Bannon's War Room - Episode 4970： A Conversation With Sam Tanenhaus And The Book Buckley： The Life and the Revolution That Changed America Pt. 2

00:00:00.000 this is the primal scream of a dying regime pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on

00:00:11.040 these people here's not got a free shot all these networks lying about the people the people have

00:00:17.640 had a belly full of it I know you don't like hearing that I know you try to do everything

00:00:21.420 the world to stop that but you're not gonna stop it it's going to happen and where do people like

00:00:25.140 that go to share the big line mega media I wish in my soul I wish that any of these people had a

00:00:33.420 conscience ask yourself what is my task and what is my purpose if that answer is to save my country

00:00:41.180 this country will be saved war room here's your host Stephen K. Band

00:00:47.940 you've just had an explosion across the battlefield that is American politics here in

00:00:56.420 the imperial capital you've actually had the a senior editor of I would argue one of the most

00:01:04.360 if not the most influential publication on a weekly basis before you had cable tv and podcasts and

00:01:10.440 everything like this uh the revered time magazine accuse in an open hearing in front of the nation

00:01:17.940 arguably one of the most respected individuals that had been in government for a long time had

00:01:23.920 been aide-de-camp to roosevelt the first secretary general of the united nations just to get the

00:01:28.920 kickoff and now leading the most prestigious ngo uh the carnegie endowment of peace as being

00:01:36.740 a soviet agent what happens well chambers goes through about eight or nine names

00:01:42.660 and and said and mentioned some others well known not as well known as his and the others

00:01:49.860 all go silent because well if somebody accuses you of something accuse you of being a communist you

00:01:56.920 got to remember Steve this is an era where if you're accusing someone of being a communist and

00:02:01.900 they're not that that's potential slander or libel yeah right because it's not no read them

00:02:07.360 watch them and when you watch the movie oppenheimer i mean we went from allies quote unquote to now

00:02:12.680 mortal enemies right and not just it was not just about geopolitics at the time these are two distinct

00:02:19.940 views of how one views humanity the world all of it this is the story of whitaker chambers goes from a

00:02:26.360 hardcore if not trotsky i you know marxist leninist atheist to a a christian that is christianity

00:02:34.100 informs every movement of his life right and you see this whole battle right there that's why this

00:02:39.200 is so big this this consumed post-war america the the the war against uh they called it the cold war

00:02:45.580 but it got hot in many places this is what consumed us up until all the way through president reagan's

00:02:50.960 uh president reagan's um presidency yeah well and and uh chambers insisted it was a moral battle

00:02:59.180 that's what nobody wanted here it's not just it's not just moving it's a spiritual war it's a

00:03:02.880 spiritual war it's a moral war that's why you know when um a friend of mine i think of yours too

00:03:09.560 pap buchanan tries to say these things right said in a long time ago you know he's hooted off the stage

00:03:14.680 hang on for a second hang on a second hang on a second how is uh one of the leading jewish

00:03:19.220 intellectuals in the country uh a friend of what the what they tell us today is the greatest anti-semite

00:03:25.420 in the nation pap buchanan i revere pap buchanan but to hear you say that you're a buddy of his is

00:03:30.900 pretty shocking well first of all any journalist who interviews pap buchanan knows how straight he

00:03:38.320 is how direct how uncensored and how helpful he will be he and you know people are shocked by

00:03:46.020 there's actually a friend of mine who told me a long time ago before i interviewed pap buchanan

00:03:49.400 said he's a really nice guy i didn't believe it then i met him and he is but there's something else

00:03:53.440 going on here too is now we're going to get to something that's in the buckley book if we want

00:03:57.960 to switch over there we see it is because buckley now comes on the stage he does come on the stage

00:04:03.120 very shortly a bit player but in the wings but all of a sudden you're going to see you're going to

00:04:07.100 see the kernels of all this this is why it's the revolution that changed america we're now going to

00:04:12.400 get in it's more than buckley it's what buckley sees down the road that's right and um pap buchanan

00:04:17.380 of course is uh still a younger guy than buckley but he was raised in all this remember he comes

00:04:22.440 from washington and he was raised in all this politics and when pap buchanan had his big fight

00:04:29.540 really with the neoconservatives during the first iraq war something i think you know a little bit

00:04:36.760 about that first gulf war and the way i treated it in my book and if you go back and look at the

00:04:44.320 documents and debates at the time because it's recirculating right now right now it's happening

00:04:50.640 there are accusations that if you are skeptical of israel and the way it's conducting this war

00:04:58.760 right now in gaza you are anti-semitic and so they look for every opportunity to make that point

00:05:05.500 well if you go back to the debate pat buchanan had you're talking about the gulf war in the 90s are

00:05:12.080 the first one in the 90s in the 90s i want people to understand this is not after 9-11 this is pre-9-11

00:05:18.040 this is when when the first bush is president the invasion of kuwait the threat to kuwait

00:05:23.520 maggie thatcher tells bush you know you've got you've got good wobbly that's it don't get wobbly

00:05:28.960 george don't get wobbly george right it's not skull and bones and right about me and grove anymore

00:05:34.560 we got to do it and pat buchanan says why are we fighting this war for israel right and well

00:05:44.880 and um he's denounced and um smeared many respects for that but that was a battle about that war which

00:05:58.120 in retrospect maybe pat buchanan was right about what do you mean by that that's so controversial

00:06:04.500 we're gonna get we may not get clicks although i think we will out of the out of the uh the the

00:06:10.800 first part of this about whitaker chambers i think is brilliant and people are saying but right now

