you like to prefer to use.
00:12:27.720 And it could have been exposed as a lie with a simple cursory reading of the United States Constitution.
00:12:35.140 President Biden had zero authority to make that guarantee because, of course, it requires Congress to sign off on it.
00:12:44.100 And, you know, one of the theses that I say constantly about our sociopathic overlords, the reason I say it, and I'm not joking, I'm not going to make an amusing formulation of words here.
00:12:55.480 These people are sociopaths. And the reason that they're sociopaths is that there is no limit on the harm and evil and malevolence that these people will do as long as they can elbow themselves to the front of an international press conference and posture at the podium as a morally superior being.
00:13:14.080 There is no limit on the harm that they will do.
00:13:17.680 And if I can close, Steve, on this point with this analysis, right?
00:13:21.700 And we'll talk about this as the show goes on.
00:13:24.020 What is absolutely emerged, especially towards the end of 2023, is that the damage that the United States is doing to the international rules based order exceeds by many, many factors that damage that would have simply happened if Russia had been allowed to annex a disputed territory of the Donbass with zero repercussions.
00:13:49.720 Now, that would have been damaging to the international rules based order, beloved of our global elites.
00:13:54.900 But what they are doing, supposedly in the defense of that order, is catastrophically undermining that, that order and leaving in its place chaos.
00:14:06.540 Well, hang on for one second. We'll take a short break here on our New Year's Eve special.
00:14:11.700 You're in the war room. We're going to go back to Rome with our own Ben Harnouar in just a moment.
00:14:19.720 You're in the war room.
00:14:49.720 As we head toward a presidential election in November, one thing you can be sure of, 2024 will be a tumultuous year like no other.
00:15:08.640 How will your hard-earned savings fare during this year?
00:15:11.720 You're already seeing the impacts of inflation at the pump, the grocery store.
00:15:16.300 The dollar continues to lose buying power quicker than your wages can increase.
00:15:21.160 How are you protecting your savings?
00:15:24.220 Consider diversifying with gold from Birch Gold Group.
00:15:27.660 For decades, gold has been the choice of investors and central banks to hedge against inflation.
00:15:33.760 Now, you can own it in a tax-sheltered IRA with the help of Birch Gold.
00:15:39.080 Just text Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N, to 989898.
00:15:43.340 And Birch Gold will send you a free info kit on gold.
00:15:47.260 They'll help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into an IRA in gold.
00:15:53.020 And the best part?
00:15:54.280 You don't have to pay a penny out of pocket.
00:15:56.700 With an A-plus rating, with the Better Business Bureau, thousands of satisfied customers, you can trust Birch Gold.
00:16:03.820 Text Bannon to 989898 to claim your free info kit.
00:16:07.500 That's Bannon to 989898.
00:16:10.420 And secure your savings now.
00:16:12.320 Take action.
00:16:13.540 Text Bannon at 989898.
00:16:16.600 Action.
00:16:17.360 Action.
00:16:18.120 Action.
00:16:18.440 Action.
00:16:19.440 Should old acquaintance be forgotten and never brought to mind?
00:16:31.480 Okay.
00:16:32.380 Happy New Year.
00:16:34.600 The New Year's weekend where we bring down the curtain on the old and open the curtain on the new.
00:16:44.360 Incredible, historic year.
00:16:49.660 For those of you that have been with us and for those of you just coming on board now.
00:16:54.100 I want to make sure the whole show today is to kind of put it in perspective this year that we came from or came through in your role in it.
00:17:05.640 And your role has been the dominant role.
00:17:11.020 The reason that Biden is now trying to soft sell a new set of objectives and a new set of perspectives on this debacle in Ukraine and the lies on Ukraine.
00:17:25.580 It's because you've stood firm and made sure you convinced the globalist neocon Republicans in the House besides the America First, which is about 100.
00:17:40.020 You've convinced the others now that they will be turfed out if they continue along this debacle in Ukraine.
00:17:47.580 And this is vitally important.
00:17:50.540 They tried to hold our they tried to hold hostage the sovereignty of our own nation by coupling this with this border.
00:17:57.640 And it was just going to be, you know, more optics, more cosmetics on the border situation to try to say, oh, we're going to get very tough on the border.
00:18:06.500 If you give us a 60 or 70 billion dollars to.
00:18:12.380 To Ukraine, Raheem is going to join us here in a moment in Raheem is, in fact, was.
00:18:21.820 For me, he was an editor of Breitbart London, and he was there at the beginning of this color revolution in 2013 and 14.
