An F-15 Eagle has gone down near the Strait of Hormuz, but the lone pilot was able to be rescued. What does this mean for the Iranian regime? And what does it mean for our relationship with them?
00:00:00.000crashed near the Strait of Hormuz. The lone pilot was safely rescued. MS Now has not confirmed this
00:00:07.780news yet. Joining us, former Undersecretary of State for Diplomacy, for Public Diplomacy and
00:00:13.920Public Affairs, and MS Now political analyst Rick Stengel, staff writer for The Atlantic and MS Now
00:00:19.540political analyst Ashley Parker, retired four-star general and MS Now military analyst General Barry
00:00:26.120McCaffrey and former U.S. Army officer, captain in the JAG Corps and former assistant U.S. attorney
00:00:32.300for the District of Connecticut. Margaret Donovan, it's great to have all of you. General McCaffrey,
00:00:37.160I'm going to start with you. What is your take? What are you watching for with this story of the
00:00:42.940downing of an F-15 fighter jet? What does it signify to you about where this war is headed?
00:00:48.680Well, obviously, it underscores the fact there's no such thing as a safe combat operation in an F-15E Eagle.
00:00:58.580You know, it's a magnificent aircraft, twin engine, 1,500 miles an hour, two pilots used in ground and air-to-air action.
00:01:08.680but they got one and the question may be it was a man pad hand carried anti-aircraft missile
00:01:16.740or possibly just a 50 caliber machine gun you know the saying used to be in vietnam
00:01:22.580big sky little bullet but by the way to underscore the political change in the nature of air warfare
00:01:31.180In Vietnam, we lost 3,700 fixed-wing aircraft and over 4,000 helicopters, half of them accidents, half of them in combat action.
00:01:43.100So the change of reality, we've flown over 10,000 sorties in Iran, devastating air sea campaign, and lost one aircraft so far due to enemy action.
00:01:55.340We have absolutely devastated the Iranian forces general, but it also appears that it is not true, as the president has stated, that we managed to wipe out their air defenses and leave them with few options.
00:02:25.340this is the primal scream of a dying regime pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on
00:02:44.400these people here's not got a free shot all these networks lying about the people the people have
00:02:51.000had a belly full of it i know you don't like hearing that i know you try to do everything
00:02:54.760the world to stop that but you're not going to stop it it's going to happen and where do people
00:02:58.280like that go to share the big line mega media i wish in my soul i wish that any of these people
00:03:06.360had a conscience ask yourself what is my task and what is my purpose if that answer
00:03:13.000is to save my country this country will be saved war room here's your host stephen k bann
00:03:24.760you're in the war room it's friday april 3rd in the year of our lord 2026 it's natalie winters
00:03:33.320hosting filling in for stephen k bannon today but as you can see even from this morning's
00:03:40.000wonderful show it seems like there's news breaking not just every hour every minute but every
00:03:44.800second obviously the f-15 down in the strait of hormuz with one of two pilots at least now the
00:03:52.500time of doing the show being reportedly found. They're still looking for the second. And it is
00:03:58.080our belief there's reporting that was the second video that we played that during the rescue
00:04:02.160mission, likely Black Hawk helicopters that were doing those missions to try to find the downed
00:04:08.180pilot that they were then hit, not totally downed, but by Iranian strikes. And then we also have a
00:04:16.360separate aircraft, I believe, a warthog that was also downed around the Strait of Hormuz.
00:04:22.480There is a lot going on. President Trump, I believe he's meeting with his
00:04:25.320national security, you know, cabin officials of the like. As we speak, obviously threading
00:04:31.460the needle very closely. We're going to get into the, I think, broader discussion of the
00:04:35.440implications also, I think, like we saw in Venezuela. Obviously, Chinese air defense
00:04:39.920not doing a very good job there. But in Iran, they use similar technologies. But obviously,
00:04:44.880you're seeing some sort of evolution going on there. We're going to have Cleo Pascal and I
00:04:50.280believe Colonel Grant Newsham to walk us through the China angle to all of this and give us an
00:04:55.840assessment of what is going on in the ground over there. But, you know, we are America first here
00:05:00.740in the war room. So we will start with what is going on here in the United States, obviously a
00:05:04.520shakeup over at the DOJ. So we thought best to bring on the one and only Julie Kelly, who has
00:05:09.760been writing wonderfully about everything that's gone down with Bondi, the weird never Trump crowd.