00:06:15.440 you're you're gonna go viral so tell me why what's the argument for why pat buchanan might have been

00:06:22.820 correct to say which if everybody says hey the good war that we fought over the last four years

00:06:28.020 is the gulf war right because you were you know and little nation was invaded by a bigger nation

00:06:32.700 uh this is where america had to stand up also it might have something to do with oil but why was

00:06:37.720 because buchanan really got the separation kind of the beginning of this whole movement this part of

00:06:44.900 this movement really started with that whole powerhouse debate they had done well you know steve um

00:06:51.020 if you go back and look at the debates in washington among like the major like intellectual

00:06:58.560 players of that era and i mean like irving crystal not his son bill no no no no irving crystal

00:07:04.800 gene these were patrick kirk patrick yeah i went to georgetown after she started things she was a hammer

00:07:10.340 and they're saying why are we looking to start a new cold war in the middle east and pat buchanan had a

00:07:19.040 line and irving crystal was not just he had been i think a trotsky out he was uh and he was one of

00:07:25.260 the guys lead the effort anti-chemists to get make sure he got the jews out of russia i mean this guy

00:07:28.980 was a hammer right when these guys are actually backing up pat buchanan these are not intellectual

00:07:33.900 lightweights these are about as heavy a public national security intellectuals as you can have

00:07:38.420 well i'll give you an example of this near the end of his life when uh my wife kathy who got very close

00:07:43.480 to bill buckley as i did we went to see him in his house in stamford 2008 now we turn the clock

00:07:49.220 forward and uh she said to him well bill is there any conservative writer now you really respect he

00:07:56.420 said irving crystal it was the one right not bill crystal irving crystal irving crystal and gene

00:08:01.980 kirk patrick you go back and look at some of pat buchanan's early books including the one he wrote

00:08:08.100 on how the republicans could build a majority he wrote that he remember he and bill rusher were

00:08:13.500 writing this now we're getting into the weeds but i know that no this is a way this is remember

00:08:19.400 young people are thirsting for this information because none of this stuff is taught you're talking

00:08:23.740 about something that happened 30 years ago and it's never discussed yeah that i i get i know it's true

00:08:28.140 because i see it when i when i go around and talk about this stuff well you look at pat buchanan's

00:08:34.040 early writing and you will see it's one of those early books is dedicated to one of his mentors

00:08:40.600 professor irving crystal this idea right that somehow that intellectual elite declared war on

00:08:50.320 pat buchanan over that is untrue they agreed with charles krauthammer i remember him oh yeah i remember

00:08:57.040 him saying the isolationist position is totally defensible and consistent on intellectual and

00:09:05.160 ideological grounds and so here's the line pat had that really resonated with me later he said

00:09:11.100 we already almost destroyed the empire over a strategically meaningless country vietnam why are

00:09:20.260 we meddling in a strategically important one the middle east i'll tell you another thing about this too

00:09:25.940 fascinated me i found it in the buckley book so after buckley started national review 1955

00:09:31.200 it was not long before the suez canal crisis right over oil the end of the british empire end of the

00:09:37.680 british empire everybody favors um the brits the french and for once the israelis national review hated

00:09:46.760 israel early on and your viewers and listeners should should know this i've got it in the book

00:09:52.400 national review referred to israel in 1956 as quote the first modern racist nation unquote and so was that

00:10:03.700 buckley's catholicism traditional catholicism or what was that what what what brought that what brought

00:10:08.740 that to the forefront of national review the catholicism was one aspect another was came from a writer

00:10:16.780 that people knew only as a pro mccarthy anti-communist named frida utley and she had covered the middle east and she said

00:10:27.700 to buckley i'm going to write a piece that defends the group nobody else is looking at there are these

00:10:35.360 displaced palestinians there and they have a case to make and she wrote a book about it and there was one

00:10:42.440 columnist in washington of all people mary mcgrory the liberal um picked up on it or it was dorothy

00:10:50.340 thompson that's who it was another great liberal columnist picked up on it that's this part of the

00:10:54.540 algonquin yeah and she said she said frida utley is making a case here no one's paying attention to

00:11:01.040 the palestinians so buckley she sends the story to buckley and buckley says what do we do with it

00:11:07.620 and he says i know what we'll do we'll just invent a new column we'll call it the open question and

00:11:14.400 this is the first one we're going to run so smart and that's why buckley was great he could open he

00:11:19.660 could open up instead of this kind of you know who do we whom do we denounce right who do we exclude

00:11:24.800 you think make the good argument and i'll run it well that changes over time we'll get to the part

00:11:29.940 about we got to exclude some guys here the birchers and and and the objective is the objective is a

00:11:35.480 bizarro anron cult right the the the the the birchers are dangerous because they're conspiracy

00:11:42.360 wing nuts but let's go back let's go back to when buckley comes in on the on the wing of the stage

00:11:48.000 it's at the end of the alger his part but the beginning of the mccarthy part yes and and so uh

00:11:54.180 and by the way one of the most fascinating parts of the book is that uh buckley's transformation

00:12:00.800 personal transformation about because unlike bush who are kinetic family who kind of went to texas

00:12:07.140 and pretend they're texans buckley's actually a texan i mean his family who kind of heart-boiled

00:12:12.840 uh all all guys down in texas that they moved to connecticut and he was raised in connecticut

00:12:17.300 but um you know buckley here one of the transformers thing is when he has to go in the army which he kind

00:12:23.700 of tries to avoid for a long time during world war ii he's anti-world war ii yeah what's controversial

