Bannon's War Room - Episode 5325： Founder's Fire From 1776 Tp the Age Of Trump

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

00:00:11.180 these people here's not got a free shot all these networks lying about the people the people have

00:00:17.780 had a belly full of it i know you don't like hearing that i know you try to do everything

00:00:21.540 in the world to stop that but you're not going to stop it it's going to happen and where do

00:00:24.920 people like that go to share the big line mega media i wish in my soul i wish that any of these

00:00:32.620 people had a conscience ask yourself what is my task and what is my purpose if that answer

00:00:39.600 is to save my country this country will be saved war room here's your host stephen k band

00:00:48.080 Okay, welcome.

00:00:53.540 Nothing could be more important in our, what is it, the 250th year of the commemoration, celebration, remembrance of our founding, the revolutionary generation, the founding of the nation.

00:01:06.620 It's going to take place July 4th, and there's lots of events that are going to lead up to it.

00:01:12.420 I kind of got briefed the other day on what's going to happen on those couple of days.

00:01:18.660 It's going to be really incredible.

00:01:21.980 But I think in homage to the revolutionary generation,

00:01:27.720 probably the best thing we can do is talk about this country

00:01:30.200 and the ideas that's driven it to be such, what do we call it, American exceptionalism.

00:01:36.160 Because I think in today's time with wars going on and the economy,

00:01:39.780 everything going on, technology, we kind of lose sight of that.

00:01:42.420 We're honored to have Arthur Herman.

00:01:44.720 Arthur, I have wanted to do this for a long time.

00:01:47.140 Me too.

00:01:47.380 I think we had an hour a while back, but I've always wanted to get you in studio.

00:01:52.460 Founders Fire is the new book.

00:01:54.280 It's just out.

00:01:56.420 And with all your other books, because you're, to me, you're my go-to guy for history of this country.

00:02:03.680 Not even this country.

00:02:06.940 Talking about the end of World War I, Gandhi and Churchill, so many.

00:02:10.800 We're going to get into all that.

00:02:11.720 But founders of fire, and here's what I love about this, it's a totally different take.

00:02:17.040 You kind of combine two big ideas, and you take it the energy of entrepreneurial America, of American exceptionalism, which is about the founder, the founder of institutions, the founders of companies, this driving force.

00:02:32.180 And you go back and you tie it actually back to the founding of the republic and you interweave those two stories of the of the kind of evolution of our history, but do it around individuals as founders.

00:02:45.220 And you lay out kind of six principles of what these founders are.

00:02:48.500 So first off, how did you get the idea, given the fact that you've written so many fascinating books about the Vikings, about Churchill, about Gandhi, about how we won World War II part of the way it was because of the industrial capacity?

00:03:05.100 How did you come up, given that people, I'm sure, came to you and said, look, Arthur, we've got to get a big book out of you for the 250th?

00:03:12.940 That's right.

00:03:13.520 How did you figure on this concept of the Founder's Fire?

00:03:19.340 Founder's Fire.

00:03:19.980 It really began, Steve, as a meditation on one of the most important themes of that book that you just mentioned,

00:03:30.340 The Freedom's Forge, How American Business Produced Victory in World War II.

00:03:34.200 It's kind of a sequel to that in a little bit, isn't it?

00:03:35.340 Say it again?

00:03:36.160 It's kind of a sequel to that.

00:03:37.820 It is, and I thought of it in that way.

00:03:39.760 That book is so unique, and you really lay an aspect that people don't think about in World War II.

00:03:44.040 And it's been hugely influential, too, in ways that even surprised me, because it really has made, in the last couple of years, the last half decade, has made a lot of people in Washington, on Capitol Hill, on the Pentagon, think about we built a defense industrial base that was so efficient, that was so innovative and productive.

00:04:06.520 How come we don't have one like that now?

00:04:08.580 And that book gives a picture into the kinds of people and the kinds of technologies that made it possible for the United States to go from basically a standing start in the summer of 1940 to become the greatest military industrial complex in history, not just through the war, but then afterwards in the Cold War and go on to win the Cold War.

00:04:31.940 I don't think you fully appreciate how big that book was.

00:04:37.480 In President Trump's first year of his first term, we went out to one of the facilities you actually talk about in the book.

00:04:45.620 Yeah.

00:04:46.020 And we had Tucker Carlson set up and did an interview.

00:04:48.680 And in the lobby of that, I think it was associated with the Ford Motor Company, that they actually had copies of your book.

00:04:57.240 Was that at Willow Run?

00:04:58.080 Yes, we're sitting there to hand out the handout to people that would come in.

00:05:04.380 And I go, oh, my Lord, this is the book that inspired us to come here.

00:05:08.500 That is that's a great story. I love that.

00:05:11.460 And yeah, it had it had enormous influence, still does in a lot of ways.

00:05:16.020 What this book does, Founders Fire does.

00:05:19.500 Is to look at that fundamental issue, and that is it's not just a question why we have a defense industrial base today that looks so different.

00:05:28.080 and has fallen really on hard times it's not just about legislation or about the pentagon's

00:05:34.480 master plans or strategies or even technologies it's also about people and what we unleashed in

00:05:41.680 the world war ii era was a series of really heroic individuals i talk about them in the book like

00:05:48.000 henry kaiser and bill newtson and henry jackson higgins who built the higgins boats that landed

00:05:53.920 GIs on the beach at Omaha Beach, and Roy Grumman, who supplied the U.S. Navy with all of its

00:06:03.200 combat aircraft, its key combat aircraft. What is it that makes America the kind of place that

00:06:10.540 creates more of these types, these founder types than any other country in the world?

00:06:15.140 I mean, they exist elsewhere. Winston Churchill, you mentioned my book on Gandhi and Churchill.

00:06:20.280 He's clearly someone who fits within that founder mentality, that kind of combination of vision and drive and willingness to take risks.

00:06:31.920 But there's something special about America that really thrusts people like that and makes them spring up from the ground throughout our history.

