Bannon's War Room - September 03, 2026


WarRoom Battleground EP 1081: COLLIN MCMAHON On The Elections In Germany; And ANDREW CRAPUCHETTES On DEI’s Unexpected Return


Episode Stats


Length

53 minutes

Words per minute

153.92

Word count

8,235

Sentence count

357


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 this is the primal scream of a dying regime pray for our enemies because we're going to
00:00:10.260 medieval on these people here's not got a free shot all these networks lying about the people
00:00:16.840 the people have had a belly full of it i know you don't like hearing that i know you try to do
00:00:21.000 everything in the world to stop that but you're not going to stop it it's going to happen and
00:00:24.360 Where do people like that go to share the big line?
00:00:27.640 MAGA Media.
00:00:28.960 I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
00:00:34.400 Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
00:00:38.160 If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
00:00:44.360 War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Vann.
00:00:54.360 Wednesday, 2nd of September, Anno Domini, 2026.
00:00:58.840 Hanwell here at the helm on Steve Bannon's War Room with me,
00:01:02.540 joining me for the first half of the show, Colin McMahon,
00:01:05.820 legendary US journalist based in Germany.
00:01:11.020 We've had to have a quick announcement.
00:01:14.760 We've had to have a last minute swapping around of this week's show
00:01:20.400 Because without going into details to respect people's privacy, there has been a family bereavement, which we've tried to incorporate, obviously.
00:01:33.540 And therefore, in part of the shuffling, we brought forward some of the programming that we had planned on for later on in the week.
00:01:41.900 And Colin very generously made allowances for that.
00:01:46.180 there is a very important election taking place that we have been talking about now for some
00:01:51.680 months on the war room taking place in germany um and everybody all the analysts all the polls
00:01:58.060 are suggesting that the alternative for deutschland the afd is going to do pretty well
00:02:02.940 especially in the um the region the the land i think i think if if that's the right german term
00:02:10.720 the land of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AFD presently are on about 43%,
00:02:17.020 which is astonishing numbers that we're talking about here
00:02:19.840 for a proportional representation system.
00:02:22.920 Colin, before we come to you and talk about the article that you had out
00:02:26.780 that's generating a lot of interest and engagement that you had out in Gateway Pundit,
00:02:34.600 let's just quickly have, call for the quick 30 seconds,
00:02:37.520 that is highlighting, showcasing the candidate of Ulrich Siegmund,
00:02:44.940 who could well be, this time next week, the governor of the land of Saxony-Anhalt.
00:03:07.520 So Ulrich Siegmund here is projected to be the AFD's first state governor, which is basically
00:03:30.960 the same thing as it is in fact in the united states arguably um potentially because of the
00:03:37.860 federal system that they still have in germany i'd suggest that they might actually have slightly
00:03:42.060 more executive power even though united states governors themselves are pretty um are pretty
00:03:48.280 powerful um and this would be the afd's correct me if i'm wrong but i believe this would be the
00:03:54.000 the first time that the afd would actually take the governor's mansion tell me what it means right
00:03:59.340 now this far ahead of the election um which is basically a spitting distance to have the afd at
00:04:07.920 43 percent right now in the polls and there is talk and i know you have written about this
00:04:13.540 so the afd could even be um have an absolute majority tell me uh what would that mean for
00:04:20.600 for german politics and specifically given germany's importance for the european union
00:04:26.780 for EU politics if the dominoes should start to fall
00:04:32.880 at the state level right now.
00:04:35.740 Right. Greetings to the gateway posse,
00:04:39.760 to the war room posse.
00:04:43.260 It's great to be on.
00:04:45.100 Yeah, this could really open the watershed in Germany
00:04:49.060 because, you know, the AFD has been cordoned off
00:04:52.460 what they used to call a cordon sanitaire
00:04:53.880 or also call a firewall.
00:04:55.960 all uh the the mainstream and legacy parties to keep the afd out of all civil discourse have tried
00:05:02.600 to exclude them from from yes uh from from the political process exclude them from committees
00:05:08.680 exclude them from from uh sharing even parliaments which is just a formal uh function uh they've
00:05:15.480 really tried to ostracize them and um the afd at some point in east germany uh realized that they
00:05:22.040 They were going to have to go all the way and start actually winning majorities because no one would ever let them prove their mettle.
00:05:29.040 Otherwise, the Christian Democrat Party, which is like the rhino center right party in Germany under Angela Merkel and now Friedrich Meretz,
00:05:37.880 have just resolved not to talk to the AFD at all, which has painted themselves kind of in a corner.
