Stephen K. Bannon joins host Alex Blumberg in the War Room to discuss the latest headlines coming out of Washington, D.C. and around the world, including the latest in the Trump administration's assault on Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, the White House's decision to pull the school's exchange visitor program, and more.
00:00:00.000To put together one's own birthday with the martial might of the country gets us very, very close to what we fought a revolution not to have, which is an autocratic, monarchical system in which we mistake the loyalty to a person and we confuse loyalty to a person and loyalty to country.
00:00:27.240His grip on the Republican Party remains vice-like.
00:00:32.060More news from the Trump administration yesterday.
00:00:34.860It has now revoked Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, the latest escalation in its battle against that Ivy League school.
00:00:43.920The Department of Justice announced in a letter yesterday that it is pulling the school's exchange visitor program certification, saying Harvard's created an unsafe campus environment that is, quote, hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
00:01:04.800The DOJ also accused the university of coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.
00:01:09.280Harvard called the action unlawful and says it's working to provide guidance and support to students and the community.
00:01:17.220The university has nearly 7,000 international students, which make up about 27% of the entire student body.
00:01:23.240Meanwhile, just a few moments ago, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, a big elite school there, shared an open invitation to international undergraduate and postgraduate students currently enrolled at Harvard, inviting them to continue their academic career at their school over in Hong Kong.
00:01:44.180The university says it will prioritize expedited admissions, credit transfers, and tailored support, including visa assistance and housing, to ensure a smooth transition.
00:01:57.120I mean, look, I think one of the ways to assess those odds is to look at what's happening where the real power is in the Republican Party, and that is the larger right-wing media.
00:02:05.980I mean, they have narrative dominance.
00:02:08.420That is where they build and organize power.
00:02:12.120That is the real whip when it comes to accounting votes.
00:02:14.500And if you look at how the right-wing media is handling this, they're enthusiastic about the bill.
00:02:19.140There isn't really any discussion or lamenting about the effects of Medicaid.
00:02:23.360Yeah, they accept the fact that it's going to add some money to the deficit, but they're largely bought in on this idea that somehow this legislation is going to lead to this bounty of riches at some point that will easily offset any of the debts and costs and deficits.
00:02:40.980The only one out there really driving any warning signs that I think has any legs is Bannon, who's really reminding the rest of MAGA and Trump's world that they really need to be careful and tread lightly when it comes to Medicaid, given how many of Trump's supporters are actually on it.
00:02:56.640So when this comes into pass, this could actually hurt them politically.
00:02:59.600So what do I honestly think the odds are right now?
00:03:02.020They're in favor of the bill passing in as close to form as possible.
00:03:05.680And I think the fact that you have to point to Rand Paul as the principal person opposing this, who's been opposed to a bunch of other things and it hasn't really been reflective of where the rest of the party is, is a really big tell.
00:03:18.180They might get some sandpaper on the edges, but at the end of the day, they've demonstrated that Trump is, you know, that they capitulate to Trump and give him what he wants.
00:03:26.380I don't see why this would be any different.
00:03:27.760They've already abdicated their role and responsibility as a separate branch of government.
00:03:30.940This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
00:03:38.740Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.
00:03:43.940You're just not going to get a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
00:03:48.200The people have had a belly full of it.
00:04:26.620It is Friday, 23 May, in the year of our Lord, 2025, an explosive day already from the President of the United States.
00:04:34.900Overnight, he shut down all foreign students from Harvard and said directly, his head of DHS said directly, their involvement with the Chinese Communist Party is very, very concerning.
00:04:49.320Just an absolute blockbuster piece of news.
00:04:51.380Also this morning, the President of the United States is getting very frustrated that we have two carrier battle groups in the Red Sea keeping the Suez Canal open.
00:05:00.460And literally no progress coming out of the G7 on getting a deal with the EU, particularly since we've already closed the deal with the United Kingdom on trade.
00:05:11.640Trump put them on blast and said, yo, June 1st, we don't have a deal, tariffs of 50 percent.
00:05:18.660Also, Apple, I think he met with Tim Apple and came out and said, hey, this whole move from China to India is not good.