00:06:40.400 This founder's mentality, you lay out six attributes, right?

00:06:45.260 First is mission and vision driven.

00:06:48.380 What does that mean?

00:06:49.000 In other words, what they have is an idea that when they create a business or an institution or create even a movement, that what they have in mind is something which is not just to address a set of issues today.

00:07:01.380 You know, I've got a I'm going to build a better mousetrap. Right.

00:07:04.400 but really to rethink what is a mousetrap? What is the future going to look like? And what role

00:07:10.640 does my company or my institution or my role as president play in shaping that future all the way

00:07:17.300 out to the far horizon? They have to have that vision. And that is. That's one of the things

00:07:24.360 that distinguishes them from your ordinary entrepreneur. And I have a lot of respect

00:07:29.020 for entrepreneurs. But by and large, entrepreneurs are thinking, here's a problem. I've got an answer.

00:07:34.400 I can get rich really fast if I put these two things together.

00:07:38.180 The founder looks to build out far beyond just the present.

00:07:43.140 You talk about, you've got a great quote in here about, and it ties it back to the Declaration of Independence.

00:07:48.560 We're almost in that time when that committee, that subcommittee was set up.

00:07:52.560 You quote about the vision.

00:07:55.100 You quote John Adams and said,

00:07:56.820 There is nothing more ancient than the observation that the arts, sciences, and empire had always traveled westward.

00:08:02.960 And in conversation, it was always added, since I was a small child, that their next leap would be over the Atlantic into America.

00:08:11.560 And that's what the founding fathers all understood, Adams, Washington, Jefferson.

00:08:17.160 What they were doing that summer in 1776 was not just declaring independence from Britain.

00:08:24.320 What they were also doing was creating a vision of what liberty could look like for the future.

00:08:29.480 They understood what was happening in world terms.

00:08:32.960 And that gave them both a sense of responsibility, that we're here not just to declare independence from King George and to list all the terrible things he's done to the 13 colonies.

00:08:44.140 Which is in the document, but it's not in the beginning of it when they set the framing.

00:08:48.140 When they set the framing, they're talking about when in the course of human events, not just in the course of British events or the events here in the colonies, but in the course of human events, that this was a moment in human history that motivated them to take the kinds of steps, including the risks that they took in order to fulfill that dream.

00:09:09.400 And then they tie it back to that amazing phrase, in pursuit of happiness, which is never in human history.

00:09:15.180 I'm hoping we're going to come back to that, because I think I think in many ways, Steve, what happened and why what they do in 1776 lives on and becomes a fundamental part of how our world in America is shaped even today and throughout its history is because through the founding fathers, they gave to America a legacy, a series of gifts to the future about what happened.

00:09:43.660 and what has shaped American history to this day.

00:09:47.520 First of those gifts, I'll say, just to summarize them real quick,

00:09:50.980 the first of those gifts was presidential power.

00:09:54.800 The Constitution.

00:09:55.920 And the office of the president.

00:09:57.040 And the office of the president.

00:09:58.840 The executive power.

00:10:00.700 This was a hugely controversial move,

00:10:03.660 because after all, America had just gone through the experience

00:10:06.720 of dealing with a monarchy, with a king,

00:10:09.420 and deeply worried about why would you create an executive who is going to.

00:10:17.440 An executive that had his name, an all-powerful executive that almost had as much power as the monarch.

00:10:23.800 We're about to have a war to make sure we set this thing up.

00:10:27.280 And it's Hamilton who understands, who says that office is where the energy of this new constitutionalist government,

00:10:35.440 where that founder's fire will be found to take strong action.

00:10:38.280 And, again, it's deeply controversial then, and it's very controversial now when we have presidents who take that.

00:10:45.780 This is the Article 2 powers that we – that's right.

00:10:46.800 Well, then you say – and this goes back to the argument we make of the Article 2 powers.

00:10:50.860 He's chief executive officer of the United States, so that any budget is a floor.

00:10:56.440 The appropriations bill is a law, but it's a floor, not a ceiling.

00:10:58.880 He can fire anybody.

00:11:00.300 Number two, he's commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

00:11:02.380 That's right.

00:11:02.860 Virtually unlimited power like Lincoln had.

00:11:04.840 and he's chief magistrate and chief law enforcement officer of the country,

00:11:09.580 which is the biggest fight they've got with us right now.

00:11:12.240 Your second, you say, is they have to be incurably hands-on and detail-oriented.

00:11:18.940 This is the second part of that. What do you mean by that?

00:11:21.620 They mean in the sense that the business and institutions, they are,

00:11:26.060 but they also want to see how that vision is being carried out on a daily basis.

00:11:31.060 They want to go and meet with the customers.

00:11:32.940 They want to go and meet with the employees.

00:11:35.500 They want to see how that vision, the company they're building, the institution, is really taking place on the ground.

00:11:43.420 The last place founders want to be is withdrawing to the corporate boardroom,

00:11:49.160 to have that corner office and to spend all their time going through memos and checking off boxes supplied to them by managers and vice presidents and so on.

00:11:57.620 They have this instinctive desire to take control, to pay attention to every detail of what happens.

00:12:02.880 This gets back to people like Edison and Henry Ford.

00:12:06.160 Back to Edison, Henry Ford.

00:12:08.760 It gets back to George Washington, who paid very strict attention to what his cabinet members were doing,

00:12:15.220 spent his time, hours sometimes, talking to each cabinet member about what was happening and what was taking place

00:12:21.580 and where the work that they were doing, whether it was a secretary of state or whether it was a secretary of war,

00:12:28.980 where that was headed and where that was going.

00:12:30.780 You know, it's interesting because Adams was not invited to a lot of the cabinet meetings because in working through how the system was going to work, he didn't want an intermediary between, not that he had anything against Adams per se, but he didn't want a vice president that the cabinet would think that it was some chain of command where the vice president would come.

