00:00:00.000About 30 seconds up, but I do want to ask you about the response you're hearing from your fellow journalists with Trump in the White House now dictating which journalists can access Donald Trump.
00:00:10.680Yeah, look, this is a big deal. I understand that a lot of Americans probably don't care too much and don't feel sorry for reporters when they shouldn't.
00:00:17.160It's not about us. It's about them in a way, because what's happening now is the president of the United States is saying the first time in generations that he gets to decide who is inside the pool that gets closest to him in terms of asking questions.
00:00:28.820That's never been in my lifetime anyway. I've been covering this going back to 1996, the prerogative of a president, Republican or Democrat.
00:00:36.420Now he's saying he chooses. And if he doesn't like your coverage, they've made very clear and barring the Associated Press, you could be expelled from that pool.
00:00:43.820So now we have a government organized, government run, government controlled press pool.
00:00:48.880And that's that's an issue of great concern, not just to to mainstream publications, but to publications on the left and right, which which have a lot at stake as well.
00:00:57.060So it is it is very concerning. And, you know, again, one more indication of where this administration under Trump's leadership wants to head.
00:01:04.900You just talked about how important the work that Elon Musk is doing is if you pass a continuing resolution, won't that just refund all the programs that he says he's cutting that are full of waste, fraud and abuse?
00:01:14.900No, look, you can. That's why I say you add anomalies to a CR. You can increase the spending. You can decrease the spending.
00:01:21.780You can add language that that says, for example, the dramatic changes that have been made to USAID would be reflected in the ongoing spending.
00:01:29.520It would be a clean CR mostly, I think. But with some of those changes to to adapt to the new realities here.
00:01:36.600And the new reality is less government, more efficiency, better return for the taxpayers.
00:01:42.220And I think that's something everybody should welcome.
00:01:46.400This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
00:01:50.240Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.
00:01:56.660I got a free shot. All these networks lying about the people, the people have had a belly full of it.
00:02:02.900I know you don't like hearing that. I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.
00:05:33.120If you look at the deal, there's no American investment.
00:05:36.740There may be some companies come over there, but no U.S. government direct investment and no security guarantee.
00:05:42.780Sir Keir, you're 100 percent correct, Brian, is going to be there to try, just like Macron the other day,
00:05:47.580as Macron tried to confuse the situation, try to talk President Trump into being part of some peacekeeping force or backup.
00:05:54.140President Trump's response yesterday, Brian, as you know, was saying, hey, if American companies are over there, that'll be a security guarantee enough.
00:06:04.320Kind of implied that the U.S. would step in if there was any problem.
00:06:09.280In the cabinet room yesterday, he threw down that the EU, which the British broke off with from Brexit, he says the EU was set up to challenge the United States, to cause problems for the United States.
00:06:20.460And he says, listen, I'm thinking about a 25 percent tariff on all the goods that come from the EU.
00:06:25.580That would obviously – Great Britain's not part of that.
00:06:29.420But President Trump reiterated this morning, Brian, on a true social that – and I think next Tuesday is when he's going to do the State of the Union also,
00:06:37.900or the first time is kind of the update on where the country is not officially a State of the Union.
00:06:43.720But President Trump said, hey, unless Mexico steps up to the plate, the 25 percent tariffs are going in, and he's not happy where discussions with Canada are going.
00:08:21.740Some sort of bilateral meeting, called a bilat in the Oval Office.
00:08:25.020I'm sure the president will make time for a press avail today.
00:08:30.180Brian, if you're in there, I know you're tossing a question.
00:08:32.200Then later at 2 o'clock, there'll be a joint press conference.
00:08:36.680So this is a relatively short meeting as they've got it.
00:08:39.800I think the president's – I'm not saying he's doing this out of courtesy, but he's kind of heard these pitches before.
00:08:45.120He wants to reestablish we are – we have a special relationship next to France, one of our oldest allies, and obviously most important allies in the 20th century.
00:08:57.300But it's going to be a relatively quick meeting.
00:08:59.480I think we'll get plenty of access to the president today.