00:05:16.740They're like zombies or Medusa or whatever the Greek thing is where you cut the head off and
00:05:22.560they come back with more of a vengeance. I thought Ron DeSantis, we agreed that wasn't going to
00:05:26.560happen, but now he's being floated for AG. I've been enjoying your social media commentary
00:05:30.360on that. But Julie, let's just take a step back and can you kind of give us your broader
00:05:34.640assessment of what we're seeing go down at DOJ, your assessment of Bondi's tenure and what you
00:05:39.840think the path forward looks like. Sure. Hi, Natalie. Always good to be with you. Happy Good
00:05:45.460Friday. Thanks for having me on. You know, this was, I believe, months in the making. It was no
00:05:52.760secret, and the president himself has said so, his dissatisfaction with Pam Bondi. I think she had
00:06:02.580some solid accomplishments that she should be proud of. However, the Epstein matter debacle
00:06:10.580files, whatever you want to call it, just became a dark cloud that still hangs over this
00:06:18.860administration, unfortunately, to this day. And a lot of that was prompted early on, shortly after
00:06:24.880she was confirmed in February of 2025, claiming that, you know, with those binders had Epstein
00:06:31.440Files, that this was going to be the first of an ongoing production of so-called Epstein
00:06:36.780Files, then she was kind of caught on camera saying that they had tens of thousands of
00:06:43.020videos of Jeffrey Epstein with children and child pornography, kind of alluding to a client's
00:06:50.800list a few times, really amping up the expectations that were then, of course, turned around on
00:06:59.400the administration by Democrats in Congress, the Never Trumpers that you're talking about,
00:07:04.740including people like Tom Massey, who then leveraged this, I think, and made this,
00:07:10.380unfortunately, Natalie, once we look back at 2025, the Epstein files, Jeffrey Epstein,
00:07:17.540will be, unfortunately, the animating issue of the president's first year in office.
00:07:23.960And I think some of that is attributed to Pambani's handling or mishandling of it early on.
00:07:32.220I'm curious, Julie, kind of taking a step back, I agree.
00:07:35.660I think the mishandling of the Epstein-Files situation may go down truly as one of the worst political comms crises in modern, maybe all of American history from start to finish, from, you know, Bindergate.
00:08:11.900There's some, but I don't think it's what exactly President Trump, who is, of course,
00:08:15.940in charge and has the right to hire and fire as he so pleases, ran on, and I think once and
00:08:20.980frankly deserves. Do you think it's fair to say that the broader department was sort of failing
00:08:26.920to meet that mark? Or do you think that the Epstein situation was more of sort of just an
00:08:31.700aberration or an anomaly from an otherwise successful department, but he just couldn't
00:08:36.860get past that? Yeah, great, great question. And look, I cautioned people early on,
00:08:43.880And I know that Steve and I talked about this and you and I talked about this. There was an expectation. And of course, part of this was also created by Pam Bonney when she established that, you know, weaponization working group where and she laid out in that memo, we are going to look at Jack Smith.
00:09:00.820We are going to look at the persecution of J6ers. We are going to look at the surveillance of, you know, parents protesting at school boards and this, you know, Catholic memo of allegedly FBI agents surveilling people attending Catholic mass.
00:09:18.100So she laid out in detail what that was going to look like.
00:09:23.160But just like our weaponization subcommittee, you'll recall that, Natalie, established by House Republicans in 2023, this all apparently went nowhere.
00:09:32.320Now, but I did caution people early on because I covered these judges in Washington, D.C. for so long.
00:09:41.760And I saw how rigged the system was and saw how these judges were flipping 180 degrees from rubber stamping anything that the Department of Justice wanted to reversing everything and overturning and blocking whatever the DOJ wanted as soon as Trump won office.