00:12:28.940 he's very anti-world war ii he finally goes in but in being an infantry officer even though just most

00:12:34.200 of it's in training it does transform him and to be kind of more of a guy's guy guy's guy i'd add a

00:12:39.960 second thing to that too which really made sense to me when i went to buckley's hometown sharon

00:12:45.080 connecticut which is what they call the northwest corner litchfield county right near dutchess county

00:12:50.800 new york and a western massachusetts so i tell people when the buckleys were declaring roosevelt war in

00:12:56.820 the roosevelts in the 1930s they're declaring war and the guy they saw at the ride back horse show

00:13:02.100 every summer like it's very much an elite this is the elites well um but but but i mentioned that

00:13:08.700 because when my wife and i went to shower in connecticut not where buckley lived as an adult

00:13:14.040 but where he's where he grew up and you can see the house there that's where the young americans for

00:13:18.340 freedom first met you can see the boulder with the the statement on it and all this and you walk to

00:13:23.460 that town you see right across from the buckley house is the oldest church in town and in connecticut

00:13:29.660 towns you really learn this it's always the congregational church then next door is the

00:13:34.400 episcopal church high church high church down the street the methodist little lower church you have to

00:13:40.040 go practically into a back alley to find the catholic church right and that's where the buckleys

00:13:45.560 worshiped the household servants got in the cars with them and they drove to church together so who's

00:13:52.740 who's worshiping at saint bernard's the catholic church in sharon connecticut it's the working

00:13:59.040 class that's who buckley saw buckley was an altar boy he and his brothers are all altar boys his father

00:14:05.220 was an altar boy in duval county texas the one right the county that won i have no air quotes here but but

00:14:14.720 won the lyndon johnson senate campaign in 1948 buckley's grandfather was a sheriff in that county

00:14:21.660 so he comes out of make sure they count them right the living out the dead they count them by the

00:14:28.580 pound we're gonna take a short commercial break want to thank uh birch gold uh for sponsoring this

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00:14:55.980 we're going to take a short break we're back with sam tannenhaus let me be blunt gold is up around 40

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00:16:20.760 still america's voice family are you on getter yet no what are you waiting for it's free it's

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00:16:49.960 free and be part of the movement okay if you really want to understand america and the conservative

00:16:55.180 movement and particularly if you have a college student or young person in their 20s that you

00:17:00.040 think needs to get up to speed this is the christmas gift you want to get them um buckley by sam tannenhausen

00:17:06.420 and by the way if you ever get whitaker changers for yourself particularly if you're especially if

00:17:11.300 you're a christian and you're saying hey in the world today you know that's so much look anti-christian

00:17:16.700 philosophy out there you think it's pressure read the book of whitaker chambers it is one of the

00:17:21.920 most moving stories of i guess a convert that had lived it had lived christianity against the

00:17:27.960 pressures of the world this book is amazing buckley and i want to i want to throw down a challenge

00:17:33.540 when whitaker chambers the book whitaker chambers came out in the 90s who was the biggest promoter of

00:17:39.140 that book in media don imus remember him oh he dominated the 90s he dominated right yeah the book

00:17:45.720 was nominated for the national book award and it and it came in a box and imus got it and he started

00:17:54.560 reading it and he started talking about it and i didn't know this at first i listened to the program

00:17:59.040 but i would hear it in the afternoon i listened to this to him in the morning but i also listened to

00:18:03.080 the sports guys in the afternoon i was working i was writing at home and somebody called me up and i

00:18:07.760 said don imus is promoting your book and then it became a thing you may remember it became a joke

00:18:13.160 remember uh charles mccord would do these things i'm going to kill myself if you don't stop talking

00:18:18.080 about imus and about about tannenhaus and chambers imus called me up his wife called me up this is it

00:18:25.720 and asked how she could get a custom-made woodstock typewriter to give don for christmas because the

00:18:35.020 typewriter was the we're going to get to that we're going to get that story why why is the

00:18:40.680 typewriter a story you talked about the farm tell me about the typewriter nixon the farm all of it

00:18:46.140 well after the pumpkin papers after chambers first testified they say he's a liar they say he's a liar

00:18:52.120 apparatus came down this is why if you're a christian you gotta read this book everything that he feared

00:18:57.200 why he was kind of a schizophrenic turned out to be true they were out to get him as soon as he said

00:19:02.300 this thing publicly the entire apparatus in the world crushed this guy right there were three

00:19:08.680 accusations that the party would use to smear somebody one is to say he's a homosexual that's

00:19:18.520 a term that was used back then two that he's mentally unstable and three he's an alcoholic they

00:19:27.280 said this about chambers go back i want to make sure people understand this this is what the russians

00:19:31.720 would do to basically try to smear somebody right but they would do it through their agents their

00:19:37.320 agents here american agents but one you're you were gay you were homosexual uh two you were mentally

00:19:43.100 unstable and three you're an alcoholic and in chambers case they try to do all three yeah they spread them

00:19:49.000 around and chambers did happen to have a history of right homosexuality the others were untrue and so

00:19:56.540 there's a really famous moment in the hiss case it's one that brings tears to the eyes of grown men

00:20:03.920 steve it's when they finally bring hiss is the only one of the accused who insists on answering chambers

00:20:12.140 he says no these are he sends a letter after chambers is named him and seven or eight others hiss sends a note

00:20:19.980 to the committee the house committee and he says i demand equal time i want to come before the committee

00:20:26.140 and repudiate these lies have been told about me so they said well come on in mr hiss so he does