00:05:28.600You've got to make these funds here in the United States.
00:05:30.360We're going to put a big tariff on you.
00:05:32.460President of the United States has been on quite a roll.
00:05:34.340Also right there, the Media Matters president, Media Matters now being investigated by the FTC about trying to take advertisers off of, I think, a Twitter, Elon Musk.
00:05:49.640He understands that we are trying to have a balance here between the big, beautiful bill, debt, all of it.
00:05:55.820The one thing I think people have recognized as we've been hammering here in the world the last couple of days is that you've got to present the entire package.
00:06:03.340You have to present the tariff revenue, you know, the external revenue service.
00:06:07.320You have to get in back of this three to three and a half percent growth rate.
00:06:10.560If that's what you believe internally, which is quite high, is a lot higher than the 2.6 percent used by the House in their calculations and far higher than CBO is scoring this.
00:06:21.180And it's one of the reasons the deficits look so terrible in the first couple of years is that the CBO is scoring this as like a 1.7, 1.8 growth rate.
00:06:31.260Those numbers, although they seem small, are actually huge when you work through the system.
00:06:35.640I think the White House is now coming out.
00:06:37.780I think you saw Scott Besson this morning doing some TV.
00:06:40.740We'll have some clips about this a little later in the show.
00:06:43.780We're also going to go to the White House, some breaking news with Natalie Winters.
00:06:48.200My co-host, let me bring in Ben Harnwell in Rome.
00:06:51.340Ben, one of the reasons I want you to co-host this morning, kind of big news, is President Trump seems to be pretty serious about trying to get the Vatican to be an intermediary here in this negotiation between the direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.
00:07:44.620The first one is that, and I think you might have some comments on my second point here, but the first point is that the administration believed on a prudential level that it was wise to indicate Pope Leo as a valid interlocutor,
00:08:04.280intermediator, intermediator in this war at this stage.
00:08:08.420And I flag that up because, as followers of the war room will know, we're very hesitant right now about exactly what sort of person Pope Leo is going to be.
00:08:20.840So for the administration to have given him this position of moral authority is something I'm just highlighting.
00:08:29.780The second thing, Steve, about Pope Leo, and this is sort of probably even more important, is that we don't know what his view is with regards to China.
00:08:39.780And him, sort of, Pope Leo himself publicly speaking about willing to be an intermediator in this war with the whole situation of China in the background,
00:08:50.260I think is another illustration of something that we've been mentioning on this show for the last few days, Steve, is that, you know, we need to know where Pope Leo stands on China.
00:09:02.080Hence, it's something that we've suggested a couple of times about a potential, a suggested joint statement condemning the force, the practice of forced organ harvesting on behalf of the president.
00:09:17.920So there are these two points here with the Vatican as an intermediator.
00:09:22.860Let me break this down for a second and if Cameron and Denver can get these up.
00:09:26.740So the Wall Street Journal had a very smart piece this morning about the fortress that China has been building in the last couple of years.
00:09:37.320President Trump worked two years with Bob Lighthizer and Jameson Graham, Peter Navarro and others to come up with a comprehensive deal that would really couple the Chinese Communist Party and their economy into the world economy.
00:09:49.440And take away all the abuses they've had, all the abuses of Lao Bajing, of their people, all the abuses they've had of state-owned industries, all of that.
00:09:59.260They tore, after two years of negotiation and really having preparatory documents to be signed in May of 2019, after they had the One Belt, One Road meeting with Putin, I think it was in Shanghai he came to, they tore it up and really spit in President Trump's face.
00:10:15.240And as everybody knows, a couple of months later, at the World Military Games in Wuhan, that was the first beginning of people noticing this thing that would later be called COVID-19.
00:10:31.480At that time, and Frank Gaffney and the Committee on President Danger, we've gone over this over and over again, they declared a people's war against the United States.
00:10:39.000This is when she actually put them on war footing.
00:10:41.840Now, you take that Wall Street Journal article, they have been preparing to build a digital fortress and really a fortress around their own technology and preparing for a trade war, also preparing for a cyber war.
