In this episode of the Steve Bannon's War Room, Steve and his war room partner, Harnell Harnwell, take a look at what's going on with the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC run by Mitch McConnell and his strategists, and why they're spending zero dollars on Ted Cruz.
00:00:00.000this is what you're fighting for I mean every day you're out there what they're doing is blowing
00:00:11.360people off if you continue to look the other way and shut up then the oppressors the
00:00:18.360authoritarians get total control and total power because this is just like in Arizona this is just
00:00:24.260like in Georgia it's another element that backs them into a quarter and shows their lies and
00:00:29.000misrepresentations is why this audience is going to have to get engaged as we've told you this is the
00:00:33.440fight all this nonsense all this spin they can't handle the truth war room battleground here's your
00:00:40.460host Stephen K Bannon welcome to Steve Bannon's war room harnwell here at the helm filling in for the
00:00:48.740great man monday 14th of october and no domini 2024 a lot to get through on the battleground states
00:00:56.520this afternoon and this evening let's start straight off with Arizona Caroline Wren special
00:01:02.920advisor senior advisor to Carrie Lake um you've been highlighting something um a little suspicious
00:01:08.920let's put it like that with the senate leadership fund uh why don't you give us an explanation
00:01:14.400because they're not exactly helping Arizona are they right no they're not and it's pretty
00:01:20.380frustrating to see senate leadership fund is the super PAC that's run by Mitch McConnell and his
00:01:24.880consultants and what they do is they really uh they pull all the funds together I think they have
00:01:30.060about 400 million dollars a cycle and then their job is to go uh help get Republican senators elected
00:01:35.680now they have uh been failing at this for I think four election cycles in a row now and last night they
00:01:43.480leaked out a memo to Politico that had a bizarre polling memo uh the polls were really all over the place
00:01:49.740and so I have a couple of questions one about what was their motivation to do this but what the memo
00:01:53.540said was it showed Ted Cruz up only one it had Dave McCormick down two it had Carrie Lake down five
00:02:00.160it had Bernie Moreno down six Sam Brown down seven Larry Hogan down seven and Mike Rogers in Michigan
00:02:06.320down eight now keep in mind this the pollster used for this memo by the way is a group called access
00:02:11.980research so I went and looked on the FEC report to see who else is paying access research besides
00:02:16.740SLF well access research was the pollster for Jeb Bush Liz Cheney Matt Dolan Mitch McConnell Carl
00:02:24.040Rove's American Crossroads so they don't exactly have a record of success but what really makes
00:02:29.180not much sense in this is they are saying that they're using this internal polling to dictate where
00:02:33.360their spending is well then someone should explain to me why they just decided to go to invest 20
00:02:37.840million dollars in Michigan and zero dollars in Arizona when per their own polling Carrie Lake is much
00:02:43.220tighter than Mike Rogers in Michigan or why are they spending hundreds of millions of dollars for
00:02:47.900Larry Hogan in Maryland when he is way down Bernie Moreno they've spent a hundred and something million
00:02:53.460dollars on he's actually pulling further down than Carrie Lake now again I'd say this with the
00:02:57.640preface that I think these polls are completely bs and wrong and I love Bernie Moreno and a lot of
00:03:02.640these guys but I'm just if this is truly how you're dictating your funding then explain that to us
00:03:07.480and so I think that they leaked if you watch last night Ted Cruz came out furious about this too
00:03:13.160because they are spending zero dollars on Ted Cruz and the real reason why they're not spending for
00:03:18.100people like Ted Cruz or Carrie Lake is because their funding is dictated by War Inc as I like to call
00:03:24.000it they know that Ted Cruz is never going to continue to fund the Ukraine war they know if
00:03:27.600Carrie Lake gets in she's not going to vote to fund the Ukraine war and so they're not going to spend
00:03:31.360one penny to help these folks and so if Ted Cruz really is only up one per their own polling which I
00:03:36.340don't believe to be true but if he is why the hell aren't you spending any money there
00:03:39.940I think those with long memories Caroline will remember 2020 2017 the special election down in
00:03:50.820Alabama when the candidate was Judge Roy Moore and Mitch McConnell did literally everything he
00:03:57.080possibly could do to stop Judge Moore I think he was retired head of the I think he was head of the
00:04:03.960the state supreme court um a sterling candidate very very senior position obviously in the legal
00:04:11.040background but he was demolished in the press um and Mitch McConnell did everything he could
00:04:17.940to tip that seat over to the Democrats and it went I think to Doug Jones who finished off
00:04:22.440for the Democrats um that term why did he do that because Mitch McConnell it was essential for his