00:20:33.540 hey and what was his thinking understanding he actually was a spy he felt i'm alger hiss i can go in front of

00:20:40.840 and dominate where these guys are the worst witnesses in the world bentley and chambers i am alger hiss

00:20:46.760 this is i can command any stage i'm on i'll command the stage and show that and show that uh show that

00:20:52.360 this he's just jealous or he's mentally unstable or he drinks too much or you know he's just not he's

00:20:58.140 not a credible witness and the other thing he's got going for him steve is that the huac congressmen

00:21:05.500 are really held in low repute it's the committee nobody wants to be on they're the red baiters they've

00:21:10.680 done the hollywood 10 right where they yeah ronald reagan this is ronald reagan's rise to power the

00:21:15.120 whole movie the way we were is about this film they bring these about this moment mainly uh this

00:21:19.820 moment they because they think anybody that come for you because you had uh what um adolf mengey you

00:21:25.180 had people in hollywood come forward but even the people that came forward and name names were smeared

00:21:30.480 by the mainstream media being a rat you were an informer so there's the whole thing about being

00:21:34.520 an informer even if you were accurate about these people being communist right it was the whole stench

00:21:40.300 of being an informer there were two blacklists and we only hear about one of them we hear about the

00:21:44.360 blacklist of the accused communists we don't hear about the blacklist of the witnesses who never got

00:21:50.140 work again because they came out and testified ayn rand actually came out of that politics so we get

00:21:55.340 to that later because she was as you know i can't believe you take these views on everything you're

00:21:59.380 it's this is how politics has changed so much in the country you're a secular jewish liberal from the

00:22:05.920 new york times yeah you're saying things that and a couple of years ago the the progressive

00:22:11.360 let's say those are lies you're just lying about eye of stone you're still still remember

00:22:15.260 out your hiss is still a fight it's still an intellectual fight how did you get through

00:22:20.020 your life by coming out and writing about this and actually telling the truth of the story you know

00:22:26.360 um one of my this is how much culture and politics have changed in this nation well they have changed and

00:22:32.140 they were starting to then i mean what the thing that worked to my advantage was i started writing

00:22:38.020 thinking about chambers in the early 90s after the soviet union collapsed remember there was that

00:22:44.180 period when people were rethinking a lot of this and heroes were people like when they opened up the

00:22:50.500 kgb files they opened up the archives and we opened up our archives yes yes so he's got the real story

00:22:55.520 you can get the real story and there was enough respect in that era uh for that kind of research

00:23:01.300 that sulti nichon thought we were he got over here he thought we were a mess he thought we were too weak

00:23:05.760 right he got over here said this is not going to save the west where america has declined to

00:23:09.720 he's the first one that really like an old testament prophet so she told us told us about the weakness

00:23:15.180 of the west he made the same argument that buckley and chambers and those early and buchanan later and

00:23:20.940 those early great anti-communist made the country is weak it has no moral uh spirit has no fiber

00:23:26.980 uh we're repudiating our own identity i mean all this stuff uh sulti nichon said that at harvard

00:23:33.640 you know at commencement commencement at commencement i mean it's unthinkable today

00:23:38.720 then he went to vermont and he said this place is a disaster yeah yeah that's right he went up to

00:23:43.120 vermont remember david remnick went and interviewed him david remnick is a guy who gets a lot of this

00:23:47.540 stuff and and uh we have some very interesting lenin's tomb is a fabulous fantastic and um i can't do it

00:23:55.620 here but uh but i'll show you the note uh uh remnick sent me about this book in chambers he sent me a note not

00:24:01.480 long ago saying basically like this is the history nobody is told that needs to be told and we'll be

00:24:08.180 there forever he says forget everything else forget what the critics say all this but there's another

00:24:13.460 guy who's really important to me is a guy no uh not well but i've written about him and i've met him a

00:24:20.120 few times is robert carrow and um the the the series on uh lyndon johnson before and the power broker

00:24:27.920 and the power broker when uh great you want to learn about new york city when great carter robert

00:24:33.040 moses hired me uh this is a robert carrow type i am pleased to say that more than one reviewer has said

00:24:41.760 that and what i'm really proud of no because it's so detailed about every aspect of like that's what

00:24:46.140 folks it's a thousand pages so you're gonna get your money's worth uh but it's a page turner it's

00:24:50.980 because you're learning about american history as you go it's not it's the story of america as told

00:24:55.960 through the actions the human agency of one person that's what i learned from bob carrow you know his

00:25:00.460 books are called as you know the years of lyndon johnson so what i think of the the books i write

00:25:06.140 as being these two big ones uh but you don't go to the public library he's one of those guys at the

00:25:11.340 new york public library that has the cubicle there's like 10 guys they can they do it out you know

00:25:15.900 what i'm talking about yeah he doesn't do that anymore i lived i lived across the street from

00:25:18.860 the new york public library yeah i loved it i that's how i did some of chambers we lived in tesla's

00:25:23.360 right next to tesla's lab on tesla way that's where i have my place yeah because the engineers club

00:25:27.740 right it's been turned into a senate co-ops yeah because those are the guys that couldn't get into

00:25:31.800 the harvard yale or the university club because they hadn't gone to ivy league schools yeah they had but

00:25:36.600 you know westinghouse carnegie so they start the engineers club tesla was part of that and that's right

00:25:41.640 across from the new york new york public library which is a magnificent you just go over there

00:25:45.400 and get lost in reading all day and they were one of the groups in the basement i think is they

00:25:50.120 have a 10 writers they allow to be in residence to kind of get a little cubicle and work yeah i never

