On today's show, we have a special guest on the show, former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell joins us to discuss the Trump administration's war on the judicial branch and its impact on our democracy. Judge Timothy Blanch has been appointed by the Justice Department and has been a long time supporter of President Trump, but he is also a vocal opponent of the President and his administration's immigration policies.
00:00:00.000Routine, getting stays and getting reversals because of local judges just not following the law full stop.
00:00:08.780And it's the same judges, or not the same judges, but there's a group of judges that are repeat players,
00:00:14.500and that's obviously not by happenstance. That's intentional. And it's a war, man.
00:00:22.740This idea of war on judges, I'll say two things.
00:00:25.440Number one, the most important judges of the Supreme Court, they do not have a lot of problems with.
00:00:30.120So the buck stops at the Supreme Court. They have not really been ruled against pretty much at all and overturned past president.
00:00:36.980But when you hear things like this, I mean, this is out of the Erdogan turkey playbook, the war on the judicial branch.
00:00:42.600We need to go after them. We need to beat them. It's scary stuff.
00:00:46.040It's really chilling. This is one of the most dangerous and damaging things that's happening right now in our country
00:00:50.860is the disrespect for judges and the public calls for others to disrespect and disregard judges.
00:00:58.240We have a constitution that has three equal branches that all have a job to do,
00:01:03.420and the job of the courts under our constitution is to rein in the executive branch.
00:01:08.500This administration does not accept that as a legitimate constitutional function of courts.
00:01:13.700They seem to believe that it is the job of judges to get on board with and rubber stamp the political agenda of the president.
00:01:20.680That is absolutely not the case, and that is very dangerous to our democracy.
00:01:24.860It is also very dangerous to the judges who are out there trying their best every single day to do the job that the Constitution requires of them.
00:01:34.380Those are people who have seen an incredible increase in real threats to their safety.
00:01:38.900We have seen people plot against judges, try to attack judges because they disagree with their rulings,
00:01:46.620and people like Todd Blanche are egging that on.
00:01:48.900He is the number two official at the Justice Department,
00:01:52.400and it is absolutely irresponsible and really, frankly, reprehensible that he is taking that position
00:01:58.860about federal judges in our country who have an important constitutional role to play.
00:02:03.880I mean, for future negotiations, if he knows once he inflicts maximum pain,
00:02:10.340that Democrats are going to say, this is too much pain for my constituents.
00:02:14.600It's not in the best interest of the United States, and we fold.
00:02:18.900Well, look, I think any political leader who goes about inflicting pain on the people they represent
00:02:26.160will ultimately be punished at the ballot box by those people.
00:02:29.740And we saw that in Virginia, and, you know, I've spent the last year screaming about the fact
00:02:37.320that our governor, Glenn Youngkin, refused to stand up for Virginians as Donald Trump was attacking us.
00:02:43.540And I told him, I said, the voters are going to punish this.
00:02:46.680And the voters in Virginia punished it last Tuesday.
00:02:49.720So I think the answer to your question is we've got to continue to tell the story,
00:02:54.180the pain Donald Trump's inflicting on people,
00:02:56.140the fact that he's more focused on the price of Greenland than the price of groceries.
00:03:00.240He's building golden bathrooms while kids are going to bed hungry
00:03:03.540because he's taken away their food benefits and SNAP.
00:03:08.420And we've got to take that to the voters if he continues in this way.
00:03:11.060Three co-equal branches of government.
00:03:14.160Now, the Republicans have said, we don't want that.
00:03:17.240And they've given up their equality, their power.
00:07:24.560You've got his restructuring of the commercial relationships of the world, as we refer to as his trade policies, right, to manifest itself if they don't move the jobs back and tariffs are in court.
00:07:43.280So I want to take – and I want to be – I would like to be systematic.
00:07:46.040So the guest today to do this is Stephen K. Bannon.
00:07:49.880And I want to talk about the influences on the president.
00:07:56.620Tonight he's got dinner with the lords of easy money, you know, Jamie Dimon, Larry Fink, real Trump supporters and MAGA supporters.
00:08:06.400As you know, I say that with tongue-in-cheek because they hate Trump and they hate MAGA.
00:08:11.780And Jamie Dimon, you know, has got this fantasy.
00:08:13.960He's going to run as a populist candidate for president.
