Bannon's War Room - WarRoom Battleground EP 692： Keeping America Safe; Rules Of Unforced Error

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

00:00:14.360 Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.

00:00:19.580 I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.

00:00:23.860 The people have had a belly full of it.

00:00:25.760 I know you don't like hearing that.

00:00:26.940 I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.

00:00:29.800 It's going to happen.

00:00:31.180 And where do people like that go to share the big line?

00:00:34.560 Mega Media.

00:00:35.880 I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.

00:00:41.320 Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?

00:00:45.080 If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.

00:00:51.280 War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Band.

00:00:59.800 It's Wednesday, 22 January, Year of the Lord, 2025.

00:01:05.440 Thank you for staying for the second hour of the late afternoon, early evening show.

00:01:09.760 So I'm going to hit three news items.

00:01:10.860 I've got two of my favorite people who have joined me for this hour.

00:01:14.520 Item one, this is from CNN, up on Derek Evans' Twitter feed.

00:01:22.980 This is huge.

00:01:24.120 U.S. Transportation Command instructed to prepare the use of military assets and aircraft for deportation flights.

00:01:32.860 Boom.

00:01:33.300 Also, we can't confirm the second, but it's a tweet out there from Blonde Lady 2024.

00:01:39.940 U.S. Marshals have entered D.C. prison to extract the illegally held J-6ers. 1.00

00:01:44.520 We'll track that down.

00:01:46.040 Ben Burquam has left.

00:01:47.980 The D.C. jail has been down there at the vigil.

00:01:49.800 He is actually out in the field and will be doing action reports tomorrow.

00:01:55.300 Tomorrow, you'll see what we're talking about.

00:01:57.200 Hopefully, Ben will be in North Carolina on Friday with President Trump when he goes to the parts of Appalachia where Ben was last week.

00:02:06.180 But Ben's going to be in the field again tomorrow in an undisclosed location.

00:02:11.900 Third element is that it's been announced.

00:02:16.900 This is the Associated Press.

00:02:18.360 President Trump's national security advisor, that would be Colonel Mike Waltz, Green Beret, is sidelining roughly 160 career government employees on temporary duty at the White House National Security Council, administration officials told the Associated Press.

00:02:35.580 I want to bring in Ezra Cohen, Josh Steinman, two of the really the stalwarts in President Trump's first term, first administration.

00:02:46.400 Ezra, I'll start with you.

00:02:47.520 I talked about this this morning, that when General Flynn was there, I asked him, you know, in the first couple of days, and I ran this by you guys, to give me an organization chart, and he came back, and there was 292 billets.

00:03:01.000 Seventy percent of these are 75 percent filled with what we call detailees, these people that come from the agencies, come from the Defense Department.

00:03:09.980 And I said, and I said, when I was in the Pentagon back in 1981, the NSC had 25 people and ran the world.

00:03:18.760 What is this about?

00:03:20.380 And Lieutenant General Flynn moving to do what Waltz just did is what got him turfed out.

00:03:27.240 So talk to folks about—we're going to talk about transition over there, but just this news today that Waltz, with the president, was able to convince the president we've got to get rid of these detailees. 1.00

00:03:38.320 What's a detailee?

00:03:39.460 What's the structure?

00:03:40.960 160 people go, man, that's a lot of people.

00:03:43.000 I thought National Security Council was a little situation room below the West Wing, sir.

00:03:47.400 Right.

00:03:49.200 Well, thanks again, Steve, for having us on.

00:03:51.100 You know, Josh and I were the ones that built out the org chart for the NSC in 2016, going into 2017.

00:03:58.600 The detailees are people that are brought in from the different departments and agencies.

00:04:02.860 They're hand-selected by the politically appointed NSC staff.

00:04:07.540 So really what you have there is the people that were there that Mike Waltz very judiciously and prudently sent packing today are people that were hand-picked, by name requested in many cases, by the Biden political appointees.

00:04:24.220 So President Trump has come in right off the bat on day one, and his aim is to break, shut down the autopilot so that you don't continue the policies, the failed policies of Joe Biden.