00:25:55.060 i never got that i never applied for probably wouldn't have gotten it but when i was working

00:25:59.560 on uh whittaker chambers you know it was a long time ago in my 30s i would go to the new york public

00:26:03.780 library and i'd see other like giants there you'd see norman maylor sitting at a table just reading

00:26:09.740 you just couldn't believe what you would see back then and um and and those are the days you know

00:26:15.580 they dig the stuff out of the archive and they they send it to they they bring up the book that's

00:26:20.480 where i first read bill bill buckley's magnificent essay on whittaker chambers in the new york public

00:26:25.040 library nothing was digitized it was an esquire magazine and i'll tell you something you're asking

00:26:29.380 me why do i do this stuff i grew up on a household that didn't think a lot of bill buckley and then a

00:26:35.100 couple of things turned me around on him and one was when i was working on chambers i went to the

00:26:41.000 new york public library and i read an essay in esquire magazine it was actually the first piece bill

00:26:47.520 buckley published there though i didn't learn that for much later called the end of whittaker chambers

00:26:53.080 it was a memoir about him interspersed with letters and i realized this guy's like an exquisite

00:27:00.360 writer why didn't anybody tell me this you know and you sort of get mad in retrospect there's

00:27:05.940 nobody in front of a classroom who's going to say by the may by the way you know i might want to look

00:27:09.840 at um a bill buckley's memoir cruising speed to see what great journalism is like nobody says this

00:27:15.500 you have to find it yourself but he the um we're gonna take a short break here um we're gonna have

00:27:22.580 to extend this a couple hours so what we're gonna do is to have you back this is our weekend show

00:27:27.120 we're gonna have you back we'll figure it out because buckley that's why he wrote god and man

00:27:32.080 at yale because he saw even then the professors how they were trying to twist things which was a

00:27:37.260 traditional you know they i've given this book as a gift to some of the most senior people in this

00:27:43.440 administration who went to yale right to say how shocking it is because right now you know

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00:28:50.100 slash bannon to check out everything that's included with all the uncertainty in the world

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00:29:02.120 prepared and get prepared today that's mypatriotsupply.com slash bannon war room here's your host

00:29:10.520 stephen k bannon wife focused on the typewriter it was for a reason the typewriter becomes by the way

00:29:16.840 we're going to do another at least a couple hours with sam uh and we're going to i'll figure the

00:29:22.020 schedule out um why is the typewriter the the uh the the farm in maryland why is all this important

00:29:30.820 and it leads to the beginning of one of the most important presidencies in this country richard

00:29:36.980 nixon's well what happened and we're in 1940 1948 1948 summer of 1948 there's an election coming

00:29:44.320 and uh the republicans think they might lose the house in 48 so here here's their chance

00:29:49.760 they wanted quickly in 46 because people were kind of tired of the war like they turfed out

00:29:53.520 churchill uh and so you got they won they won that midterm and they take control you have huac and but

00:30:00.160 now in 48 a lot of people in the country going is this is what we're spending our time on yeah and

00:30:05.340 you know the republicans don't have the strongest candidate in tom dewey and truman's actually a good

00:30:09.920 campaigner so who knows what's going to happen and you have coattails and you're swept out of power

00:30:13.920 so alger hiss makes his appearance and he's incredibly suave and debonair and so there's a

00:30:21.160 key moment and um he's everything their hard right hates personified but everything that the kind of

00:30:29.540 liberal mentality of particularly the urban mentality of new york city and san francisco it's what the high

00:30:35.900 ideal has been of an ivy league globalist and new dealer right you know he came through the new deal

00:30:42.960 he'd worked in all a lot of the key departments involved as we said before and the united nations

00:30:49.260 founding that the alta uh conference summit all this now he comes to form very polished smooth guy

00:30:55.460 and um he seems kind of amused by it by it all well mr hiss you know so whitaker chambers is

00:31:02.340 you know he's a senior editor of time magazine why he's calling you a communist so you sure you don't

00:31:07.260 you were never a communist that he's making it up and and he says well i don't know anybody named

00:31:14.860 whitaker chambers is it really you don't even know him and and hiss says well i've seen pictures of him

00:31:23.280 i might even confuse him with you mr chairman in this committee because the chairman's got this round

00:31:30.700 face the audience breaks up laughs right laughs and he's passing on the newspapers one detail he's

00:31:38.360 under oath correct under he is oh this is key this is the leads up to the point he's under oath graduate

00:31:43.720 of the harvard law school and there's a lawyer a very smart young lawyer elected to congress from

00:31:53.000 california orange county a total outsider 30 35 year old guy former naval officer former naval officer

00:32:02.200 and he's watching hiss and he doesn't like him either for all those reasons you mentioned

00:32:08.560 and and he later because nixon's an outsider with a chip on his shoulder and he's looking at the

00:32:15.260 personification of the establishment when nixon despised that just treat guys like nixon like nothing

00:32:20.480 when nixon was a young guy we all know this has been reported in all the biographies you can always

00:32:25.280 tell the really interesting presidents because they get great books written about them including

00:32:29.220 nixon and nixon when he was a kid was admitted you know from coming from that little town yorva

00:32:36.060 linda california is admitted to harvard but he's a son of a grocer he can't afford to go there so instead

00:32:41.160 he goes to the local college whittier and then he gets his law degree at duke finishes third in his

00:32:46.180 class and the law firm will hire him get a job can't get a job the fbi

00:32:50.300 wouldn't hire him he tried to get a job there nobody wants him so here he is he's got he was