00:08:17.400Jamie spent – it was not this past summer.
00:08:20.020I think it was the summer before he talked about he took, I guess, a Winnebago or one of these, you know, land cruisers, one of these big mobile homes.
00:08:28.300And he went from – I think he's at Spokane, Washington, all the way – I think it was to Idaho or it might have been to Kalispell, Montana or somewhere.
00:08:35.920He went up in the American Redoubt or, as we call it, the Christian Redoubt, the capital of Christian nationalism in this country.
00:08:42.460And Jamie Dimon goes, you know, the people were so nice.
00:08:44.680My wife and I really said that this is really kind of the backbone of America.
00:08:50.300Jamie Dimon, this is how clueless they are.
00:08:53.660Guy runs the biggest bank, one of the most powerful banks in the world, chairman, CEO, been on Wall Street for, I don't know, 40 years.
00:09:01.300Sandy Wiles, henchman, and just doesn't really understand, have the first clue about a place called the United States of America and American citizens.
00:09:13.140This is why we started the cold open with Todd Blanche giving that talk at the Federalist Society and because it is the quiet part out loud that, of course, the crew at MSNBC said about, you know, they're going after these judges because they don't agree with the political agenda of President Trump.
00:09:36.120This is why the Roberts Court has overturned so many of these radical left-wing judges that you judge shop, okay?
00:09:42.520This is why the Supreme Court, because what the Roberts Court has said, essentially in ruling after ruling after ruling, it's not their job to make political decisions.
00:09:57.420And that's what's been the problem with the court for decade after decade after decade.
00:10:02.480And the Roberts Court, I think because you have some, you know, very strong conservatives, or as we call it, the Clarence Thomas Court, right, Judge Thomas Court, is saying we've got to get – we're not interventionists.
00:10:19.280The political decisions should be made by – wait for it – the political branches of the government.
00:10:25.920That would be Capitol Hill, the Congress, and the executive branch.
00:10:30.340Let's go – so I want to start there because it's going to roll through the entire analysis of exactly where we are on a major pivot of the economic policy of the – economic policies of the United States.
00:10:42.340Can I play the first cut, the Todd Blanchard?
00:10:51.060We are routinely getting stays and getting reversals because of local judges just not following the law full stop.
00:11:00.300And it's the same judges – or not the same judges, but there's a group of judges that are repeat players, and that's obviously not by happenstance.
00:11:43.460This is called lawfare, and this is a war, and this is the principle – this is – they don't have the political support, so this is the principle attack that they've used to date is the courts.
00:11:53.720And they go, oh, but this is out of Erdogan where you call it out.
00:11:58.220Out of Erdogan, and you guys have had the high ground for decade after decade after decade after you removed – starting with the war on court somewhat, but after you removed Richard Nixon.
00:12:10.240And always remember Jeff Shepard, the Watergate stuff you see in all the presidents, man, that's Hollywood, deep throat.
00:13:33.920We're going to continue with the tape because then the other panelists or the other co-host on the evening show at MSMUC says the quiet part out loud.
00:13:42.020You know, they're all over these judges because they don't agree with the political agenda of Donald Trump.
00:13:47.440We don't give a damn what a judge thinks about the political agenda of the executive branch or Capitol Hill.
00:18:04.680The 3%, which may be – I don't know if that's the target right now for inflation.
00:18:10.380In full-spectrum energy dramas, the president is absolutely correct.
00:18:13.460And supply chain corrections, absolutely correct to get costs down.
00:18:17.860But when you have – when you're putting in a $2 trillion stimulus every year and old brother John Maynard Keynes tells us this is not the time you should be putting in a $2 trillion stimulus,
00:18:31.520and he's the guy that thought it up on kind of classic economics, you're going to have embedded inflation.
00:18:40.000What's the gospel we preached on this for, I don't know, starting in 2001 – or excuse me, 2021 when Biden had those plans coming out of the gate, right?
00:18:50.600We said this is going to be inflationary, this is going to be inflationary, this is going to be inflationary.
00:18:58.180Back to the courts because the economic piece here is of whole cloth.
00:19:04.720To make America great again, one of the basic subsets of this, foundational elements, and this goes back to President Trump's book when he was a civilian.
00:19:21.900He wrote a book that came out from Regnery Press I think in 2011.