00:04:37.940 So the people that are hand-picked by their staff need to go.

00:04:43.020 Otherwise, you will have a continuation of those policies until somebody actively steps in and shuts them down.

00:04:49.680 So how can you lose, Josh, how can you lose 160, 160 detailees?

00:04:59.140 Are these coming from the Pentagon, CIA?

00:05:00.940 I mean, how can Waltz, the criticism on MSNBC tonight, and they're going to have David Ignatius, mark my words, David Ignatius will be in Morning Joe tomorrow, say the nation's unsecure. 0.95

00:05:11.120 You have these crazy people.

00:05:12.940 They're crazier now than they were in 17, right? 0.94

00:05:16.240 Because now they've effectuated the plan.

00:05:18.300 Flynn and Cohen and Steinman and Bannon just crafted a plan that was never fully executed and led to the impeachment of Trump because the deep state fought it.

00:05:27.080 Here, you've let go 160.

00:05:30.060 Imagine, let's say they still got the 292.

00:05:32.540 You've let go two-thirds.

00:05:34.100 The nation's not safe.

00:05:35.860 How can you go to sleep tonight? 0.98

00:05:37.180 How can you rock that little baby of yours, Steinman, asleep, knowing the nation's unsafe because Trump's a madman and is ripping apart the National Security Council, sir? 0.93

00:05:46.960 Yeah, Steve, it's great. 0.84

00:05:48.020 It's a great question.

00:05:48.900 I think, first of all, we should level set, which is that when Ezra and I came in with General Flynn in 2017, January 2017, we were there minute one, day one.

00:05:59.420 We brought in with us less than 25 people that the president had chosen, including the National Security Advisor or Deputy National Security Advisor.

00:06:09.220 So, every other person on that NSC staff on day one, last time, had been someone who, though a career civil servant, had been screened, interviewed, and then hired by the Obama team.

00:06:22.920 And that was exactly what was going to happen.

00:06:25.260 This time, obviously, it hasn't.

00:06:27.220 And I think National Security Advisor Waltz made a great move to have those folks go on a sort of limited duty and go home.

00:06:38.120 So, I think the question is—

00:06:39.940 Yeah, but hold it.

00:06:41.780 But hang on.

00:06:42.360 But hang on.

00:06:42.860 I got it.

00:06:43.560 We had a plan.

00:06:44.380 We wanted to pull the trigger.

00:06:45.780 25.

00:06:46.300 I don't think we ever got up—I don't think President Trump ever had more than 35 political appointees.

00:06:51.820 I think he could have had 60.

00:06:53.440 And he still wouldn't take down.

00:06:54.400 Yeah, so there are a lot of reasons why staff—

00:06:58.960 Pentagon, they go back to CIA, they go back to there.

00:07:02.300 How can the nation be safe?

00:07:05.260 Yeah, so, you know, what those staffers are doing from day to day is essentially coordinating the interagency.

00:07:11.920 So, they're not actually—now, under Obama, they were.

00:07:15.320 But under us, you know, they are not actually picking targets.

00:07:19.340 They are not actually, you know, manipulating the agencies themselves.

00:07:23.340 They're just saying, hey, why don't we get on one sheet of music and do one thing?

00:07:28.080 And that one thing should be what the president wants.

00:07:30.900 And this is why it's so critical that NSC staffers—and, by the way, you know, I'm sure they're good patriots.

00:07:36.480 I hope they're good patriots, even the ones that were serving under the previous admin.

00:07:40.000 But this is why NSC staffers need to be totally in lockstep with the duly elected president of the United States,

00:07:47.700 because an NSC staff is an extension of the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution.

00:07:52.440 Executive power will be vested in a president.

00:07:56.200 NSC staffers are there to make sure that that is what happens across the national security establishment.

00:08:00.980 So, Ezra, I don't know if I'm feeling better after Steinman.

00:08:10.320 How is the nation going to be safer tonight?

00:08:12.540 Isn't it unsafe?