00:05:44.200 All they can do is is work together with left wing parties like the Social Democrats right now or the Greens, which is just disastrous for for conservative Christian democratic policy.
00:05:56.400 Of course, it turns into a climate, gender, open borders, leftist cluster or whatever.
00:06:05.980 And and that's spelling the death for Friedrich Merz's government.
00:06:10.780 He's the most unpopular chancellor there's ever been in Germany since the Second World War.
00:06:15.940 He's down at 20 percent approval.
00:06:17.660 Donald Trump is twice that or more, you know.
00:06:20.580 And the expectation is that if the AFD really takes power in Sachsen-Anhalt on Sunday, this could also spell the end of the Merz government.
00:06:33.380 It could really dissolve the CDU or at least Friedrich Merz, who's really tied his political fortunes to this idea of a firewall, of cordoning himself off towards the right wing and only working together with left wing parties.
00:06:47.540 Even though there are some figures now in the CDU who have been speaking for the last six months about it being time to gently let the firewall policy, the Brandt-Mauer policy, fall by the wayside, because not only has it not worked at this point, it has failed to work.
00:07:09.420 that that much is clear um some commentators from the mainstream political families view the
00:07:16.520 center right and the center left are actually saying what we've been saying now on the war
00:07:20.420 for a couple of years that the that the fact that the main the main so-called mainstream
00:07:25.720 establishment political parties have refused to allow the afd into any co-governing coalitions
00:07:36.580 at the national level and certainly at the state level as well,
00:07:39.800 that has concentrated Germans' minds towards the fact that it is the AFD
00:07:45.720 versus everyone else, and that has sort of concentrated attention
00:07:49.280 that this is the only serious opposition party
00:07:54.220 if you want to see radical change.
00:07:56.500 And that's why there are voices even within the Christian Democratic Union,
00:08:02.640 the CDU, the centre-right, the establishment, the centre-right political party, saying it's time
00:08:08.240 to let the AFD into coalition. Because at the moment, we're so unpopular as political elites,
00:08:17.060 as political establishment, people are thirsting for an alternative and they're going to go towards
00:08:21.560 the AFD. But anyway, that's going to be too late, I think, for them to save their skins that way
00:08:26.760 ahead of these local government elections on Sunday.
00:08:31.840 Tell me something about the precise nature of these elections.
00:08:35.820 You've been commenting that these elections in Germany
00:08:41.740 are pretty much like a lot of Americans would like to see in North America.
00:08:50.100 They're on-the-day elections, right?
00:08:52.380 um in person i think no postal ballot tell me precisely because i know it varies from
00:08:59.240 eu country to eu country what is the um how might how does this work in germany how do germans vote
00:09:05.600 yes there are only paper ballots there's no voting machines allowed in germany there was
00:09:11.240 an actual decision by the supreme court 2008 ruling that electronic voting is too unsafe
00:09:19.280 It's not reliable.
00:09:20.440 It can't be used in Germany.
00:09:22.180 They do use things like email and such to transmit results.
00:09:26.620 People are starting to worry that that may be a source of hanky-panky.
00:09:31.180 But the way it is right now, you have only paper ballots.
00:09:34.340 You have election observers.
00:09:36.940 Any citizen can go in when the ballots close at 6 o'clock on Sunday and observe the count.
00:09:43.980 The officials there are often volunteers from the community as well.
00:09:48.740 That's been a source of some worry, especially in left-wing areas, because you can't imagine in Germany, blue-haired, nose-wing-wearing volunteers just dropping AFD votes in the trash can.
00:10:01.820 But in a state like Sachsen-Anhalt, which is almost 50% AFD now, and definitely together with the Christian Democrats, 60%, 65% conservative, you have a huge backing within the people, and that's what you really need.
00:10:17.380 You saw that video of Ulrich Siegmund in Quedlinburg, like a rock star.
00:10:24.120 Everywhere he goes in the tiniest villages, people call each other up and say, hey, Siegmund's in town, and suddenly you have 1,000 people standing on a field, and he's talking from a tractor.
00:10:35.140 And this is the kind of dynamic we saw in the Donald Trump election 2020 and 2024 and also 2016, where it really takes on an energy of its own.
00:10:46.180 It becomes a virtuous circle and people want to be on board.
00:10:49.680 This is fun.
00:10:50.520 This is where it's happening.
00:10:51.920 You know, he's 35 years old.
00:10:54.760 He's a marketing type guy.
00:10:57.880 Very charismatic, very well-spoken.