00:19:29.760I'm going to say in 2011, when people were talking about is this guy going to run for president against Obama, et cetera, et cetera.
00:19:36.480I mean he was not a main topic of conversation, but it was out there.
00:19:41.280And I think that is around the time Obama, I think, went after Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
00:25:31.520Getting gun-decking the whole process to see if it was a national security to get over there so they could get the high value added or the heavy rare earths.
00:25:52.180We're having that good old American stick-to-itiveness, ingenuity.
00:25:57.840And why is it important to bring it back?
00:26:00.400A guy named Tom Peters wrote a book that came out in the early 1990s that was the definitive book on how you run companies called In Search of Excellence.
00:26:14.300That book had a theory of how you run a company.
00:26:18.860And it wasn't by just the mathematics.
00:26:21.820It wasn't by how you ran manufacturing companies.
00:26:24.300It was based upon the lessons of Hewlett-Packard in the early days of Silicon Valley and all the way up to that current time.
00:26:32.220And that was – and that was – and also Intel, I think, both of them.
00:26:38.360That was management by wandering around.
00:27:03.520And that's what led – when we finished with every day at noon or every hour segment, we finished with the – we finished with the right stuff.
00:27:14.400The right stuff are about the test pilots and about the astronauts in the Mercury program.
00:27:20.700It's their courage, their unbelievable courage.
00:28:56.780The other part is obviously the big, beautiful bill and the supply-side tax cut.
00:29:08.580So the supply-side tax cut, the trade policies converge on a massive program to redirect the American economy.
00:29:17.620It has not been done since it started in the late 60s, 70s, 80s, but it picked up massive momentum after the Bush first Bush administration went over and bailed out the Chinese Communist Party in Tiananmen Square.
00:29:38.040They said they sent General Scowcroft over, who is essentially their national security guru, to tell Deng Xiaoping and these guys, you've got to get it back in line.
00:29:48.560You can't be killing 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 people in front of the world.
00:30:13.340The corporatists and the globalists did not back their play.
00:30:17.500They were like, they weren't all great people, but the large majority of them were kind of like the revolutionary generation here.
00:30:25.760They wanted to break out from totalitarian structure.
00:30:29.420We didn't back their play, and that really began the turbocharge of shifting the arsenal of democracy to the Chinese Communist Party, the arsenal of democracy.
00:30:43.520Essentially, the arsenal, the Industrial Revolution superpower that won World War I, that would be us.
00:30:51.880They'd still be fighting World War I if the United States had not come in.
00:31:06.580It's one of the reasons he was on the short list to even be Secretary of Treasury because he had laid out what Trump's vision was, President Trump's was, to get a supply-side tax cut.
00:31:17.060And Scott kept making the argument, this may be the last chance you'd get it.
00:31:21.040Now, part of that, a big part of that, is you have to have a workforce that's ready to rumble.
00:31:27.560And it is true, much of the high-value-added manufacturing, not all of it, there's some high-value-added manufacturing here.
00:31:33.980A lot of the manufacturing has left for Asia.
00:31:38.100Of course, all the people come in, no, no, no, no, it's all technology, technology taking the jobs, no.
00:31:42.860Technology took certain parts of jobs as you're going to have automation.
00:31:45.760But the bulk of it was shipped overseas by private equity, by Wall Street, by the corporatists.
00:32:11.080And that would be the American worker.
00:32:12.500Who, until Trump came along, think about the decades, and you had Bush and these guys, they ran the exact same campaign as, what, Jack Cittarelli in New Jersey.
00:32:24.020Tax cuts and, oh, government's too big.
00:32:26.640We're not going to stop the growth of government, but we're going to bitch about it and bellyache about it and pretend to all conservative ink, the National Review and Tel Aviv Levin and the entire crew at Fox, that we're going to do something about it.
00:41:34.900With Scott now, I've got a whole new thing.
00:41:36.640We're just coming here temporarily for shipbuilding, some weapons.
00:41:40.380And the advanced chip design is a special category.
00:41:43.520You know, some people have told me over the years, you need a place like Taiwan that has, you know, half the nation has 800 on their math scores, which we don't.
00:41:53.720Because it's both an art, it's both a science and an art.
00:42:06.640I love it if they, well, let's say I don't love it, but I like it a lot more than what else I'm hearing.
