Bannon's War Room - WarRoom Battleground EP 1079： The Power Of College Boards And Populist Colleges

00:00:00.000 This is the primal scream of a dying regime.

00:00:15.000 Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.

00:00:20.280 I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.

00:00:24.540 The people have had a belly full of it.

00:00:26.440 I know you don't like hearing that.

00:00:27.620 I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.

00:00:30.580 It's going to happen.

00:00:31.860 And where do people like that go to share the big line?

00:00:35.240 MAGA Media.

00:00:36.580 I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.

00:00:42.000 Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?

00:00:45.780 If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.

00:00:52.060 War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Band.

00:00:57.620 it's monday 31 august year of our lord 2026 paul glastris from the wash of monthly joins the

00:01:06.680 second time they've come out with a uh with their list of the best schools kind of the populist list

00:01:12.680 of schools uh colleges to think about they had a huge article paul in the wall street journal

00:01:19.180 fact i think it led it's the site for almost all the weekend about syracuse university a private

00:01:23.760 school up in new york state that's under tremendous economic pressures because of

00:01:28.700 they they kind of miscalculated acceptance acceptance rates people had other bids they

00:01:35.460 took them they're scrambling at the last second but the article goes into this kind of demographic

00:01:39.700 cliff and the problems of uh universities today particularly when people are asking the basic

00:01:46.680 question is it worth it is it demonstrable that my son or daughter are going to get much farther

00:01:52.880 their head in a profession in doing this uh are going to college or particularly there's so many

00:01:58.080 jobs out there do not require college degrees uh is it worth it uh your assessment and looking

00:02:04.140 through and doing the populist list here for the second year in a row looking at all the data

00:02:08.040 particularly all this new data that was available sir yeah syracuse is a great example of uh colleges

00:02:16.660 that, especially true of private colleges, they cost more. Students don't have the money.

00:02:24.300 They have to discount to get those students to come in. If they discount too much, they don't

00:02:30.780 bring in enough revenue to cover their costs. If they don't discount enough, the students don't

00:02:36.540 accept the offer, and they don't have enough students to fill the seats. And that is happening

00:02:42.640 all over the country. It's going to happen more. We're having a 20% decline over a decade in the

00:02:49.600 number of high school students graduating because of demography. And it's going to hit primarily

00:02:56.440 private colleges. Syracuse is a pretty big school, but it's going to hit those small,

00:03:02.980 non-selective liberal arts schools the hardest. Those are places where a lot of working class

00:03:08.800 students go. We know from studies that half those students will not transfer to another school.

00:03:16.240 They're going to be lost to the system. And it's true that there are opportunities out there

00:03:21.620 to make a middle-class wage and not get a college degree. But very few of those opportunities

00:03:28.700 don't require some post-secondary education. Maybe a certificate, maybe two or three certificates.

00:03:35.240 If you can get into apprenticeship, well, look, that's about the same as going to college.

00:03:40.000 It's years of study, you know, most of it on the job, but some of it in classrooms.

00:03:45.000 So you can't escape the need for post-secondary education, at least a little bit of it.

00:03:51.940 And, you know, there is help on the way.

00:03:55.720 The current administration passed the workforce Pell program that will provide, for the first

00:04:02.740 time, students who are taking short-term credential courses, they'll cover their costs. So some of

00:04:10.300 that is happening. But for the most part, if you want to maximize your chance of entering or staying

00:04:17.540 in the middle class, you're going to need a BA degree. And most of the projections are that we're

00:04:22.920 not going to have enough of them to fill society's needs. So I take issue with people that say,

00:04:28.000 we don't need, we don't need college. We do. Most people that say that want their kids to go to

00:04:33.560 college. So, but we do need other options also. And we need some change in Washington to save

00:04:41.460 the, these schools, you know, that are struggling. And look, one of the geniuses of the American

00:04:48.800 system is that we have decent colleges spread all over the country that cater to everybody,

00:04:56.660 not just the elite. This is what separates us. This is what separated us from Europe in the

00:05:02.560 20th century. No other country did that. And to lose a bunch of our colleges, especially the ones

00:05:08.940 in the more struggling areas, I think that'd be a betrayal. And so we have a story by Kevin

00:05:15.440 Carey in the current issue, How to Fix Higher Education, that suggests a new model for the

00:05:25.700 compact between the federal government and universities. And I'd urge you all to consider

00:05:31.380 it because we need to do something and we're not talking about it. So where do people go

00:05:38.280 to get the magazine, the rankings, particularly the rural, if they're so inclined, and to really

00:05:44.660 dive into this, see all the articles you've got? Best way to do it is go to WashingtonMonthly.com.

00:05:51.260 It's right there in the front.

00:05:52.740 Click on College Guide, and you'll get our main rankings, which we call Best Colleges

00:05:58.700 for your tuition and tax dollars.

00:06:01.760 And we break that down, by the way.

00:06:03.780 That's 1,400 colleges.

00:06:04.980 Compare every decent-sized four-year college to any other and see which one is best for

00:06:11.120 you.

00:06:11.980 And then we break that down by region, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Midwest, and West.

00:06:18.620 And then we have Best Colleges for Rural America.

00:06:22.200 This is what we talked about.

00:06:23.720 And there's an introductory essay that explains how we did it.

00:06:27.820 And then we have Best Colleges for Research.

00:06:30.820 And there you're going to find literally what I said,

00:06:33.820 Best Colleges that are producing the scholarship that drives economic growth and human flourishing,

00:06:41.940 where a lot of the land-grant universities do very, very well.