00:11:00.480 And he really doesn't actually spend a lot of time talking about politics.
00:11:03.380 He does.
00:11:03.820 He's very good on the issues, but he spends a lot of time just having fun.
00:11:07.600 He goes out on motorcycle rides with people.
00:11:09.900 they have these old east german style motorcycles two-stroke old piston engines you know and so he
00:11:18.520 has a fan club and they go out and with a thousand motorbikes and riding the roads in in east
00:11:23.680 germany these sometimes kind of bumpy cobblestone roads they have there and they all have a good
00:11:27.800 time together and this is this is the kind of thing that gets young people excited it gets
00:11:32.420 everybody excited and and and that's the kind of dynamic you need really to to turn the ship around
00:11:37.560 so this is penetration beyond a popular appeal beyond the uh the simple politically obsessed
00:11:46.620 class which is interesting to show where to illustrate where german politics is right now
00:11:51.420 let me just uh pick up and clarify then um what you just said now so the 43 for the afd is at
00:11:57.480 national um and but 50 particularly in the state of saxony anhalt that's the state itself
00:12:05.540 that's a that's a phenomenal figure for a proportional representation system for one
00:12:11.980 political party i mean i'm not even sure if the cdu is running on sort of 50 when it won the last
00:12:17.940 election oh no they're they're down at 20 in in saxony anhalt and 20 nationally uh they they said
00:12:25.600 you know um they were going to have the the afd results that's what friedrich merritt swore to do
00:12:31.360 He was going to cut them down in size from 20% to 10%, and now it's gone exactly the other way around.
00:12:38.500 Friedrich Merz broke all his election promises.
00:12:40.620 He did the opposite of what Donald Trump did with his list of promises kept.
00:12:45.040 He came into office and started breaking all of his election promises.
00:12:48.720 He promised to balance the budget.
00:12:51.040 He promised to kick out the left wing, and he wound up in a coalition with the left wing
00:12:57.460 and running up the highest deficit that Germany has ever had
00:13:00.440 at a trillion euros.
00:13:05.000 Which he did say in advance.
00:13:10.300 He did, you know, without wanting to defend the CDU,
00:13:14.140 the Germans ought to have been paying attention
00:13:16.480 because he explicitly said when he was leader of the opposition.
00:13:20.560 In fact, he actually succeeded, correct me if I'm wrong,
00:13:23.700 when Olaf Scholz was still the chancellor.
00:13:26.340 They actually, between the two of them, even connived to amend the Constitution before the election so that Friedrich Mertz would be able to take on debt to finance its defense spending to the extent that now Germans themselves...
00:13:44.340 Even worse, Ben.
00:13:46.300 Go on. Go ahead. Go ahead.
00:13:48.340 even worse it was after the election after the election he ran on a platform of the left is over
00:13:55.620 we're going to close the borders we're going to restore fiscal uh uh responsibility we're going
00:14:00.960 to bring germany back uh economically and then he wins the election and the first thing he does
00:14:05.320 is because he has a firewall he can't talk to the afd is is enter negotiations with the social
00:14:10.820 democrats and decide to change the constitution on the old majority which people had just voted out
00:14:16.860 to change the constitution, which actually has a balanced budget amendment. He changed the
00:14:22.740 constitution to allow him to run up the biggest debt Germany has ever seen. And he had run on
00:14:27.140 exactly the opposite promise. So this is where people really start getting angry at even a
00:14:33.260 milquetoast politician like Friedrich Merz, who's basically an accountant, you know, and he's
00:14:38.940 managed to have the poll results for his party. And the AFD is now up at 29, 30% nationally.
00:14:45.280 and the formerly ruling all-powerful Christian Democrats
00:14:49.220 are down at 20% nationally.
00:14:52.080 Well, however this goes,
00:14:53.400 we'll definitely try and get you back on the show next week
00:14:56.020 to break down the results.
00:14:57.600 Stay with me, Colin McMahon.
00:14:59.520 I'll be back with you in just two minutes.
00:15:01.260 And I want to pick up, actually, we do have something else,
00:15:03.580 especially that we wanted to ask you to explain to us on the show today.
00:15:07.360 But I need to come back to one thing that you just mentioned
00:15:09.720 about the polls in Germany.
00:15:11.980 Just a quick moment, though.
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00:19:14.800 of the show text bannon to 989898 or go to birchgold.com forward slash bannon let's go back
00:19:24.960 to colin mcmahon colin um i do want to ask you about something else i know you have your beady
00:19:32.400 eyes on um but first i can't not just pause and rewind to what you just said in your explanation
00:19:41.220 about how Germans are voting, on the day voting, paper ballots in person.