00:42:12.860Has anybody informed the guys that it's temporary, you're going to come over to train people up, and as soon as they're trained, you're leaving?
00:42:20.220I don't think corporate America works like that.
00:42:22.220I think as soon as they get cheap labor, you've got to go with the trenching tool and dig it out.
00:42:26.240Because, hey, that adds to the operating income, which adds to the bottom line, which is going to mean a higher multiple and a higher stock price.
00:43:07.680He's our wise man, a former CIA, Pentagon, and White House advisor with an unmatched grasp of geopolitics and capital markets.
00:43:15.300Jim predicted Trump's Electoral College victory exactly 312 to 226, down to the actual number itself.
00:43:24.560Now he's issuing a dire warning about April 11th, a moment that could define Trump's presidency and your financial future.
00:43:31.680His latest book, Money GPT, exposes how AI is setting the stage for financial chaos, bank runs at lightning speeds, algorithm-driven crashes, and even threats to national security.
00:43:43.920Right now, war room members get a free copy of Money GPT when they sign up for Strategic Intelligence.
00:43:50.520This is Jim's flagship financial newsletter, Strategic Intelligence.
00:44:55.680Look back over their recommendations, I don't know, the last 20 or 30 years.
00:45:01.320But we talked about, it's just not about AI.
00:45:05.520We're going to get to that back at the top of the hour, again, artificial intelligence.
00:45:08.400It is about the underpinnings of that, and they announced that I think two of the four frontier companies are saying that they have reached human intelligence level.
00:45:19.600If you look at the curve on that, if you look on the curve on that from the time chat GPT, because that was an inflection point where you get the actual response by talking.
00:45:33.080That was a huge, internally to the AI, to artificial intelligence, a huge move.
00:45:38.020If that's what shocked people, it had come that quickly.
00:45:40.280They thought that might have been a decade away.
00:45:43.640If you look at what's happened since then, they're accelerating at an accelerating rate.
00:45:50.400Now, I'm not saying that the economics of this makes sense.
00:45:53.460I think you are seeing a little bit of a bubble where they're in a virtuous cycle.
00:45:56.900One guy announces they're raising money.
00:45:59.140He's going to buy chips, and they're going to buy, you know, they're going to use cloud computing.
00:46:03.960You know, they're going to use the Amazon global cloud network.
00:46:07.900So one announcement from one capital kind of goes through the system, and all the stocks run like it's all one central thing.
00:46:14.640And you've got some smart people, a lot of people involved in shorting the market before the 2008 crash.
00:46:20.940It kind of went through and understood how the derivatives were a house of cards.
00:46:25.900I think Michael Burry and that crowd are now starting to short certain stocks.
00:46:29.520And so that whole thing is maybe tenuous, but what's coming out is that they're making, in these frontier labs, of which we know nothing that's going on, they're making, it looks like, tremendous advances.
00:46:42.480When they talk about, hey, we may be at the human intelligence level, your brain's a pretty special thing for human intelligence.
00:46:50.240Because you're imbued with the power of God, because you're made in his image and likeness.
00:47:00.540This is why Homo sapiens have kind of taken the lead from all the other species.
00:47:06.700In addition to the fact you have an immortal soul, might I add, as a footnote, keep that in mind.
00:47:17.300Particularly keep it in mind when you go back to, was it Mark 13?
00:47:21.100You've got Christ basically bringing up the apostles or the disciples who are back from a trip where they're calling his powers, a power of the devil or Beelzebub.
00:47:31.880He says, hey, you can do anything, but you mock the Holy Spirit, you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, that's an unforgivable sin.
00:48:09.700Now, on top of it, the Wall Street Journal has been doing amazing, oh, by the way, that the Chinese Communist Party is doing everything possible to worm out of the deal on rare earths.
00:48:19.820That you saw Scott Besson down in South Carolina a week ago.
00:48:24.680They're trying to get everything, our military industrial complex, the production lines for our military can't get access to it.
00:48:32.580Because, obviously, they are thinking of, they have a plan at some point in time, if they have to, to go kinetic in the South China Sea, in the Straits of Taiwan, in an invasion of Taiwan, to get their hands in those chip factories.
00:48:46.800And you're not going to be able to ship them to Arizona soon enough.