00:04:29.020narrative at that stage in time which convinced a lot of people that he knew how to pick winners
00:04:36.000and this out of control America first MAGA movement um that at that point in time was incredibly
00:04:44.960dominated by Steve Bannon um who was trying to one by one deselect all of their or primary to use the
00:04:51.780American expression to have primed all the all the rhinos um and this became the fundamental battle of
00:04:57.740credibility who was going to win is it going to be on picking Senate candidates for the future was it
00:05:03.300going to be Steve Bannon or was it going to be Mitch McConnell Mitch McConnell did everything he could
00:05:07.900to stop a Republican from losing that that that seat um and you know to some extent I think we never quite
00:05:15.720regained the initiative as a movement after that I see Caroline Wendt exactly the same dynamic
00:05:23.660seven years later now taking place in Arizona I do not think Mitch McConnell wants Carrie Lake to win
00:05:31.240even though he's sort of known sort of he's standing down um perhaps his personal envy perhaps he's
00:05:39.000thinking of of of of the future in lobbying um perhaps this is a battle of pride he does not want
00:05:46.080her to win tell me some more about about the the funding uh if you will just I know you said it but
00:05:51.640just for the war in posse do that again about the absolute lack of funding and then and then we'll
00:05:58.200talk about the polls because I think you pointed out that uh Arizona was the only state that didn't
00:06:03.700have a breakdown on on the polling there yeah well Senate Leadership Fund um I would say has historically
00:06:11.420been the kiss of death when they get involved in races just look over the past three cycles
00:06:15.120and the races that SLF went all in on Adam Laxalt in Nevada Don Bullock in New Hampshire John O'Day in
00:06:20.740Colorado Martha McSally twice in Arizona John James in Michigan Mark Ronchetti in New Mexico uh Jim
00:06:27.280Renacci in Ohio Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire um you had David Perdue in Georgia Joe Heck in Nevada Dean
00:06:33.240Heller in Nevada these are all races that SLF spent hundreds of hundreds hundreds of millions of dollars
00:06:37.880in that they lost you know the three races that SLF did not spend in who went on to win uh Senator Ron
00:06:43.400Johnson in Wisconsin Senator Rick Scott in Florida and Senator Ted Cruz in Texas so to be honest with
00:06:49.140you their funding is is true I've I'm actually like you know what screw it we actually don't want your
00:06:53.660funding all you do is run horrible television ads and blow donors money that don't actually move the
00:06:58.780needle on any races but it does just show what a problem that we have in the Republican Party of the
00:07:03.700money being so centrally controlled by this small group of consultants that are literally paid
00:07:08.980and rewarded to lose races at this point and the way so I'm not really following the polls what I do
00:07:14.540follow is the Democrat spending because the Democrats are much smarter than we are when it comes to their
00:07:18.400political spending and their ability to win or lose races and so every single day I see Chuck Schumer
00:07:24.480by another 600,000 2.5 million 3.5 million in Arizona Chuck Schumer is currently spending more in
00:07:30.740Arizona than he is in the Wisconsin Senate race in the Michigan Senate race in the Nevada Senate race
00:07:35.740he's almost tied with what he spent in the Montana Senate race now typically these groups like this
00:07:40.780their job is to protect incumbents so someone tell me why is Chuck Schumer spending more in an open race
00:07:46.380in Arizona than he is to retain his incumbents Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin John Tester in Montana
00:07:52.940Jackie Rosen in Nevada it's because Chuck Schumer is looking at the same numbers and data points that we are
00:07:59.580seeing on our race which show that Carrie Lake is likely to win this Senate race and so he keeps pouring
00:08:03.880more and more money in meanwhile Mitch McConnell announces another 5 10 20 million every other day
00:08:09.120to Larry Hogan and to Dave McCormick Dave McCormick you know I hope he does pull it out but he has
00:08:15.640tons of billionaire friends he's self-funding the race himself I've never seen so much money pour into
00:08:20.740a Senate race than I have in Pennsylvania you could just five million dollars spent in Arizona defining
00:08:25.720Ruben Gallego could be a game changer needle mover but they're not going to do it because they
00:08:29.600ultimately know that Carrie Lake will go to Washington DC and she will not answer to GOP
00:08:34.560leadership she will answer to we the people and the people of Arizona and that is why she is such
00:08:40.020a danger to them Caroline can you tell me about how this polling this internal polling escaped into
00:08:48.280the public domain and perhaps reference who's behind the Senate leadership fund you know I don't know
00:08:54.760it's unclear how this poll got out there it is my theory that Senate leadership put it out there
00:08:59.880because it is a internal poll that they used to make funding decision is what they're claiming and
00:09:06.100so either someone within the organization leaked it out it's even law possibly leaked it out we don't know