00:06:45.260 um so you'll you'll find a lot of information and and as we say it's this is the best best

00:06:53.360 colleges for your tuition and tax dollars because we all have a a stake at this stake in this it's

00:07:00.180 not just people paying tuition even if you're out of college every year you're being charged

00:07:05.180 seventeen hundred dollars at every level of government for the half trillion dollars we put

00:07:11.040 into the higher education system and it's good that we do that but we want a better return

00:07:15.960 we want you know college to be less punishing less uh economically punishing and and more of a roi

00:07:23.720 and we want our students to become good citizens and that's what we're trying to measure with these

00:07:29.540 rankings paul it's a ton of work thank you for doing it particularly going through all the new

00:07:35.940 data coming off the rural list and um glad uh that the land-grant universities got a shot they

00:07:41.660 were the they were the uh the gleam in the eye of president lincoln when he's fighting the civil war

00:07:46.360 to get their land-grant universities out there so thank you so much uh do you have a what is your

00:07:50.760 do you have a twitter handle people can follow you uh at glastris g-l-a-s-t-r-i-s i hope they

00:07:57.360 will and follow the washington thank you brother appreciate you we will do that and thanks for

00:08:05.360 guys putting out the list again kind of the populist alternative to the wall street journal

00:08:10.300 u.s news and world report and forbes which all kind of look the same those lists you know

00:08:16.440 stanford harvard princeton always changing up at the top maybe mit on occasion uh jeremy wayne tate

00:08:26.320 sir the it's classic learning test first off what is that you've got a pretty hot tweet that just

00:08:34.120 came out about the, what the college board, you're saying the individual, the CEO of the

00:08:39.740 college board has more power over colleges and more power over individuals life than has been

00:08:46.700 recognized before. But first off, what is classic learning test, sir? Yeah. Steve Bannon, great to

00:08:53.540 be on the show. Thanks for having me. So the classic learning test, it may sound boring and

00:08:57.880 sleepy. We're an alternative to the SAT and ACT. A lot of folks don't know this, but the

00:09:03.180 the organization referenced in this tweet, the College Board, is the single most influential

00:09:09.720 organization in American education. It shapes the minds of all of our brightest students. All of

00:09:15.620 them take what's called AP or advanced placement. And through AP, through AP U.S. History, AP World,

00:09:22.280 AP Human Geography, students get a profoundly distorted view of God, of man, of the West,

00:09:28.260 of America. No kid takes AP U.S. history and then thinks, wow, I'm so grateful to live in this

00:09:34.460 country. America is the big bad bully. And David Coleman has been the leader of this organization 0.98

00:09:40.160 for 12 years. He's a radical lefty kind of guy. And he has given open praise himself to the

00:09:48.640 Confucius Institutes and the Chinese Communist Party influence on the college board's AP curriculum.

00:09:58.700 So hang on. Let's go back to the college board. Why do you say, just walk us through the mechanics one more time. Why do you say that the guy that runs the college board is the most influential person in higher learning? Because you would think, I don't know, maybe the president of Harvard or one of these great intellectuals.

00:10:15.680 What is it about the mechanics of the system and where the college board fits in there that gives him that much power?

00:10:23.380 I noticed in your tweet, you've got him in front of the Time Magazine, 100 Most Influential People in the World, which is a list that they put out.

00:10:34.040 I was actually on that list one year, and it's not a random list.

00:10:38.300 They kind of go through what you've accomplished.

00:10:39.900 Why was he on it, and why is he so influential and powerful?

00:10:45.680 Yeah, before coming to the College Board, and the College Board sounds like a board. It's just a company. It's just a company that has tremendous power that flies under the radar. It is the most powerful company that most Americans have never heard of. They think, oh, it's some conglomerate of colleges. No, it's really it operates like a single company with David Coleman at the helm.

00:11:06.600 And the reason he's the most influential is because it touches nearly every American student, right?

00:11:12.700 So many students now, tens of millions, take advanced placement.

00:11:17.860 And through, I'll give you one example of this, right?

00:11:20.200 This was AP Human Geography.

00:11:22.480 And there was a question and a girl took a picture of it and posted it on Instagram and Twitter and it blew up.

00:11:28.100 So what was the question?

00:11:29.280 The question said it gave the kids two tables, death rates and birth rates.

00:11:33.460 And then it said, based on the tables, which country has made the most advances in female empowerment?

00:11:40.100 Again, all they had was birth rates and death rates. 0.92

00:11:42.520 And the correct answer was France, because France had the lowest birth rate. 0.96

00:11:48.100 So they're just connecting ideologically, not having babies, to female empowerment.

00:11:53.560 And that is very par for the course with this organization, right?

00:11:56.780 Giving kids a distorted view of the American system of government.

00:12:00.460 And so what we're doing at the classic learning test is building an alternative, because this is the one thing I think, Steve, that nearly everyone in education agrees on, is that the test, especially the college entrance exam, shapes curriculum, right? Teachers teach the test for better or worse, right?

00:12:18.240 You look at the old Harvard entrance exam, which was basically just translating Greek and Latin.

00:12:23.620 But what that did was it shaped the education up to Harvard for hundreds of years.

00:12:30.000 And now because the College Board has gone in this anti-American, more radical direction and clearly partnering with the Chinese Communist Party, it has had a tremendously corrosive effect on American education.

00:12:44.860 So let me just say this right.

00:12:46.460 The College Board itself doesn't set inside the curriculum for the AP courses, but the College Board sets up the College Board overall test for math and English, but it also sets up the AP test also.

00:12:58.300 And so that's how they're the governing mechanism because people see it and go, oh, we got to teach the test.