00:09:03.060And, Brian Glenn, we hope you keep your streak running, that you're the first guy called – you're the first person called in the East Room.
00:09:11.240Just, hey, I'm not – you know, you're on DiMaggio's streaks.
00:14:24.820We're going to get a lot into geopolitics and capital markets.
00:14:27.520President Trump, and that's why this week you had France, you had England, and you've got Zelensky tomorrow.
00:14:37.460Birchgold.com, take your phone out, Birchgold, text Bannon, 989898.
00:14:44.100Get the ultimate guide to investing in gold and precious metals in the age of Trump, the era of Trump, totally free, available to you today from the good offices of Birchgold.
00:16:54.180Josh, and if Denver can put up, you put up a tweet last night that had attached a, I guess, a ruling or a declaration from the chief justice.
00:17:09.520And why is this important in this overall fight for President Trump to get his agenda implemented?
00:17:14.100Yeah, Steve, so great to be back with you, first of all.
00:17:17.580So last night, Chief Justice John Roberts of the United States Supreme Court basically stepped in for the first time, from what I can tell, to finally swat down one of these lower court judicial insurrectionists who was trying to bring the entirety of the Trump administration to a halt.
00:17:33.140So what I put on X was I said, Chief Justice Roberts to lower court judicial insurrection FAFO, which I'm not going to say a bad word on air, Steve, but F around, find out.
00:17:43.160That's basically what it's saying there.
00:17:44.780And this is what many of us have been calling for for weeks.
00:17:47.680So let me just kind of lay the scene briefly here.
00:17:50.520What we're seeing is not just judicial activism, Steve.
00:17:53.960I used the words very carefully there.
00:17:56.040I mean, this is a full-on judicial insurrection, going back to the very first days of this administration in power.
00:18:01.660By the way, those of us with a long enough memory to remember the first Trump administration, this is nothing new.
00:18:06.080So the first Trump administration from 2017 to 2021 faced, by my count, I believe it was 65 so-called nationwide injunctions, which, by the way, is more than the first 44 presidents of the United States combined, literally in all of American history, faced there.
00:18:19.960So they basically picked up in January just last month as if they hadn't lost a beat over the past four years.
00:18:26.140So whether it's a judge in Washington state or Ohio or Washington, D.C. or Florida, Hawaii there, the notion that you can issue a TRO, a temporary restraining order, and thereby try to bring a federal executive branch policy, an executive order to halt there, it's completely anathema.
00:18:46.260See, that's not how the separation of powers works at a very fundamental 35,000-foot altitude view.
00:18:51.740The judicial power of which Article III, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution speaks, Steve, is the power to render a judgment in a case or controversy, a.k.a. to rule on the parties before you in court.
00:19:04.220The notion that you can then bring the entire executive branch to heel, well, Thomas Jefferson, for instance, he famously described this in an 1804 letter to Abigail Adams as making the judiciary a despotic branch.
00:19:16.880This is what Abraham Lincoln railed on and on against.
00:19:19.820He famously, in his first inaugural address in March of 1861, said that the candid citizen must confess that he who allows the final decisions in constitutional law to be decided by that eminent tribunal,
00:19:32.140he was referring to the Supreme Court, but the judiciary in general, he said that that would be to basically allow us to cease to be our own rulers there.
00:19:39.740So this is all coming to a halt, and it's about time that the Supreme Court finally, finally, finally swat away.
00:19:46.080Now, this exact case that Chief Justice Roberts stepped in last night, it's from Washington, D.C.
00:19:51.160It's from a district court judge by the name of Amir Ali.
00:19:53.640And the so-called temporary restraining order in question basically would purport to require the Trump administration to continue the slush fund of all foreign contracts and contractors, billions, billions of dollars when it comes to the State Department and USAID.
00:20:09.620The problem, Steve, there's a lot of problems here.
00:20:12.820But even on these specifics here, you can't even issue a temporary restraining order when it comes to an executive order in the first place.
00:20:19.940That's actually not how administrative law works.
00:20:22.080If you want to kind of go there, you need a final agency action from, let's call it the State Department there.
00:20:28.660They're trying to sue just an executive order.