00:12:50.600 he wanted to deal with. That's right. Particularly Hamilton and Jefferson quite directly. Quite

00:12:55.740 directly. And it's the relations between you and me as chief executive, as president. And there is

00:13:02.440 no, there's nobody sitting in the ante room at a desk or a table deciding who it is I'm going to

00:13:09.240 see and who it is I'm not. Extraordinary. I tell you what, we're going to take a short commercial

00:13:13.920 break here. Arthur Herman, you've written how many books? This is number 11. This is number 11.

00:13:21.080 Incredible.

00:13:21.780 When did your first book come out?

00:13:23.700 First book came out in 1997.

00:13:26.540 1997.

00:13:26.940 The Idea of Decline.

00:13:28.400 Idea of Decline.

00:13:29.780 I've read so many of you.

00:13:30.580 Which I know we've talked about and so on.

00:13:32.920 And you're part of that dedicated cult of followers who love that book.

00:13:36.820 Love the book. 0.96

00:13:37.360 And, you know, every once in a while I'll dip back, go back into it, look at it, and I sort of say, damn, I was good. 0.95

00:13:44.060 You were very good. 0.75

00:13:45.380 And at the time, I tell you, it was a, for those of us that read it, and there were a lot, I think it informed people's views.

00:13:53.460 And you know what? This book is very similar in the sense that they both breathe this air of optimism about the future.

00:13:59.720 Well, that's particularly where we are today.

00:14:03.320 And this is not happy talk just about American exceptionalism.

00:14:06.540 You go back, you're grounded in the details.

00:14:09.160 That's what I love about you.

00:14:10.040 Roll your sleeves up on every book.

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00:14:44.340 end of the dollar empire arthur herman is in the house and we'll be back in the world

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00:16:33.360 War Room.

00:16:34.400 Here's your host, Stephen K. Band.

00:16:39.780 Okay, welcome back.

00:16:41.400 Founders Fire, not just for yourself, but for anybody else,

00:16:45.180 particularly people saying, oh, we're so overwhelmed by our issues and our problems.

00:16:50.560 We're in a war.

00:16:51.280 We've got discontent going on in the 30 front.

00:16:54.680 We're here in the United States.

00:16:56.220 Founders Fire by Arthur Herman.

00:16:58.860 It's his 11th book.

00:17:00.600 I'm glad to say I'm beyond a fan, probably in the cult of Arthur Herman.

00:17:05.380 I've read all 10.

00:17:06.720 I encourage that, by the way.

00:17:08.940 And here's the thing.

00:17:09.900 I've given your books out to so many.

00:17:12.420 Well, we're going to get back into this book.

00:17:15.760 But I'm not going to go through the whole book because I want you to get it.

00:17:19.060 More importantly, I want you to get it also for a friend and a young person in this 250th year.

00:17:25.900 I think this gets to the from 1776 to the age of Trump.

00:17:30.260 You talk about the drive and the initiative and the vision of founders, but you tie it back to the revolutionary generation.

00:17:37.900 And then you go through the entire history of the country, how this continues to drive America forward.

00:17:43.200 And that's why this book is not just for yourself. Get a couple of copies for friends.

00:17:48.360 And I give Arthur Herman books out all the time.

00:17:51.160 I am particularly being a former naval officer.

00:17:53.340 I always give one of my favorites to rule the waves.

00:17:55.860 Because you talk about one of the most unique institutions in this world, the Royal Navy, and how it was created and what it had to go through and the struggles.

00:18:03.780 And what you do in your books, it's not happy clapping.

00:18:06.880 You show the resistance, whether it's Gandhi and Churchill.

00:18:10.700 You show the resistance that people have and how they overcome it just by determination, as you say, keeping the vision.

00:18:16.720 In this, before I get back on to the punch list, you said there's three gifts that also we have to be cognizant of.

00:18:23.880 One I just mentioned, which was presidential power embedded into the Constitution, giving one person in particular that ability to use that founder's sense of vision, sense of drive of will, willpower, and also to a bias towards action.

00:18:41.180 That the president is there not just to sign.

00:18:43.300 That was principally driven by Hamilton.

00:18:44.940 Driven by Hamilton.

00:18:45.960 And he was really his the son he never had. He never had. And but Hamilton understood that what George Washington brought to the role of president, the very first president of the United States.

00:18:58.580 I talk about it in the book in detail, that everything he brought to that, his prestige, his record of success, both as general but then also as leader in shaping the U.S. Constitution, as chairman of the Constitutional Convention, that that was not just something that would die off with or leave office with Washington.

00:19:22.860 It needed to be embedded in the institution itself.

00:19:25.420 Wow. And the way to do that was to do it and start to build the institution as the office of the presidency.

00:19:31.700 And even to be in a situation that even the president could be in a situation where he could oppose the legislative majority if he feels it's something that needs to be done and something that's right.

00:19:43.540 And it have the means by which to carry that out in the face of that kind of opposition.

00:19:49.420 Did Hamilton, given he was his aide-de-camp for the whole Revolutionary War period and saw some of the lowest of the lows, because we talk about Washington today as a founder, but he was attacked viciously when he was the commander of the Continental Army by certain elements within the Army and certain elements in Philadelphia that were always second-guessing.

00:20:12.900 They were always thinking, got to fire this guy and find somebody else who's more experienced.

00:20:17.280 And people today's history is taught are shocked by that.

00:20:20.200 I said, I don't know how this guy slept every night because they were viciously.

00:20:24.080 You think they're after Trump, which they are.

00:20:26.320 They were after Washington just as badly.

00:20:28.420 And they were always questioning his strategy, always questioning about why you're doing this, fighting this kind of a war.

00:20:35.980 You really should simply retreat into the mountains rather than try and mount a conventional confrontation with the British in arms and with an organized soldiery.

00:20:45.960 And then why are you taking on the British at all?

00:20:48.900 Of course, that was the other thing, that every founder has key characteristic, is a willingness to take on risk, 0.64

00:20:56.240 willing to take on, to see in facing a situation, not just the risk that comes with it, but the opportunities that lie on the other side.

00:21:04.940 And that's true for business founders.