00:32:54.580 not kind of the cut of the jib he was they were looking like they delayed no it's not just intellectual

00:32:58.840 you know you're the non you're the total opposite package it's uh yeah he's got nothing going for him

00:33:04.040 but he's very very smart and he has a great word he says there's something mouthy about

00:33:12.100 hiss he says he's talking too much right there's this thing where somebody asks you the question

00:33:19.820 give them the answer don't make the joke about the chairman of the committee and something sticks

00:33:26.700 in nixon's head also he is talking to robert stripling the very smart investigator who's been

00:33:35.440 interviewing these communists for years and he says to nixon he's saying he doesn't know a guy

00:33:43.140 by the name of whitaker chambers chambers isn't going to call himself by his real name when he's

00:33:49.700 an underground agent he's going to go by an alias right so maybe if we look closely at his transcript

00:33:58.160 he's not answering the questions he's evading them so then a journalist guy named burt andrews a very

00:34:06.640 smart journalist for the herald tribune in new york the herald tribune was the republican establishments

00:34:12.880 new york times it was like time magazine and they but they had a smart journalist there named burt

00:34:19.060 andrews who'd been covering these investigations and he calls nixon aside he sees that nixon means

00:34:26.300 business here and he says are you really investigating this case what if he says what if chambers is telling

00:34:33.580 the truth let's just make this weird assumption that a guy who's throwing up throwing away

00:34:40.700 a high-paying job a senior executive at time magazine might not make this stuff up unless he's got a good

00:34:50.420 reason for it and that reason is he's not making it up he's telling the truth so it's well have you

00:34:55.240 really looked at his have you seen whether the things chambers said about him make sense so they go out

00:35:02.400 and they interview chambers and i said well his says you don't know him they go out to chambers's

00:35:07.820 farm in maryland right he has his little farm he and his wife are there back to the earth types

00:35:13.440 like old ex-socialists right only chambers really does it he doesn't just talk about it he actually

00:35:19.020 works on a farm with his kids and his wife milks the cows himself and all this because now he's a

00:35:23.780 quaker he's a quaker he's a believing quaker and he's doing that when he's not going into time

00:35:28.860 magazine he's actually going home right working in his farm and they go to see him and chambers as

00:35:33.860 well kind of surprised to see you guys when everybody else is he's calling me names and they

00:35:39.060 say well we want you to prove that you knew alger hiss i knew alger hiss here are the addresses we lived

00:35:45.280 at here's the car i loaned him when um or rather that hiss loaned me because i didn't i needed one to

00:35:54.280 get around so i could go back and forth and make the rounds and he goes through all this stuff he

00:35:59.120 being a courier that that that hiss actually loaned him a car so he could do this nefarious activity

00:36:04.600 important thing though chambers does not yet say that hiss is passing him documents all he says is

00:36:11.960 yeah we were meeting these cells my wife esther knew his wife priscilla very well and and esther who

00:36:19.120 was a painter and artist oh yes here's the dress priscilla wore you know when we went to her

00:36:23.820 apartment once i had the baby there and the baby wet the floor and she brought this lovely little

00:36:28.820 blanket for him i think either and and bert andrew says to nixon either this guy is a fantasist or he

00:36:37.360 really knew alger hiss because it's too detailed he's got too much stuff so there's a funny thing that

00:36:44.860 happens they start setting up more interviews they do one with hiss in the uh what's now that

00:36:53.840 grand hyatt the first trump hotel that back in those days was a hotel commodore and they call hiss

00:37:00.000 and chambers in for meetings they again off the record now so it's not their executive session

00:37:06.660 executive session because they understand and nixon understands that what they have is a game changer

00:37:13.120 game changer for him politically he can come from a nobody to a national figure also they could

00:37:18.780 actually take down real communists yeah and you know the story goes um and other huac guys said this

00:37:26.540 later nixon was the only one who really nailed the communists who really got the guy and this is why

00:37:33.820 that by the reason this is all that this is why they hated him they hated him to the mirror of his

00:37:37.760 bones and this is the reason they hated him you should see the letter nixon wrote me by hand

00:37:44.720 before my book came out when the chambers book back in the 90s when i was writing first op-ed pieces i did

00:37:53.420 one in the times which nixon didn't read didn't read but he did read the one in the wall street journal

00:37:58.060 and he wrote me a letter by hand um uh who is the guy um i'm drawing a blank who wrote that great recent uh

00:38:07.060 biography of nixon uh furling or no the guy who also did he's a he's a friend of mine i'm feeling

00:38:13.880 embarrassed about this it's a senior thing he wrote a biography about tip o'neill jack farrell john

00:38:19.380 farrell that's what furling and he quotes yeah jack farrell he quotes that letter it's a great

00:38:24.320 biography yeah really good biography and he quotes the letter that nixon wrote because i put it in the

00:38:28.900 hoover archive back when archives were interested in my stuff and they're not anymore uh but they were

00:38:33.660 back then the guy a great guy robert conquest arranged i had no money so i was able to sell

00:38:38.460 the chambers archive to the hoover institution well at any rate so i have a copy of the letter

00:38:42.820 that was written by hand and so i'm going to paraphrase it nixon says something like well back

00:38:47.360 in the days of prestige media you know they were not going to listen to a guy like me he's he's

00:38:52.820 remembering back to 1948 still with a chip on his shoulder still with a chip on his shoulder

00:38:58.520 having been president well never give it up man you need that you need that fire people hate it

00:39:05.080 when i say it but it's really true nixon's my favorite president he said oh my god how do you