00:13:03.640 So this company that very few people know the reach of it can actually control curriculum and have such a dramatic impact because of the way they actually set up the test.

00:13:16.460 Yeah, 100%. And for your listeners right now, I mean, I bet a large percent of them have students right now that are taking courses like AP US and AP government, AP lit. I mean, think about AP literature. I'm a Christian. I believe that Christians have the very best literary tradition in the history of the world.

00:13:36.580 look at the recommended readings for AP Lit. You get a tiny little bit of Shakespeare, but it's all

00:13:42.140 just global perspectives, right? Robbie George, who's one of the most, maybe the most influential

00:13:48.200 American public intellectual who's actually a conservative, he says the influence of the

00:13:53.460 college board is the single greatest source of mission drift for Christian schools and Catholic

00:13:59.620 schools in the country. They've been doing this a long time. They've been around since 1899,

00:14:04.460 And they've managed to somehow fly under the radar where a lot of people, even people in power, don't understand.

00:14:12.520 But everybody knows, oh, this is one organization that controls AP, that controls the SAT.

00:14:18.680 And it really is. And David Coleman was also the chief architect of the Common Core Standards, which, as you know, anti-Western, anti-classics, very anti-classics.

00:14:29.520 The math is all kinds of bizarre math. They're getting rid of traditional math.

00:14:34.200 Well, Coleman was the chief architect of the Common Core, and then he came to be the CEO

00:14:39.280 of the College Board and align the SAT with the Common Core.

00:14:46.180 Oh, my Lord.

00:14:47.340 The Common Core was a firestorm for years.

00:14:50.460 I thought that was gone.

00:14:51.200 So hang on for a second.

00:14:52.280 The College Board as a company, I mean, how do they have this power?

00:14:56.040 I thought, didn't ACT come up a couple of years ago because people were questioning,

00:15:00.800 forget the wokeness of it and all that, but people were questioning,

00:15:03.720 the actual effectiveness of it?

00:15:06.920 Didn't they have a competitor, ACT, come up?

00:15:09.060 Because they don't control that.

00:15:10.260 That's a separate organization.

00:15:12.580 Yeah, so the college board forms in 1899 at Columbia.

00:15:17.240 They launched the SAT in 1926.

00:15:20.400 And they're the only game in town,

00:15:21.900 and nobody's really heard about it

00:15:23.020 until after World War II, GI Bill,

00:15:25.480 huge influx of college applicants.

00:15:27.460 And the SAT is there as a sorting mechanism

00:15:30.220 for Harvard and Brown and Columbia.

00:15:32.900 you. ACT launches in 1959 with a critique of the SAT, and they say, look, what the SAT does is

00:15:40.420 not fair. They measure on aptitude, intellectual horsepower, cognitive ability. What students

00:15:46.300 should be taught on, measured on, is what they learn in the classroom. And to most people,

00:15:51.180 that sounds good. Sure, they should be measuring what they learn in the classroom until you stop

00:15:55.120 and you say, wait a minute, what classroom? Are we talking about a Jewish day school? Are we

00:15:58.760 talking about a Montessori school, a Catholic school, a Christian school, right? A classical

00:16:03.420 school. And it became very clear over time as both the SAT and ACT aligned with the Common Core

00:16:10.700 that it was public school and public school only. And you look at the departure now that

00:16:17.300 the public schools have made from traditional American education, right? 100% of America's

00:16:24.320 founders, 100%, were classically educated. These were men who were baptized into Western

00:16:31.560 civilization. They knew the great books. They knew Plato's Republic, right? They knew the great books.

00:16:39.380 And we have seen this radical departure from this for this new education that's very utilitarian,

00:16:46.180 but really aims to deconstruct Western civilization.

00:16:54.320 So, it really is an issue.

00:17:03.380 We're looking to raise awareness right now.

00:17:05.820 Again, we've met with a lot of people at the legislative level, people in elected office

00:17:09.580 who just aren't aware.

00:17:11.020 They've heard of AP, they've heard of the SAT, they've heard of the PSAT, but they're

00:17:15.480 not aware that it is one organization, the college board, pulling the strings behind

00:17:20.680 all of this.

00:17:21.440 And again, Robbie George, top Princeton professor, intellectual conservative, who has identified the college board again as the number one source of mission drift for Christian schools and Catholic schools around the country.

00:17:36.220 So what we're trying to do, Steve, at the Classic Learning Test is build an alternative. If tests shape curriculum, if tests shape what happens in the classroom, students should be reading.

00:17:46.420 They should be seeing on the top test Ben Franklin, John Locke, Abraham Lincoln, the giants that made our country great.

00:17:57.080 We've been doing this 11 years now.

00:17:59.520 Pete Hegseth recently endorsed the classic learning test as the new gold standard for West Point, for the U.S. Naval Academy, for the Air Force Academy.

00:18:10.460 The University of Texas system just came on board.

00:18:13.200 The University of Florida system is now on board.

00:18:16.420 And so state after state, especially red states, are waking up and they're realizing that the college board is toxic and that we need a serious competitor who is willing to stand up and say, no, Western Civ is excellent.

00:18:31.100 It's great. We're going to stop suppressing this tradition for young people and we're going to do our part.

00:18:37.200 I think that's the important part. This tradition has been passed down from generation to generation to generation for millennia.

00:18:46.420 And we have come so close to losing it, right?

00:18:51.200 What was education for every previous generation?

00:18:54.560 It was these two things.

00:18:55.660 It was passing down the great books, the Western intellectual tradition, but it was also this moral formation.

00:19:04.160 It was a cultivation of virtue.

00:19:06.380 The educated man or woman was self-controlled, right?

