Stephen K. Bannon and the War Room discuss the latest in the Ukraine and Israel, as well as the massive fraud uncovered in the wake of the massive Somali health care fraud scandal, and the ongoing efforts to protect the immigrant community.
00:01:55.000First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said during a news conference that federal officials suspect a significant portion, New York Times,
00:02:04.000a significant portion of the roughly $18 billion paid out by Medicaid to Minnesota programs was fraudulent.
00:02:12.000The Hill leads today with, well, there's a few millions and, you know, Nick Shirley's out there doing better reporting than the New York Times and The Hill.
00:02:21.000And they're just deceptively covering it, right?
00:02:23.120The press has been along this the whole time.
00:03:44.120So, Kurt, just walk me through your because President Trump is putting a massive effort in clearly on this.
00:03:51.120I'm not sure when I hear the press conferences and all this back and forth, they keep saying it's close.
00:03:56.120I'm not sure what progress is actually really being made because I then see the readouts later from the Russians and they're pretty adamant.
00:04:04.120There's not going to be the campaign security guarantee campaign troops.
00:04:07.120They're pretty adamant about what they've got and they're pretty dug in and they keep showing.
00:04:12.120I mean, the over the Christmas holiday, the showing of Kiev was about as bad as you got.
00:04:18.120And now they're showing the port of Odessa.
00:04:47.120He brought Zelensky to the United States once again.
00:04:49.120He has his entire top cadre there pretty much.
00:04:52.120But I think there's a genuine concern that either the administration or the president himself doesn't fully understand the brief here.
00:05:01.120The Russians are fine with the war continuing.
00:05:03.120This war was, I think, a strategic mistake by Vladimir Putin, but he's recovered from it.
00:05:08.120And they're slowly grinding territory and they're able to project power deep into this country, as evidenced by this sort of savage attack on Kiev over the weekend.
00:05:22.120And their demands are pretty hard line.
00:05:24.120Behind door letter A is a set of demands that they can live with.
00:05:28.120And behind door letter B is keeping the Russian war machine going, which is very tied into their economy and their entire social contract at this point.
00:05:36.120So from Putin's perspective, you know, two and a half years removed from the Prigozian coup, this is a win-win.
00:05:45.120But when we had the 28 points or whatever, were we really actually much closer to a deal before Marco and the globalists got involved here and then retorked this?
00:05:54.120And my point is that we can walk away.
00:05:56.120You can't walk away from Minnesota and Somalia.
00:06:23.120And this is why you end up with a Mondami, a guy from Uganda that's now the mayor, you know, a Marxist jihadist that now is the mayor of New York City.
00:06:32.120But you can walk away from Ukraine that the eastern Russian speaking eastern border of Ukraine is has nothing to do with the vital national security interests of the United States.
00:06:43.120So our option here is just like, hey, guys, we tried.
00:06:46.120President Trump's put in a monumental effort.
00:06:48.120I mean, he should get the Nobel Prize Prize just on what he's done to date.
00:06:52.120But the 28 point plan we had was closer to reality of something that could happen until Marco and the globalists got involved.
00:07:00.120And now we got now we got Zelensky making up his own plan and showing up.
00:07:06.120I'm just not sure how much progress is happening, particularly when you read the read of the Russians.
00:07:11.120It's it's pretty it's pretty standard of what they're saying.
00:07:15.120They're saying they're prepared to tolerate and they're not.
00:07:17.120And they've kind of won on the battlefield.
00:07:19.120And unless the Europeans are prepared to put in troops, money, arms of which none of them are because they're all broke and they haven't funded their own defense for decade after decade after decade because they leaned on the United States to do it.
00:07:35.120I guess I don't know if it's performative or what, but I don't see this thing getting done with and Zelensky is talking about he asked for a 50 year security guarantee, sir.
00:07:45.120Yeah, as Congresswoman Green said over the weekend on the on the successive meetings between Netanyahu and Zelensky, can we just do America for a little while?