00:18:30.580 I believe he went over to Kiev itself to cover it live.
00:18:34.740 I think one of the first time for five days to cover the revolution, this color revolution life.
00:18:40.180 So he said we've been there since the very beginning and it's very tough to make hide nor hair of this.
00:18:46.820 And the reason is you can never tell who the players are.
00:18:49.060 It's all it's a wilderness of mirrors.
00:18:50.900 In fact, in this, Ben, I'd be remiss and talk about where we've come this year and now this.
00:18:58.200 And remember, the always remember Biden's putting a new face on this for the world is because of this audience,
00:19:06.020 specifically this audience stood up when the whole world was against us, when the Republican Party was against us.
00:19:13.800 And you said, absolutely no way.
00:19:16.160 This is 100 percent wrong.
00:19:18.040 We don't have the money.
00:19:18.940 We shouldn't be supporting this.
00:19:20.160 We don't like the elites are involved with this.
00:19:22.960 But most importantly, this is the wrong thing for the Ukrainian people, because we're going to end up in a place where the eastern border of Ukraine with the Russian speaking provinces is not going to change.
00:19:36.520 Crimea is not going to change.
00:19:38.180 You're going to lose tens, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Ukrainians.
00:19:42.620 They're going to be funneled into the charnel house.
00:19:45.120 And remember, most of those Ukrainians are just like you.
00:19:48.620 The deplorables of Ukraine.
00:19:50.720 OK, they're the the MAGA types of Ukraine.
00:19:53.940 They're the hobbits.
00:19:55.680 They got shoveled into the charnel house here with a country that's left like, as I keep saying, if you look at Bakhmut and some of these places, there's no difference in that than Dresden in 1945.
00:20:06.600 So that's where we've come.
00:20:09.660 And this audience stood in the breach at the beginning, said this does not have to happen because there's other ways to sort this out.
00:20:17.860 It turns out, Ben, even in the early days of war, more of this is coming out now as fingers the fingers are going to start to be pointed and history is not going to look good on guys like Zelensky and Biden and Jake Sullivan, particularly Victoria Nuland.
00:20:31.920 As we've said from the beginning, when all most of the conservative commentariat was sitting there calling Zelensky, they were fanboying for Zelensky worse than a fanboy for Elon Musk.
00:20:42.960 I mean, it was sickening certain commentators whose names I will not mention putting Instagram pictures up or tweeting out pictures of Zelensky going.
00:20:52.660 This is what Churchill looks like.
00:20:54.120 I mean, absolutely revolting.
00:20:56.920 And we told people at the time that this guy was a not a good guy and was only looking after himself.
00:21:04.640 But it turns out that the British, particularly the United States were bad, but it turns out the British and Boris Johnson.
00:21:13.060 So the question were hands on of of not letting the Ukrainians even come to some sort of negotiate deal in the very early days of this.
00:21:20.380 What is the obsession with the Victoria Nulands of the world and the Boris Johnson's the world and that click with Ukraine?
00:21:29.980 There's something that the average person in this one I consider myself an average person can't understand why this whole thing's been about Ukraine and particularly shoveling money into Ukraine.
00:21:43.340 That when President Trump even had a perfect phone call and brought up the fact of corruption and have to get the bottom of it, he's immediately when I say immediately within 60 days impeached.
00:21:55.900 The highest thing you can do to an American president, Ben Harnwell.
00:21:58.940 Steve, well, really, this just illustrates the existential danger that Donald Trump confronted the corrupt US military industrial complex with.
00:22:12.860 And it was an existential threat to them, and that's why they wasted two basically legislative years with impeachment inquiries on Donald Trump, because they could not afford to let his program go forward.
00:22:31.540 And the reason that Donald Trump was an existential threat to these people was that his mandate, and I don't know, probably I don't know enough about American history in the first century of the republic.
00:22:45.620 Perhaps Andrew Jackson would be a parallel who went on the mandate of abolishing the precursor to what is today the Federal Reserve, and he did abolish it.
00:22:55.960 But both Trump and Jackson had popular mandates with the people.
00:23:01.040 They weren't just basically like Joe Biden's boogies term that they'd done.
00:23:05.460 They'd served their time.
00:23:07.440 They'd worked their way off the greasy bowl.
00:23:10.120 And therefore, you know, in the absence of anyone else, they said, OK, so let Joe do it, as they did on the Democrat side.
00:23:17.240 And before that, Hillary, right?
00:23:19.320 People with no particular merit.