00:19:46.300 You did mention something, I thought, that ought to be of interest to Americans,
00:19:51.540 and that is you said that the German Supreme Court, no friend whatsoever to the AFD,
00:19:59.080 ruled a couple of years ago that Germany would stick to paper ballots only
00:20:05.320 because electric computer machines aren't reliable enough.
00:20:12.820 That is, considering that America does use these machines,
00:20:15.940 that is, I think, incredible.
00:20:19.180 Just give me 30 seconds on that,
00:20:20.800 and then we'll talk about the second thing
00:20:23.100 that you want to discuss with us this evening,
00:20:25.640 if you wouldn't mind.
00:20:27.240 Well, strangely, the European Union does use digital voting,
00:20:31.120 which has been really outlawed by the German Supreme Court.
00:20:34.200 So I'm not sure, quite sure how that works. But yeah, the Germans are very technocratic people. They're very tech savvy. They're a country of geeks, really, or they used to be of inventors. And they had a look at this stuff and they said, no, this just doesn't hack it. This stuff can be hacked. It's been done before. Any good hacker can show you how to hack into a Dominion system. And we've seen that before. So how can you use it for elections?
00:21:04.200 just doesn't make sense um okay underlying that point folks this isn't just a rabid
00:21:13.080 far-right talking point this is actual serious stuff electronic voting voting via machines
00:21:21.560 is not secure and germany i repeat i underline the german supreme court right now along with
00:21:27.800 its constitutional court along with this elections court right they are trying they
00:21:32.840 They are doing everything they can to suppress the AFD as a political party.
00:21:38.960 They're trying to block, they're striking off the candidates list, AFD candidates.
00:21:44.620 They're banning them from speaking.
00:21:45.960 They're raiding their homes.
00:21:46.980 They're doing everything a totalitarian state can do to block an insurgent anti-establishment party.
00:21:53.660 And yet, and yet, with all that going on, the German state says, well, even though, Colin, as you're saying, the AFD is presently heading into these elections on Sunday on more than 50% in the polls, it's going to be a blowout for the AFD.
00:22:10.880 Even if the regime is staring this in the face, they have the integrity to say, no, no, no, paper ballots only.
00:22:19.400 americans take note of that um do do it do with that information what you will all right uh we
00:22:25.640 only we only have you now colin for a couple more minutes you you have um been following this with a
00:22:33.680 great deal of interest that um spinal fluid the extraction of spinal fluid from calf embryos is
00:22:45.920 being done in the netherlands and even the united states as well um and you've been following this
00:22:52.480 peer-reviewed report i think it is that's um that's uh just tell us what the details are here
00:22:58.880 and how does this fit in to the maha agenda what's uh what's the administration doing
00:23:05.520 on this to stop this pretty grotesque practice
00:23:10.560 yeah it's horrifying i i became aware of this uh doing a report on the dutch farmers
00:23:18.480 you know the dutch farmers have started protesting again in in august uh we've heard a lot about the
00:23:23.800 the dutch farmers since 2021 uh when they were trying to basically take away their farms over
00:23:29.940 alleged uh nitrogen uh over over saturation of of the environment uh the dutch farmers are the
00:23:36.720 third most productive in the world for this tiny little country after the United States and Brazil
00:23:41.500 before their much larger neighbor Germany, for example. Dutch farmers are very productive. They're
00:23:47.380 very good at what they do. You know, just as the Dutch-descended farmers in South Africa are some
00:23:53.720 of the best in the world, so are the Dutch at home. And the government apparently doesn't want
00:23:59.580 good farmers because they're trying to take their land away. So I was interviewing the leader of
00:24:05.380 what they call the farmer's defense force there uh jos ubels uh who's a wonderful a wonderful guy
00:24:11.560 from north holland and he i was talking about what the motivation for for this may be and he said
00:24:19.500 first of all they're taking the uh the land away to build data centers to build ai centers uh the
00:24:25.000 netherlands are i guess leading the pack in europe on ai data centers and the other thing is uh they
00:24:30.520 want to do away with meat and replace it with lab meat i kind of did a double take and said
00:24:37.720 what is lab meat uh and and you all started filling me in that they're they're cultivating
00:24:43.220 uh laboratory grown meats um and and trying to replace our our regular wonderful beef that we
00:24:51.020 have that the farmers raised uh with lab grown monster meat um and and not only is this
00:25:00.220 horrendous on the surface it also involves killing uh the cows killing the uh the the young
00:25:08.080 so every every milk cow has to have uh young to keep giving milk and now they're using them