00:08:13.380 Isn't the plan that we came up with a—in the scale of what the NSC does today?

00:08:20.560 Because Steinman, bear a good point.

00:08:22.040 We made a conscious decision that we weren't going to run wars out of the National Security Council.

00:08:27.260 And people should understand this is a fundamental—there's two ways a National Security Council can be a coordinator and an advisor to the commander-in-chief,

00:08:34.400 or it actually can be we actually run the wars.

00:08:38.360 This is the big struggle when I was in the Navy as a junior officer of the Chief of Naval Operations.

00:08:43.060 Even though they didn't want a Kissinger, they didn't want a Zigbee Brzezinski, this guy, Richie V. Allen, the White House still ran the wars.

00:08:51.880 They ran Contra.

00:08:52.720 They ran what they were doing in Central America.

00:08:55.240 They ran—everything was run out of the White House with 25 guys, right?

00:08:59.860 Trump made a conscious decision to do that.

00:09:02.860 Biden, I think, took the opposite.

00:09:04.220 So tonight, like, who's in charge?

00:09:07.440 When you guys are relieved to watch, who's in charge, particularly when you see 160 of these guys going to the Pentagon, CIA, everything, who's on watch?

00:09:15.460 Yeah, so, look, we're in a—we're coming in here to a crisis situation after four years with Biden.

00:09:22.300 So step one, we've got to stem the bleeding.

00:09:24.940 Part of stemming the bleeding is getting people out that are not on the same page of music.

00:09:30.160 Now, ideally, what would have happened is we would have already selected new detailees to come in, and we could have done this hot swap.

00:09:39.600 That's obviously not going to happen for many reasons.

00:09:43.400 But right now, the key thing is stop the existing policies.

00:09:47.400 I can just tell you as an example, Steve, in 2017, when Josh and I stepped into the Situation Room, actually five minutes before the president was sworn in,

00:09:57.480 and we were the first people into the White House compound, we immediately started getting phone calls to try to get us to authorize operations that were ongoing or that the Obama administration had put in place.

00:10:11.580 And General Flynn was great.

00:10:12.980 He basically just said, look, we're going to do a 24-hour stand-down.

00:10:16.440 The only thing that requires an immediate response, and truthfully, is responding to a nuclear strike or an attempted nuclear strike.

00:10:26.620 Everything else can wait.

00:10:28.300 So that's what I think is going to happen now.

00:10:30.240 We're just going to have a quick pause here.

00:10:32.860 And then at the agencies, you know, this is another problem, and maybe you want to get to this, but we do not have control yet at the agencies.

00:10:41.140 We don't have political appointees anywhere except the State Department.

00:10:45.700 Hold it.

00:10:46.340 Hang on.

00:10:46.820 Hang on.

00:10:47.200 Hang on.

00:10:47.660 Hang on.

00:10:48.160 Hang on.

00:10:48.740 Hang on.

00:10:49.160 Hang on.

00:10:49.720 I'm going to play a clip from Russ Vo taking Incoming from Warner.

00:10:53.180 We're going to get to that.

00:10:54.300 Before I do, though, hang on.

00:10:56.800 Steinman, in the entire apparatus, how can you even staff with anybody?

00:11:02.120 The apparatus, the way your career progresses, like when I was in the Navy, it was before they had the joint, really the joint commands were very weak,

00:11:09.020 and you kind of, the deadbeats got dumped there.

00:11:10.780 It was only later when they went to the joint unified command structure that you've got a career enhancement by going.

00:11:16.700 Before, the biggest enemy we had was not the Russian Navy.

00:11:19.420 It was the U.S. Army taking resources.

00:11:21.300 My point is every institution has their own outlook, right, on national security, of how you progress this career.

00:11:29.900 To be at the top, and they only take the best.

00:11:32.660 Are there any best, having spent their careers 10, 15, 20 years at that level, to be equivalent to get second deed or seconded over to the National Security Council,

00:11:46.080 that don't have the mindset of America the imperial state?

00:11:50.480 America first, it's like, that's like a bacillus. 0.90

00:11:54.260 Yes, the institutions reject it, not just the personnel, but the institution rejects it.