00:19:10.600 The educated man or woman was generous, was kind, right?

00:19:15.960 You look on a map of the United States where folks are the most generous with their money.

00:19:22.180 It's all in red states.

00:19:23.880 It's all in the southeast, right, where they've received this more traditional education that's aimed at the cultivation of virtue.

00:19:32.740 But that's what we need to get back to, I think, in a major way.

00:19:38.380 It's amazing.

00:19:39.360 It's an amazing effort that you're undertaking.

00:19:42.000 OK, first off, I want to immerse people in information.

00:19:44.460 So where do they go? Because this is the first time people are hearing this.

00:19:48.040 They just thought the college board is something they had to sweat it out, you know, in their junior year of college to start or high school to start.

00:19:54.360 And you had to perform. If you didn't perform on it, you weren't going to get your first pick.

00:19:58.240 So where do people go to find out the effort you're leading right now? What's the website?

00:20:03.880 Yeah, cltexam.com. This past year, we had over 350,000 students took the CLT.

00:20:12.420 Because, Steve, this is the other part. The way the SAT and ACT actually compete against each other is by becoming the dumber test over time, right? Think about it. The easier test is going to be the way to scholarships and admissions. And so it's over the years it has forced these tests. 0.57

00:20:31.400 So I was at an Ivy League just a few months ago, and they were saying more than half of

00:20:36.220 their applicants now have well over 1,500 on the SAT, meaning the tool is no longer

00:20:42.060 doing what the tool was designed to do, whereas CLT now is coming in.

00:20:47.880 Hang on.

00:20:49.380 Hang on.

00:20:50.440 Hang on.

00:20:51.460 Over half or over 1,500?

00:20:55.520 Is that what you just told me?

00:20:56.820 That's right.

00:20:57.400 When I graduated high school in 2000, back then there were about a dozen perfect

00:21:01.180 SATs per year. Now it's about 4,000 or 5,000 students get a perfect 1,600 in the SAT per year.

00:21:09.000 ACT has the same problem, right? Because college counselors, they recommend these tests and they

00:21:14.640 recommend the easier tests, but it's reached now a point of absurdity. And I think that's why

00:21:19.260 Secretary Hegseth realized this is a national security issue, right? Not only has the college

00:21:25.020 board pushed American education away from the Western classical tradition, but it has also

00:21:31.580 lowered academic standards at the same time to where these tests are just not serious anymore.

00:21:40.220 Unbelievable. Where do people go to find out more about the classic test?

00:21:46.300 Yeah, cltexam.com. You can follow me on x at jeremytate41. I also, Steve, want to give a

00:21:54.020 special shout out to my friend, Delois Stallman. If America is going to be saved, it is going to

00:21:59.980 be homeschool mamas like Delois who are going to make it happen. So thanks so much for having me 0.92

00:22:05.340 on your show. Yeah, she's fantastic. One of the great grassroots leaders of the Commonwealth of 0.99

00:22:11.740 Virginia, of course, a homeschool mom. Brother, thank you so much. Look forward to having you

00:22:16.020 back on is there a pile in there today find out about this if you if you consider what jeremy's

00:22:23.640 talking about jeremy wayne tate and you think about the colleges that uh that paul just went

00:22:30.060 through kind of poppy's and you then look at what's going down at texas how we started the show

00:22:35.320 an hour or so ago with this uh with this testimony you understand that the other side

00:22:41.400 gets this they understand formation is everything that you form the younger generations and you're

00:22:46.540 close to civilizational victory uh neil mccabe at the white house neil i got you and cleo i want to

00:22:55.040 go to you before we go to break i got about three or four minutes the all afternoon we were only able

00:23:00.440 to touch on it at the end of the morning show i know you and i discussed over the weekend we had

00:23:04.440 post so on but there was a major security breach i guess over the last week or so that was

00:23:10.960 manifest in the washington post in their sunday edition about the uh the really the deployment

00:23:16.220 of our assets militarily and and kind of a real-time method this is a highly secure high

00:23:22.240 high security report that only goes to a handful of people including the commander-in-chief and

00:23:27.800 obviously the uniformed military it's put together by the uh by the individual uh staffs of the

00:23:33.760 joint staff, the Navy, the Army, et cetera. And there was a firestorm that it leaked, but also

00:23:38.880 as importantly, there was a firestorm that it leaked that there was non-concurrence and kind

00:23:43.120 of the current global deployment plan of our military. Can you get us up to date on what

00:23:49.240 you've learned today at the White House, sir? Right. So you had, you know, of course, this is

00:23:56.380 the document that's written and approved by the Secretary of War every two or three weeks. And

00:24:01.980 it's the document that everyone relies on as they become as they make their operational tactical

00:24:07.660 decisions there were four non-concurs the chief of naval operations and the commanders of PACCOM

00:24:16.640 European Command and Southern Command and I'll quote uh this is was quoted in the Washington

00:24:22.900 Post but the CNO the chief of naval operations he put in you know he submitted that his own

00:24:29.940 comments, he says, I will execute this, but I am formally putting on record that I disagree

00:24:36.780 with the risk being accepted. And so that's strong stuff. Of the four non-concurs, only one of them

00:24:44.800 is a holdover from President Biden, and that's Admiral Paparo, who is the commander of Pacific

00:24:52.500 Command. Interestingly, the commander of European Command, General Christopher Donahue, who was the

00:24:59.560 last boot to leave Afghanistan. He was fired by War Secretary Hegseth. And so his last act as a

00:25:07.120 four-star on active duty was issuing his non-concur. And so you want the non-concurs, you want