00:07:55.120Look, the president is very interested in foreign policy.
00:07:58.120And as far as I'm concerned, that's good for business for me personally.
00:08:02.120But it's clear that the administration in its first year was somewhat distracted by foreign affairs.
00:08:07.120And part of that has been their inability to wind down the two major wars, one in the Middle East and one in Eastern Europe, that Washington is frankly a financier of.
00:08:20.120In the mid autumn when the 28 point plan first came through, that was a set of demands that was pretty close to ending the war.
00:08:29.120And you could you could tell because one side was amenable and our side, the Ukrainians and the Europeans were pretty aghast.
00:08:38.120That means we were pretty close to the Russian understanding of what it would take to end this war, which is what it's going to have to be.
00:08:44.120Or else it's just going to be status quo and more and more militarism for the Ukrainian government in Kiev.
00:08:52.120And I think that's pretty clear. You know, Zelensky doesn't sound like a man who's who's really close to making a deal.
00:08:57.120He said that Putin is this evil person, regardless of what you think of that.
00:09:03.120That's not how someone talks before they're about to shake someone's hand unless there's something we don't know.
00:09:08.120And yes, you're quite right. Rubio, the secretary of state, is the ostensible chief diplomat of the United States.
00:09:16.120But he seems pretty averse to diplomacy. He's he's a hawk on Russia, Ukraine.
00:09:22.120He's a hawk on Middle Eastern issues. And of course, he's an uber hawk on this sort of Venezuela distraction.
00:09:28.120And so it's very curious why he's considered to be so competent at it when his core function diplomacy.
00:09:35.120We've seen a widening of these wars this year, not not a narrowing.
00:09:39.120I mean, President Trump, look, he says, look, I want to stop the killing.
00:09:45.120And he's put so much time and effort in this. I do agree.
00:09:48.120Even look, you have to deal with the facts that you have.
00:09:51.120He was trying to wind down the kinetic part of the Third World War and do it as rapidly as possible.
00:09:55.120But the the geopolitical reality, particularly in Ukraine, is that the Russians the Russians have, you know,
00:10:02.120and they don't have a history of backing the tanks up and giving up territory that they took on the battlefield.
00:10:07.120That just has to be a reality. If the Europeans got something to say about it and do about it, then go with it.
00:10:14.120And France and France has a lot of talk. They're broke. The Fifth Republic is about to collapse.
00:10:18.120Starmer's got no money, no troops, no arms.
00:10:21.120Germany's now heading towards a major financial crisis because of their nutcase cult like net zero carbon regime to deindustrialize themselves.
00:10:32.120The Italians Maloney talks a good game, but she doesn't put any money up ever.
00:10:36.120None of them do. That's why the Russians look at this and think it's a joke.
00:10:39.120The only thing the Europeans are going to do is steal their money, the three in a billion dollars.
00:10:43.120And when that was finally when Hungary and Poland stood up and said, we're not going to do that because you do that.
00:10:48.120They said that's an act of war and they could come blowing up over here and we're not going to have it.
00:10:52.120That got shut down. So hang on for a second. Just stay right there because I've got to ask you about Netanyahu.
00:10:57.120Dr. Thayer, you've got some issues with this thing of security guarantees.
00:11:01.120Just walk me through. You've got a couple of bullet points you think that people ought to be aware of.
00:11:05.120What do you got? Sure, Steve. Great to join you.
00:11:08.120First point is that this is something the United States should not do.
00:11:13.120It's important to recognize what a security commitment is.
00:11:16.120A security commitment is a pledge by the United States that it will use all of its might if necessary,
00:11:23.120including a nuclear, employing our strategic nuclear arsenal to advance the particular end.
00:11:31.120So making a security commitment to Ukraine means we're pledging, if it comes to it, to use nuclear weapons for Ukrainian security.
00:11:41.120We're making Ukraine the 51st state and Ukraine is not the 51st state.
00:11:46.120It is not a strategic interest of the United States.