00:11:59.540 So where do you get and get any detailees that can actually come into the National Security Council,

00:12:06.100 since we don't have control of those institutions, which we'll get to in a second,

00:12:09.620 that could actually be supportive of an America first agenda and keep the country safe?

00:12:14.160 I mean, Steve, this is the deep, dark secret of the swamp, which is that, you know, being a good NSC staffer is not actually a hard job.

00:12:26.780 It's just a demanding job.

00:12:29.600 And so, you know, I am—it's like that line about I'd rather be governed by the first hundred names in the Boston phone book than the, you know, faculty of Harvard College.

00:12:41.360 You know, smart, dedicated professionals who know how to write, know how to think, and know how to uphold the Constitution can be good NSC staffers.

00:12:51.820 What you're talking about is the way in which Washington has groomed, you know, this class of mandarins for the past 50 years.

00:13:00.300 And look, in my opinion, it's like, you know, what's that memetic concept with the Swedish fish, right?

00:13:09.420 These people, they are, you know, multiple generations past the great statesmen that they claim to be the inheritors of, you know, their, you know, their mantle.

00:13:22.560 And instead of actually being great thinkers or great warriors as those folks in the 1940s and 1950s were, instead, what's actually going on is they just participated in the forums.

00:13:35.380 These are the people that were like, oh, you know, Zig Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger got PhDs at Harvard.

00:13:42.160 I'll go get a PhD at Harvard, and I'll be Kissinger. 0.91

00:13:44.940 It's like that's not how it works, you know?

00:13:47.180 And so what you're talking about is when you ask this question of, oh, do we have the people that can do it?

00:13:52.680 Anyone can do it.

00:13:53.880 I mean, not anyone, but lots of people can do it.

00:13:55.860 But the point is, how does Washington, how does establishment Washington like to groom people for these positions of, you know, named authority?

00:14:06.480 And it's through these processes.

00:14:07.920 All that to say that there are plenty of folks in the U.S. government that I think are well-qualified and could be effective NSC staffers, and many of us have been going out and finding them over the past few years.

00:14:19.900 And so I'm confident that we'll get a good crop, and I think many of them are already coming to the NSC staff right now who absolutely will be able to do that job.

00:14:28.540 The interagency process, this is where everything gets leaked, everything President Trump wanted to do, the phone calls got leaked, everything got leaked.

00:14:36.640 Higgins, Sergeant Higgins wrote a memo that was very controversial, led to his being removed by ministers from the White House that walked through.

00:14:43.960 He took the detailees and walked through who the traitors were, and it turned out in the impeachment, you just go right through that list.

00:14:53.320 Let me play, I want to get to it, let's play, I want you to listen to Russ' vote taking incoming from Warner today at his hearing on Office of Management and Budget.

00:15:03.200 Let's go ahead and play it, Denver.

00:15:04.960 Sir, I do appreciate the fact one of the things you said, which was you think it's important for the federal government to keep our nation safe.

00:15:14.460 Probably the most important thing I've done in this job is I've, my work with the intelligence community.

00:15:19.160 I'm chair and vice chair now. We've got thousands of men and women who work in the intelligence community without a lot of fanfare.

00:15:29.240 You realize, of course, I hope, that to become a CIA agent, it takes about a year to get a secure clearance.

00:15:35.340 You aware of that?

00:15:36.400 Yes, Senator.

00:15:36.800 All right, so in your Project 25, Magnus, you put forward the idea that somehow breaking up the CIA and moving it around the country would make our nation more safe?

00:15:50.640 Do you not understand, sir, that if President Trump, by having the intelligence community close to him, to have ability from folks from NSA to CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI, in this region,

00:16:08.720 your idea of let's somehow go on this ideological jihad to break up the intelligence community's effectiveness?

00:16:16.320 I would ask you, sir, can you show any evidence that somehow we would make our nation safer if you put your political litmus test and, you know, this idea of bringing trauma to the federal workforce

00:16:35.960 by taking the intelligence community, which has been supported on a bipartisan basis, year in and year out, and somehow breaking it up and spreading it hither and yon, just for a political purpose?

