On today's show, Stephen K. Bannon is joined by Caroline Keyser, the host of the podcast The War Room, to discuss what's going on in Washington, D.C. right now and why it's so important to have a president who can seize control of the institutions.
00:01:13.280It's like 1,200 people, so it's not a tiny poll.
00:01:15.860That's 53% wanted to run for a third term.
00:01:21.260I want to go, Caroline, I want to get you back in.
00:01:23.100But first off, seizing the institutions.
00:01:25.520So when we talk about this coalition, and we do have a coalition, and I agree with you, the major fights between the populist right, the populist nationalist right, and still the globalist tech bros to come.
00:01:35.580But even the more traditional Republican Party part, the neoliberal neocons, which is the Tom Cottons and Lindsey Grahams.
00:01:43.280You've got the Ted Cruz's and the Ron DeSantis, the old traditional limited government folks, which is still a big contingent.
00:01:51.480You've got the religious right, the evangelicals.
00:01:54.200Those three groups alone, before you leave the tech right, some of the things President Trump, he's doing, yes, he is listening to a lot of different people, but he's driving in a direction that's not traditional Republicanism.
00:02:23.160The reason he's Secretary of the Treasury is just his calm demeanor and the fact that he just doesn't go out, you know, and jump on things.
00:02:30.700Scott said this morning, hey, she's got to be prosecuted.
00:02:33.360She has not denied the mortgage fraud.
00:02:35.080And he said, how do you have somebody who's a governor of the Federal Reserve, right, that, you know, has had mortgage fraud, pretty blatant mortgage fraud.
00:02:43.100So talk to me about the seizing of the institutions, whether it's doing this thing.
00:02:46.940And you've got these liberals, I think you had Glasner on, arguing there's no crime in D.C., that this is overreached.
00:02:55.100Talk about the seizure of the institutions, whether it's the courts, whether it's the Justice Department, the FBI, whether it's the Federal Reserve.
00:03:05.080And remember, we're in the strategy of the maximalists.
00:03:09.140We want to put the pedal to the metal because we say we're burning daylight.
00:03:12.280You've got to get these things done, whether it's redistricting, you know, take the 30 seats and take them now.
00:03:19.280Texas still owes us another five of the five they got.
00:03:22.500How do you think, one, how do you think President Trump's doing in that regard, given the three-hour, you know, basically board of directors meeting you saw yesterday?
00:03:30.380And coupled with how do you hold that traditional part of the – that you came from, quite frankly, of the Republican Party?
00:03:41.200I did love the premise of this Axios article that you referenced in the beginning, which was, quote,
00:03:46.080Trump has exerted decisive control over every inch of the executive branch.
00:03:50.460Well, yeah, he is the head of the executive branch, so I think it's a good thing that he has taken decisive control.
00:03:56.420But what is funny is that these journalists are just so blown away by Trump is because they're used to these, frankly, cocked politicians that bow to every institution that they were actually elected to govern over, that the Constitution directs them to govern over.
00:04:11.160But somehow they actually bended the knee to these institutions.
00:04:15.140So much of Washington, our elected officials, were run by the institutions.
00:04:18.800It is supposed to be the other way around.
00:04:20.800And so that's why when Trump has come in and truly taken over the institutions of which he is in charge of and, in fact, should, it is an earthquake in D.C.
00:04:31.920But I think we should talk about the key genius here, who truly is Stephen Miller.
00:04:36.500You have to understand, Stephen Miller has studied these institutions and how to dismantle them since he was 16 years old.
00:04:44.160And he came into this administration not only prepared to dismantle them, but emboldened by President Trump to do so.
00:04:51.460And he really is the driving force behind what I think is an unbelievable success.
00:04:56.860And in the Axios article, they lay out a lot of those successes.
00:04:59.900But then one thing I kind of thought was where they say there's still remaining resistance that needs to be done.
00:05:05.320They brought up the judicial branch, which obviously is true.
00:05:08.280Now, the judicial branch is its own branch of government.
00:05:11.340I blame a lot of the problems with the judicial branch actually around Mitch McConnell, Leonard Leo, and the idiots that put in these Bush Republican judges in the first Trump term that have been disasters.
00:05:24.760And so this time around, I'm glad we're not listening to the Leonard Leo and those folks.
00:05:29.720But they bring up the media as being remaining resistance.
00:05:32.480Well, we do have a brilliant FCC chairman in Brendan Carr, who I think is doing a lot to dismantle the media.
00:05:38.420I still would love to see him actually strip one of these news outlets from their licenses, something Trump's talked about.
00:05:46.320But he's won a number of settlements, forced settlements against some of these organizations.
00:05:51.480And I can't wait to see what's going to happen with the Wall Street Journal.
00:06:02.940A couple of the big wins that we – because remember, the war room is also the home of the neo-Brandeisian movement where we think Lena Kahn did a tremendous job in the first term.
00:06:16.720Folks, the difference in the first term and the second term in those years in between is the concentration of power in big pharma, big ag, big tech, right?