00:25:16.440 in the embryo to basically extract their spinal fluid and use the spinal fluid to grow
00:25:24.020 lab-grown meat and it's just just ghastly anybody can look up the article and tell me
00:25:29.280 or to use the name that the national like the us national library of medicine part of the the um
00:25:35.600 the nih um you call this fetal bovine serum folks in the uk 30 years ago 40 years ago
00:25:45.560 um 30 years ago we had this phenomenon i didn't know how great it was in the united states of
00:25:51.360 mad cow disease and that was a consequence of basically grinding up old cows where they're
00:25:58.820 no longer use for anything else and feeding them to young cows including the brain matter and that
00:26:04.920 led to the the the the fatal onset disease of um of of croates felt yakub disease i would have
00:26:12.420 thought we'd learned some lessons from that clearly not if that's what they're doing here
00:26:16.100 instead of using these this grotesque bovine spinal fluid bovine serum colin mcmahon um folks
00:26:26.620 can go to your twitter feed if they want more information on this i know you're on top of this
00:26:30.580 what is that where do they go to keep up with your analysis especially over this weekend with
00:26:35.440 the elections in germany there you go colin f mcmahon uh i'm posting in english and in german
00:26:42.000 you can translate the german stuff automatically and say say the rest of what's going on over here
00:26:46.840 thank you sean um colin will be back hopefully next week to see if we're getting one to break
00:26:53.340 down the results but we'll stay tuned watching him on on x over this sunday folks back in two
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00:31:26.440 Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec.
00:31:28.680 And so many more.
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00:31:35.720 Welcome back.
00:31:37.480 Let's welcome on to the show now, Andrew Krapuschets, the CEO of Red Balloon.
00:31:44.100 He's going to talk to us this evening about something that we thought was dead, buried, but much like a zombie in a B-list movie.
00:31:53.360 Apparently not.
00:31:53.820 This is D-E-I, diversity, equality and inclusion.
00:31:59.020 These are the huge programs that corporate America was funding, especially under the previous administration.
00:32:05.480 And we had thought that under the constant flex of the Trump White House, these programs were dead and buried.
00:32:15.600 But apparently not. Andrew, I know you're following this quite closely.
00:32:18.940 What is the situation then with these D-E-I programs right now?
00:32:23.820 Yeah. So if you remember under the Biden administration, DEI was all the rage. People were very excited they would be putting quotas on how many people they would hire based on skin color, based on sexuality, based on any number of these factors that had nothing to do with how hard the person worked or their innovation or anything like that.
00:32:44.440 It was just focused on these qualities outside of what was productive for work.
00:32:49.860 So DEI really lost its luster as the Supreme Court both handed down the affirmative action decisions for universities,
00:32:58.200 and then the Trump administration said that DEI was no longer legal within the federal government.
00:33:03.580 And what happened is not that those things went away, but people who have an ideology,
00:33:08.980 and they're obsessed with that ideology, typically are not going to change their mind very quickly,
00:33:15.320 especially not if Donald Trump says to, right? And so what did they do? Well, they knew it was
00:33:19.800 illegal. They knew they needed to not upplay that. They needed to downplay that. And so what did they
00:33:25.200 do? They just kind of changed the names. They kind of kept their head down. They kept their ideology,
00:33:29.680 but they changed some of the verbiage around that ideology. They continued to push on hiring
00:33:34.780 based on skin color and sexuality and again characteristics that have nothing to do with
00:33:40.620 productivity at work we want people to be judged based on the quality of their character not the
00:33:44.900 color of their skin and they basically have been keeping their head down waiting for the culture
00:33:49.740 to change so they can rear it again and they're already starting to rear it again in what they're
00:33:53.760 calling woke two yeah i saw aoc um positioning herself quite intelligently uh ditching woke one
00:34:05.140 earlier a week or two ago um so this is um i would suggest that a perfect illustration of this
00:34:14.480 It's not particularly an illustration of how DEI is being subversively promoted by corporate America behind the backs.
00:34:34.200 But it is an illustration of how cunning corporate America can be with regards to the administration.
00:34:40.740 And that is the whole discussion over Lake America, the renaming of Lake America.
00:34:47.380 And the new CEO of Apple, I think, that he put his feet under the desk for the first time.
00:34:57.340 Apple, somewhat late to the game with regards to other map apps, they agreed to the name change.