00:10:55.200This is one of the reasons we're going to have Natalie on today.
00:10:58.120A lot of rumors going around, a lot of speculation, a lot of discussion about the grid.
00:11:02.420So we've got Dave Walsh and Natalie about our grid, EMP, potential threats to all that.
00:11:07.600President Trump's frustration, let's go to the G7.
00:11:10.600Besant, the Secretary of Treasury, goes from Riyadh, goes from the meeting in the Middle East where all these deals are being announced and look like a stabilizing influence and using economy and growth and upside to calm the issues of jihad and all these issues that have kind of rolled the Middle East.
00:11:55.320I think President Trump is very appreciative.
00:11:56.900They did make progress like we're making in East Asia with Japan and South Korea and Taiwan of putting together this new trading or commercial relationships that basically puts China on notice that no longer are you going to be able to basically beggar thy neighbor, including the United States.
00:12:14.680However, I think the frustration, and this is just my read on it, I think the frustration is that we have two carrier battle groups in the Red Sea, basically taking on the Houthis, but keeping the sea lanes in the Red Sea open for the Suez Canal, of which 97% of trade from the Gulf, from the Persian Gulf, or I guess now the Arabian Gulf, the oil that comes from there,
00:12:38.960and everything that comes from Asia, including China, India, all of it, all come through the Suez Canal.
00:13:07.840And as you know, Ben, some of the people in the EU, now this was a finance minister's meeting, not a head of state, but Georgia Maloney and others, you know, and these G7 nations, you know, propped themselves up as a bridge.
00:13:22.140I just don't think he thinks it's going quickly enough.
00:13:24.640That's why you see today, this was a shotgun blast.
00:13:27.980He basically told Apple, hey, I want to see manufacturing back here in the United States of America.
00:13:58.680I would also say to the president and others, hey, right now we're going to work through the system of this bill that, at least on the surface of the way it's been scored, looks like the deficits are up in the short term.
00:14:10.440I don't think it's that bad, but I don't think we're making the case.
00:14:13.120Ron John, Senator Ron Johnson in the Senate has already said, hey, to him, this thing's dead on arrival.
00:14:20.280We're going to get a clip, I think, of Scott Besson, I think actually saying something positive about Johnson, about what's going to happen in the Senate and the House.
00:14:30.200Okay, short commercial break, Ben Harnwell's co-anchoring with me this morning.
00:14:36.140We're absolutely packed with the kickoff Memorial Day weekend.
00:14:39.820Of course, we're going to have wall-to-wall coverage of President Trump at the United States Military Academy at West Point tomorrow and then at Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate the honored dead of the United States military.
00:14:51.860Short break, back in the warm in just a moment.
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00:16:21.420This is going to be a furtherance of a brain drain we are seeing here in the United States.
00:16:33.360We've already seen these research grants be cut, you know, earlier in the administration.
00:16:37.620And now, international students, if they can't practice their craft here, if they can't learn here and then potentially go on to careers here, other universities around the world, other countries will be happy to have them and we'll be poorer for it.
00:18:18.860That's why Trump's got them up against the rope.
00:18:21.240Ben Harnwell, your thoughts on this Harvard situation and also my comments and observations about the G7, the EU, and President Trump putting out a basically trade shotgun blast this morning.
00:18:34.440The Harvard, let me just read the quotes here from Secretary Noem's statement.
00:18:41.960She said, this administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, anti-Semitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.
00:18:53.720Your point just now about that this will offer an opportunity for actual Americans to study at Harvard, I think can't be overstated enough.
00:19:02.180This is not only is it a throw down directly in the face of the CCP, but it also has the added blessing of being 100%, 1000% America first, because this is prioritizing actual Americans and their opportunities to get ahead.
00:19:17.020And, you know, I can't close without noticing that when President Trump does something like this, which you would think patriots across America would be applauding and welcoming, MSNBC instinctively takes the side of rich foreign students.
00:19:37.500Straight away, that's their, you know, their bias against actual Americans couldn't be more stark.