00:09:57.420So I said, these things just are not going to happen quickly. And they weren't. So she, to the extent that she did, and then Ed Martin as acting D.C. U.S. attorney, and then the team around her, and even we see this with Janine Pirro, I mean, there is a lost arm judicial resistance, especially in the D.C. District Court, to sabotage anything that this DOJ wants.
00:10:23.040And that extends even to grand juries, Natalie, where you have activist groups in Washington right after Trump won counseling and coaching people if they were selected to serve on a grand jury.
00:10:35.980Here is how you undermine the DOJ's speaking of a federal criminal indictment and returning a no true bill, which we now see in unprecedented numbers coming out of not just D.C., but other blue cities as well.
00:10:50.860So she faced almost insurmountable obstacles, and we can go into detail about all of them, not just, you know, the judges, but this flood of lawsuits for the immigration policies.
00:11:05.780I mean, it was like whack-a-mole at the DOJ every single day.
00:11:10.140So, you know, I'm sure she was doing her best, but knowing that the president's priority
00:11:16.740and the MACA's base priority was we want to see serious indictments, charges, investigations.
00:11:21.980We want raids, just like we saw of J6ers, just like we saw at Mar-a-Lago.
00:11:32.700John Bolton, I think, was the only one.
00:11:35.780So, were they gun-shy? Were they just short-handed? They were dealing with internal uprisings as well. Saboteurs who were DOJ prosecutors, including U.S. attorneys, who were, you know, resigning and quitting in dramatic fashion.
00:11:53.100And so I want to fairly identify all of the uphill battles that Pam Bobby and her team
00:12:47.580It's more importantly, which I'm curious to get your thoughts on.
00:12:50.620And moving forward, what would your advice be to the next AG, to the acting AG, as to how to actually rectify those more systemic problems that you're talking about?
00:13:02.800I mean, it's going to be tough whoever is put in there.
00:13:05.860I think there are some really good names floated.
00:13:07.860As I said, I strongly object to the suggestion that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis should be in the Trump administration, certainly as attorney general.
00:16:27.420you're back in the war room where of course you've got to be checking out birch gold that's
00:16:37.280of course birchgold.com slash bannon or you can text bannon to 989898 you can get your free info
00:16:43.920kit on gold they're always running a special promotion for i think their favorite audience
00:16:48.760you guys obviously with everything going on in the world for all the times we've said that now
00:16:52.680I think it's truer than ever, you got to make sure you are always using gold as a hedge,
00:16:57.900which it has been for all of history. That's birchgold.com slash Bannon or text Bannon to
00:17:02.720989898. We love the guys over at Birch Gold. You are back in the war room here with Natalie
00:17:08.740Winters. We got another guest, Peter Tickton. We weren't sure if we were going to have you.
00:17:13.920You're a very busy man, so we're glad you could make some time for the war room posse.
00:17:18.120Of course, they want updates on all things Tina Peters. But before we get to that,
00:17:22.420I wanted to really open the floor for you for the discussion I was just having with Julie Kelly.
00:17:27.420You've obviously fought this lawfare, you know, firsthand and to some extent won.
00:17:32.860I'm curious your assessment of the situation there, not just as an outsider, but, you know, someone who's kind of interacted with that DOJ and who you think good replacements would be.
00:17:46.740First of all, Pam Bondi, I think that she was basically left out, okay?
00:17:52.700I mean, she had somebody that was running the department, which was Todd Blanche, and
00:17:56.940I think he basically took over the department.
00:18:02.400I think that he was the one operating everything, and I think that the problems that Pam Bondi
00:18:07.140had was that she trusted the man and that she was basically under the line.
00:18:12.260And I think she needs to answer one question to herself and perhaps the public.
00:18:17.340Who is it that gave her that line to say that those client lists were sitting on her desk?
00:18:25.580If she came up with that all on her own, then she's got nobody to blame but herself.