00:23:21.720 Donald Trump had never even fought a political election campaign.
00:23:24.900 His mandate to drain the swamp and to build the war, I do not know in the 20th century any political leader to be elected as head of state with a mandate so pure and so convincing,
00:23:42.200 given from the people that sort of transcended the political party that that candidate was standing for.
00:23:50.160 And it was a direct relationship to the people, to their representative.
00:23:55.400 That's why they hated him so much, because he wasn't controlled opposition, as we're used to seeing for decades now, sort of on the table tennis ball that goes between flips between the blue team and the red time.
00:24:08.260 He was a guy with his own mandate enabled by the people themselves to do something.
00:24:14.180 And that's why the Robert Kagan's and the Victoria Newlands, the whole of the mainstream media, which we support and paid for, right?
00:24:22.280 This is the reason all of Congress, all of the Senate, this is why the reason that they are, that they display what we call Trump derangement syndrome.
00:24:32.160 It's not really, they're not really deranged.
00:24:33.900 They're acting in there like rats leaving a sinking ship.
00:24:36.380 They were acting purely, and still are to this day, in their vested, corrupt, vested interests.
00:24:43.480 And you only need to look, right, just I'll close with this observation.
00:24:46.860 Just look at this fact that the paladins, when it comes to Ukraine, the sort of the paladins of democracy,
00:24:54.780 will support a guy who suppressed his political opposition in Ukraine,
00:24:59.660 and will then in Colorado remove a person from, or try to remove a person from the ballot paper
00:25:06.260 to specifically deprive the people from exercising their democratic derogative.
00:25:12.000 That just shows you that these, just how far gone these people are.
00:25:16.500 They must be opposed, they will be opposed, and they will fundamentally lose in the long run, Steve.
00:25:20.700 What, in this year, as it went through, too, because we had the, give me a minute on the spring offensive,
00:25:32.440 because that was the big sale job of, and they were coming off, they thought they had the wind to their back
00:25:37.200 in leaving 22 into 23.
00:25:40.500 23 was where they were going to deliver the knockout blow to the Russians with the, quote-unquote, spring offensive.
00:25:46.860 And at the time, we said, because, remember, it was a huge fight over getting the combined arms,
00:25:52.720 the tanks from Germany, the close air support, all this.
00:25:56.420 We said, it's impossible.
00:25:57.720 You can't train troops up here.
00:25:59.140 This is not something that's done over the night.
00:26:00.500 The United States Army ain't that great at it.
00:26:04.140 And we've been doing it for decades and decades and decades, and kind of learned it from the British.
00:26:09.120 Walk me through that, that fiasco, and just the bald-faced absolute lies that were told in this entire time.
00:26:15.000 Well, Steve, if you want to pick out one event from the last two years in Ukraine that exemplifies exactly what the corrupt ruling elites have done,
00:26:24.880 look at the counter-offensive.
00:26:26.360 I think it's increasingly obvious now that there was never really the intention of having a war-deciding initiative
00:26:34.000 with this first spring offensive, then summer offensive.
00:26:37.400 It was a pretext.
00:26:39.100 A pretext to do what?
00:26:41.140 To bill for the American taxpayer for money.
00:26:44.820 Because you've got to remember, a lot of the funding that the United States gave to Zelensky and his regime of crooks for this counter-offensive,
00:26:52.260 that's unaccounted for.
00:26:53.180 We don't know where that money has gone.
00:26:54.720 A lot of the arms that the United States gave to Ukraine have ended up on the secondary market all over the world, right,
00:27:02.820 because they were just selling them and pocketing the cash.
00:27:06.540 So it was just a pretext, Steve.
00:27:08.900 It was a pretext to beat the American taxpaying public over their head with lies so that the American elites could put their hands in the back pocket
00:27:19.760 of the American taxpayers with minimum resistance.
00:27:23.260 And that is exactly what happened.
00:27:25.460 And if you want to see another repetition of this, I'll give, well, I thought there was a cue for a break there.
00:27:32.520 Hang on a second.
00:27:36.540 Just hold a break.
00:27:37.460 We're going to bring Raheem in, too.
00:27:39.240 We're connected back at the start of this.
00:27:41.180 And also, at the beginning of the year, Ron DeSantis was up 20 points on Donald J. Trump.
00:27:49.300 We're going to tie it all together next in The Word.
00:28:02.520 We're going to tie it all together next in The Word.
00:28:32.500 It's actually yours, has been forged.
00:28:34.580 And it's not in your name anymore.