00:21:07.840 It's true for presidents who have had that kind of founder instincts.

00:21:12.280 It was certainly true of Washington.

00:21:13.840 You think about that single stroke of crossing the Delaware on Christmas Eve when his army was at its lowest point through desertions, through the loss of state militias who said, you know, our time is up.

00:21:30.740 We're going home.

00:21:32.100 We're done with it.

00:21:33.300 We're done with this fighting for now.

00:21:34.720 You know, we try to teach here in the war room that in the period that we're in now, 250 years ago, the beginning of the, hey, we need to have a statement to have a purpose to this if we're going to do it after all their other avenues were concluded, the subcommittee that met and it came up with this magnificent document, the Declaration of Independence, that at the very moment, you know, around July 4th, which we'll celebrate, the British Expeditionary Force,

00:22:03.100 the largest expedition force in human history, had already left Nova Scotia and other places

00:22:07.820 to come for a military conflict.

00:22:10.160 And from late July or early August, 30 days after, less than 30 days after the signing,

00:22:17.000 we were in one of the toughest military conflicts we've had.

00:22:20.300 And from Staten Island and Long Island and the Battle of Brooklyn and Manhattan,

00:22:25.400 it's a continual retreat under fire, strategic retreat by Washington

00:22:30.920 until you get across the Delaware, and then over Christmas.

00:22:34.660 The whole nation could have been over,

00:22:37.720 and we have been part of the British Empire in the first 120 days,

00:22:42.400 and he had people in Philadelphia on him nonstop.

00:22:45.660 This guy doesn't win.

00:22:47.000 He had a disaster in Brooklyn.

00:22:48.660 He had a disaster on Long Island.

00:22:50.880 This is going to be over.

00:22:52.100 And I tell people, if you think you're under pressure,

00:22:54.380 you think President Trump is constantly under pressure,

00:22:56.760 You cannot imagine the pressure that this individual was under.

00:23:01.280 And it's that kind of, I guess, founder's fire that gets you through.

00:23:04.000 That's right. I mean, and you just said it in Washington case.

00:23:08.500 It's the nation itself. The survival of a of an American independence that's at stake at that moment when he decides we're going to go across the frozen Delaware.

00:23:19.000 where we're going to take an enormous risk to counterattack against the Hessians,

00:23:23.640 which was not in itself a great strategic goal in many ways.

00:23:28.900 But he had to do something.

00:23:30.340 He had to prove that he had a fighting army on his side and that he could beat the British and their allies.

00:23:34.780 You talk about risk profounders.

00:23:36.540 When you're sitting there and talking because he didn't really have a council war,

00:23:41.440 but there are even guys in his inner circle that were not wildly enthusiastic about that night.

00:23:48.300 First off, there's a Northeaster. It's almost zero degrees.

00:23:52.800 The Hessians are probably better even than British regulars because they're German mercenaries who know how to fight. 0.90

00:23:59.080 And they have kind of psychologically scared so many people because of their viciousness. 0.74

00:24:03.780 If you had to pick long odds, because nothing's harder than a river crossing under fire.

00:24:11.120 Under blizzard conditions as well.

00:24:13.620 I mean, that was the other thing about it, too, that, you know, there were three columns that were supposed to head out, as I describe in the book.

00:24:20.120 They were supposed to land on the other side of the river.

00:24:22.760 Only one of them made it because the others had to turn back because the weather was so bad.

00:24:28.200 But Washington's did.

00:24:30.460 And even those who had doubts.

00:24:31.840 Is that what you mean by founder's fire and the grit is that his did not?

00:24:35.420 The other two, very logically, because it was so awful.

00:24:38.440 That's what I'm saying.

00:24:39.180 I can't.

00:24:39.480 We can't.

00:24:39.920 It can't be done.

00:24:41.420 Washington persevered.

00:24:42.240 And, you know, you just touched on something else that's really important, Steve, and that is, yeah, there were a lot of doubts, even within the ranks, even within his own command chain about this strategy and about the way we're doing it.

00:24:54.740 But they trusted Washington. They felt if he feels it's possible to do it, then it's got to be possible to do it.

00:25:03.340 And that's one of the other key characteristics, I think, of Founders, is that they build around them and draw together a team of dedicated, loyal lieutenants who carry out, who share the vision, who understand the vision, and who act in order to carry that out.

00:25:21.480 brothers. This is Nelson. Nelson had in the entire Royal Navy, they had this, it became kind of the

00:25:27.300 cult of Nelson, that he had a group of frigate commanders who looked up to him, but they were,

00:25:33.680 and that's what created the Battle of the Nile and Copenhagen and eventually Trafalgar, that he

00:25:38.720 had these individuals because his strategy was a little different than the normal strategy taught

00:25:43.700 by the Royal Navy. Well, you had to have, in Nelson's case, what he had to do was he had to

00:25:48.740 had people who would understand his orders almost as soon as he gave them and who realized that

00:25:54.520 they didn't, everything didn't happen. Implement on their own. He didn't have to spell it out on

00:26:00.260 paper. You know what I want to do, and I'm just going to turn you loose to go and do it. And I

00:26:06.020 think how many business founders have around them that kind of tight-knit, disciplined, loyal group

00:26:11.900 who likewise read the mind of the founder, understand his vision, and know what they

00:26:18.200 need to do in order to fulfill that vision. That was true for Henry Ford. It was true for

00:26:24.040 John D. Rockefeller, true for Edison, Thomas Edison, with the team that he built around

00:26:29.800 Menlo Park. It was true for Abraham Lincoln when he ran for president in 1860. He had this

00:26:36.660 band of loyal led by David Davis. He didn't even go to the convention that nominated him. And that

00:26:43.920 convention was a knife fight. Totally. They knew what he wanted to do. They kind of had it. And he

00:26:49.600 just devolved the command to people that are going to be there. And I think you see it with

00:26:56.240 our current president. You know, he is his first term. He learned you can't operate as president

00:27:02.180 Unless you've got that loyal, disciplined team who realize you're you're there to carry out.