00:19:43.080But I think this, Ben, your point, hang on, your point, I think is perfect here, is that this shows, and look at all the things, oh, they're going to take jobs?
00:19:52.120The Hong Kong, the university, and that's the Hong Kong university that we first went to, they explained the pandemic and how the CCP was rolling it out.
00:20:03.540That's not independent anymore since the CCP has taken over Hong Kong.
00:20:06.980If these foreign students want to go anywhere else, and the Chinese students want to go anywhere else, go.
00:20:15.360If you want to take jobs in foreign countries, take jobs in foreign countries.
00:20:18.800When they say this is a brain drain, they denigrate American kids and American citizens.
00:20:23.740Because this, to me, and I've always said, even the ones that come here, clip an exit visa on when they graduate, get the hell out, go back to your country, and make your country great.
00:20:36.920It's not that we have any problem with foreigners.
00:20:38.480Because what we have is foreigners taking billets, limited billets, in Silicon Valley at these great jobs, and these universities are teaching artificial intelligence and computer science and electrical engineering at the Ivy Leagues and the public Ivies.
00:21:32.920President Trump is furious this morning.
00:21:35.740That true social, he ain't happy with what happened at the G7.
00:21:39.500And I think the growing frustration is that he's got a trillion-dollar defense bill, and part of it is still because we've got troops and everything deployed on the Eurasian landmass.
00:21:51.100Now, yesterday, there's a discussion inside the administration about pulling out a lot of the combat troops of Korea, but you've still got carrier battle groups protecting the Suez Canal for the trade of Europe.
00:22:03.920Is President Trump right to be frustrated with the EU, given that the United Kingdom did a deal with us in four weeks?
00:22:15.760The point about the European Union for the last 70 years is that it's been operating a grift at American taxpayers' expense.
00:22:23.920And the European nations, thanks to the consistent pressure that Donald Trump has been applying now on these EU nations, is confronting them with a choice.
00:22:48.060And for various financial and economic reasons, the ability to print is becoming ever more sort of difficult, even for the United States with its historic dollar supremacy.
00:23:01.060So they're basically either talking about borrowing, which would go against the Maastricht criteria of the single currency, the euro, or it would have to print new dollars.
00:23:15.720And, of course, that goes against, for example, Germany, the most important economy in the eurozone, its own constitutional requirements that it just amended just before the last election in order to finance the increased defence spending.
00:23:28.920Now, so Donald Trump is putting this pressure on the European nations.
00:23:33.280And you have the historic centre-right Christian democratic parties that are Atlanticist, which means that they are open to the dictates of the American military-industrial complex.
00:23:45.280The problem is, is that you have these groups on the right of them who are actually nationalist iterations, and they want to represent their peoples, Steve.
00:23:54.180So the very consequence of Donald Trump putting this pressure on the European nations is that they either do what they're trying to do here in Europe, which is pacify, or they don't pacify.
00:24:06.760They don't have the political courage to go against Donald Trump.
00:24:10.640And what they're going to do is create a massive sort of 30%, 40% of the electorate, which will go to the nationalist iterations.
00:24:19.680So Donald Trump, yes, you're right, he is absolutely right to be frustrated with the European Union, but that this pressure that he's giving will have fruit on the European continent, far beyond what his specific first-degree intentions are.
00:24:37.200I want to go to something you just said.
00:25:07.820That's one of the reasons I want the White House and others to come out and put more information, more about the plan, particularly the growth rates, the tariffs, cash coming in, to show, to make an argument that the deficits that are shown by CBO and others are kind of artificially high, potentially, because they're not including everything.
00:25:26.760But go back, this is about currency, and that's why you've got to learn about currency.
00:25:29.480This is why we did the end of the dollar empire for 40 years with birchgold, because before you can understand gold, you've got to understand fiat currency.
00:25:35.680Talk to people, we've got a minute or two.
00:25:39.100Did Britain have the ability even to get their sovereignty back because they kept the pound and they didn't go into a common currency?
00:25:46.820Has going into a common currency and giving up their own currencies, has that really limited the European nations to kind of break free and stand on their own?