00:28:37.340 But we can't let that happen, and we won't let it happen.
00:28:40.800 Home title theft is a clear and present danger for all homeowners.
00:28:44.800 And that's why I trust Home Title Lock.
00:28:47.000 And now, Home Title Lock is protecting those who protect us and giving back.
00:28:52.880 For every subscription you purchase from Home Title Lock, they'll donate one year of free service to a military family in your name.
00:29:02.220 Our troops deserve the peace of mind in knowing that while they protect us, Home Title Lock protects their most valuable asset.
00:29:10.460 We all need to protect the title to our homes.
00:29:13.940 I'll share updates, but for now, please join me.
00:29:17.580 Protect your home's title at HomeTitleLock.com slash Bannon and use promo code Bannon.
00:29:24.420 And when you do, they'll protect the home of a service member in your name.
00:29:28.560 That's HomeTitleLock.com slash Bannon code Bannon.
00:29:32.960 HomeTitleLock.com slash Bannon code Bannon.
00:29:35.640 HomeTitleLock.com slash Bannon.
00:30:05.640 HomeTitleLock.com slash Bannon.
00:30:07.560 HomeTitleLock.com slash Bannon code Bannon.
00:30:31.680 HomeTitleLock.com slash Bannon.
00:30:32.260 The two biggest stories of this year and things that drove, one, your efforts to get this Congress straight, but it was really tied to this out-of-control spending.
00:30:45.300 The out-of-control spending is inextricably linked with this concept of an American empire, that we have to be everywhere.
00:30:54.320 We have to have a trillion-dollar defense budget.
00:30:56.120 We are the guardians of this, quote-unquote, post-war international rules-based order, which has really done nothing but strip jobs from working-class people in the United States, suppress your wages, worsen your economic well-being at the benefit of the elites of the world that have profited off of this.
00:31:18.220 Both these stories go back to really 2013, 2014, the migration issue starting in Europe with the Syrian civil war and then Merkel allowing in, I don't know, a couple of million, million-and-a-half Syrian, quote-unquote, refugees, where Orban and others stood their ground.
00:31:35.620 In addition, the beginning of the Ukraine color revolution driven by the United States, Victoria Nuland, the people of the State Department.
00:31:46.140 And here we are today getting ready to close the books on 23 and going to 24, and you see that these are two of the biggest stories of today, 10 years later, with only one big development in between.
00:32:01.760 And what was that? The rise of Nigel Farage and the kind of populist nationalist right in the United Kingdom that led to them, Brexit, and taking their country back and their sovereignty, which was the predicate for the great come-from-behind, out-of-nowhere victory of President Trump and the beginning and rise of the MAGA movement.
00:32:23.200 So we're going to tie it all together with people that were there. That would be Stephen K. Bannon, Ben Harnwell, and Rahim Kassam.
00:32:29.700 Rahim, I want to go back to those days, particularly the way this year started, because this year started, and this is why it's been such a big reversal of fortune.
00:32:38.400 And if you watch this show every day, maybe sometimes you don't get it, because we've been so adamant about both of these, about what a worm Zelensky was, untrustworthy guy, and a puppet for the West, and all these things were lies.
00:32:52.140 You could see through it pretty easily if you focused. And the demise of Donald Trump or the rise of Ron DeSantis.
00:32:59.000 At the beginning of the year, Zelensky's capital was as high as – he was nearing his high watermark, and so was Ron DeSantis.
00:33:09.280 Ron DeSantis, people forget, was up, I don't know, 20 points on President Trump.
00:33:14.100 And if President Trump had not announced immediately after the midterm election, it would have been much worse.
00:33:21.300 Rahim, put it in perspective for us.
00:33:25.460 Yeah, I think that's right. I think it was the timing that was critical to a lot of it.
00:33:31.140 And I think it was this audience, by the way, that was critical to a lot of it, if not all of it, quite frankly, because at the beginning of the year, in January especially, I mean, you know, the national polls, we issued our endorsement the day after President Trump made his announcement, right?
00:33:47.600 But for most people, not really plugged into what was going on.
00:33:51.540 Hold it. Hang on. I just want everybody to remember, that was on 15 November, right after the midterm elections.
00:33:58.620 You were down there. You were one of the few. I mean, we covered it.
00:34:02.640 We had a whole crew down there of Moe, and I think Grace went, and I think we had Nicole Grady there, and Natalie Winters, Jane Zirkle.
00:34:12.600 We fully had a full deployment. We covered it live here in the war room.