00:20:30.660So it's wrong on the actual substantive underlying law as well.
00:20:34.000But the broader point is the more important ones, I think, which is I think, I predict, and I really hope that this is going to be the beginning of a more active SCOTUS, of a more active nine justices on the Supreme Court that are going to get more involved in patrolling and policing this lower court judicial insurrection, which they have every power in the world to do.
00:20:53.920The Supreme Court of the United States is the only court in the country that is literally established by the Constitution.
00:21:00.380So it's the only one that is required.
00:21:01.980All the other lower courts basically just exist at Congress's discretion there.
00:21:05.580And it's kind of implicit in that understanding there and that hierarchy and that structure that SCOTUS has the power to swat down all of these lower court administrative stays, temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, whatever legalese they want to call it there.
00:21:18.400They can and they must get involved when these lower courts exceed their legitimate jurisdiction.
00:21:23.600The big question, and I'll end on this, the big question here is when will SCOTUS hear a direct challenge to the entire practice of these so-called nationwide injunctions in the first place?
00:21:33.640These so-called nationwide injunctions are completely unconstitutional.
00:21:37.400It is not part of the judicial power of Article III.
00:21:42.200And it hamstrung the Trump administration the first time around.
00:21:44.960And I fear, Steve, my fear is that unless and until SCOTUS directly weighs in on this and the DOJ, the acting solicitor general of the United States, Sarah Harris, they can get that cert petition nicely teed up, God willing.
00:21:55.700But unless and until SCOTUS cleanly rules that the lower courts cannot do this, they cannot bring the entirety of the executive branch to a screeching halt with one puny little one-paragraph order in some random judicial chambers out in Hawaii, whatever there, unless and until they do that, we risk letting this whole second Trump administration get away, I fear.
00:22:14.360So as we've been looking at this in the legal front, and particularly in federal courts, very, very important, we have said that they should go for X because the front line, these radical left-wing judges, and you said they're beyond activists.
00:22:31.920Take your number two pencil out because Josh Hammer just gave you the overall construct, a judicial insurrection by these front-line federal judges.
00:22:40.840We've always said expedite appellate review and then get on the emergency docket immediately because of the appellate review, particularly if it's in Washington, D.C., you're going to lose.
00:22:50.120A lot of these appellate courts are just as bad as the front-line judges.
00:22:55.820For the personnel issue dealing with this special counsel, the Supreme Court passed, and that's why I was starting to get concerned of Mike Davis and your guys' theory that the Supreme Court is going to be the arbiter of this.
00:23:08.580And in that arbitration that they're going to come down on the side of the Constitution and the unitary theory of the executive, which is obviously the intellectual construct that the Trump administration is doing.
00:23:22.520Why have they gotten involved in the slush funds or the money side of it?
00:23:26.840Why have they avoided taking any action, at least today to my understanding, on the personnel side?
00:23:38.920So Hampton-Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Trump tries to fire him on February 7th.
00:23:44.440The district court issues another one of these TROs, these temporary restraining orders, essentially purporting to mandate that he keep his job on February 12th.
00:24:10.840Now, it's worth noting that the D.C. Circuit ruling, when they heard it in that procedural posture, it was over a vociferous dissent from Judge Greg Katzis, who was an excellent Trump nominee on the D.C. Circuit the first time around.
00:24:22.320It will probably be a SCOTUS shortlister this time around as well.
00:24:25.340When it reached the U.S. Supreme Court this past weekend, there were two dissenting votes.
00:24:31.240Justice Gorsuch wrote what I thought was a compelling dissent, where he basically said that this entire notion of this remedy, what I was talking about, the notion that a district court can issue a so-called temporary restraining order, and commanding you in this case that you have to rehire Hampton-Dellinger, is nuts.
00:24:48.340So SCOTUS should have stepped in and made a substantive ruling just this past weekend.
00:24:52.460But I do think that their hand is going to be forced here sooner rather than later there.
00:24:56.440The good news, and I agree with my colleague Mike Davis on this, is that I do think that the votes are absolutely there on the current Supreme Court to finally uphold unitary executive theory, as the left-wing media likes to call it, otherwise known as just basic common sense, right?