00:06:25.380The big media, Wall Street, it's the concentration of power.
00:06:29.800They're taking all the top law firms, all the communications firms.
00:06:34.500We've got two massive cases we're working on.
00:06:37.100And now we find out Zuckerberg's back in the Oval Office.
00:06:40.620You're hearing – and the FTC, Andrew Ferguson has done a tremendous job taking a case that was filed in the last days of President Trump's first term.
00:06:49.520Lena Kahn kind of perfected it over her time, and Andrew Ferguson's got him in court to essentially break up a big part of Facebook.
00:06:57.680And now we hear that Zuckerberg's back hovering around the White House.
00:07:01.340Gates spent two hours – after the president's three-hour board meeting or cabinet meeting, Gates is in the Oval for two hours arguing his case on vaccines, USAID, all that.
00:07:14.400So are we going to continue to win this, or the forces of concentration of power, money and power, are going to thwart our efforts here to try to break up some of these institutions and particularly try to break up certain of these institutions, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Google, et cetera, ma'am?
00:07:35.680Well, I think that there's a difference between institutions and companies.
00:07:40.880Where I think that we are winning right now in the Trump administration is breaking up institutions.
00:07:44.740For example, putting Darren Beatty as the head of the – what is it?
00:07:47.500The National Institute for Peace, which was just a massive money laundering building organization in D.C. to funnel money to USAID.
00:09:00.020But the corporations are still a big, big problem.
00:09:04.900Let's go to – by the way, President Trump's got a couple things on True Social today.
00:09:08.180One is about Karl Rove, and that problem at Fox continues to exist.
00:09:12.840The other is about he wants to bring, I think, RICO charges against Soros.
00:09:16.740Is that a little bit missing the boat?
00:09:18.120Talk to me about Arabella and some of these organizations that we quite – we cannot totally figure out how some of these institutions on the left get their cash.
00:09:29.820Is Soros yesterday's news and Arabella is where the focus should be, ma'am?
00:09:35.260No, because Soros and Arabella are directly linked.
00:09:38.220In fact, the person who's basically in charge of Arabella Advisors right now is Soros' son, Alex Soros.
00:09:43.240So Arabella Advisors was formed in 2005, and it was formed after the Democrats had lost the House, Senate, and the presidency.
00:09:51.580And so George Soros called a meeting of the top progressive donors in the country and then invited a couple of the top political consultants.
00:09:58.560And the donors told them, you just collectively wasted hundreds of millions of our dollars.
00:10:04.920Come back to us with a plan that involves funding ideas and institutions that will live beyond one election cycle.
00:10:11.200From that meeting, you got Arabella Advisors.
00:10:14.180It was conceived there, and it was – it's, you know, quote, a philanthropic consulting company that manages tens of billions, some say upwards of $75 billion with a B, and foundation support – and those foundations support left-wing woke causes and institutions.
00:10:29.540Now, Arabella essentially runs about 200 nonprofits.
00:10:32.760They're the fiscal sponsor for them, but really what they do is they are – they fund these grassroots groups, which are anything but.
00:10:40.160They are actually political, you know, political-run entities.
00:10:43.880And so, for example, the No Kings protest, Arabella Advisors funded that.
00:10:47.060It's funded largely by a lot of foreign money as well, but they poured $20 million most recently behind the groups funding the protests of Trump's D.C. crime crackdown.
00:10:56.640And when Mark Zuckerberg wanted to purchase the 2020 election, he spent $350 million to do that.
00:11:06.540Arabella is who ran the Center for Tech and Civil Life, the CTCL, where Zuckerberg famously gave that $350 million to turnout voters.
00:11:15.480But really, they just focused that money in 26 blue counties and swing states.
00:11:20.740They took over those counties' election systems, printed ballots, and here we are.
00:11:25.720So the buck stops with Arabella Advisors.
00:11:28.360It is the – I mean, it runs everything, all of these institutions, and we have to go after them.
00:11:34.120The next step, I want to see Scott Bessent, who is now the acting director of the IRS.
00:11:38.260The most important thing he can do is announce an investigation into Arabella Advisors.
00:11:43.200These nonprofits, that's how they operate, they are not nonprofits.
00:11:46.980They get the tax deductions on their way in there, but they are meddling in every single institution, corporation, and also our government and the way that we live our lives every day.
00:11:56.540So I think it is the most important thing we can keep our eyes on.
00:11:59.340But the first thing we could do is the ability to donate their stock, right, on a tax-free basis, right, and then finance these things.
00:12:15.020Still, Zuckerberg and Gates – I mean, Gates gets two hours with the president.
00:12:18.940New York Times reporting he's got two hours with the president.
00:12:20.880Gates and Zuckerberg are still getting – how are they still getting this type of access when they've been on the other side of the football for so long?
00:12:47.260But what also came out yesterday was that Bill Gates was – he's one of the largest financial backers of Arabella Advisors, that he was pulling his $450 million out of Arabella Advisors.
00:12:58.380So I would like to hope that it was actually the Trump administration that pressured them to do this and then said, fine, we'll take your meeting.