00:34:16.700 You were there. I think it was you and Seb and Matt Boyle and a couple of others, but you could – even hardcore MAGA, there was a lot that were not there.
00:34:28.240 DeSantis has just come off that big midterm victory, up 30 points, I think, or 20 points in Florida, and so many – and people remember, so many of the people – a couple of three of the people who used to be on this show just jumped right onto it.
00:34:40.800 DeSantis is the guy. So, I mean, Trump's lowest point, even – almost as bad as January and February of 2021 when he first got to Mar-a-Lago, maybe March was right after that midterm when he announced, boldly announced, set it in motion.
00:34:56.840 But by January, he's still 20 points down, correct?
00:35:00.460 Yeah, and if you don't mind, by the way, I will say that all of these sort of – the former Hispanic hard men that used to come on this show and gibber to the audience about whatever they want, they caved immediately, right?
00:35:15.580 And I don't even need to mention names, but they caved immediately.
00:35:18.200 And by the way, now, look, it's the end of the year.
00:35:21.060 They all know they messed up.
00:35:22.420 They're all trying to make their way back in somehow.
00:35:24.280 But, you know, the people who turned up on November the 15th, you know, we are the people who were there in 2015, right, before everything, before all of the hangers-on, all the clingers-on.
00:35:37.000 You know, we always use the phrase, especially to talk about people like Nigel Farage, Trump before Trump, right?
00:35:44.820 And a lot of people do this for a very long time.
00:35:47.680 And Geert Wilders is another one that I can think of that's been there and doing this and putting each other to the will and not wavering, right, and not trying to find some compromise with the political establishment to say, okay, well, we'll choose a less controversial version of that.
00:36:04.660 And that's what a lot of people thought they were getting out of Ron DeSantis.
00:36:08.500 I saw very early on, if the audience wants to know why, because I talked to a lot of those people.
00:36:14.600 I talked to the pushaws and the tear mans and, like, all of those people of the world who ended up defecting.
00:36:22.160 And I looked at it and I said, you guys don't know what you're doing.
00:36:25.720 You don't know how to run a national campaign.
00:36:27.640 You don't know how to work the media.
00:36:29.640 You don't know any of – you don't have a base.
00:36:32.360 And, frankly, a lot of these people are wildly dislikable people.
00:36:36.500 The Jeff Rose of the world, all of these people in the DeSantis milieu ended up being people who just couldn't appeal to people at a very human level.
00:36:50.520 So that's why you saw as the year went on and they led up to that launch amidst their donors in the basement in that hotel in Miami.
00:37:01.200 And then they did the glitchy launch on Twitter.com as it was back then.
00:37:07.020 And then, of course, we were told, oh, well, you know, maybe that didn't go very well.
00:37:10.160 But wait until he gets on that debate stage.
00:37:12.100 Then everybody will see.
00:37:14.000 And everybody did see.
00:37:16.000 And I wouldn't call Ron DeSantis an empty suit.
00:37:19.100 But, you know, maybe the Ozempics had too far of an impact because he is coming across like that.
00:37:26.600 And he isn't coming across like Trump without the drama.
00:37:29.760 He's coming across as Ted Cruz without the charisma.
00:37:33.800 And that has only worsened.
00:37:36.500 I mean, you saw the same thing take place over the course of the year with Zelensky.
00:37:42.260 I remember coming on the show in I think it was February and saying, mark my words, there is no spring offensive.
00:37:48.480 This is all talk.
00:37:49.520 It's all to get the political class to part with more American taxpayer cash, to send it overseas, to cover up for the things that they're covering up for in Ukraine.
00:37:57.440 It's not a coincidence that Ukraine was what President Trump was first impeached over.
00:38:04.180 And it's not a coincidence that they also lied about this spring offensive that never came to pass.
00:38:10.480 And then the third thing I think that, you know, this audience really put their shoulder to the wheel on is Kevin McCarthy and getting him out of there.
00:38:17.580 Hang on.
00:38:20.520 We're going to pivot that second.
00:38:22.520 But I want to go back to Ukraine.
00:38:24.380 The first chink in the armor for those people that were MAGA or maybe taking a look at DeSantis was also Ukraine.
00:38:34.800 Let's go back to that.
00:38:35.720 When he came out and he took the – I think on Tucker, he took the kind of America first war room Tucker party line, national pulse party line.
00:38:46.340 Regional dispute.
00:38:47.020 This thing, regional dispute, it's the national security interest of the United States, the vital national security is the southern border, not the eastern-speaking Russian border.