00:16:50.360 How does that make our nation safer?

00:16:52.360 Senator, I never proposed that, and the president has disassociated himself from Project 2025.

00:16:57.700 It's a mischaracterization of my role.

00:17:00.060 Okay, good. We're here on the record. You're going to commit to make sure, like, you know, I would argue you have to make a business case

00:17:08.220 before you start breaking up the government. I'm all for effectiveness.

00:17:12.900 But are you going to be willing here to commit not to undermine our national intelligence community

00:17:18.280 by arbitrarily trying to break them up and spread them around just because you want to blow up the federal workforce in this region?

00:17:25.620 Yes, Senator. There's no policy process that the Trump administration had done that's producing arbitrary results.

00:17:32.680 And let me speak to the question that you raised with regard to my comments about the bureaucracy.

00:17:37.720 It was specifically in reference to the weaponized bureaucracy that we've seen certainly at the DOJ.

00:17:42.580 And so you are the arbiter of who's weaponized and who's not?

00:17:47.540 You get, you know, again, I hope my colleagues will raise, I think, your completely irresponsible actions on so-called Schedule F.

00:17:55.620 You know, we put a civil service in place. But I urge you, sir, if you become in this position,

00:18:01.680 think long and hard about the men and women of the national security and the intelligence community

00:18:09.480 before you go on some political jihad of trying to score points by simply trying to break up an operation

00:18:16.480 that actually functions better because of their close collaboration.

00:18:21.540 And your comments about the federal workforce, I find disqualifying on its basis.

00:18:27.540 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:18:31.500 Disqualifying. That's the great Russ vote right there.

00:18:34.660 You remember Russ, one of our major contributors over the last four years.

00:18:38.340 Let me start with Ezra.

00:18:43.080 Right there, it gets to the heart of what you guys have been talking about and, quite frankly, have been working on.

00:18:46.920 You are experts in the IC community.

00:18:48.880 We don't have control of it. It has control of us.

00:18:52.080 This is when people talk about the deep state.

00:18:53.960 And IC, and I understand, the CIA is root and branching everywhere.

00:18:58.380 It's in DOD. It's in DHS. It's in FBI.

00:19:01.240 It is a cancer that has metastasized, and they have their own way of doing things.

00:19:07.400 As they said in my father's house, there are many mansions in the CIA.

00:19:14.000 They have all kind of independent fiefdoms and tribes and clans in there, oftentimes across purposes.

00:19:21.400 But always focus on they run the deal.

00:19:25.060 Ezra, I overplay that.

00:19:26.220 And you just see right there, Russ, vote we're going through are very logical.

00:19:29.260 There's been years in the making from the first administration and the bridge, which we call either 2025 or America First Priorities, Brooks Rollins.

00:19:37.580 And you've got Russ's CRA.

00:19:40.480 You've had many different think tanks look at this, and the best thinking is that we've got to get our hands on this apparatus.

00:19:46.400 You've got to deconstruct the administrative state, but you've got to take the hammer to the CIA and kind of disaggregate it.

00:19:52.200 And right there, you see Warner, who's one of the worst, one of the worst.

00:19:56.280 That's the defense of it.

00:19:57.180 And he actually said what Russ's vote had said about this was disqualifying.

00:20:02.180 So that's a no vote in your grill at your hearing today.

00:20:06.860 Start with it, Ezra.

00:20:07.820 Your thoughts.

00:20:09.700 Yeah.

00:20:09.980 So I'm not sure of the exact proposal that Senator Warner was referencing.

00:20:14.040 I don't think Russ's vote knew either.

00:20:15.760 But the key thing is I just want to push back on a few things that were said there that are not accurate.

00:20:21.620 One is this idea that somehow you have to be physically located in the same place to be productive.

00:20:29.400 First of all, one, over the past four years, even the intelligence community has been in large part remote.

00:20:36.500 People are not having in-person meetings.