00:09:11.140the answer to that but I'm convinced that they are trying to set up a reason to start pulling out of
00:09:15.440Ohio because they also know Bernie Moreno will not it's similar to Carrie Lake Bernie Moreno is not
00:09:20.480going to DC just to vote along with leadership and continue to fund the Ukraine war and they were
00:09:25.120setting up a way to start to put even more money into Pennsylvania and so there's a lot of different
00:09:30.480theories that I have asked this it's also possible that they sent this out to a few different donors
00:09:34.860and a donor I guess leaked it but it's not that typical for donors to leak an internal memo like
00:09:39.800this especially if you are giving massive amounts of money to the Senate leadership fund and so
00:09:44.300all we know is it ended up in the hands of Politico yesterday afternoon
00:09:47.560just before you go Caroline you mentioned that these vehicles are great for raising money for consultants
00:09:55.760and not so great for getting candidates of the quality of the advertising in favor of their candidates
00:10:02.620would you mention one consultant perhaps who's very senior in the SLA that I know will have huge name
00:10:10.700recognition with the Wolverine posse right well Karl Rove is heavily involved in all this and has been
00:10:16.260the ironic part about Karl Rove is he hasn't won a race since 2004 but yet somehow he's who Fox News
00:10:21.720touts on TV every night to come in and give his expert analysis at losing races quite frankly and Karl Rove
00:10:28.900is also heavily involved in Senate leadership fund he's very close to Mitch McConnell he has a hand in all
00:10:33.920these spending decisions along with the organization that he runs which is American Crossroads which is
00:10:38.420basically just a spin-off of Senate leadership fund and so this is just how the Republican consultant
00:10:44.000culture works it's completely broken and that thank God Donald Trump came in and kind of blew a lot of
00:10:49.480this up and so I actually think you know in 68 of the last 69 Senate races when Donald Trump was on the
00:10:55.020ballot the Republican Senate candidate and Donald Trump won or lost together and so I think that Donald
00:11:00.480Trump is going to win Pennsylvania and thus I think Dave McCormick's going to win I think Donald Trump's
00:11:04.200going to win Arizona so I think Carrie Lake isn't going to win so right now you know when Donald
00:11:08.420Trump the better he does in these swing states the better our Senate candidates are going to do
00:11:12.660and so this race these races are not going to be decided based off these ridiculous public polls
00:11:17.120or the Senate leadership fund ad spending it's going to be based on Donald Trump running up the score
00:11:21.640and the numbers and that's where the momentum seems to be right now and so I'm very excited I'm very
00:11:27.220hopeful for these Senate races so just don't when you read about this leader Senate leadership fund
00:11:31.580polling memo today please just print it set it on fire and put it in your trash can
00:11:36.220Caroline absolutely outstanding where can people go to get in touch with your analysis of the of
00:11:43.960Arizona and all things to do with the election heading into November the 5th sure it's at Caroline
00:11:50.260Wren on Twitter getter and truth social Caroline thanks very much for coming on the show thank God
00:11:55.960bless you now so over to our next battleground state now Wisconsin and Wisconsin GOP chair Brian
00:12:04.000Shimming joins us Brian thanks for coming on good morning to tell me Kamala Harris has been has been
00:12:11.880quite busy in Wisconsin yeah she sure has was just announced yesterday that she's coming back into
00:12:19.240Wisconsin to go to Milwaukee and Green Bay and lacrosse I take that as some panic on the part of her
00:12:28.220campaign because we've seen polling now a lot of the swing states it's basically within two points
00:12:34.940in almost all the swings Wisconsin Pennsylvania Wisconsin Pennsylvania Arizona probably a little bit
00:12:43.940bigger of a lead so I think what's happening here is that they are panicked and so all of a sudden she
00:12:50.860comes into Wisconsin into three cities in one day I internally we show a lot of numbers that have
00:12:58.100President Trump up by about a point and half or two here in Wisconsin our modeling shows us up about one
00:13:05.080I presume Kamala Harris is seeing the same thing and she's now panicking so as you know President Trump has
00:13:12.040been here in lacrosse in Milwaukee in Waukesha and Racine in Green Bay up in the Wausau area a couple of weeks ago so the
00:13:22.420Trump campaign is putting a lot of effort here into Wisconsin state as you know that has gone has had 12 races in
00:13:30.600the last 24 years that have been decided by less than 30,000 votes well I haven't checked the betting markets in the last
00:13:39.040couple of hours but when I last checked it before preparing to come on air I think Trump was two points ahead and it was a 51 49 on
00:13:47.420on poly markets which is updated in real time um so you know that's where that's where people are putting their own personal money on who they think is going to win tell me in the closing three weeks of this campaign are there any uh intentions to get President Trump or Senator Vance out to uh to you in Wisconsin yeah my suspicion is that we'll see the