00:38:57.500 He had that down from his staff, clearly had been watching these shows.
00:39:01.640 He was prepped to do it.
00:39:03.240 And it's all about Ukraine.
00:39:05.080 And then immediately the bricks fell on him from the Republican donor base.
00:39:11.120 And why did they care?
00:39:12.860 This is what – it's for folks at home.
00:39:15.260 Why would the Republican donors – here's a guy running, trying to out-Trump Trump.
00:39:20.120 And Trump's been very ambivalent about this from the beginning, saying, hey, I can solve this thing in 24 hours.
00:39:26.000 But, you know, fighting is not the way to do it.
00:39:27.600 War is not the way to do it.
00:39:28.660 And Putin would have never done this in a million years as I was there.
00:39:31.900 DeSantis came in to actually be to the right of Trump to a degree and then caved immediately.
00:39:37.860 Why would Ron DeSantis, having prepped his whole life for this, thought about it, held his military credentials out as a big deal, that he really understood geopolitics, why would he come out, take our party line, and then fold like a cheap suit within 24 hours, sir?
00:39:57.140 Firstly, a correction.
00:40:00.280 I have a question for you.
00:40:02.380 What is the Islamist group in Gaza?
00:40:05.480 It's the Muslim Brotherhood, sir.
00:40:12.660 So why call them the Muslim Brotherhood?
00:40:15.480 Donors.
00:40:17.260 They're not Republican donors.
00:40:19.100 You're saying global donors.
00:40:20.840 They're globalist donors.
00:40:21.180 Very good.
00:40:21.620 They're the globalist class.
00:40:22.640 Very good.
00:40:23.760 And it just so happens to be at the time, at this time, they're giving money to a Republican, right?
00:40:30.580 But just like Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood, these globalist donor classes are still the globalist donor class.
00:40:37.600 And we shouldn't refer to them as Republican donors.
00:40:39.760 These are not people who believe in the same things as Republicans all across this country do.
00:40:43.220 These are not people who believe in closed borders.
00:40:46.440 These are not people who believe in, by the way, higher tax rates for the billionaire class, the multi-billionaire class that is getting away with all the globalist policies everywhere.
00:40:55.940 No, I mean, this is a globalist racket we're talking about here.
00:40:58.920 And DeSantis, like you say, caved to them immediately, caved to them immediately over an issue which he was clearly told, hey, if you can't get right with this, then you ain't right with us, and we will do everything to stop you getting its nominations.
00:41:10.440 Chris caves immediately.
00:41:11.780 And by the way, you've got to look to just not him, but to all the people around him.
00:41:18.100 I mentioned Pusho earlier, you know, masquerading as MAGA for the last several years, then comes out against Donald Trump.
00:41:25.640 And then you go back and you look at their history.
00:41:28.200 I mean, she's a darker advocate.
00:41:30.280 She talks about wanting citizenship for illegal migrants into the United States.
00:41:36.200 And these people hadn't received this level of scrutiny, whether it's DeSantis, Jeff Rowe, or the team around them.
00:41:44.580 And as soon as that level of scrutiny was applied, everything collapsed.
00:41:49.740 And I know they like to joke, like, oh, you guys talk about his shoes.
00:41:53.320 You talk about his suits.
00:41:54.780 You talk about his, you know, bobbling his head all over the place.
00:41:57.760 Those are not serious things.
00:42:00.000 They don't get it.
00:42:01.380 Those are not serious things because he's not a serious candidate.
00:42:05.480 Those are used to show how utterly unserious him and his campaign are.
00:42:11.020 And time and time again over the course of this year, that cadre of people who are, by the way, the neo-never-Trumpers.
00:42:17.900 That's who they, you know, that's who they, prediction for the next year, they're all going to move over to RFK.
00:42:22.840 OK, they're all going to shift their allegiance to RFK.
00:42:24.780 They're not going to go back to Trump.
00:42:26.480 Some may try, right?
00:42:28.140 Some of the ones that we know who have been on this show may try.
00:42:31.400 But the majority of those people, they're not going to go back to Trump.
00:42:34.140 They've set their face like Flint to being never-Trump now.
00:42:36.460 So they are the neo-never-Trumpers is what we'll know them as.
00:42:40.980 And, you know, frankly, I don't think the country will look at Ron DeSantis the same again.
00:42:46.960 No, political career destroyed.
00:42:48.860 Hang on for one second.
00:42:49.900 Ben Harnwell in Rome, Raheem Kassam, both of them there at the beginning of all this, reviewing 2023, a historic year, the ascendance of MAGA as a political force.