00:25:55.580And this is why they're negotiating as a bloc, and you can tell Italy and others would probably like to break out and cut their own side deals, sir?
00:26:02.200I'm not sure whether Italy would like to cut out.
00:26:06.240I mean, that's really the problem with the heart of Giorgio Maloney and her philosophy and her administration.
00:26:12.760Open brackets in this big story of the last couple of days over the World Health Organization and this pandemic treaty.
00:26:23.240It was, I think, one of the 11 states that abstained.
00:26:25.720Perhaps we'll dig into that a little later on in the show, because that's very important, that pandemic treaty.
00:26:31.260Look, it was absolutely imperative for the UK, if it ever had an idea of itself on the world stage, as a proper sovereign nation, that it wouldn't enter the Eurozone, take the Euro, and that gave it the independence to pull out.
00:26:49.580Your question is absolutely perfect, because to a certain degree, even if there were an appetite in like a plus 50 percent, and there isn't here in Italy, but if there were a Brexit movement in Italy that had the same sort of strength, they would find themselves far more handicapped, practically, to pull out of the union, having already given up their currency.
00:27:12.780That's how, because, you know, sovereign nations, one of the attributes of sovereignty is the ability to have your own money, to print your own money, even though that power is massively abused.
00:27:23.400So the European peoples, like the Italian people, that's, I think, Italy's seen like 5 percent growth over the last 30 years, compared to 30 percent in Germany.
00:27:35.360Italy has been betrayed for the last two generations by its class of political leadership.
00:27:41.420And joining the single currency, as you correctly put your finger on, was a very cunning manoeuvre on behalf of the European elites to stop a future independent movement, pulling back that power in election time.
00:27:58.120Short break. Ben's going to stay with me in Rome, but we're going to go to the White House, Natalie Winter's breaking story that everyone, kicking off Memorial Day weekend, talking about the black hand of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:28:10.800Is it in back of an attack on the grid, the electoral grid of the United States of America?
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00:31:08.840Dave, one of the reasons the president's driving down cost and inflation is being driven down is full-spectrum energy dominance.
00:31:18.520They just had the G7, and Trump's not happy with the progress being made for a deal.
00:31:24.200It took, as they said, guys, June 1st are 50%.
00:31:27.860One of the reasons you have this problem is Germany, and now you're getting reports out of there that Germany is now panicked because not only have they done this net carbon zero, but they also got rid of all their nuclear power.
00:31:41.160The president's been signing executive orders.
00:31:43.160He's throwing down hard on nuclear power across energy across the board, and then I want to get into, and Natalie's got some information about maybe a potential problem with the American energy grid.
00:31:54.200Let's start with nuclear power at these executive orders.
00:31:57.180President Trump's looking at Europe and saying, no way we're going to do what the Europeans did.
00:32:03.620Well, Europe, Spain, who had the big outage two weeks ago, are hard fast to shut down their seven remaining nuclear reactors, which is insanity.
00:32:14.020You know, over here, even now on a bipartisan basis, nuclear is fully supported by all parties.
00:32:20.120Nuclear power, which had been damned and abandoned by the left and Democrats 60 years, now back in vogue.
00:32:27.380It is an essentially important ingredient, provides baseload, continuous duty power.
00:32:33.780What he's looking at are incentives that would provide some loan guarantees to spur the building of a lot more nuclear capacity, de-risk it somewhat.
00:32:43.120We just had a bad experience with Plant Vogel in Georgia, seven years late, eight years late, $22 billion over budget.
00:32:49.380So the support for loan guarantees he's seeking, but also, more importantly, deregulating the construction of existing technology, nuclear plants, BWRs, PWRs, GE technology, Westinghouse technology.
00:33:13.320He appears to be all about streamlining that, which is essentially important.
00:33:17.080And allowing for U.S. fuel reprocessing.
00:33:20.920This is the ability to reprocess, not turn it into nuclear weapons, but reprocess spent nuclear fuel to reuse once again in a reactor, which would be essential to driving the cost of nuclear power down.