00:11:50.120So that commitment is dangerous in that respect and we shouldn't do it.
00:11:56.120We don't make security commitments lightly and we shouldn't do it in this instance.
00:12:43.120It prevents the U.S. from improving our relationship with Russia because now we're tied to Ukraine for 15 years.
00:12:50.120Purportedly, it's going to prevent any rapprochement with China.
00:12:54.120Second big problem with this is it ties us down to a new commitment at a time where we're hard pressed to deal with the threat from the PRC.
00:13:02.120The center of gravity for our national security is the PRC, the People's Republic of China.
00:13:08.120And this agreement allows really all of those who want to threat deflate.
00:13:14.120Right. Minimize the China threat and focus the threat on Russia, say that Russia is a threat to continue that.
00:13:21.120China is the strategic center of gravity for us.
00:13:25.120And we're supremely foolish not to see this at a time where Beijing is turning up the heat on Taiwan like it hasn't before with the new exercise Peace Justice 2025.
00:13:36.120And the last point, Steve, is that this really is in the scope of our interest.
00:13:43.120The PRC wins if we make this strategic commitment to Ukraine and we lose.
00:13:48.120Right. Xi Jinping is going to be dancing in the street if we do this, because the U.S. will be occupied in a sideshow for U.S. national security.
00:13:57.120And Russia is compelled to remain dependent on Beijing as a result of it.
00:14:03.120It's as dangerous as the blank check that Germany gave Austria-Hungary in July of 1914 that allowed Austria to escalate.
00:14:13.120So, look, we didn't, you know, Xi Jinping.
00:14:17.120I saw that one. I tell you what, hang on a second.
00:14:21.120We're going to get back to you. We're taking a short commercial break.
00:14:23.120Yes, the CCP is doing a massive live fire naval exercise.
00:14:28.120I guess it's all hands on deck exercise showing how they can envelop Taiwan even as we speak.
00:14:35.120In fact, Captain Fennell will be on tomorrow. We're going to break all that down.
00:14:39.120But just a little love tap from the CCP about the chip manufacturing Goliath that is Taiwan.
00:14:49.120Short break. Back in the warm in a moment.
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00:17:19.120Of course, how many homes the Russian president has is a matter of some speculation.
00:17:23.120Regardless, the foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, says this will change the Russians' negotiating position down in Florida.
00:17:32.120So this looks like a potential 11th hour, you know, real gum in the works here.
00:17:38.120And, you know, whether or not it's true, whether or not it was actually an act of extreme belligerence by the Ukrainians or the Russians are merely claiming as such.
00:17:50.120I think that sort of checks out that we don't have we are an incomplete point on this deal, which is that President Trump, for all of his efforts, is not going to get the Russians and the Ukrainians to agree to something at least anytime soon, unless the facts on the ground really change.
00:18:09.120Well, look, the Russians, the Russians pounded the Russians are pounding Kiev and Putin keeps saying we're not going to have any ceasefire.
00:18:18.120And Zelensky in this crowd gives as good as they get.
00:18:21.120Sometimes like if they did this attack, they've been very aggressive in the drone attacks.
00:18:26.120But if if this is even true or close to being true, it shows you we have very little control over the situation on the battlefield.
00:18:33.120Right. Guys are just slugging it out and going to do what they're going to do.
00:18:37.120So, Harnwell, your thoughts on this? I know you as head of our International Bureau in the Eternal City, you keep your beady eye on this.
00:18:47.120Well, look, let's start off with the 50 year term limit that the ask on behalf of Zelensky, because I know that's what we've been discussing on the show so far.
00:18:58.120My view on that, and I think Dr. Thayer makes some valid points, especially on the idea that 15 years, which is what apparently the US is committed to, is only a token in order to shoehorn the US into this.
00:19:13.120And then it will obviously be ignored and extended further on.
00:19:16.120But my observation on this to sort off with is that the whole 50 year thing, the whole thing is theatre, Steve.
00:19:23.120As I see this, right, the 50 year thing was only ever a theatre, a theatrical fake negotiation point.