00:14:09.020the president two to three more times here in Wisconsin I'd be surprised if he didn't end up in
00:14:14.640Milwaukee TV market again uh probably outstate a couple of times as well so I think we're gonna see
00:14:21.540President Trump a fair bit here in Wisconsin and that's clearly having its impact I mean not only in
00:14:28.120terms of the media coverage but for folks the grassroots out here who we spend most of our time with uh here at the
00:14:36.080state Republican Party that's having an impact to have him come in I talked to him last week
00:14:41.760after he'd been in uh in uh Dodge County uh over to the east of Madison here and we had 12 or 14
00:14:50.120thousand people out at an airport in rural Dodge County in just a couple of days notice essentially
00:14:56.800we see the same thing everywhere he goes we're turning thousands of people away
00:15:03.080so that has provided energy uh for our county parties it's provided energy for uh our election
00:15:10.060integrity effort we have almost 6,000 poll workers Republican poll workers in Wisconsin we'll have
00:15:15.660thousands of folks that are stepping up to be poll watchers we still need more of those and uh and we'll
00:15:22.820have hundreds of attorneys involved our election integrity effort here in Wisconsin will be the biggest
00:15:28.440in history by a factor of 20 probably we're we're taking it very seriously
00:15:34.040Brian you you mentioned just now that you were with the president last week how was he how was
00:15:40.040he feeling regarding Wisconsin was he buoyant yeah he was he was terrific actually uh spoke for the
00:15:47.260better part of two hours and by the way for the first time I was mentioning to someone this morning
00:15:52.840for the first time President Trump had a banner up on the wall on the other side of the stage from
00:15:57.760where I was sitting uh that said vote early and the president spoke very specifically to the need
00:16:03.960of Republicans uh to vote early here in Wisconsin as you know uh people can uh begin to vote early on
00:16:10.480October 22nd so not only was the banner up uh not only did we have the t-shirt uh so to speak but the
00:16:17.340president also spoke very specifically very passionately in his remarks about the need for people to vote
00:16:24.420early uh if there's any question uh if there's any question whatsoever on whether they'd be able to
00:16:28.980show up to the polls but the other thing is to vote early to save resources uh so I can stop spending
00:16:35.180money on on folks that haven't gotten the polls yet if if I can take the average Republican voter who
00:16:41.000votes two weeks early I can save the resources from from you know that person and spend it on someone
00:16:48.380else who's a persuadable either has not voted before and as I say and I've said on this show
00:16:54.580there are hundreds of thousands of people in this state who think like us who act like us who live like
00:17:02.620us who believe like us but don't vote they're hunters they're people in churches they're part people in
00:17:10.880conservative school groups around the state a lot of people it's hard for us to believe but there's a lot
00:17:15.760of people out there who don't vote we get them to vote just a percentage of them in this election
00:17:21.660Donald Trump will win Wisconsin and he'll be on the way to the White House
00:17:25.640from your lips to God's airbind and the closing three weeks where do people go if they want to
00:17:34.040help out in Wisconsin they want to help out on election day perhaps they want to help out knocking
00:17:38.400on doors putting leaflets through to try and utilize as best as possible the latent momentum
00:17:45.700that is there in the budget state they can come to our website right they can come to our website
00:17:51.340here at wisgop w-i-s-g-o-p they can come to our website and they can follow me on twitter as well
00:18:00.700my twitter handle is at brian shimming b-r-i-a-n-s-c-h-i-m-m-i-n-g at brian shimming
00:18:10.160and i'm giving daily updates on what's going on on our website wisgop.com we have enormous activity
00:18:18.480here and all of these swing states there's i always say to folks look there's not 50 states
00:18:23.600this year who i'm going to ruin your kindergarten education there are not 50 states there are seven
00:18:29.620so i don't pay a lot of attention to the national polling other than just being interested in it
00:18:34.620the truth is what's happening in these battleground states like wisconsin like arizona like michigan like
00:18:42.360georgia that's where the action is in this election so i appeal to people across the country
00:18:48.060to send whatever assistance you can if you want to come up and volunteer for a day or for a weekend
00:18:54.060we'll get that figured out we need this is an all hands on deck save america moment right now
00:19:01.960in uh this election is three weeks from tomorrow we have 22 days to get this done
00:19:07.220as steve bannon would say shoulder to shoulder to the wheel folks brian shimming thanks for coming
00:19:13.740on the show catch up again with you in wisconsin as soon god bless for now thank you so much for having