00:43:04.060 Short commercial break.
00:43:05.140 Back in a moment.
00:43:06.460 Back in a moment.
00:43:36.460 Back in a moment.
00:43:41.460 Should all acquaintance be forgotten and never more?
00:43:49.780 OK, welcome back.
00:43:52.520 Remember, we're ending a year of turbulence and heading into a year of even greater turbulence.
00:43:57.040 That's why you need now more than ever to understand de-dollarization, the importance of the dollar being the prime reserve currency.
00:44:06.040 Not that it's something we should not think through, but it's also something that you just can't get off of immediately or you will have a collapse of your system.
00:44:14.640 Go to birchgold.com slash Bannon right now.
00:44:18.320 Get the end of the dollar empire for four free installments to get you up to speed.
00:44:23.000 A fifth one is coming in mid-January.
00:44:25.040 But also you can talk to Philip Patrick and the team about why gold has been a hedge for man for 5,000 years of recorded history.
00:44:34.520 Understand that, and you will be a better person for it and a smarter person for it.
00:44:41.000 Gold's close to an all-time high here as we end the year.
00:44:44.480 But that's not in and of itself the most important thing.
00:44:47.660 It's why it is at an all-time high.
00:44:53.100 In closing out this hour, I've got to go back to something because this is going to inform us in reviewing the rest of the year,
00:45:00.500 particularly about McCarthy and about what this audience did and about the invasion on the southern border.
00:45:06.080 I'll start with you, Rahim, and I'll go to Ben.
00:45:08.220 Again, it wasn't like he said, I'm going to raise the taxes of the billionaires or, you know,
00:45:14.360 I want to do something tougher on the border or end asylum, something.
00:45:18.300 This about Ukraine, the stand he took, which was really not as hard as us.
00:45:25.680 So it was but it was in the sweet spot of America first.
00:45:30.080 They came down on DeSantis like a ton of bricks and like a little boy.
00:45:35.600 He reversed in a very sloppy and unsophisticated manner immediately.
00:45:40.080 So exposed to the entire world that he was nothing more than a neocon if you scratch the surface and didn't believe anything.
00:45:46.220 So then how could you believe anything this guy said when something so important about the as the Ukraine war at the beginning of the year?
00:45:53.680 He thought, why is it that the globalist donor class elite will not allow any heresy whatsoever in thinking about something like the Ukraine, sir?
00:46:03.460 Yeah, well, I don't mean to sound like a contrarian on this, and maybe you're just teeing me up here.
00:46:10.060 But I completely disagree with the framing of the question again, that he absolutely was at that point in time talking about something worse than raising the taxes.
00:46:20.420 It is a tax raise as far as they're concerned, right?
00:46:22.940 They are stakeholders in this war.
00:46:25.500 They are shareholders in the companies that make the money on the war.
00:46:29.840 For them, it's worse than a tax rise.
00:46:32.600 And, of course, the ultimate tax rise is a tax on their philosophy.
00:46:36.320 The tax on their philosophy, by not backing something like that, is a tax on globalism.
00:46:40.860 It's a tax on the rules-based global order that they have been beneficiaries of and even helped to set up, have familial lineage in that going back decades to set up.
00:46:52.500 So for them, it's worse than two or three pennies on the dollar in terms of a tax rise.
00:46:57.060 It's the ultimate tax rise.
00:46:58.680 This is putting them out of business.
00:47:00.120 They are stakeholders in this war.
00:47:01.560 They are stakeholders in globalism.
00:47:03.480 And I think that's the way people need to look at it.
00:47:06.320 You know, this isn't a minor issue to these people.
00:47:09.840 Just like Iraq and Afghanistan were places there so many people made their fortunes into bigger fortunes.
00:47:16.760 They have been invested in Ukraine in the very same way.
00:47:19.540 And mark my words, once this coming year, Ukraine is left by the wayside, they will turn their attention somewhere else on foreign soil to try and grift off destruction, disease, catastrophe, killing, you name it.
00:47:33.980 But that's what's going on here.
00:47:37.300 Ben Harnwell, your assessment.
00:47:39.000 Yeah, I want to start off from Raheem's starting point as well and question the framing of how you put that, Steve.
00:47:49.440 Look, as far as I'm concerned, judging by how he's been governor of Florida, Juan DeSantis isn't a neocon.
00:47:57.960 He's something worse than a neocon.
00:48:00.820 He's weak.