00:19:30.120So that President Trump could then sort of bring it down to 15 and then come back and say, look, what a great negotiation I've obtained for the American people.
00:19:38.120Of course, the war in audience knows that 15 years is appalling in and of itself.
00:19:44.120This is a defeat for the America First movement for the reasons that we've been saying from the beginning of this war, from when Biden was in the White House.
00:19:54.120No one ever made the argument and attempted to explain what America's vital national interests are in this.
00:20:03.120And therefore, as an extension of that absence, 15 years to safeguard what American interest is the question that needs to be asked.
00:20:12.120Look, so that's the first point I would make about this.
00:20:16.120This is a defeat for the America First movement.
00:20:19.120The second point I would make is I think that, you know, and I don't want to take too big a sweeping hit at my own side on this,
00:20:30.120but I get the impression somewhat, Steve, that folk in the administration are concentrating on the wrong election cycle.
00:20:39.120They're preening themselves, the front runners in the administration for 2028.
00:20:45.120And they ought to be concerned, far more concerned about the midterms.
00:20:49.120Because at the present rate, the way things are going, President Trump is going to be impeached after the midterms.
00:20:57.120And that will obviously have a dynamic on 28.
00:21:07.120Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Full stop.
00:21:11.120Full stop. I got so much I get to. Just put a pin in and I'll come back to you on that.
00:21:15.120Jack Basobik, what do you got for us, sir?
00:21:20.120Well, Steve, I hope you and all the War Room Posse had a wonderful, blessed Christmas.
00:21:25.120I know that we certainly did here at the Posse household.
00:21:28.120We've been praying our rosary daily and we're making sure to keep all the demons at bay at this wonderful time of our Lord's coming to Earth.
00:21:38.120Steve, every year at Christmas time during this break sort of, you know, when people aren't always going live at Human Events Daily, we run a special series where we do deep dives.
00:21:49.120People remember the China files from a couple of years back.
00:21:52.120Then we did Chronicles of the Revolution.
00:21:54.120We did Tales of the Christians last year.
00:22:03.120President Trump holding his meeting with Zelensky, the phone calls, multiple calls now we're hearing with President Putin, meeting with B.B. Netanyahu today.
00:22:53.120And for the neocons who've been very, very upset with me for the last week or so, buckle up,
00:22:58.120because we're going to be discussing all of your work for the last 20 or so odd years where you've been sending American dollars and America's sons and the best of middle America to go and die in the sandbox.
00:23:12.120And we talk about the two Georges, George Bush pushing the war and then George Soros, the money extraction, the financial extraction and pushing the system of globalism, the system of LGBT agenda all the way across these areas.
00:23:28.120So, Steve, this is going to be something that the entire war room posse is going to want to lock into, because as you watch these scenes play out, President Trump holding these high stakes meetings, it will give you an understanding of the and Trump understands all of this.
00:23:43.120Trump understands all of this indelibly.
00:23:45.120He knew all of the cast of characters at the time.
00:23:47.120This is one of the things, and President Trump talked about the very first debate when he went after Jeb Bush.
00:23:52.120This was one of the things that animated him to get involved in politics in the first place, when he saw the insanity of the Iraq war and the neocons pushing for it.
00:24:01.120That's why the entire war room posse needs to lock into this series, Tales of Regime Change.
00:24:07.120And we've got great cast of subject matter experts, Joshua Lysak, Mike Benz even joins us.
00:26:41.120And when I stood there at the memorial for Charlie and held up my rosary, that was an invocation of God.
00:26:49.120That was an invocation of the saints, an invocation of St. Michael.
00:26:53.120And I don't know why Mark Levin chose that picture of me to attack, but I'll simply say this.
00:27:00.120Mark, if you want to come pray a rosary with me, you're more than welcome.
00:27:04.120And I will always welcome you to do that.
00:27:07.120And in fact, I hope that Mark watches the regime change series that we've set up at Human Events Daily because a lot of his work is featured very prominently in it.