00:20:38.500 President Trump's going to fix that, and things have just been working just fine, according to Senator Warner.

00:20:44.540 Second of all, we also have a problem, and I think Tom Cotton pointed to this very well in John Radcliffe's hearing, which is the intelligence community is incredibly distracted, and it has lost sight of the core objective.

00:21:02.580 We do not need people in the IC focused on influencing the policy process or getting involved in making policy.

00:21:13.560 Their job is to inform the policymaker, not influence, and that's very important.

00:21:20.000 And unfortunately, the overemphasis within these agencies on what's happening on the politics inside of the Beltway has reduced their mission effectiveness.

00:21:29.480 We need them focused on the politics of our adversary, not on the politics at home, and one way to do that is to get people physically out of the Beltway.

00:21:40.940 And by the way, the CIA is one of the most geographically dispersed agencies in the world, and again, according to Senator Warner, they are functioning fine.

00:21:51.760 So I just think some of the core assumptions there are just not accurate.

00:21:55.820 Okay.

00:22:00.380 Steinman, how do you actually get to the beast?

00:22:04.760 We talk about the deep state.

00:22:05.940 The CIA is the head of the snake.

00:22:09.240 How do you get your arms around it?

00:22:11.820 If you see right there, Warner, you're going to have Senate intel is going to be against you.

00:22:15.620 They just fired.

00:22:16.920 The President of the United States, let's be blunt, it wasn't Mike Johnson.

00:22:20.320 I know Waltz might have upset him in a meeting or something like that, but as even Johnson told Waltz, this is coming from Mar-a-Lago.

00:22:27.240 They're not happy.

00:22:28.400 The President wants a clean sweep of this.

00:22:30.800 I mean, you guys were the tip of the tip of the spear for him, the first administration.

00:22:34.680 Now, with more experience and, quite frankly, a bigger win, as they said in Davos today, the greatest come-from-behind win ever, so he's kind of unbeatable now.

00:22:44.500 How do you go about actually taking on the deep state?

00:22:50.760 Well, Steve, it sort of goes back to Aristotle.

00:22:53.120 We are what we do, right?

00:22:55.620 And so I think the first task is what is the U.S. government doing?

00:23:00.400 What are these institutions actually doing?

00:23:02.880 What are they doing day in, day out?

00:23:05.380 And that's why some of the biggest, in my mind, initiatives that have come out over the past 36 hours, 48 hours since the president took the oath of office have been the stand-downs, the let's hold off on, the 90-day freeze on foreign aid, the similar activities happening across the Department of Defense, et cetera.

00:23:26.760 So I think the whole point here is that good leadership, and good leadership comes from the top.

00:23:32.460 It can come only from the politicals.

00:23:34.440 Good leadership here is about stopping the things that the U.S. government is doing that are against the interests of the American people.

00:23:43.480 And I think that's one of the most powerful things that a National Security Council staff can do, which is deeply get into the weeds with these departments and agencies.

00:23:52.200 And so for me, like, yes, we can—

00:23:54.620 Okay, hang on, hang on.

00:23:56.220 But hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

00:23:59.040 They thrive—we're talking about the CIA here, bro.

00:24:02.200 They are experts at the Wilderness of Mirrors.

00:24:05.460 You're going to walk over there.

00:24:06.540 I could take my two best guys.

00:24:08.220 I could take, I don't know, Steinman and Ezra Cohen.

00:24:12.800 I would send you over to the CIA.

00:24:14.980 They would have your head turning so much and chasing false rabbits.

00:24:17.920 If you had to go over, and your mission was quite simple, from the President of the United States, guys, number one, I want to get CIA involvement out of the Pentagon.

00:24:28.760 I want to get it out of FBI.

00:24:30.920 I want to get it out of DOJ.

00:24:32.900 I want to get it out of the National Security Council.

00:24:35.660 I want to get it out of DHS.

00:24:37.200 I want to get it out of the State Department and Treasury.

00:24:39.580 I want to take my power organizations.

00:24:41.380 The first step is I just want to get their reach that's everywhere.