00:48:02.160 That is fundamentally, I think, the issue here.
00:48:05.200 As governor, he's been, I think, pretty good, pretty outstanding as governor.
00:48:08.100 Right.
00:48:08.840 The reason is that he crumpled, as you said, like a cheap suit.
00:48:12.600 He's weak.
00:48:14.100 Now, you can criticize Donald Trump for many things.
00:48:16.980 Right.
00:48:17.880 And people do criticize him even when he's wrong.
00:48:20.160 He never backs down.
00:48:21.000 Right.
00:48:21.740 But compared to someone whose instincts may be right, though, not on the point that Raheem was mentioning, I'm not going to argue with that because he's absolutely right.
00:48:30.100 But on the general point, you cannot at this point in an existential crisis that the United States now is put someone who is weak at the top of the apex.
00:48:42.380 That would be just catastrophic.
00:48:45.620 It would be worse than putting Nikki Haley there.
00:48:47.660 Right.
00:48:48.060 That's my first observation I want to make.
00:48:50.240 The second observation, to come back to your question, is why did the donor class fall down on him so instantly?
00:48:58.220 Look, I'm going to have to riff again off Raheem.
00:49:01.360 Top one percent of the United States owns, I think, owns, has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent put together.
00:49:10.820 Right. That is not a consequence of free market capitalism.
00:49:15.180 I'm a free market capitalist, an uber free market capitalist.
00:49:19.260 That is not a consequence.
00:49:20.280 And I'm not peddling envy here about the rich because their gains are not a consequence of satisfying consumers in the free market.
00:49:29.500 Their gains, as Raheem was saying, are due to the fact that these people have gamed the system for their own advantage to the extent that the ordinary, regular, working guy can never move ahead.
00:49:46.460 Right. That's why we have seen this phenomenon, right, that people with hundreds of millions of dollars have become billionaires at one end of the spectrum and at the other end of the spectrum, people are working two and even more jobs and still not able to make it to the end of the month.
00:50:02.560 That is not a consequence of free market capitalism is a consequence that the system is not only corrupt, but corrupting.
00:50:11.920 And to repeat the point I mentioned earlier, this is why Donald Trump represented in 2016 an existential threat to their interests, because they are doing this.
00:50:22.720 The elites are doing this in the face of the American people with literally zero percent of popular support.
00:50:30.420 The only way they can get away with that is by making sure whoever is the leader of the red team or the blue team, that they're pulling the puppet strings.
00:50:40.260 And obviously, Ron DeSantis was told the nature of the game and he crumbled.
00:50:47.200 Hang on one second. We're going to take a short commercial break back with Raheem, Ben Harnwell.
00:50:55.580 We're also going to go to southern Mexico to talk about the invasion of your beloved country.
00:51:00.760 We even track down Dave Brad if we can. All of it here on the New Year's Eve special in the war room.
00:51:17.200 Folks, let me tell you about Soul Tea.
00:51:42.440 It's a company that makes a soft gel supplement rich in antioxidants.
00:51:45.820 To help people like you and me keep a healthy heart.
00:51:49.700 While COVID gets all the headlines, it's important to realize that heart disease kills nearly 700,000 Americans every year.
00:51:57.960 Yes, heart disease is the number one killer every year, year in and year out.
00:52:01.800 Heart disease builds over time.
00:52:03.800 Hypertension, high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, diabetes, all of it affects our heart.
00:52:09.080 A healthy heart is key to being energetic as we get older.
00:52:12.900 However, it is never too early to take care of your heart.
00:52:17.780 You see, heart disease sneaks up on us.
00:52:19.840 You can start in your 30s and when this happens, you're at serious risk by the time you turn 60.
00:52:23.520 If you want to take care of your heart and those you care about, please go to warroomhealth.com.
00:52:29.800 That's warroomhealth.com.
00:52:32.680 All one word, warroomhealth.com.
00:52:35.120 Use the code warroom at checkout to save 67% of your first shipment.
00:52:40.020 That's code warroom at checkout to save 67%.
00:52:43.020 Do it again.
00:52:44.480 Warroomhealth, all one word, warroomhealth.com.
00:52:47.820 Go there today.
00:52:49.340 You need, if you're going to be part of the posse, you need a strong heart.
00:52:52.360 You need a lion's heart.
00:52:54.120 How we're going to do that is with Soul Tea.
00:52:56.520 Go there.
00:52:57.060 Do it today.
00:52:57.680 Check it out.
00:52:58.140 You need a lion's heart.