00:25:13.720 deliberation. The problem is you don't want to tell people why people are non-concurring. And

00:25:20.740 also in this document, it says that Central Command has 50,000 troops on standby through 2017

00:25:28.740 excuse me to uh 2020 uh 2027 so that's what that's uh two divisions and probably some

00:25:35.880 sustainment brigades and so you maybe don't want that out there either and so again it was a it

00:25:42.780 was a difficult read for people who care about our efforts and the safety of our troops but it

00:25:48.580 was a fun read for the persians and those people who do not wish the best for the united states steve

00:25:54.800 Neil in fact I'll ask you this and answer it on the other side we're gonna take a short commercial

00:26:02.020 break here in a moment when you got the CNO and then Pacific Command Pacific Command I think is

00:26:08.280 always a Navy Admiral maybe there's been a one that they've had Air Force in there and in the

00:26:13.540 Navy Admiral there is pretty highly thought of you essentially have all the voices of the senior

00:26:19.860 Naval Command saying, we don't concur with this. This is about this deployment schedule. We'll get

00:26:25.240 more into it. But it's shocking that it got leaked. And MSMEC and CNN are all over this all day.

00:26:32.580 So we'll get more into it. Number one, how it got leaked and about the non-concurrence with really

00:26:37.420 the asset deployment, deployment of our assets, our military assets throughout the world.

00:26:43.740 Neil McCabe will join us back in the White House in just a moment. Take your phone at

00:26:47.000 Text Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N-9-8-9-8-9-8, the ultimate guide, not kind of a guide,

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00:31:24.340 Washington Post reports, quote, several U.S. military leaders have advised Defense Secretary

00:31:29.480 Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable

00:31:34.880 and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland.

00:31:40.340 That's according to people familiar with a recent assessment prepared for the Pentagon chief.

00:31:45.340 The Pentagon told the Post they do not discuss internal operational processes.

00:31:50.140 But if you want a sense of the public posture from this administration, look no further than this AI video posted by the president of the United States.

00:31:58.920 His fantasy version of Iran's Karg Island being blown to smithereens.

00:32:04.080 The president has also vowed a response to Iranian missiles intercepted before they could hit U.S. bases in Jordan.

00:32:10.100 Telling Fox News, we're going to hit them hard.

00:32:16.240 Neil McCabe at the White House, what kind of jeopardy this put our forces in?

00:32:21.820 Because this is a pretty detailed, I mean, it's not that many people know about this.

00:32:27.060 It's very, very highly classified, done twice a month to make sure there's an overall view of exactly where everything is and everybody is.

00:32:37.260 There's a lot of questions.

00:32:38.580 Did the military itself leak this?

00:32:40.040 They're going to get to the bottom of it.

00:32:41.240 I'm sure it's going to be a massive investigation.

00:32:43.580 Your thoughts on this, sir?

00:32:48.040 First of all, I would be very curious if outgoing General Donahue, maybe someone close to him.

00:32:56.660 He was very close to Milley his whole career, and perhaps he had something to do with this getting out.

00:33:02.860 I have no evidence for that, but that's my first scan.

00:33:06.500 Second of all, the leak also talked about, you know, 25% of our Reaper drones have been lost in action and that 25% of our destroyers are offline.

00:33:18.520 And the commanders were saying that we are getting strained because we can't complete our mission because everything is being pulled to support the effort in the Middle East.

00:33:30.760 And so that's obviously a signal to people all over the world that, you know, our lines are thin everywhere but the Middle East.

00:33:40.240 And so you basically this document gives our enemies a roadmap of our vulnerabilities.

00:33:46.020 And it isn't their analysis of what's vulnerable.

00:33:49.860 It's our own leadership saying what's vulnerable, which makes it so damning, Steve.

00:33:54.640 yeah no the the non-concurrences are kind of shocking particularly like i said it's 100

00:34:02.240 percent of the naval is senior leadership when we get the cno and you got paccom because paccom is

00:34:07.120 a is kind of the navy's uh navy zone anyway neil uh social media where do people get your

00:34:12.080 to continue your reporting also there's any breaking news out of asheville north carolina

00:34:16.740 absolutely you can find me on all the socials at reporter mccabe and you can also check out

00:34:26.020 my groundbreaking columns at the south shore press steve thank you neil appreciate you thanks

00:34:33.440 for sticking around now we're going to go to the far pacific which is the central pacific is the

00:34:42.180 central pivot strategic pivot of hemispheric defense if you read through that report the uh

00:34:49.280 of uh the washington post you realize we have not pivoted to hemispheric defense yet

00:34:53.740 but we got to that's why the budget's got to be in line with the strategy we've got a strategy

00:34:59.840 but we're not aligning not aligning the budget cleo pascal you're there for a big conference

00:35:06.080 they're having won the shanghai cooperation organization which is kind of the counter to

00:35:11.060 G20 and counter to the West is meeting and they're plotting, particularly about the primacy of the

00:35:19.260 dollar's reserve currency, but much more. In fact, India is thrown in with them. India is

00:35:24.460 their charter member of that. What's happening out in the Pacific? The Chinese Communist Party

00:35:29.200 still trying to make inroads, ma'am? They certainly are. So first of all, where am I?

00:35:34.780 I'm in Palau, and how did I get here?

00:35:37.400 I flew from North America to Japan, and then flew from Japan to America.

00:35:42.420 I flew down to Guam, and then from Guam, I flew another couple hours here.

00:35:47.040 So just to remember how big the U.S. is, Guam is just a couple hours away from here.

00:35:53.320 This is the country which fought the Battle of Peleliu. 0.70

00:35:57.140 This is where Pete Ellis died in the famous Marine in the early 1920s as he was trying to figure out what the Japanese were doing here.