00:33:36.060As built at Plant Vogel was $32 billion for a 2,200-megawatt plant that just got opened up.
00:33:42.500So the actions he's taking to streamline the regulatory space around it, essentially important, and to localize yellow cake mining in Utah, in Nevada, in Idaho.
00:33:54.340We had been 91% self-sufficient on uranium mining in this country as recently as 1992.
00:34:00.260The Clinton era and the Uranium One deal basically sent all that to Russia.
00:34:07.740Since I spent, since I, one of the reasons I was brought into, the principal reason I was brought into the campaign in 16 was about Clinton cash and about uranium.
00:34:17.340So the audience members, particularly our newer audience members who may not be up to speed on this, what Hillary and Bill Clinton did about uranium in the United States vis-a-vis the great mortal enemy, Russia, sir.
00:34:29.880Well, they hid behind a theory of displacement, and that is, well, if we can get the Russians to use their enriched uranium and uranium resources for nuclear power in this country by importing it from them, we can get them to use less of it making nuclear weapons.
00:34:47.320That whole naive theory was then surrounded by personal interest in the uranium one deal that they had personal interest in, causing the U.S. nuclear fuel supply to be shifted entirely from a domestic one over time to a Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, 58% of our nuclear fuel comes from those countries.
00:35:08.640Even through this so-called war, that supply chain has been unabated to the U.S. and Western Europe, the yellow cake uranium coming from Russia and allied states.
00:35:20.500That can easily, there is no shortage of it here in Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada.
00:35:27.280And I think the EO will get at the appropriate boundary conditions off now to begin to restart mining uranium in this country, which we, once again, can be self-sufficient with completely.
00:35:41.120But no, the Clinton aspect of that was very, very suspicious and drove, under false pretenses of denuclearizing Russia's military presence, a shifting of transition to buying their nuclear fuel.
00:35:54.580One of the reasons I want to have you on today is because I don't think we're putting forward the best case of President Trump's overall economic plan in regards to the big, beautiful bill.
00:36:07.280The big, beautiful bill, listen, the way it's being scored by the official people that scored, because of the constraints of reconciliation process, these deficits in the first couple of years are big, and nobody can doubt that.
00:36:20.600My point is that you don't have to just stick with that.
00:36:23.720You can actually put forward a true business case of exactly what you're doing, incorporate tariffs, incorporate the growth rate.
00:36:30.620The growth rate of 3% or above of which they're pitching is the foundational element of that is full spectrum energy dominance.
00:36:40.440Now, four or five months into this, you're our expert.
00:36:44.800How would you grade President Trump of going after the entire, you know, waterfront on this, the full spectrum, to make sure he's driving down energy cars?
00:36:53.260Because Trump gets something that it appears that other political leaders throughout the world don't get,
00:36:59.400that the fundamental foundation of an industrial economy is plentiful, consistent, and cheap energy.
00:37:08.380Well, on the full spectrum energy dominance grading, A-plus on freeing up federal lands and for oil and gas production offshore, onshore, in the Arctic Refuge, everywhere, that's an A-plus.
00:37:23.580And then reopening the LNG export permitting through the DOE to go ahead and more rapidly build LNG export facilities, that's all great.
00:37:32.120The part that's been a little bit slow to emerge here is the electrification issue.
00:37:37.100Electrification is 40% of the cost of U.S. energy all in.
00:37:41.180And we need a profound return in the near term, not to nuclear, just nuclear still 10, 15 years out.
00:37:47.380There is no supply chain left here for building nuclear power plants.
00:38:22.980We need to move more strongly in that.
00:38:24.880And the way forward, really, is to remove the incentives on all this trivial stuff that really doesn't matter and produces very little electrification.
00:38:33.140Solar, wind, battery storage, carbon capture, which is in the way, all drive up the cost of electrification hugely.
00:38:40.180We need to actually minimize the quantity of it, put us in net zero electricity growth.
00:38:46.780But most importantly, has us rely entirely on China, who build 88% of the solar panels, battery storage, and inverters in the world.
00:38:56.620So we're actually presently incenting Chinese supply.