00:35:07.480 but only in america only for americans elsewhere
00:35:11.740 lake ontario still has the same name that it always had before um and i think that that's
00:35:21.860 it's not precise as i say it's not a dei thing but seeing as is is this was in the press today
00:35:28.040 it's an illustration of how the how of how corporate america can sidle up to the administration
00:35:35.200 because they now, President Trump, has worked quite closely
00:35:38.500 to ensure he has great personal relationships at the CEO and chairman level.
00:35:44.000 And they sidle up to one another.
00:35:46.400 And they look him in the eye and they say, yes, Mr. President,
00:35:48.900 we're fully on board with the agenda.
00:35:53.300 But it's really quite superficial.
00:35:56.320 And if you think what they've done with Lake America,
00:35:59.060 That is, I think, pretty, it illustrates the point pretty well, I think, exactly their attitude will change it in America only.
00:36:12.700 So if you go on with an America-based, the America-based, US-based app store, you'll think that this is a universal thing, but it's not.
00:36:22.380 It's just what we're doing here for America, elsewhere around the world.
00:36:25.180 Where you're not looking, where you're not paying attention, we're just treating you with the same old contempt that we always ever had.
00:36:33.160 Look, I know you have gone through some household names here with the research to illustrate exactly how nothing has particularly changed apart from the superficials.
00:36:47.080 Why don't you, and these are household names,
00:36:49.980 why don't you just sort of brief the war room posse
00:36:53.580 on exactly what some of these corporate giants are doing
00:36:57.700 when they think that nobody's paying attention?
00:37:00.700 That's right.
00:37:01.060 And I'll pick on the first one, which is an easy one, Nike, right?
00:37:03.820 We all expect Nike to be pretty left-leaning.
00:37:06.560 They have continued to report how many females they have on their executive team,
00:37:12.380 how many LGTBQ, Alphabet Soup people they have in their company.
00:37:18.460 So they're continuing to categorize their employees based on, again, sexual orientation
00:37:25.820 or skin color or gender, right?
00:37:28.760 And so what they're doing, and DEI is fundamentally Marxist, right?
00:37:32.040 It's basically saying that everyone needs to be put in categories.
00:37:36.320 You're the proletariat or the bourgeoisie.
00:37:39.080 You're the haves or the have-nots.
00:37:41.580 And DEI makes you, you know, be competitive with other groups of people, not based on we're all part of Nike, but instead, oh, are you an LGBTQ or are you a female or are you black or are you Asian, right?
00:37:56.620 And so it puts people in those categories.
00:37:58.620 So Nike is still reporting this is how our company is made up and the type of people that are in our company.
00:38:05.020 So we'd all expect that one.
00:38:06.720 But then when you start to look at some of these other companies like Cargill, right, you think of Cargill is like, you know, you know, they make clothes for the working man or for the hunter out there. Why are they pushing on these DEI things? And what they're doing is they're changing DEI to inclusion and belonging. They're basically renaming it, but they still have this deep ideology that you should be judging people on these immutable characteristics of who their parents are, not based on the, again, the quality of their character, their ability to do great work or innovate.
00:38:36.380 So Cargill is kind of a surprising one or Traeger, right? Many of us have a Traeger grill. We're enjoying making ribs on them tonight. And they are still pushing on a DEI policy. In fact, they took their head of DEI, who was within the organization, and they promoted that person to the head of people in HR, right?
00:38:55.140 And so they changed the names and tried to make it sound happy for the current administration, but they have not changed their ideology, right?
00:39:04.500 And we talk about Lake of America, when people are trying to, you know, Trump signed a thing that said, an executive order saying DEI is not allowed in the government anymore.
00:39:15.520 And so clearly these companies know that it's not allowed, but they have not changed their ideology.
00:39:20.280 And so I think one of the big messages, and again, those are just three of the companies. There's a number of companies in this report talking about how they are still doubling down on DEI. They're just trying to use a different name for it. But I think the message for conservatives is we tend to, we as a conservative group of people tend to, you know, fight the battle, work really hard.
00:39:44.700 But then when we feel like we've gotten some ground, we've made some headway, all of a sudden we give up and we're like, let's go back to sleep.
00:39:52.040 Let's just get back to raising our families and not worrying about it.
00:39:54.480 But the culture war is still raging.
00:39:56.340 And I think that's the important thing for people to remember.
00:39:58.560 Corporate America is still pushing an ideology on our employees that we need to push back against.
00:40:05.380 There was one omission from the list of the research that I was analyzing before the show, and that's Budweiser.