00:39:10.020 even get into do they let you in restaurants in new york no and my own family doesn't understand that

00:39:15.900 one and i think i don't hear dershowitz whining about his defense of trump you're going back to

00:39:20.420 the railhead of this and and i don't say you defended pat buchanan you're defending nixon you just

00:39:25.360 said nixon's your favorite president i'm not saying i think he was the best president though

00:39:29.500 i think much of what he did was a lot better than what he gets credit for but he's my favorite one

00:39:33.660 he's the one i identify with i've met a lot of people a lot of literary people who tell me their

00:39:37.680 parents like nixon often people from other parts of the other countries because they'd say nixon was

00:39:44.000 the outsider nixon was the one they never gave a break to nixon's the introvert in the extrovert's

00:39:50.320 profession he doesn't have trump's amazing public skills although as you know nixon liked trump

00:39:56.560 a lot and they were they were friendly monica crowley is now the ambassador reporter that was

00:40:00.420 nixon's yeah you know aide-de-camp for the last year i knew monica way back when when she was writing

00:40:05.460 those books for harry evans and um so nixon begins to realize there's something very powerful about

00:40:11.860 chambers remember there are a few quakers in this case including nixon's a quaker and chambers i didn't

00:40:17.960 make that connection yeah and wow right wow priscilla hiss was a quaker alger hiss is i didn't know that

00:40:25.140 either there's a whole quaker thing going on wow they're always inside stories in those things

00:40:29.900 if we ever get to buckley and gore vidal i'll tell you the inside no we're gonna hold that for the

00:40:35.220 no no there the buckley stuff's got so much you will get gold and platinum so here we are and um so

00:40:41.540 they start gathering the the the evidence so at one point there's a really great moment in the hiss

00:40:47.840 case um chambers had said well um alger and i were both he uses great term nobody uses anymore he said

00:40:56.240 we were amateur ornithologists said bird observers this gentleman sounds like buckley didn't we say

00:41:02.300 bird watcher said well we do it on the bird observers we do it here on the canal and they say

00:41:07.700 oh really yeah chamber said alger once got really excited when we saw a rare warbler a prothonotary

00:41:15.560 warbler and there's one guy on the huac committee guy named john mcdowell from pennsylvania i think

00:41:22.440 who is a bird watcher they bring hiss in and he says uh mr hiss uh well we know right we get it you

00:41:30.620 know he didn't know chambers you told us all that but tell us a little bit bit about yourself

00:41:34.880 uh you're interested in birds and he says oh yeah and and mcdowell says you ever see a prothonotary

00:41:44.420 warbler he said you bet i did i saw one right here in the canal and like they'd heard the story before

00:41:51.840 they'd heard it from chambers and they're thinking there's no way this guy makes up that alger hiss

00:41:59.240 had seen this bird that right so it's little details like that it's a kind of meticulous that

00:42:04.740 turn history yeah and you know and i'll say we don't see that this level of like exactitude in a

00:42:12.940 with our legislators now on the committees are you kidding me um we're gonna take a short break

00:42:19.580 sam tannenhaus uh the book is buckley i want everybody to if you have a young person first i'll get it for

00:42:27.620 yourself it's amazing um if you want to see kind of the lead up to president trump and that's why

00:42:33.880 death of conservatism we'll talk about that next time is really got my interest peaked back after

00:42:39.120 the financial crisis in 2009 when i read this book i go wow this guy's nailed it the problem with the

00:42:44.420 republican party and conservative inc back then but buckley's the book to get now want to drive some

00:42:49.420 sales on this particularly give it young people in your family college in their 20s you sit and they go

00:42:54.640 you don't think they know much there but they're thirsting for access to information buckley's the

00:43:00.120 book short commercial break back with sam in a moment

00:43:02.040 hey i realize you got many choices when it comes to who you choose for your cell phone service and

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00:43:56.280 standing by to take care of you call 978 patriot today or go to patriot mobile.com slash bannon that's

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00:44:10.040 patriot mobile.com slash bannon or call 972 patriot and make the switch today war room here's your host

00:44:19.100 stephen k man this book around people don't think they're brilliant right because this is a heavy book

00:44:24.380 um and it's magnificent reads like a novel it reads like you're reading a russian i was like it's like

00:44:30.160 war and peace because you're seeing the history but you bring these characters to life not just buckley

00:44:36.060 but mccarthy uh jack kennedy claire booth loose you have these vignettes of these people and you

00:44:41.560 realize why they made such a big impact in american history the book is buckley the life and the

00:44:46.720 revolution that changed america and it leads you right up to the age of trump um i want to finish

00:44:53.760 we're going to have you back on in this coming week but i want to have you because we could do this

00:44:57.840 for hours i want to finish the pumpkin story because you see nixon you see whitaker chambers hiss the whole

00:45:05.340 establishment this is one of the biggest moments in post-war history about this uh committee yeah

00:45:11.440 well what happened is they start seeing the evidence and they think okay the bird watching

00:45:16.460 thing gets the guys in committee realize this guy's lying under oath they know he's purging himself and

00:45:21.060 then they start doing the research and that's what they were good at back then steven we've been

00:45:25.400 talking about this before in those days the congressional committee would really do the work and they

00:45:30.420 start not like today they were serious people serious people they're hunting down car leases

00:45:34.620 um they see uh chambers at one point that hiss had given him had had given him a car which they

00:45:42.100 found uh and um and hiss admitted that he'd given him the car but he said chambers had known him under

00:45:48.340 a different name he'd known chambers under a different name george crosley and you know all this stuff is