00:18:30.520But if that was given to her by the people that were helping her, even helping writing
00:18:35.140in her speeches and so on, she needs to wake up and smell a coffee and realize that she was
00:18:42.260badly used. In terms of the DOJ, your previous guest and you are absolutely right. Look,
00:18:50.360the name of your show was The War Room. And anybody who doesn't figure it out at this point
00:18:55.280that we really are in a war, maybe we're not shooting bullets at China, but for sure,
00:19:01.160we know of their involvement and Serbia's involvement, Iran's involvement, Venezuela's
00:19:07.340involvement in terms of the election fraud. Somebody's trying to take over our country.
00:19:12.680Somebody did take over our country for four years. Our DOJ is wasting its time going after
00:19:18.960minor offenses by people and treating them as major crimes. The whole DOJ needs to be revamped
00:19:27.080And people, we need to get rid of all of that BS and stop going after Americans who are basically the fabric of our country because they're MAGA, which was happening under Biden, because they're parents of children where they went to PTA meetings or not PTA, but Board of Education meetings.
00:19:49.900when we are talking about doctors who prescribed ivermectin, the weaponization under Biden
00:19:56.160was immense. And part of that is because there's too many police, too many prosecutors,
00:20:02.140and they have to rationalize their existence. We had 25% more crime than we have now
00:20:09.140when marijuana and other drugs were criminalized. Now that they're decriminalized,
00:20:14.780we did not, by about 25%, we have not reduced those forces. So in order to keep people employed
00:20:22.300and for them to keep their jobs, they have to come up with things. And what I've been seeing
00:20:26.840with the weaponization is just horrendous. So if we could get rid of those cases and start applying
00:20:33.080these AUSAs, the assistant U.S. attorneys, and start applying these prosecutors to the crimes
00:20:41.620that we need to look at now one of the things we need to see like for instance take a look at
00:20:48.260january 6 not only do we need to compensate the innocent people that were basically injured in
00:20:55.180this whole thing where they lost their businesses they lost their spouses they lost their freedom
00:21:00.580that they were put in solitary confinement for an extended periods of time and they've got major
00:21:05.660claims. But not only do we need to basically go after making sure that's done, but look at the
00:21:13.880other side. Look at the people that need to be prosecuted that never were. I mean, it's not just
00:21:20.360like we have the J6 committee that destroyed evidence. Who's looking at that? Oh, forget it.
00:21:27.480We don't need it. Of course we need to look at these things. But there were actually, J6 was
00:21:32.360planned in advance by people of the deep state. And we actually have videos of them planning to
00:21:39.140break the windows of the Capitol building on January 6th. And these videos go back to September
00:21:44.180of 2020. Nobody's going after these people. It's okay, I guess, to be an insurrectionist and to
00:21:50.980destroy our country. But J6 was intricately connected to and planned by the same people
00:21:58.100that participated in rigging the election of 2020.
00:22:02.340So we need an AG that's ready to really fix
00:22:26.700because of my experience and what I've done so on I feel that you know we need to have
00:22:34.760somebody that really knows how to make this thing happen and happen fast Lee Zeldin I think is a
00:22:41.380great man I don't know him personally but from everything I've seen and heard anything you need
00:22:47.420to put the man in it's a good thing to put him in but at the same time he doesn't know the
00:22:53.320intricacies of what is going on here and what has been going wrong and what needs to be fixed
00:22:59.320so frankly i threw my hat in the ring about three weeks ago and uh you know let you see
00:23:06.160what happens i i i i don't give me the highest of chances because i'm not uh you know for some
00:23:13.640reason i'm just a a lawyer that a trial lawyer uh that that uh that that works hard and makes
00:23:22.100things get done but uh but there are people that may be of a higher level in the inner circle and
00:23:28.480so on that would be uh somebody that donald trump trust donald trump would trust to be able to
00:23:35.800handle this level of work i mean it's a big department it's got 115 000 people employed
00:23:42.700there it's 40 different agencies and it's it's quite a handful for somebody to take and then
00:23:50.020make something of. I mean, I would see that you've got to even get out of the building and
00:23:55.740maybe set something up in an army base or whatever needs to be done to make sure this
00:24:02.440whole thing happens. Because I wouldn't be surprised that part of the reason there's
00:24:06.540been inaction is because people are afraid of threats to themselves and their families and so
00:24:12.320on. So, you know, it's going to take somebody that's not afraid to die. Not that they will die,
00:24:18.860but that they can't be afraid they have to be able to move this whole agenda forward and start
00:24:26.360getting the people that committed crimes against this country prosecuted it has to start and and
00:24:33.820in terms of you know like we heard oh my goodness we can't get indictments because the grand juries
00:24:40.540aren't well you don't need a grand jury there's something called an information and for some
00:24:45.500reason we're afraid to do that. We're afraid to fill out the form and start the prosecution.