00:40:13.400 um yeah did um did did did did did they learn their lesson were their hands burnt um
00:40:21.360 they're they don't appear to be pushing the dei thing anymore or is that just uh
00:40:27.960 they're too subtle what's going on there no actually they did learn their lesson and actually
00:40:33.160 budweiser and target which i'll pick on a little bit um both of them were very much in the limelight
00:40:39.360 right? Nike didn't get the same kind of pushback that Budweiser and Target. And obviously Budweiser
00:40:44.580 and Target kind of got pushed back in different ways. Target was pushing the LGBTQ dolls and
00:40:50.820 ridiculous, you know, binders for swimsuits and so on and so forth, trying to, you know,
00:40:55.680 indoctrinate our children, which none of us wanted. And so we did as a conservative group,
00:41:00.560 did a significant and very effective boycott of Target. And guess what? They learned their
00:41:05.580 lesson. Budweiser, same thing. We saw them change. And they are not, based on the research,
00:41:13.460 pushing DEI in the same way that they used to. So we're actually encouraged that conservatives can
00:41:18.820 make an impact on these companies. Cracker Barrel, another example, the CEO is now gone. The CEO that
00:41:24.400 was pushing this kind of let's drift left ideology within Cracker Barrel, that person is now gone.
00:41:30.280 And so we can make an impact, but we can't just go to sleep and give up.
00:41:34.560 We have to keep pushing on these things, and it will have a long-standing impact for these companies.
00:41:41.440 Andrew, stay with us, back with you on this point in just a couple of moments.
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00:44:48.260 Back now to Andrew Krapuschets, the CEO of Red Balloon.
00:44:52.700 Andrew, when we were planning a show today to bring you on to talk about these things,
00:44:57.000 we were discussing whether to play Nina's 99 Red Balloons.
00:45:01.880 But I think you're too young. I don't think you were a child of the 80s as I am.
00:45:06.120 And we decided against it simply because for anyone who was a child of the 80s, that is pure sort of earworm.
00:45:16.000 Once that song gets in the head, it's not getting out.
00:45:18.640 And I thought people would be concentrating on that rather than Red Balloon itself.
00:45:24.300 All right. So you were pointing out just in the first half of your interview that when conservatives are focused on the issues, they can actually, even with these corporate giants, they can actually affect change.
00:45:43.300 And you cited Budweiser with the humiliating collapse of Bud Light.
00:45:52.920 And you also mentioned the CEO, I think she was ousted pretty quickly, of Cracker Barrel.
00:45:59.200 But when we were chatting before the show started, you said that one of the points you want to make on the show today,
00:46:07.200 and it is an extremely important point, not just on holding corporate America to account,
00:46:12.220 But across the board as well, is that conservatives shouldn't do what they sometimes do, which is think they're notched up a victory and then they switch off and sort of go and watch the game on TV.
00:46:26.340 They need to stay focused on these things.
00:46:29.400 Just make that point in your own words, if you wouldn't mind, please.
00:46:33.540 Yeah, absolutely.
00:46:34.160 And when you think about DEI, right, you think, oh, what's the big deal?
00:46:37.100 Like I go to a DEI training.
00:46:39.600 It's just telling me about diversity, equity, inclusion.
00:46:43.060 And honestly, those are good words in and of themselves, but they've been weaponized.
00:46:47.080 Those words have been used as a bludgeoning device against many conservatives to make
00:46:51.320 them think a certain way about the world.
00:46:53.500 And I would say that most DEI training is a liturgy.
00:46:56.580 It's designed to make you think something about yourself, about your coworkers, and
00:47:01.300 about the world around you, which is fundamentally Marxist at the end of the day.
00:47:04.700 And so for conservatives, we're a go-along, get-along crowd, right?
00:47:08.340 we're going to just say, well, DEI training is not that bad. It's not going to have a huge impact
00:47:13.500 on this. But I want to give one example of why I believe that is not the case. Here at redballoon.work,
00:47:19.320 we believe that freedom in the workplace is a good thing, that America is a good thing. And we
00:47:24.860 represent employers and job seekers who are looking for freedom in the workplace. Well,
00:47:30.080 we had a single mom write me a little while ago and said, hey, I just got a new job through
00:47:34.360 redballoon.work. And after three weeks in the job, one of my two boys says to me, mommy,
00:47:38.720 you're not angry anymore. She's like, oh man, why was I angry mommy? And basically they told her
00:47:44.200 like, you're happier again. And she realized that the water that she swam in for eight to 10 hours
00:47:49.660 a day, this DEI world that she was living in was actually having such an impact on her worldview
00:47:55.360 that it was affecting her relationships with her boys. And being in a place where she could
00:48:00.160 actually be free actually impacted every other aspect of her life. And so for conservatives,
00:48:06.840 we tend to be like, oh, it's not that big a deal. I'll just make this little compromise. I'll just
00:48:10.900 sit in the back of the DEI training and not worry about it. But it is a big deal. It is affecting
00:48:16.020 you in ways that you don't even realize. And courage begets courage. Bravery begets bravery.