00:45:54.560 starting to pile up and so and they realize that well they've got one thing they know that hiss is lying

00:46:01.180 about whether he knew chambers but how does that prove that he'd known him as a communist and so they

00:46:10.660 say to chambers look we get it we get it that yeah hiss is lying we know it now we can call call him up in

00:46:19.100 front of a committee again and say did you know whitaker chambers and he might have to say well maybe his

00:46:25.460 memory had slipped but he'd known him so what and so there's a great confrontation there this is one

00:46:31.020 that brings tears to grown men's eyes is they have they have a big public meeting now in the caucus

00:46:37.480 room house caucus room television cameras there steve 1948 at that point 10 000 people in america own tvs

00:46:44.660 but the ones that are the bars bars have them yeah bars have them so they go on their watch and there's

00:46:50.500 hiss again and he's denying he knows chambers and um and he looks at him chambers is sitting there and

00:46:58.720 he just looks at him with this kind of contempt and then they bring chambers up and they said look what

00:47:03.660 he's saying but he's saying that uh the insinuations are out there that they're now they don't say this

00:47:10.240 publicly what the insinuations are but the press world knows what they are the media establishment

00:47:15.760 very small in washington much smaller town everybody knows the communists and liberals they

00:47:21.960 respect are saying uh well i knew chambers at time magazine the guy's a total paranoid

00:47:27.820 you know my copy would come in from china he'd turn it upside down he's some kind of anti-communist

00:47:34.580 fanatic or or you know he seems to come in at strange hours i think he's out drinking all the time

00:47:40.000 so they start spreading all the all these lies about him say so what about this why are you going after

00:47:45.120 out your hiss why have you chosen to uh persecute this man and chambers then says what you would

00:47:53.260 expect him to say now is what we hear president trump and people around say f you right but that's not

00:48:01.160 what chambers does chambers says in testifying against mr hiss people are saying that i'm acting

00:48:10.980 out of some grudge or personal animosity toward him he said i'm not i knew mr hiss and i liked him

00:48:21.000 i still like him but he and i are caught in a tragedy of history and so help me god i have no choice

00:48:34.120 but to testify now and steve you know your religious history he says i can't do otherwise he's doing

00:48:41.900 martin luther right i can't do otherwise so then they say all right we get it we believe you

00:48:51.120 the nixon and the others are saying their headlines everywhere this is dominating all the news but you've

00:48:56.660 got to prove he's a communist so okay now chambers is afraid that he's not going to make his case and

00:49:04.520 also the other side is going to come after him and he remembers something that when he defected from

00:49:10.160 the party before 1939 in 1938 he kept some material he had he called it his life preserver and he gave it to a

00:49:19.580 relative of his wife's she kept it in a dumbwaiter in brooklyn she and they go in the eight goes with

00:49:26.280 this young guy they dig through the dumbwaiter and they have a manila envelope and inside it are

00:49:33.260 documents and those are typed documents that are secret classified information and by this time

00:49:45.440 hiss has made the stupid mistake of suing chambers for slander chambers has to defend himself and he

00:49:54.280 go looks at his lawyer and he says well i've got something different for you now this is how one of

00:49:59.980 my chapters ends and he says what is it chambers says espionage and that's when he delivers the

00:50:06.160 documents so now it gets to the huac people they have to nixon to nixon they have handwritten documents

00:50:13.760 and type documents and they say do you have anything else chambers says all right come out you can come

00:50:20.460 out to my farm and i'll show you something else i've got so at night they drive out to chambers's farm

00:50:26.540 in maryland west mr maryland he walks them out it's it's uh winter it's december now 48 the election's

00:50:34.240 already been held republicans are not going to control the house anymore and and somebody either his

00:50:41.020 or chambers is going to be indicted for perjury chambers takes him out to a pumpkin patch

00:50:47.320 and he pulls out a pumpkin with a hollow with a right jack-o-lantern with a hollowed out middle

00:50:53.880 and he put he said gentlemen i think this is what you're looking for they're tin canisters of

00:51:00.360 microfilm that he's got from al jahis we're going to bring you back in this coming week this has been

00:51:06.220 amazing the book is buckley we've only done the lead up to it the buckley stories will just

00:51:10.760 blow your mind where do people go do you have social media you have a website i have a website

00:51:15.600 sam tannenhouse.com sam tannenhouse.com all one word uh the book is buckley today on a saturday

00:51:23.540 afternoon maybe the day you go out to a bookstore and get it or go to amazon and order it i'm probably

00:51:27.700 sold out at your local bookstore but if not go to barnes and noble check it out or a local we love

00:51:32.180 little um the small independent bookstores go check it out or go to amazon get the book

00:51:37.300 give it as a gift to friends you've got to basically your children your grandchildren

00:51:41.480 make sure they fully understand what america's gone through the man in the revolution buckley

00:51:46.720 is the book sam tannenhouse so honored to have you in here what a pleasure look forward to having

00:51:51.680 you back next week you're actually a right i feel realized something about who there's a way

00:51:55.780 thing you're actually a right winger you're right when we're talking about it later other people

00:52:00.820 have accused you of that too guys have a great weekend we're gonna be back here at 10 a.m eastern

00:52:05.360 standard time on monday i'll be up on getter on social media all weekend putting up on another

00:52:10.680 action-packed weekend all my thoughts and observations see you back here monday

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00:53:28.400 you

Bannon's War Room - December 03, 2025

Episode 4970： A Conversation With Sam Tanenhaus And The Book Buckley： The Life and the Revolution That Changed America Pt. 2

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