00:24:50.420The heck with it. That's what needs to be done. You've got to find the way to make sure that the
00:24:55.220mission is accomplished, because this country depends on it right now. Our survival as a free
00:25:01.240country depends on it. You've obviously taken this fight up firsthand with everything you've
00:25:09.920been doing with Tina Peters. Obviously, our audience has been following that very closely.
00:25:13.900I know you guys are still assessing some strategies and working out some specifics, but can you give our audience an update on all things related to Tina's case?
00:25:23.560All right. I'm happy to. But I don't want you to know, I act for Joseph Altman.
00:25:28.400I act for Stephanie Lambert, for Patrick Byrne, for others in this fight, too, on a number of different election cases.
00:25:37.580And in regard to January 6th, we've got between ourselves and Mark McCluskey, we've got about 450 people that we represent in terms of January 6th.
00:25:48.960So we're well aware of what is going on in this country and what the war is all about.
00:25:55.400Because once you realize that the election was rigged, who rigged it, you know, is the question.
00:26:01.480Once you answer that, you understand where we really are.
00:26:04.520And thank God we have a president that gets it.
00:26:08.540so in terms of tina peters you're right uh we're working on our next moves we're disappointed at
00:26:16.380the feckless uh decision that we got from the court of appeals uh you know we're surprised
00:26:24.060because you know the way they were asking questions they were cognizant of reality and
00:26:28.460and things that were were uh that did not not show up in their decision let's put it that way
00:26:34.060uh at least they uh realize the sentence is too great everybody realizes that but then they want
00:26:41.540to send us back in front of the same judge that gave us the crazy sentence in the first place
00:26:45.940and and and the name call you know i mean what a biased judge you know calling her a charlatan
00:26:52.280and calling her a liar you know what the whole liar thing is all about is because in the in a
00:26:57.780hearing uh the prosecutor accused tina peters of recording the hearing on her ipad and she denied
00:27:10.880it and the state took the ipad and then they were able to actually get a conviction for contempt
00:27:18.580on the prosecutor saying that she recorded even though she was denying it and then eventually
00:27:24.380they returned the ipad and when as soon as they returned it the lawyers at that time that were
00:27:30.040involved they took that ipad they gave it to experts who were able to determine that nobody
00:27:34.100ever recorded any any hearing on that it was it it was fiction out of the mouth of a lying
00:27:41.640prosecutor and peter we're coming up against the the end of the show or sorry the end of this block
00:27:49.060so i'm gonna have to drop you we got to get to all things going on in ron and china no do it do it
00:27:53.120No, if people want to stay up to date with everything you're working on, where can they go to follow you and do that?
00:27:59.800Although I don't think we have Peter anymore.
00:31:31.760So we're going to go back to the story that you and I covered a while back about what's going on in the Commonwealth of Northern Marian Islands.
00:31:38.640And there is a map, which might be helpful.
00:31:41.140So this is a part of the United States of America.
00:31:45.140That's an eight-hour flight west of Hawaii.
00:32:50.040And, of course, Guam is also seeing a lot more activity before.
00:32:54.860So the Chinese, I look more like you do at the political warfare component to this.
00:33:01.080And they're on the ground seriously trying to destabilize the U.S. from the inside so that if there is a move on Taiwan, both Guam and the Northern Marianas won't be operational.
00:33:13.940And one of the ways, and this has come up in the context of what's going on in the Supreme Court, is Chinese can still arrive without a visa on U.S. soil in the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas Islands.