00:48:22.860 Nobody wants to be the first one to step out. But as this DEI and this woke ideology starts to
00:48:28.780 rear its ugly head in the workplace. Again, I would encourage people don't go for it, right?
00:48:34.280 Stand up. You think, well, you know, if the COVID mask mandates came back, I would stand up against
00:48:38.700 that. Well, you might, but also stand up against little things like this because lots of little
00:48:43.520 compromises turn into very big compromises, particularly in the workplace. And so that's
00:48:47.980 my encouragement to conservatives. It's when you make little compromises, it's having more of an
00:48:53.620 impact on you than you realize, and you need to stand up for other people. And if you're courageous
00:48:58.380 and brave it's going to help everyone else and that's why we're doing it here at red balloon we
00:49:03.180 believe that the workplace should be free and people should work for people who aren't going
00:49:07.860 to jam a worldview down their throat what did you just say bravery begets courage begets courage
00:49:16.080 bravery begets bravery and as steve bannon often says on this show victory begets victory um tell
00:49:22.480 me just a little bit in the final minute and a half that we've got you for tell me a bit about
00:49:28.020 Red Balloon? Yeah, Red Balloon was founded five years ago. I was the CEO of a large tech company,
00:49:33.600 and my board decided that I was a little too conservative and Christian for their liking.
00:49:37.300 And so I found myself delightfully unemployed. And I thought, well, if this happened to me,
00:49:40.760 it might happen to other Americans. And so we were founded as a place where work is a good thing,
00:49:46.160 freedom is a good thing, America is a good thing. And we now have thousands of businesses and
00:49:51.960 millions of job seekers who are finding each other. And we're just helping to facilitate that.
00:49:57.500 So we do everything from job postings to full cycle recruiting to help businesses find employees who are going to build their culture and not tear it down and help employees find employers who will respect their freedom, allow them to work really hard because we believe that work is a good thing and it brings dignity to individuals.
00:50:17.820 But we think it is super important to not have a workplace where a worldview is jammed
00:50:22.840 down your throat all the time, but you can actually live your values out loud and be
00:50:27.380 free and work really, really hard.
00:50:28.840 So that's really what Red Balloon does.
00:50:31.300 We are working, again, with employers all over the country who are looking to fill critical
00:50:36.240 positions with people who believe that America was founded on the principles that we all
00:50:41.540 know that they were founded on.
00:50:42.700 And we are representing job seekers who want to show up to an employer, bring a lot of value.
00:50:49.060 They believe capitalism is a good thing, believe it or not, and want their employer to make money.
00:50:54.660 And so if you want to avoid a bad hire who's going to wreck your culture or take down your business, Red Balloon has, again, full cycle recruiting.
00:51:03.160 We also sit down and can help you with any solution you need to build your company with great employees.
00:51:09.840 We do nationwide searches and we help everybody from, you know, Daily Wire and Steak and Shake to mom and pops who are hiring their first employee.
00:51:18.280 And they want to make sure they don't mess up that first one and get a bad one.
00:51:22.880 So very quickly, Andrew, where do people go to learn more about you or if they are in the corporate sector to perhaps engage your services?
00:51:32.160 Yeah, it's redballoon.work.
00:51:33.900 It's not .com because we thought that sounded like communism.
00:51:36.960 So we went redballoon.work.
00:51:38.900 and we would love to help you with your any of your hiring needs
00:51:42.120 andrew crappy shit's ceo of red balloon that is a fantastic endeavor i couldn't support it more
00:51:52.840 and i think america has need of it and you know we have need of it here in continental europe as
00:51:58.000 well folks that's all we've got time for thanks to vittorio santi franco for putting the show
00:52:02.620 together and to rob at real america's voice feels like our country finally has momentum again
00:52:09.920 with our leaders fighting to restore common sense in america first but we've seen this before
00:52:16.660 conservatives get comfortable and the left starts taking background inch by inch we cannot let that
00:52:22.640 happen in these midterms america needs every one of us in the fight and a big part of that means
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