00:27:18.120Uh, he's, uh, he's like a, uh, he, his reaction, uh, Jack was like a vampire when they see the, uh, when they see the Holy Rosary, right?
00:27:39.120You could not see, you cannot see, you cannot see that photo of you at Charlie's, uh, at Charlie's, uh, memorial service and, and attack it.
00:27:48.120What'd he call you a crackpot after some guy called you a piece of for putting it up?
00:28:41.120I want to get you in on this with, uh, Kurt Mills.
00:28:44.120So Kurt in, in the logic of Netanyahu, he does have, I mean, he's sitting there going, hey, the serious situation is because, uh, the, um, the new regime there, the ISIS Al Qaeda regime is a Turkish proxy.
00:29:00.120He's got now Turkey's going to be in the mainland of Israel in Gaza as a security guarantor.
00:29:06.120Um, Whitcoff and Jared are meeting with Egyptians, Qatar and Turks last Friday for an all day meeting without the Israelis.
00:29:15.120Um, everywhere he looks, even if you look at this Somalia land and Somalia situation, the United States, I think, as you correctly observe all the time, kind of invited Turkey in years ago.
00:29:27.120So everywhere he looks, he's got Qatar writing checks and he's got, he's got Turks providing security.
00:29:33.120Um, and, uh, in, in the greater Israel project, uh, that doesn't make sense because they're saying Turkey's a big problem for us, sir.
00:29:43.120He's coming, he's pitching a new expanded war with the Persians, but he's also going to make a pretty hard pitch about, you got to stop this whole thing in Gaza right now.
00:29:54.120Hamas is not going to disarm the, I can't allow the Turks to run the place.
00:29:58.120And in Syria, you're basically, uh, America, you are the running dogs for the, for the Turks in, uh, in supporting this, uh, radical Islamist regime up there, sir.
00:30:10.120I think he will be a little careful on Gaza because, uh, the president has such pride in the peace deal that they brokered in over the autumn.
00:30:18.120Um, so additionally, they're going to see how many people they can just kill, frankly, and get away with it.
00:30:24.120Uh, just this morning, they announced that the Israelis assassinated the Hamas spokesman some time ago, um, and replaced with another guy.
00:30:33.120Um, basically I think on Gaza, it's probably status quo.
00:30:37.120But, but, but hang on, but hang on, but hang on Hamas, but Hamas is also, just look at the deal.
00:30:42.120They're not actually bending over backwards to disarm.
00:30:45.120I mean, I think that they've made a decision, a calculation here that they're going to keep until somebody actually forces them to do it.
00:30:52.120And, and, and right now they haven't decided on which country is going to do it.
00:30:56.120Not, not even Qatar and the Turks don't want to do it.
00:30:59.120I mean, Hamas is sitting there going, we're not going to ever really fulfill the last part of this, right?
00:31:04.120They're not going to disarm because the same, if we disarm, they're going to kill us all. Correct.
00:31:07.120Yeah. I mean, there's no coherent way to achieve the core.
00:31:11.120This is classic Israel, which is, uh, uh, genius of tactics, incoherence and strategy.
00:31:16.120There's no coherent way to quote, destroy Hamas, which is the stated war aim of Netanyahu.
00:31:24.120Uh, it's very possible a deal could be brokered that could blend some of the more moderates into a future Palestinian government.
00:31:31.120But as of today, there's no real plan, uh, to move these people, uh, or just murder them all, uh, or to have any durable, uh, process that gets rid of Hamas is basically an armist.
00:31:42.120And the Israelis are seeing how quickly they can, uh, uh, violate it or how much they can violate it.
00:31:47.120As for the wider Middle East. Yeah. Netanyahu is going to do what he normally does.
00:31:52.120He's going to come to Washington or he's going to come to Palm Beach in this case.
00:31:56.120And he's going to come with a list of demands and new wars that he wants Washington to underwrite.