00:25:09.700I mean, Article II of the Constitution says the executive power.
00:25:21.120I mean, Article II says the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States.
00:25:24.820It's not vested in the vice president.
00:25:27.080It's not vested in the secretary of state.
00:25:28.960It's not vested in the dog catcher, the White House coffee boy, whatever.
00:25:33.120No, it's vested in one person and one person only there.
00:25:35.600And specifically when it comes to Hampton-Dellinger, by the way, there's a very similar parallel track litigation going on right now involving a woman by the name of Gwynne Wilcox.
00:25:43.480Gwynne Wilcox is a Democrat nominee to the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board.
00:25:49.980So whether we're talking about the office of the special counsel, which is where Hampton-Dellinger purports to work, or whether we're talking about the National Labor Relations Board, where Gwynne Wilcox purports to work, we're talking about these so-called independent agencies, which is an entire creature of FDR-era New Deal jurisprudence.
00:26:09.040And specifically, there's a 1935 SCOTUS precedent called Humphrey's executor, which was the first time that the Supreme Court upheld the legitimacy of this there.
00:26:20.640I'm typically pessimistic about all things judicial branch related.
00:26:23.720I'm actually optimistic about this one.
00:26:25.180I really do think that there are five votes on the current court when that case is finally heard to directly overturn Humphrey's executor.
00:26:31.700I get a little weary, a little wary about this court when it comes to kind of the so-called culture war issues, when it comes to sovereignty, when it comes to race, things like that there.
00:26:41.060When it comes to bread and butter, structural constitutionalism, separation of powers, federalism, that's when the John Roberts court is at its absolute best.
00:26:48.460So I actually do feel pretty confident that this is going to end up going the correct way and that Trump will be vindicated when it comes to both Hampton-Dellinger and Gwynne Wilcox.
00:26:56.540But it is taking a little longer than it should, frankly.
00:26:58.520Can I hold you – can I hold you through the break?
00:27:12.900The two things, the reauthorizations because none of these – all the – even the cabinet, EPA, FBI, all of them are supposed to be reauthorized I think every five or ten years.
00:27:23.860The military makes sure that they're never out of authorization.
00:27:27.180They do a National Defense Authorization Act every year.
00:27:34.080Also, the independent – I mean why did the president feel he had to go out and actually put an executive order out to basically say the independent agencies actually report to me?
00:27:43.320I want to get the answer after the break because the left, if you watch TV every night, they're saying we're hurtling towards a constitutional crisis.
00:30:58.420We're going to come back to you in a second.
00:30:59.560Philip Patrick, speaking of universities, a professor at the University of Arkansas talked to you about the end of the dollar empire.
00:31:06.900And I'm really proud of this because, as you know, your staff, yourself, yours truly here, Stephen K. Bannon and the war room got together and worked on this for many years.
00:31:16.560I think we started three years ago at the end of the dollar empire.
00:31:18.920And what we wanted to do is make, really make capital markets and particularly debt deficits, all of it, accessible to people that hadn't had a chance to go to college, but to make it at a level that was college level.
00:31:32.580And I guess the finance professor said, hey, we've read this thing and we would love to incorporate this into our curriculum, sir.
00:31:41.360He made it, in fact, mandatory reading for his class.
00:31:45.120And he asked if you and I would be happy to go and talk to his students and help educate.
00:31:51.920And quite frankly, I've had that feedback consistently from many different people talking about how educational, how informative, and specifically how it talks up to people, not down.
00:32:14.400We want to definitely figure out how we can work that out and do other places, too, because we're one of our big causes here is to make sure that working class and middle class folks, that the finance system in our country, the political economy is understood along with the geopolitics of it.
00:32:29.680And this is why it's a good – you can go to birchgold.com right now, slash Bannon, and get it all for free, all six installments, including the latest, which is Modern Monetary Theory, which is a theory coming out of France that's going to blow your head up, folks.
00:32:49.940Two of the consequences we're seeing of this is in this posse – we're going to have to make a decision here in the next week or so of where to put our effort on this because the budget resolution last night – and we understand what President Trump is doing.