00:27:09.780 They're there to carry out your vision, not there to to mitigate, mitigate or to intervene.

00:27:16.500 Yeah, that's right. This is what he went through that first year in the wilderness helped us do this.

00:27:21.680 OK, Arthur Herman is here with us and we're honored.

00:27:25.500 and it's not a better way to kick off really our commemoration of the 250th anniversary

00:27:31.720 that we're going to take all through the year with Founders Fire.

00:27:34.780 He's combined the entrepreneurial drive and the vision of founders specifically

00:27:40.340 with the founding of the nation and the entire history of the nation

00:27:43.800 and how this is probably one of the most important threads that drives the nation

00:27:48.560 through pattern recognition.

00:27:50.220 Okay, we're going to take a short commercial break.

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00:28:12.480 Short commercial break.

00:28:15.260 Author Herman, his 11th book, Founders Fire.

00:28:19.100 Make sure you get it for yourself and buy a copy for a young person that is close to you.

00:28:25.500 Back in a minute.

00:28:31.620 Fellow patriots, the Federal Reserve has betrayed America for over a century.

00:28:37.060 Printing fiat, inflating away your savings, serving globalist masters.

00:28:42.680 But President Trump is ending it.

00:28:44.700 President Trump is wielding a 112-year-old law to reclaim control from the rogue Federal Reserve.

00:28:52.940 He's replacing Jerome Powell, slashing rates, igniting America's re-industrialization.

00:28:59.000 Now, this is not theory.

00:29:01.140 Government-backed industry plus low rates unleashes super cycles.

00:29:05.580 History does repeat.

00:29:07.920 Gold's already exploding.

00:29:09.680 Miners are up over 400% in the last year.

00:29:12.800 What Rickards is calling Trump's gift is wealth for American patriots, not global handouts.

00:29:20.020 Now it's America's turn.

00:29:21.520 Jim Rickards, former CIA and Pentagon veteran, says act now.

00:29:28.120 Go to Insider2026.com.

00:29:30.600 That is Insider2026.com to get Jim Rickards' strategic intelligence newsletter today.

00:29:38.580 Strategic intelligence based upon predictive analytics.

00:29:42.300 It's what chairman and CEO throughout the world read, and you should too.

00:29:47.460 War Room.

00:29:48.560 Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann.

00:29:51.520 welcome back founders fire we have arthur herman in the house today in the warm from 1776 to the

00:30:03.440 age of trump make sure you you come up from center street center street has shed i mean

00:30:09.300 is center street uh division of ashett yeah has shed shed i think it's what i think there are guys

00:30:15.260 I visited Andrew Breitbart's book, as I remember.

00:30:18.420 Arthur Herman, your 11th book.

00:30:20.920 How long did it take you to come up with a pattern recognition

00:30:26.020 that to say, to understand the country,

00:30:30.120 and particularly as we go forward,

00:30:31.880 you need to understand this whole thing about founders' fire,

00:30:34.700 of founders of companies or institutions or movements

00:30:37.500 with the revolutionary generation,

00:30:41.100 and then going forward, the actual evolution of the American experience.

00:30:49.220 Well, the genesis of the book was, in fact, an op-ed that I did for Wall Street Journal,

00:30:56.540 talking about Trump and Elon Musk as founders,

00:31:01.500 and exhibiting all those characteristics of the founders' mindset that you just talked about,

00:31:07.140 and saying this is one reason why so many people in the media and Congress and elsewhere just don't understand this guy

00:31:14.960 and haven't understood how Trump works, how he functions because of his mindset.

00:31:22.740 You've been an observer of Trump for a while?

00:31:25.460 I've been an observer of his since the mid-'80s when I worked on Wall Street.

00:31:30.440 And when I worked on Wall Street—

00:31:32.240 Where did you work?

00:31:33.340 In Manhattan.

00:31:34.380 for one of the, yes, for

00:31:37.720 Payne-Weber, Payne-Weber, Jackson

00:31:40.020 and Kurtz.

00:31:41.920 And in those

00:31:44.080 days, mid-80s,

00:31:46.880 Wall Street

00:31:47.880 loathed Donald Trump.

00:31:50.400 I remember that. They hated

00:31:51.940 him. They thought he was a phony. 0.97

00:31:54.840 He was this

00:31:55.460 publicity-grabbing

00:31:58.440 real estate

00:32:00.540 developer.

00:32:01.980 Absolutely.

00:32:02.500 Absolutely. I met him once briefly at a party and he was there.

00:32:07.420 You know, he's this enormously tall guy and standing in the room surrounded by beautiful women with a presence, with his entourage and so on.

00:32:15.840 The two people who were held up as my models by my mentors and bosses at that time were, first of all, Michael Milken, head of Drexel Burnham Lambert, the great junk bond king.

00:32:32.500 The other one was Ivan Bowsky, the bond trader operating out of Salmon Brothers.

00:32:39.500 And in fact, those were the models.

00:32:42.120 If you want to be really successful in Wall Street and you build a career for yourself, young man, these are the two figures you need to look up to and emulate.

00:32:50.980 And of course, what happened was they were successful because of insider trading.

00:32:55.280 They were insider trading, put them both into prison.

00:32:58.540 It's true. Michael Milken's cleaned up his act since then.

00:33:01.640 And Ivan Boski discovered his Judaic roots as a result of that. 0.89

00:33:06.060 But the third guy, the one that couldn't stand, went on to become president of the United States. 0.50

00:33:11.620 So it was a good lesson for me in understanding how conventional thinking operates, not just in the world of Wall Street, but elsewhere.

00:33:19.880 And understanding that the very things that drive people crazy about Donald Trump are, in fact, his key virtues.

00:33:28.760 I'm going to get back to that moment.

00:33:30.060 When you were at Payne Weber, which I think eventually was bought by Morgan Stanley, right?

00:33:34.040 Yeah, I think it was, yeah.

00:33:34.940 To become, even take Morgan Stanley.