00:36:05.240 This was the headquarters for the entire Japanese mandate from about they controlled the center of the Pacific from 1914 to about 1944.

00:36:14.720 And on the same day that they bombed Pearl Harbor, they took the Philippines and they took Guam and they pushed the U.S. back to Hawaii. 0.97

00:36:21.500 And that's basically what the Chinese would like to do. 0.98

00:36:25.080 and they've put it on the record. Admiral Keating in 2008-2009 said it before a Senate hearing that

00:36:32.040 a Chinese official had said, why don't you take Hawaii East and we'll take Hawaii West and don't

00:36:37.180 worry, we'll keep it all under control. And they're trying to action that. They're trying to make sure 0.97

00:36:42.660 that the U.S. is cut off from allies in Japan and in Korea and in Australia, obviously. And they've

00:36:50.300 taken a very close look at the World War II map, as Toshio Shahar has written about, if anybody's

00:36:55.540 interested. And part of it is through political warfare. And so there is this major regional

00:37:01.780 event happening now, the Pacific Island Forum meeting. It has 18 members, which includes

00:37:08.000 Australia and New Zealand, but not the United States, even though the U.S. is a Pacific power,

00:37:13.180 even though American Samoa and I think Guam now are associate members. And three of the countries

00:37:18.820 recognize Taiwan, and one of them is the country that is hosting this event. Palau recognizes

00:37:23.680 Taiwan. So the Taiwanese foreign minister is here. This drives Beijing crazy. The president

00:37:31.500 of Palau put on the record two days ago that he was personally threatened by Chen Bo, who's the

00:37:39.540 Chinese representative for the Pacific Islands, with retaliation if the Taiwanese would attend.

00:37:46.740 He's a very strong, courageous leader.

00:37:49.120 There's some amazing people here showing the kind of guts that actually we really need in Washington and elsewhere.

00:37:55.460 And he basically said, hey, it's my country.

00:37:58.900 You know, we're going to do what is good for our country.

00:38:01.580 And he stood up to them. 1.00

00:38:03.380 But the Chinese have been playing every single card they have. 0.97

00:38:07.400 Five leaders are not coming, including from countries that are very closely aligned to China. 0.76

00:38:12.320 one who came and then immediately had to go on a plane to get back was the prime minister of the

00:38:18.820 Solomon Islands because the new government in Solomon Islands have been trying to free

00:38:22.840 their country and remember Solomon Islands is where Guadalcanal was fought from Chinese grips

00:38:28.300 and so suddenly out of nowhere a vote of no confidence was mooted in Solomon Islands and he

00:38:35.400 had to rush back. So last night at the opening ceremony, there was a handover from the Solomon

00:38:42.680 Islands, who hosted the Pacific Island foreign meeting last year, to the new Palau chairmanship.

00:38:50.640 And the speech was made by the foreign minister, not the prime minister of Solomon Islands. And

00:38:55.740 it was a very powerful and emotional speech. And everybody in the room could see what happens when

00:39:02.280 china tries to take over your country and to that end just to make it really clear the chinese have 1.00

00:39:07.800 have played their cards but but i think they've played them badly i think that this was a failure 0.99

00:39:12.960 for the chinese i think that they've um pulled out their assets yeah yeah no they're overplaying 0.94

00:39:21.160 the hair but i want to get to the hangover for a second let's put a pin in that we're going to come

00:39:23.920 back to it first of all the solomon in the solomon islands that slot is where um where jack

00:39:29.280 Kennedy, right, became a naval hero. Now, he's the first to admit his patrol boat, his

00:39:34.660 patrol torpedo boat, PT boat, got cut in two by a Japanese destroyer. He says, hey, that's the

00:39:43.140 reason I became a hero, right, because they cut it in two, but it's there. Talk to the audience

00:39:47.620 just briefly. Peleliu. I mean, people didn't pay attention to this in the 20s and 30s,

00:39:53.700 And eventually, America had to pay a price to get these strategic islands back, particularly Peleliu.

00:40:00.540 You could argue yard for yard.

00:40:04.080 Peleliu may be the toughest and nastiest battle of World War II, and I'm including Normandy and Bastogne, Terawa, Aguata Canal, some pretty North Africa, Kazareen Pass, and a bunch of the 8th Air Corps stuff.

00:40:21.740 Peleliu, the United States of America has fought and left a lot of blood in Peleliu, did it not, ma'am?

00:40:28.540 Yes, this is a heart-rending battle.

00:40:31.620 And going to Peleliu, you see it all over the island.

00:40:35.760 The relics are there.

00:40:37.180 You can see how narrow the beaches were.

00:40:40.600 This was supposed to last four or five days.

00:40:43.120 It lasted months.

00:40:44.460 The island is about five square miles.

00:40:47.080 The Japanese had dug in.

00:40:48.700 They had had, because as mentioned, this location was the headquarters for the whole Japanese mandate, which covers what's now Federal States of Indonesia, Marshall Islands, the whole center of the Pacific. 0.74

00:40:59.120 So they knew that this day was coming and they had dug this cave system.

00:41:05.180 They had fortified the beach approaches and they used it a different method.

00:41:09.840 They didn't attack the U.S. so much on the beaches, which they did obviously kill a lot of young Americans on the beaches. 0.94

00:41:16.960 But then they let them come in. And the fight was just horrific. And the Japanese on the island at that point knew that they weren't going to get reinforcements. And so they were going to fight to the death. And they had had decades to prepare for this fight to provision. 0.75

00:41:36.040 They knew the lay of the land. And it's heartrending.