00:13:04.420So that – if that is the case, I don't know that to be the case, but if that is the case, then that's a big win for Trump.
00:13:10.420And we all know Bill Gates went in and advocated for funding of vaccines all over the world and whatever crap that he always advocates for.
00:13:18.360It doesn't mean Trump's going to do it, but Trump got him to pull his money out of Arabella, and that's a win in my book.
00:13:23.440So, Caroline, where's your social media now that you're back from your long, summer-long audition for Below Decks, back from the Aegean or, you know, wherever – I saw the Instagram, wherever you guys were.
00:18:03.54020th anniversary of the Washington Monthly College Guide and Rankings.
00:18:08.620This year we redid our methodology to put an even finer point on what we think college rankings, which we think are important.
00:18:19.260But the dozen of them that are out there, especially U.S. news, totally miss what's important about college rankings.
00:18:28.000You know, our college rankings are about the value for average students, students from modest means, students who are poor, who are working class.
00:18:44.540You know, the average taxpayer spends about $1,700 a year on higher education because the government spends half a trillion dollars on higher education.
00:18:54.360And they, you know, students and taxpayers want certain things from higher education.
00:19:34.040And that's very different from U.S. news and the other dozen imitators because what they're about is capturing the eyeballs of the upper middle,
00:19:46.800well, students from the upper middle class and wealthy families who have been taught since birth to strive to get into the most selective schools in order to stay in the upper middle class and the wealthy class.
00:19:59.280And so their metrics all somehow, surprise, surprise, result in the same 20 or 30 mostly private or big flagship public universities in the top.
00:20:17.880So you've got your Harvard's, your Yale's, your, you know, and so forth.
00:20:22.000And in our ranking, it's quite different when you measure things the way we measure it for the average person and the average taxpayer.
00:20:30.440A lot of mostly unsung state schools and small liberal arts colleges share the top 30 with the elite.
00:20:40.720And in fact, the highest ranking elite school, Princeton, is number five on our rankings behind three California State University campuses, including Fresno State, number two.
00:20:55.280And the number one school is probably a college 99% of your listeners and viewers have never heard of.
00:21:03.820And that's Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.
00:21:37.600These guys work it nonstop because it's very important to be number, you know, for Harvard is, wants to be above Stanford, wants to be above Princeton, wants to be above Yale.
00:22:48.560But basically, what U.S. News and most of its competitors do is they measure colleges by how exclusive they are, number one, right?
00:22:59.620How few people, you know, they get in, how many people they don't get in.
00:23:04.540Number two, wealth, how much spending per student, you know, and it used to be they would measure the donors who would give them money.
00:23:19.260And number three, prestige, right, is this self-referential survey they do that asks other college leaders, what do you think of this college?
00:23:31.000And it's all sort of, well, it's prestigious because people say it's prestigious.
00:23:36.580So when you do it that way, you automatically lift to the top the Harvards and the Yales and the Princetons and the Columbias and the MITs and so forth.
00:24:33.860You've gone, you started at a, you started, what, at University of Missouri and then went to Northwestern.
00:24:41.300Talk to us about the, because I did the same thing, you know, I, and this is why I talk about the H-1B visas all the time, about the kids that grinded through the STEM programs and went to engineering schools and computers.
00:24:51.760These guys were number one in their class or the top in the hard courses.
00:24:54.560You know, I, I had, I had a while that, you know, I kind of phoned it in, right, and I went to a land-grant university, start off before Georgetown and Harvard.
00:25:04.200But you did also, and you find out when you go to these institutions, it's about the teachers.
00:25:09.100It's about the people around it that want to learn.
00:25:11.160I mean, and that's why I think it's so fascinating about your guide.
00:25:14.140You actually lay it out that, hey, there's a whole world out here that you don't have to pay $100,000 a year if you really want an education.
00:25:22.540Yeah, well, I, I, I was, you know, not the greatest student in the world, uh, in, in elementary and middle school.
00:25:29.600And toward the end of high school, I finally kind of began to buckle down, but I didn't have great scores or anything.
00:25:34.240So I went to where everybody in my subdivision there, my suburb of St. Louis went to, which is, uh, you know, a Missouri state school, University of Missouri.
00:25:52.840Anyway, what I found was that the quality of the professors at Northwestern were excellent, but they were no more excellent than the quality of the professors at, at Mizzou.
00:26:02.040They, they, they, I, they were, we have a plethora of very smart people getting, uh, you know, degrees in this country, struggling to find places to teach.
00:26:13.940And so, you know, these universities have their pick of brilliant minds.
00:26:19.760And so the, the difference in the quality of the teaching is not so great.
00:26:23.820And that kind of opened my mind to the idea that this hierarchy, uh, at U S news was malarkey.
00:26:31.780And, and, and so, um, and in, in our current issue, I mentioned, uh, uh, uh, Fresno state.
00:26:38.980I don't know if you know about Fresno state.
00:26:40.760Fresno state is in the heart of the central Valley of California, right?