00:33:36.660 Of course, long gone now, yeah.

00:33:37.700 Yeah, but they wanted a classy retail part to go with their major institution.

00:33:43.120 When did you decide, when did you decide that what my real calling is, is to basically write?

00:33:51.460 Oh, now that's a long story.

00:33:53.920 You're a working stiff on Wall Street.

00:33:56.760 No, I was actually, you have to go back.

00:33:59.960 I have to rewind the tape a couple of years before that, because I had a Ph.D. in history and I had grown up in an academic family.

00:34:09.320 I had spent went directly from there to graduate school, Johns Hopkins University, did a Ph.D., was a prize winning Ph.D. in European history.

00:34:18.300 And I wanted to do something completely different. I said, let's try something totally in that range.

00:34:23.800 You were burned out after getting your Ph.D. or you wanted to make some money?

00:34:28.620 It was not burned out, but it was make some money.

00:34:31.800 That was part of it.

00:34:32.520 But also experience a world outside of academia, outside of the intellectual life.

00:34:36.980 And from that point of view, the time I spent on Wall Street was hugely important part of my education because it was the first time in my life I was dealing with people who were smarter than I was, who were not intellectuals.

00:34:51.340 And that was a shock to the system.

00:34:54.100 And sharp elbows.

00:34:55.620 Well, that too.

00:34:56.580 Especially working on Wall Street in those days, in the mid-'80s, at any time, actually.

00:35:05.240 It was an important part of my education.

00:35:07.580 And the woman I met when I was working there, who's now my wife and has been my wife now for 37 years, who I met living in New York, she said, you're not enjoying this at all.

00:35:19.420 Why don't you think about going into teaching instead, which is where you were headed in the first place before you took this swerve into the into the world of world of business and engagement in the in the world of finance and see what you can do with that.

00:35:36.260 So I did. And I did an interview at the American Historical Association, a walk on interview and the University of the South in Suwannee, Tennessee, if you know it.

00:35:46.920 Sure. No, well, I said.

00:35:49.420 why don't you come teach for us

00:35:51.560 so we got married and moved out to Tennessee 0.88

00:35:53.940 which for my wife was a bit of a culture shock

00:35:56.140 as you can imagine

00:35:56.880 having grown up in New York City

00:36:00.620 moving to top of a mountain

00:36:03.040 in the Smokies

00:36:04.280 in middle Tennessee

00:36:05.860 yeah that was

00:36:08.240 I must have been a really persuasive 0.52

00:36:10.420 guy to get her to go after that 0.99

00:36:12.360 she must have been 1.00

00:36:13.720 did the Wall Street

00:36:16.840 experience because your books

00:36:18.420 are written, you can tell

00:36:21.420 in your command of the topic when you're reading your books,

00:36:25.540 you know how the world works. You just haven't been in a research

00:36:29.180 library. You understand, like when you write about this

00:36:33.420 in Founders, you've had a business background or a practical background

00:36:37.540 that you've seen how the world comes together.

00:36:40.760 You understand how people act in the real world, and you come to understand

00:36:44.760 historical actors, whether you're talking about ancient Greece in Rome or all the way forward to

00:36:49.360 today, that the way in which they behave has very little to do with the big analytic frameworks that

00:36:57.080 historians or economists or others use to try to understand their own time or to understand the

00:37:03.580 past. It gives you a real sense that when you go into the archives, for example, and look at

00:37:10.000 documents, that you're not just studying discursive strategies, which you're trying to

00:37:16.360 analyze and understand in some highfalutin kind of theoretical way. These are the traces of real

00:37:23.520 people making real decisions, sometimes under intense pressure, which you can only imagine

00:37:29.180 if you're sitting there as an historian two centuries or three centuries later in trying

00:37:36.900 to understand why they do what they did in the context that they did. That, I think, and also

00:37:43.160 the experience in business, gave me a real sympathy and an ability to connect with people

00:37:49.800 who are, who fit this founder's mindset, who see the world as a series of opportunities and who say,

00:38:00.420 I'm going to take a risk. My wife would say, you did the same thing, young man,

00:38:05.660 And when you decided I had a Ph.D., I was going out to look for, you know, jobs in the academic, typical academic job, job career direction.

00:38:15.340 And I sort of said, I think I'm going to go to Wall Street and see what's happening, what's really taking place there.

00:38:22.220 So, yeah.

00:38:23.060 And then to make the other shift to go back.

00:38:25.900 And then to give it then to sort of say, you know what, I could have a good career, but it's not what I want.

00:38:32.160 What I want is something that brings more of me, that gratifies more of me.

00:38:37.720 And that meant going back to teaching and then also to writing.

00:38:41.040 We're going to get back to the book in a second.

00:38:42.620 But how was it when you left Wall Street?

00:38:46.120 And that was obviously a formative experience, one of the key form of experience.

00:38:49.900 You go back now to one of the great universities in the South, right?

00:38:54.000 The University of the South.

00:38:55.540 And you're teaching what?

00:38:56.860 You go there and what do they have you teach?

00:38:58.460 I was teaching European history.

00:38:59.760 basically anything that fell into

00:39:02.420 because I had developed a really good

00:39:04.520 background in graduate school

00:39:05.920 French history, Spanish history

00:39:08.260 modern

00:39:10.720 history

00:39:11.440 a range of topics

00:39:14.520 not so much American history

00:39:16.780 that

00:39:17.600 became an interest and became

00:39:20.540 a professional interest later on

00:39:23.080 which I think also by the way

00:39:24.680 Steve has given me slightly a different

00:39:26.800 view of things

00:39:27.880 Yes. Because my background is not in the typical sets of problems and issues that American academic historians worry about, but coming at it from another completely different angle.

00:39:39.040 When did you get the idea that I'm teaching, I'm more fulfilled now, but I need to write? I need to actually manifest my understanding of the world?

00:39:49.420 Yeah, that that decision, Steve, was made for me by a book called How the Scots Invent of the Modern World, because I was still teaching at George Macy University and also at the Smithsonian.