00:41:40.560 And in fact, they just found just a few months ago a mass grave of Japanese soldiers here.

00:41:46.840 And who found it was U.S. Marines, because the U.S. Marines are back on Peleliu.

00:41:51.540 They're rebuilding the old runway. They're clearing the roads.

00:41:55.340 This is this whole old battle plan and field is back in action.

00:42:00.280 well this i want to go to the chinese communist party when you said about admiral keeney back at

00:42:06.620 testimony where they approach him and say hey look we'll take hawaii west you take hawaii east

00:42:11.940 is essentially the japanese asian co-prosperity sphere that's the strategy of the chinese

00:42:18.120 communist party and they've been hell-bent for leather over decades to kind of roll that out

00:42:23.420 between economic and political warfare, correct?

00:42:27.020 That is.

00:42:27.680 So I reframe it as China's co-option of prosperity sphere

00:42:34.220 because their structure, their economic structure is very different.

00:42:37.340 It's a very parasitic engagement.

00:42:39.580 So they're sucking out capital, human resources, natural resources.

00:42:44.620 They leave devastation behind them.

00:42:48.480 And you can see it in the fisheries and elsewhere.

00:42:51.460 It's just horrific what's going on across the region.

00:42:54.900 And they're using this entropic warfare approach where they'll create the fragmentation and

00:42:59.440 disintegration of political, economic, and social structures.

00:43:02.760 We know this from the US.

00:43:05.040 This is the fentanyl approach, where if somebody won't bow to you, you weaken them and try

00:43:10.520 to destroy them until they have no choice.

00:43:13.280 They can't stand up anymore. 0.95

00:43:15.060 And so that's what they're doing across the Pacific to the people of the Pacific.

00:43:18.860 And that's what they're doing at this very moment in Solomon Islands.

00:43:22.780 They're trying to bring down this incredibly courageous government.

00:43:27.740 You know, we talk a lot. 0.96

00:43:29.000 We know the Chinese playbook, and you can see it very clearly in the Pacific Islands. 1.00

00:43:33.380 The question is, can we put together a playbook on how to counter that? 1.00

00:43:37.600 And you can also do that in the Pacific Islands because the levers are so clear on the Chinese 0.97

00:43:41.480 side. 0.99

00:43:41.860 It should be clear how to counter that.

00:43:43.660 I'm not just talking about the US.

00:43:44.940 Japan is here.

00:43:45.700 Taiwan is here.

00:43:46.500 there are a lot of countries in the region who know what this means if the Chinese win. And in

00:43:52.800 the case of the Solomon Islands, they emancipated themselves. Everybody's going around saying

00:43:58.380 Solomon Islands is lost. There's, you know, the Chinese have it. But the Solomon Islanders 1.00

00:44:02.820 themselves figured out a way of coming up from the depths and grabbing a breath of air and getting

00:44:08.840 control over their government. And now the Chinese are trying to drown them again. But I think we 1.00

00:44:14.260 should be learning from the Sullivan Islanders about how they did it. They understood the political

00:44:18.100 warfare operations of the Chinese in a way, functionally and operationally, that nobody

00:44:22.580 else I've seen in Washington certainly has. So listening to the people who are Regent President

00:44:27.300 Whips, who stood up to the Chinese when they tried to threaten him, their national security

00:44:32.700 office here is excellent. There are some real fighters here, and that's the only reason that

00:44:37.880 the U.S. has not been pushed back to Hawaii yet. Was the personal threat, was that the Solomon 0.72

00:44:46.300 president in the turnover, or was that the president of Peleliu saying that he's under

00:44:50.760 personal threat? Who actually made that statement that they've been personally threatened by official

00:44:56.720 members of the Chinese Communist Party? There was a meeting in Fiji, which was attended by

00:45:03.000 the president of Palau, which is where I am now, which is where Peleliu is. And Chen Bo, who is

00:45:09.540 China's representative to the Pacific Islands, insisted on meeting with him. And at that meeting,

00:45:15.880 he requested, put it mildly, that Palau not invite Taiwan to attend this meeting,

00:45:22.680 the Pacific Island Forum meeting. And when the president of Palau, President Sir Angle Whips

00:45:28.420 Jr., who has family in Baltimore, said no. Chen Bo said, well, then we're going to have to retaliate.

00:45:37.020 And at that point, the president kind of, you know, more than stood his ground and said, you know,

00:45:44.820 we're going to do what we want. And Chen Bo said, you're a little country. And the president said,

00:45:50.740 yeah, but we're a country. And then reportedly he said, and I'm not, I don't talk to you. I only

00:45:57.460 talked to Xi. And then he got up and walked off. These are incredible people. I mean, I would like

00:46:03.380 to see the look on Anthony Blinken's face to see how the president of Palau handles the Chinese.

00:46:10.620 These are, they know what they need to do in order to survive. You don't cut deals with these guys.

00:46:16.460 You don't, you know, they're not going to give you something if you give them something. They're

00:46:22.220 just going to take what you got and then get more. On this map, you can see Palau is at the extreme

00:46:27.440 left of it. And Hawaii is kind of at the right, up at the top. And you can see Guam is just kind of

00:46:35.680 above and to the right of Palau and Northern Mariana Islands, also U.S. territory. And

00:46:41.720 the U.S. is a security risk to the region because remember, Chinese can still arrive without a visa

00:46:48.000 in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands. And the Chinese criminals that are coming in 1.00

00:46:52.220 through that route are ending up in places like Palau. A Chinese criminal who came from the 0.92

00:46:56.900 Northern Mariana Islands, came to Palau, killed another Chinese guy. 0.93

00:47:01.180 Like the Palauans are dealing not just with the problems being created by the Chinese, 0.76

00:47:05.140 but by the problems being created by the U.S. 0.99

00:47:08.140 Now, it's getting a lot better.