00:33:25.720So this has been obviously a birth tourism issue, but also the woman that ran the Bureau of Motor Vehicles there was convicted of selling U.S. driver's licenses along with a Chinese co-conspirator specifically to Chinese.
00:33:38.180The Chinese that come in without a visa aren't supposed to leave the Marianas, but at least in the hundreds, we think, they've been taking the boat, illegally going by boat, from the island of Rhoda, which is in the south of Marianas, to Guam, which is about 60 miles away.
00:33:53.620They've been showing up in Guam, selling drugs, human trafficking, and wandering around the U.S. bases.
00:33:59.500There was just a Chinese tourist who was convicted of taking photos of Anderson base in Guam.
00:34:07.280They're also very heavily and deeply entwined into the economy of the Northern Marianas.
00:34:15.340And this is something that's coming up again right now, because they are trying to make the case,
00:34:21.440and people who are pro-no visas for Chinese,
00:34:25.580which includes the woman who represents
00:34:27.740the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas in the U.S. Congress,
00:35:10.780They say they're broke and they need a federal government bailout.
00:35:14.620So they've realized that the unlimited flights was a bit of a bridge to China too far.
00:35:20.420So they've pulled that, but they're still sticking with the unlimited visa-free access for Chinese tourists, and they're not going after the estimated $1.6 billion in funding that the late Governor Palacios from the Northern Marianas said was not properly accounted for when he came into office in 2023.
00:35:44.380Now, viewers of War Room may remember that there was this governor who came in in 2023 who tried to pivot the Marianas away from China, and he also repeatedly requested the federal government to come and investigate what was going on in the Marianas.
00:36:04.020He said he had proof to hand over to the FBI about high-level corruption.
00:40:01.940But it raises this larger question, because this isn't the only base.
00:40:05.540The UK also, an Iranian drone struck a UK base in Cyprus, and the UK wasn't in a position to defend it. And reportedly, there's US NSA capabilities there as well.
00:40:18.940So I think that not just the NATO question, but the whole partnership with five eyes, various five eyes countries is going to have to be reassessed so that you don't have these, you don't have London or Paris or others putting a chokehold on U.S. decision making at critical times of conflict.
00:40:40.980Strangling us by our own systems. I think I have heard that one before. Cleo, if people want to
00:40:47.300follow you, keep up to date with all of the truly intrepid reporting that you're doing,
00:40:52.280where can they go to do that? Sure. I'm on X, just my name, Cleo Pascal, C-L-E-O-P-A-S-K-A-L,
00:41:00.040and on Getter at Real Cleo, because there is apparently an unreal Cleo there who's got my name.
00:41:06.660I wish they would post like interesting things at least, but they're not.
00:41:10.360It's probably a Chinese bot, it's Wu Mao, and they wanted to get your handle before you could.
00:41:25.080Colonel Grant Neusch, I want to go to yet another wonderful China expert that we have here in the war room.
00:41:31.620I want to get your thoughts on everything that's going down in Iran.
00:41:33.860It seems like the doomsday scenario that everybody talks about when we are dragging our feet to ensure that this doesn't turn into another forever war is this idea of almost unintentional escalation, right?
00:41:44.240A plane being shot down, which then spirals and snowballs.
00:41:47.280And then the rescue team, like we're seeing now, right?
00:41:49.440A helicopter getting, I think, struck to some extent by Iranian capabilities air fire.
00:41:55.060I think the Chinese air defense systems that they use there evolving is certainly from what we saw go down in Venezuela.
00:42:08.100Well, sometimes it seems as though Americans have sort of the attention span of about five-year-olds really expecting a war to end in about 24 hours, 72 hours.
00:42:18.520Sometimes it takes a little time and also some context helps as well.
00:42:22.320It is amazing that we have not lost any aircraft today.
00:42:28.760It gives you a good idea of just how we've beaten down the Iranian-slash-Chinese-slash-Russian air defenses there.
00:42:37.560This was bound to happen at some point, particularly when it comes to the shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, the so-called MANPADs, that are all over the place in Iran.