00:24:45.340 Just get it out.

00:24:46.120 But, Steve, these things are—

00:24:48.240 You two went over there.

00:24:49.500 They would have you guys bagged and tagged.

00:24:51.460 They'd have you guys bagged and tagged in a week.

00:24:53.300 Would they not, sir?

00:24:54.580 No, I don't think so.

00:24:55.680 And, in fact, last time, I mean, you know, we had a handful of people that deeply understood the intelligence community and the Department of Defense as political leaders.

00:25:03.800 And we absolutely were able to get our hands around it.

00:25:06.580 You know, if you understand how those mechanisms in the IC actually work, which Ezra does, which I do, there's a critical bureaucratic process that you can take control of on day one that absolutely pulls things to a standstill.

00:25:22.360 And so this is where I think it's so critical that we have people that understand the intelligence community, that have been intelligence community operatives and then have gone on to be political supporters of the president.

00:25:34.260 This is why it's so critical that we have those people in the most senior roles in the government.

00:25:39.840 And that includes the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Principal Deputy D.N.I., Deputy Director of CIA.

00:25:47.040 You need people who are politically on the same page as the president and then deeply understand the intelligence community in those roles, because if you know how the mechanism operates, you can absolutely put your hands on the steering wheel and get control of it.

00:26:04.760 Hang on for one second, guys.

00:26:06.020 I'm going to ask you to just stay through a short commercial break.

00:26:07.880 I want to talk to Senator Rubio, Secretary of State, laid out a new vision of America first at the end of the post-war international rules-based order.

00:26:20.960 That's the one big fetish that runs the hegemon. 0.97

00:26:24.820 But the internal fetish is the interagency process.

00:26:29.260 Oh, man, that sounds like a sleeper.

00:26:30.680 It is not.

00:26:31.240 But this is how the deep state coordinates the way they're going to roll, no matter who the locals are.

00:26:38.440 Short commercial break.

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00:26:40.920 Times of turbulence.

00:26:42.260 We're coming out.

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00:26:58.360 Back in a moment.

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00:31:12.660 Here's your host, Stephen K.

00:31:23.160 Band.

00:31:26.760 Okay.

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00:32:04.880 Ezra, interagency process.

00:32:06.240 My theory of the case is this is how it is.

00:32:10.040 If you're in the National Security Council, or I would get the calendars of the National Security Council guys, the senior guys, Flynn, Kellogg, and then McMasters.

00:32:22.420 You could be in meetings down there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and only get about half the work done of meetings.

00:32:31.180 They got deputy meetings, assistant meetings, everything, and they got the agencies, and they're getting all the different departments.

00:32:38.720 They're throwing in their true sense.

00:32:39.820 They got papers going around to get a consensus.

00:32:41.960 It is a massive amount of work.

00:32:44.500 When I saw this interagency process, and it's sacred.

00:32:47.280 The interagency process, the reason they hated Trump right out of the box is that it's Trump.

00:32:52.280 He doesn't care about interagency process.

00:32:53.880 He wants to get facts, things, make decisions, move on.

00:32:56.540 The interagency process, I believe, is the mechanism that the CIA uses to control the entire process.

00:33:05.080 All they're different, and they have major nodes of power in every one of the principal, what I call the power departments, Treasury, DHS, Justice, and FBI underneath it.

00:33:16.520 Obviously, the Department of Defense, and DNI, which is the oversight, not the operational control, but the oversight of 17, labor in these things, State Department also.

00:33:26.540 Why am I wrong?

00:33:30.180 Tell me, argue that the interagency process is not the way the CIA keeps control.

00:33:34.580 Until you get in and then break that up, the CIA is basically going to have control of the United States government, full stop.

00:33:39.860 And I've seen it from the inside where I don't – it's not a deep state.

00:33:44.000 It's up in your grill every day, sir.

00:33:46.920 Yeah, Steve, I mean, I think you do point at one problem we have, which is that the intelligence agencies are – again, they're supposed to be influencing – they're supposed to be informing the policymaker, not influencing.