00:32:01.120And he's going to have a particular pressing, uh, nature this time, as opposed to all the other times that he's come to President Trump.
00:32:07.120Because Netanyahu is probably running for, uh, reelection in Q1 of 2026.
00:32:12.120And, uh, as you mentioned earlier in the show, he is changing the goalposts on Iran.
00:32:17.120It is now ICBMs, uh, the missiles, which is, uh, you know, had been sort of floated before, but it's an entirely new metric basically in the public sphere.
00:32:26.120And then as for the Turks, uh, and the Qataris.
00:32:30.120Uh, I think it's, it's pretty clear, uh, for all of the, uh, uh, investment that Israel has put on Iran.
00:32:36.120Uh, meanwhile, sort of Turkish Qatari access, uh, has emerged that has, has checked Israel's ambitions in the region.
00:32:43.120And they're going to keep asking Washington to intervene on his behalf.
00:32:46.120Um, you see basically Israeli mouthpieces in Washington already arguing.
00:32:51.120But President Trump, the art, the architecture, the architecture of this coming off the Abraham Accords, it looks like it's pretty set.
00:32:58.120I mean, President Trump actually has, and it's very close.
00:33:01.120Obviously there's some big things that still have to be done, but you're a million miles closer to a real deal there than you are in the Ukraine, where the two sides are slugging out and going after each other.
00:33:15.120Putin is, is over Christmas is really cutting out the power and the heat, uh, in the capital of Kyiv.
00:33:21.120Here, President Trump's got an architecture and you do have sit downs.
00:33:24.120It looks like progress is being made with Jared and Whitcoff with the Turks and the Qataris all the time.
00:33:30.120So what is the argument actually they're going to make today that could get any traction with, you know, cause Jared's going to be there.
00:33:37.120They could get any traction with the Trump administration.
00:33:42.120I just think residual sympathy for the Israelis, uh, residual deference to Netanyahu.
00:33:47.120There was reporting over the weekend in Axios that basically Netanyahu is exhausted his will with pretty much everyone on Trump's team, other than Trump, which is curious given their toward relationship the last 10 years.
00:33:58.120Um, but I think, you know, the reality is, uh, you're right, uh, but there's a major X factor, which is, uh, that makes, I think the Middle East portfolio potentially more unstable, which is that if there's a new war that opens up in Iran.
00:34:11.120And if the Israelis, uh, get their long sought after goal of regime change there, they'll pivot to other players in the region, whether that to be Turkey or Pakistan, who knows what's next.
00:34:22.120And it's a sort of permanent engine of Netanyahu's political project.
00:43:01.120Yeah, no, I'm still sort of reeling from a Jack Posobiec reference of the clean break memo.
00:43:06.120I'm going to have a pep in my step the rest of the day, I suspect.
00:43:09.120This is a memorandum that was prepared for future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Richard Perle and David Wormser, who later became key Bush administration officials.
00:43:24.120I think it is basically the Rosetta Stone of modern neoconservatism.
00:43:28.120Its goal, and it's in the subtitle, was securing the realm, quote-unquote, and the realm, of course, was Israel.
00:43:36.120So this is American officials writing for a future Israeli prime minister and sort of monolithic Israeli prime minister.
00:43:45.120So it's highly unusual, very weird, definitely not the pure pursuit of U.S. national interest.
00:43:54.120Yeah, where do people go for all your writings today?
00:43:57.120You're going to be hopefully helping us with this coverage this afternoon.
00:44:03.120It's at C-U-R-T-M-I-L-L-S on X at Kurt Mills.
00:44:07.120And the magazine was founded in 2002 by Pat Buchanan and friends against said Iraq war.
00:44:14.120And you can find us at www.theamericanconservative.com.
00:44:19.120We actually just launched this month's cover piece today by Nick Rowan.
00:44:23.120It's all about the Ukraine-Russia war.
00:44:25.120He was in Kiev a few weeks ago before the latest round of, there it is, Ukraine's fading Western dream, before the latest round of bombing and these new negotiations.