00:39:59.160 But even again, I want to get back to what even look, that's one of my all time favorite books.

00:40:05.340 And that will change the way you look at the world. But even before that, to get to the first book was idea of a client.

00:40:12.080 when did you come to the decision that i'm just not going to be a professor i'm not actually going

00:40:18.780 to i'm actually going to write well part of it is the reality of the profession is you better

00:40:24.300 that's why they call it publish or perish so you've got to come out but you're a narrative

00:40:28.820 historian you're not i would call it a narrative historian that you these topics are bringing like

00:40:33.660 this you know that that's true you know i do i did you start oh yeah i did started doing very

00:40:38.920 sort of standard academic studies and works, turning my PhD thesis into a book to be published

00:40:46.660 by University Press, Yale University Press of London. That was the idea. They're still waiting

00:40:52.360 for the final manuscript of that book, as a matter of fact, from 1995. It was going to be

00:41:00.780 academic press. Very much so. And then I was approached to think about doing a book on not

00:41:07.340 the idea of progress, which I had been teaching a course on, but what about the opposite, the idea

00:41:11.800 of decline? And something went off in my head. A light went on and I sort of said, I could see

00:41:17.920 how you could do this in a really interesting way in a series of, let's say, 10 chapters.

00:41:24.240 So I actually sat down and in an afternoon typed up a single-spaced book proposal, about five pages

00:41:32.940 I want to get into this because so many people want to understand brilliant writer's process.

00:41:39.900 So when somebody talked to you about the idea, you went back, sat, you put the thing in the typewriter, totally blank piece of paper.

00:41:48.080 Tell me about the, when did that happen?

00:41:50.520 Well, what you also have to understand is that the writing springs out of the teaching.

00:41:55.180 because in addition to my courses for my always enthusiastic undergraduates,

00:42:04.220 I was also teaching courses, adult courses, at the Smithsonian.

00:42:09.560 And the Smithsonian lecture, the typical format for the courses at noon

00:42:14.700 and at 6 o'clock that I was teaching were eight-week courses.

00:42:21.440 You would come back to the Smithsonian for the summer? Is that what it would be?

00:42:24.420 No, this would be during the course of the year.

00:42:26.080 During the course of the year.

00:42:26.720 But we're going to earn a little extra cash.

00:42:29.060 It was my adult education was my side hustle.

00:42:32.060 But you flew back into D.C. to do it.

00:42:34.340 No, no.

00:42:35.740 We had moved back to D.C.

00:42:37.320 You had moved to D.C.

00:42:38.060 Yeah.

00:42:38.380 After a year at Swanee, after attending United Daughters of the Confederacy luncheons, my wife said, maybe we need.

00:42:48.960 I'm from Richmond, man.

00:42:49.860 Don't go there.

00:42:51.980 I know.

00:42:52.660 The University of South is a very special place.

00:42:55.400 It was for me because I was a big Civil War buff as a kid and appreciated the fact that the grandson of General Edmund Kirby Smith was my colleague at the University of the South.

00:43:09.980 That I understood and I took very seriously as part of that mission.

00:43:14.360 But for my wife, there had to be a change. 1.00

00:43:17.340 It's culture shock. 1.00

00:43:18.060 There's probably a movie in there somewhere.

00:43:20.180 It's a culture shock.

00:43:21.340 uh author herman one of the greats and i mean greats uh is with us uh in the house we're gonna

00:43:28.880 take a short commercial break founders fire is the book you want to kick off this celebratory

00:43:34.980 uh and commemorative season the 250th there's not a better place to start than this short break 0.89

00:43:40.540 back in a moment we rejoice when there's no more let's take down the ccp this year marks a critical 1.00

00:43:48.100 moment for our country as the opposition grows more aggressive and more unapologetic the fight 0.99

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00:44:00.980 the front lines fighting for freedom for more than 12 years they just don't deliver top-tier

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00:45:08.920 promo code Bannon for a free month of service.

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00:45:14.280 That's PatriotMobile.com slash Bannon or call 972-PATRIOT and join the team today.

00:45:23.020 Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.

00:45:28.260 Okay, I am here to announce that we're actually going to continue this conversation for another

00:45:32.820 hour, and we're going to do that on the Saturday show.

00:45:36.280 So I want everybody to, because there's so much to go through here and your other writings, I want to go back to process.

00:45:44.020 So you're back in D.C. and you're back in D.C. and I'm teaching at George Mason.

00:45:47.900 And then I'm also are you still teaching European history, still teaching European history, very much so, but also beginning to integrate some American history.

00:45:54.980 My biography of Joseph McCarthy, which was the second book after Idea of Decline, got me interested in approaching American history from a totally different view and taking a totally different view of Joe McCarthy in particular.

00:46:10.740 How did you not get banned just by doing it?

00:46:13.360 Oh, it was tough.

00:46:14.260 You wrote this book. It's one of my favorite. Your biography, and I've read, I think there's nine or ten biographies of McCarthy. Two, yours and M. Stanton Evans.

00:46:27.660 The only two.

00:46:28.640 Blacklisted by history.

00:46:29.620 Blacklisted by history, which Ann Calder said, the greatest book since the Bible. Your books, and I've read all of them, and I've read, what is it, Pogue's five volumes of General Marshall.

00:46:42.260 because you can't talk about McCarthy without General Marshall.

00:46:46.060 You are the only two that actually, not just give a fair thing,

00:46:50.920 but actually tell the story as it really should be told with the facts.

00:46:55.040 I think so, yeah.

00:46:55.900 Others are so, they're polemics.

00:46:57.600 They're just there to vilify.

00:46:58.940 Why did you pick, I could spend hours with you.

00:47:02.460 Why did you pick, why did you pick McCarthy?

00:47:04.320 First off, that's career suicide.