00:39:00.440If we need to get in front of the Chinese supply, but more importantly, get back to power generation aspects and technology that works, is proven, and is decidedly low-cost, and is presently available.
00:39:13.960And that's combined cycle gas-fired power with U.S. natural gas at its core.
00:39:18.720And that, you know, the best way forward is eliminate the incentivization of things opposite that, wind, solar, and battery storage.
00:39:26.600Can he, at the federal level, what can he do so much of this is done at the, and maybe I got this wrong, but so much of this is done at the state level.
00:39:35.120You got the issues in Florida you've mentioned, the issues in South Carolina, the issues in Texas, right?
00:39:42.180I'm talking about the core backbone of the MAACA movement and President Trump's political power.
00:39:47.760We're all upside down on this very issue.
00:39:50.960At the federal level, is there much he can do about this?
00:39:54.520Is this still, is this still, we just got to get down the trenches on the state level and get this sorted out?
00:40:01.280Well, because you have now deregulated power generation markets in a lot of the country, PGM, MISO, in the Midwest, the Northeast.
00:40:09.220Weck out in the far west, Aircot, all deregulated, where the generation companies are disaggregated from distribution.
00:40:16.900You have investors following the incentives, and the incentives are as high as 52%, 53% when adding in the PTC, the ITC, and the depreciation benefit of accelerated depreciation and this stuff.
00:40:30.320The incentives are too hard for independent investors who form the bulk of power generation buildout to resist.
00:40:39.220Even Aircot and Florida, the next five-year and 10-year plans respectively, are all 91% renewables, solar mainly now, and battery storage because of the incentives.
00:40:50.840Then you move over, okay, regulated markets like the utility ones.
00:40:53.780You've got people like Florida Fire and Light and Duke Energy in regulated markets actually starving consumers of electric power, sending out notices about, hey, we're going to give you a cheap rate to use power between midnight and five in the morning because they're running into massive shortages due to over-applying solar power that works only five hours a day in utility-scale farms.
00:41:15.280So the incentives have to be removed from paying Duke Energy, paying NextEra, paying Iberdrola, Exxon.
00:41:22.920These are the firms that enjoy the benefits of the incentives to build this stuff out.
00:41:28.380There's no cost benefit to ratepayers.
00:41:30.700Four to five times more costly to rely on this kind of equipment for electric power supply.
00:41:35.780So you've got massive, massive, massive, large-cap utilities and investors benefiting from the incentives.
00:41:45.700Isn't this big rush for nuclear power and now that you're seeing, even President Trump on what he's doing on power overall, you're not seeing the pushback before, which was hysteria, you know, they just, it's the end of the world, it's climate change.
00:41:59.340Isn't it because the progressive Brolic arcs who have now flipped to kind of our side need unlimited virtual, they need power for artificial intelligence?
00:42:10.580And that's why you're seeing Google come up with their own compact nuclear power plants, right, plug and play, and you don't see anybody melting down.
00:42:18.180Isn't it, we've got about a minute here.
00:42:19.760I'm going to hold you through the break.
00:42:21.640Isn't the drive here is because the folks that run the country essentially know they need unlimited power now to drive artificial intelligence, and it's devil-catch the hindmost on this?
00:42:53.460But we've even had blue states, Michigan and California, Whitmer and Newsom respectively, running out of electricity, acknowledging, well, in the case of California, we've got to keep Diablo Canyon open and subsidize that.
00:43:06.660Michigan keeping the Palisades plant open, now favoring nuclear after 70 years of adamantly resisting it.
00:43:12.780So, you know, we have general bipartisan support now for nuclear power.
00:43:16.760The trouble is the supply chain to begin making lots of these plants, building them, is way out there.
00:43:23.300We've built 320 combined cycle plants in the country in the last 25 years.
00:43:28.420That supply chain, due to a six-year timeout from 2000 to now, is half gone.
00:43:33.900Half the contractors are gone, and now lead time is just to build those.
00:43:37.600That easy technology is now six, seven years.
00:43:40.200Nuclear is going to be quite a ways out.