00:33:04.300He's trying to get some gap for these tax cuts, but I think the math shows, Philip, that ultimately we get up to 125 to maybe 135 percent of debt to total – to GDP.
00:33:17.140And on the 14th, we're hurtling down like a train to the CR or to whatever is going to happen on midnight.
00:33:27.820You're pretty conservative when it comes to finance.
00:33:32.500And here we have this massive Keynesian stimulus that we still – I mean, President Trump mentioned today, hey, I want to get to a balanced budget.
00:33:45.020I want to use all these different elements, but he wants – he aspires to a balanced budget, but we're a long way from there, particularly with the budget resolution we signed off last night, sir.
00:33:54.860Yeah, we are, and we knew this would be the biggest task from the beginning is trying to close that gap.
00:34:01.500And as we've been seeing, Trump and the team are being more than inventive, right?
00:34:20.900Look, we're going to continue to run deficits.
00:34:23.160But President Trump and the team need time to make fundamental changes to grow the economy out of it.
00:34:29.960And the big question is, will we get that time?
00:34:32.620We're going to continue to amass debt.
00:34:34.440What we're looking at with doge, I think, is enough to mitigate the loss of revenue from the tax cuts, but I don't think it begins to close the gap.
00:34:44.520So it's going to be interesting to see how it shakes out.
00:34:48.240I think the one thing we can't have is sort of another continuing resolution.
00:35:32.480Are those rates dropping because you saw the consumer confidence report that came out of the business conference had a pretty big drop?
00:35:40.980Also, Zero Hedge had a couple of great charts up about people's anticipation of inflation, where they thought inflation was going to go, not where it will go, but where they thought it was going to go.
00:35:51.040So is that making the business environment softer?
00:35:55.400Is that why rates are coming down a little bit?
00:35:58.460Is that the bond market thinks there may be a recession or a mini recession or at least maybe flat growth, sir?
00:37:06.860What do you think President Trump, I mean, he's got Elon Musk like an unguided missile, which I think is powerful in this regard, into the administrative state, particularly in these audits or finding out whether there's waste fraud, abuse or what I call leakage.
00:37:20.880What do you believe has to happen to convince the capital markets that this administration is serious about making significant cuts to federal spending so that whether it is external revenue coming from tariffs or this new regime, tariff regime, which is supposed to kick in next week on March 4th, 25 percent to Mexico, 25 percent to Canada.
00:37:47.520This is massive, given the size of their trade with them.
00:37:51.600What do you think he has to show in order to convince the capital markets he's serious about getting to a balanced budget?
00:37:58.200He said it twice today in the cabinet meeting in front of the media.
00:38:01.020But what actions do you think they're going to have to see to make sure they see that this is serious to get our deficits at least under a trillion dollars to start with and hopefully down to some sort of balanced budget?
00:38:13.260Well, I think we're seeing the actions, right?
00:38:15.120And like I said before, I think President Trump is showing how serious he is to sort of close that gap.
00:38:21.800But I think what we need to start seeing is results, right?
00:38:26.280And I'm not talking about President Trump here, but, you know, there's a big difference between hypothetical spending cuts and actual spending cuts, right?
00:38:34.300It's easy to get everyone to agree to cut spending on something in the future.
00:38:40.580But to take dollars from, you know, any congressman's district, that becomes more and more difficult.
00:38:46.880We've seen this time and time and time again.
00:38:48.980And I think when we start to really push through with spending cuts, we're going to start to see resistance.
00:38:54.180So we need to just start making progress, start closing that gap.
00:38:59.140The more it closes, the more confidence in the U.S. will increase, confidence in the dollar will increase, and that will buy President Trump time.
00:39:17.240Obviously, she's not part of the administration.
00:39:19.000She's being touted potentially for the Federal Reserve.
00:39:22.460There's a lot of good ideas coming out of the administration and potential appointees.
00:39:27.400But we need to start seeing results because if 12 months from now, U.S. national debt's at 40, 45, 12 months after, there's nothing the administration can say.