00:47:10.060 The U.S. kind of series of deals with Palau at the end of December, which were excellent.

00:47:14.680 They're talking about sending in all sorts of border security, help with cyber security,

00:47:21.920 the sort of things that they actually need to help fight back.

00:47:25.160 But the U.S. is learning.

00:47:28.000 You know, they're designated the president of State Department, designated the president

00:47:34.180 of the Senate of Palau for corruption related to Chinese activities, but didn't send the

00:47:39.220 prosecutorial files to Palau.

00:47:42.060 So he's still in place.

00:47:43.140 So the president of the Senate of Palau, who the U.S. government has said is involved in

00:47:47.780 corruption with the Chinese, is still the president of the Senate of Palau because the

00:47:51.560 U.S. started to take a step, but then didn't complete.

00:47:54.500 So there's movement. The U.S. is really trying. It's sent a very big delegation here. Deputy Secretary Landau is here. The Commandant of the Coast Guard is here. Deputy Commandant of PACOM is here. There's a lot of people, but they're all going to leave.

00:48:11.060 And then the question is, who's going to be on the ground in Palau to help the Palauans fight the good fight going forward?

00:48:17.500 Because it is relentless. 0.99

00:48:19.140 And the people the Chinese are sending in are totally ruthless. 1.00

00:48:23.000 They've sent in people like Broken Tooth, one of the main triad leaders. 1.00

00:48:26.140 They're trying to do this fragmentation disintegration warfare to destroy this place 1.00

00:48:32.940 because it is a paragon of how you handle the political warfare attacks that the chinese are 0.95

00:48:41.020 trying to do elsewhere uh absolutely unbelievable people don't realize yeah

00:48:47.260 the industry completely linked nature of the tongs and the triads and all that real quickly

00:48:54.480 should uh border patrol should tom holman should we get tom holman uh or tom holman's deputy to

00:49:01.580 guam should we start treating that border like we treat the southern border ma'am yes i mean again

00:49:07.760 and cnmi you have to go to the commonwealth of northern marian islands chinese are arriving

00:49:11.500 without a visa the woman who ran the bureau of motor vehicles there was convicted with the chinese 0.61

00:49:16.720 co-conspirator of selling u.s driver's licenses to chinese the chinese are illegally going from 0.84

00:49:21.680 there to guam where they're being found on the bases they're going then throughout the whole 0.67

00:49:25.460 Central Pacific region, it feels like there is a node within China that has sort of been

00:49:32.800 delegated to Central Pacific because you see the same people moving all over the place.

00:49:38.540 So the U.S. border weakness is weakening the whole Central Pacific. The U.S. is the weak link

00:49:45.100 in many of the cases where you've got political warfare and economic warfare infiltration to the

00:49:50.000 Pacific. Remember, the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. territory, less than 50,000

00:49:56.120 people, is where the Chinese set up a casino that was running $5.3 billion in three months on less

00:50:04.440 than 20 tables, right? When you're bringing in that kind of money, something totally different

00:50:09.280 is going on at the state level. So, you know, not only does the U.S. need to help its allies,

00:50:14.680 it needs to stop being a risk to the region on this front line again we are seeing the chinese 0.97

00:50:21.700 replicate the japanese um physical map but through political warfare where the japanese did it mostly 0.55

00:50:28.520 through kinetic warfare if it's political warfare you can win and you can win at low cost all of

00:50:33.740 this money that you're talking about all the armaments that you're talking about for iran

00:50:37.620 and elsewhere what you need is no nonsense lawyers really good people at tracking money

00:50:44.380 The ability to coordinate. 1.00

00:50:46.020 The woman that runs the National Security Council here is a rock star. 0.55

00:50:50.460 But the problem is U.S. lawyers keep saying, no, we can't do it. 0.78

00:50:54.720 We can't help you.

00:50:55.980 It's, you know, not in our regulations.

00:51:01.300 Cleo, we'll come back to you.

00:51:03.520 Where do people go right now on your Twitter?

00:51:05.860 All the information about what you're doing out in the Western Pacific right now.

00:51:10.440 So to my chagrin, I've set up a sub stack.

00:51:13.880 Cleopascal.substack.com.

00:51:18.760 We love Substack.

00:51:19.960 Where do they go for Substack?

00:51:22.140 It's just my name.

00:51:23.680 My name, my same name for Twitter and for Substack.

00:51:26.220 Cleopascal.

00:51:29.040 Okay, we'll push it out.

00:51:30.460 You'll be the next Natalie G. Winners. 0.56

00:51:32.900 We love Substack. 0.98

00:51:34.520 Nobody can replace her. 1.00

00:51:35.940 Wow. 0.63

00:51:36.040 She's amazing.

00:51:37.940 Thank you.

00:51:39.600 We're back.

00:51:40.540 We're back tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.

00:51:42.420 We're going to talk to Cleo after the show and hopefully get her back on the morning.

00:51:46.860 The HomeTitleLock.com, promo code STEVE. 0.78

00:51:50.840 Don't let artificial intelligence and cyber combined monetize your title.

00:51:58.080 Remember, every dream you've ever had and 90% of your net worth is tied up in that title for pennies a day.

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00:52:19.980 We will see you back here at 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time tomorrow morning when you'll be in the world.

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Bannon's War Room - August 31, 2026

WarRoom Battleground EP 1079： The Power Of College Boards And Populist Colleges

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