00:47:06.700 Why didn't you just, you just come out with a book that's kind of an intellectual

00:47:09.660 and it got great reviews and it did some it did some business because i guess christopher lash

00:47:16.140 there were others at the time more popular press talking about america's potential decline the

00:47:22.020 revolting hey i got for a first book and you hit right into the middle of that why do you then go

00:47:26.180 to mccarthy which this is the way to go to this is a ticket to palookaville nobody at the time

00:47:31.980 because i think stanton evans's book was 10 years later yeah if i remember correctly you're you're

00:47:38.360 You were the first guy to give McCarthy and just really tell the story the way it should be told with facts.

00:47:44.840 That's a way to go to to be to be go to go to go to publishing Siberia.

00:47:50.980 Well, I was the first one taking risk.

00:47:53.100 I was the first one through the window.

00:47:54.640 Let's put it that way.

00:47:55.400 And I took a lot of slings and arrows for that one.

00:47:57.620 Let me tell you, I had colleagues at George Mason who ceased to talk to me after that.

00:48:02.240 No, tell me about that.

00:48:03.180 Because George Mason was a conservative university.

00:48:05.200 Um, well, not, yeah, not, not so much in the history department or in the other liberal arts

00:48:11.340 departments. They were furious about a couple of things. They were furious, not just about the

00:48:16.780 political angle of the book, of course, because it was, it was a fair assessment of Joe McCarthy, 0.57

00:48:22.200 which in their minds automatically makes you an apologist for Joe McCarthy and for the Red

00:48:27.680 Scare and all the other terrible things. For the right wing. But there was also, they were also

00:48:32.220 furious because i dared to venture onto their territory their terrain american history i was

00:48:36.700 in europe you're supposed to stay in your lane don't you see in academia you're supposed to stay

00:48:40.420 in your lane in european history and stay there um and so by going and going into american history

00:48:47.420 i was an interloper you know it was like um it was like somebody crossing your land

00:48:52.420 works in academia very much so they were also furious steve because the book made the cover

00:49:00.760 of the New York Times magazine.

00:49:03.940 And photographers from New York Times

00:49:05.740 came out to shoot me in my office

00:49:07.940 and to have me pose at various places

00:49:11.560 to look like the investigator.

00:49:14.520 It was a piece that was, in fact,

00:49:17.560 M. Stanton, Evans was in it.

00:49:21.900 Also very much involved at that time

00:49:24.180 was an interest in the Venona decums,

00:49:27.480 which I'm beginning to expose,

00:49:28.920 That was the fact that the Red Scare was about a real communist.

00:49:31.620 McCarthy was right. 0.77

00:49:32.360 McCarthy was right.

00:49:33.520 That was the basic summary, the bald truth about the situation there.

00:49:38.520 And so the fact that this kid, who is a European history, who shouldn't be writing a book like this at all, is also drawing the attention of the New York Times.

00:49:50.200 Hover.

00:49:50.900 The sacred New York Times.

00:49:52.560 It was unforgivable.

00:49:53.640 Unforgivable.

00:49:54.000 So I just want to make sure, because I do not think people come up to anything and say,

00:49:58.220 sometimes you use references that we can't catch.

00:50:00.560 The Venona files, why were they so important?

00:50:03.600 They came out after the Soviet Union collapsed, the KGB files.

00:50:07.320 The declassified files came out.

00:50:09.420 But at the time, it was a code-breaking operation that was able to get into the messages that were passing back and forth

00:50:19.340 between Moscow and its embassies, particularly in KGB operations.

00:50:28.640 And this is one of those extraordinary situations in which the Venona decrypts didn't give U.S. intelligence and the FBI real-time intelligence

00:50:39.220 because the codes had been changed.

00:50:41.720 But it did give them a window onto past operations of who is involved in the United States as operating as assets of this and even direct secret agents of the Soviet Union.

00:50:55.000 It's what exposed finally and ultimately the treason of Alger Hiss.

00:51:01.660 It's what exposed finally the treason of the Rosenbergs. 0.53

00:51:06.100 A couple of big names. 0.65

00:51:07.540 It also exposed the treason of Harry Dexter White.

00:51:11.240 Big time.

00:51:11.840 Who had been FDR's Secretary of the Treasury.

00:51:14.540 Yeah, only set up Bretton Woods, the monetary system that we have today.

00:51:18.640 So there was a group of historians. 0.61

00:51:19.860 These were KGB agents.

00:51:22.020 These were essentially Russian spies.

00:51:24.620 So there was a group of historians.

00:51:26.500 And implied even I.F. Stone and some other people on the...

00:51:30.300 Who were obviously cooperating with...

00:51:32.120 Fellow travelers.

00:51:33.780 Or maybe even slightly more than just travelers, but were actually helping to drive the bus.

00:51:40.880 You're hitting pretty close to the thing where you get the founder of the nation, right?

00:51:44.340 I thought that the whole revelations that were coming out at that time about it ought to cause a re-evaluation of the role that Joe McCarthy and his colleagues had played in terms of exposing this communist conspiracy that was operating at the heart of the government during the New Deal years.

00:52:09.040 But that's where the left drew the line.

00:52:11.960 They could just barely swallow the expose of the Venona decrypts,

00:52:18.600 although they still have their doubts about whether Hal Gerhiss was not.

00:52:22.020 But Joe McCarthy couldn't go there.

00:52:24.140 Okay, we're going to continue this for another hour.

00:52:29.260 Founders Fire is the book.

00:52:31.580 If you want to kick off this season, which won't culminate on July 4th,

00:52:36.840 That will be one of the big things, but there are going to be other events afterwards, particularly around some of the campaigns in Long Island, in Brooklyn, all of it, as we remember the 250th of the founding of the revolutionary generation.

00:52:50.840 This book will, it's optimistic. It's a book that looks to the future and about America at her best.

00:52:59.020 This is why if you have a young person in your life, I strongly recommend you get a copy for yourself and a copy for a young person.

00:53:06.340 we're going to be back at 5 o'clock

00:53:09.560 we'll see you back in the war room

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Bannon's War Room - April 24, 2026

Episode 5325： Founder's Fire From 1776 Tp the Age Of Trump

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