00:34:03.100 But then you have about 50 percent of the detailees at the NSC are all CIA bodies.

00:34:08.900 So it's not just that they're filibustering with a plethora of meetings and policy proposals, which aren't going to go anywhere.

00:34:16.080 But they're also then back-channeling things to people on the NSC staff to manipulate the process, which is supposed to be isolated.

00:34:24.640 So they're really coming at it from both ways.

00:34:27.140 Now, I will say this.

00:34:28.120 I do think that there is a need to have a centralized control cell element that basically pulls together – I mean, I think if you look at what we did with China, right, we needed to find a way to pull together the American power from the Treasury Department, from the State Department, from the Department of Defense.

00:34:50.280 We needed to find a way to synthesize them all together to create a focused action against the enemy.

00:34:55.640 And I think that really the NSC is the place to do that.

00:35:00.660 The key thing, though, is you've got to keep the intel agencies out from making policy.

00:35:06.620 And actually, this is where I've got to give it up to Mike Waltz.

00:35:09.320 If you look at NSPM1, which is really that core document, the rules of the road for the NSC, they popped that on day one.

00:35:17.500 It took us the first term several weeks because McMaster's wanted to relitigate it three or four times.

00:35:23.920 But they popped that on day one.

00:35:25.980 And Mike Waltz did a very smart thing in there, which is he said the intelligence agencies have a non-voting role.

00:35:33.680 Basically, they can't make decisions.

00:35:35.600 Their job is to show up with facts so that the other agencies can make the calls.

00:35:40.540 And I thought that was a very good move to kind of fight back against what you're talking about.

00:35:44.560 Josh Steinman right there with Waltz.

00:35:48.760 And you've been there.

00:35:49.680 You had a front row seat.

00:35:50.840 You were a player in this.

00:35:54.060 And President Trump's, we came from out of nowhere, even though they tried to stop us with all the crossfire hurricane.

00:36:01.080 They tried to stop us.

00:36:01.940 They couldn't.

00:36:02.660 The American people voted.

00:36:03.640 And you could argue she lost as much as we won.

00:36:07.460 But then, so they failed.

00:36:09.380 They tried to act and failed.

00:36:11.380 And that's pretty definitive.

00:36:13.520 Then they tried to make up a whole thing, the Russia hoax, all that.

00:36:16.060 But in Trump's first term, to stop him, have a nullification process.

00:36:20.500 Then the stealing, the pandemic and the stealing of the 2020 election.

00:36:26.520 And then the insertion of Biden.

00:36:29.120 And we know now Biden's not even making decisions.

00:36:31.360 Open secret on that.

00:36:33.480 Has the CIA, no matter what Waltz does, had they become a modern Praetorian guard like in ancient Rome?

00:36:40.960 Would they actually select who your leaders are?

00:36:44.360 And they select, then, the field of actual action and effort that the leader, if they disagree with the leader, of actually what they can actually do?

00:36:52.200 And even if they agree with the leader, they funnel it in a way that is self-supporting of them, sir?

00:36:59.060 Yeah, Steve, you know, it's an interesting point that you raise.

00:37:01.400 And I think, you know, what we're really seeing here is the fact that the modern American state is incredibly complicated, right?

00:37:08.980 It's not as simple as things used to be.

00:37:11.500 You know, we used to be able to handle statecraft and international relations, you know, with letters and communiques and, you know, singular individuals dispatched with, you know, small staff over to Paris or, you know, down to Rio de Janeiro with very simple ambassadorships.

00:37:31.460 And so, you know, I think what we're really seeing here is the fact that that complication affords bureaucratic topological advantage to people that deeply understand the mechanisms, right?

00:37:46.100 And so they know that if they change this memo over here, that they can then control these outcomes here.

00:37:52.940 They can control what outcomes get offered up to senior leadership.

00:37:56.340 And I just think that that advantages people that have been in that system for a very long time.

00:38:01.880 And this is why I think it's so critical that we have people that understand those systems but are also loyal to the Constitution and to the first sentence of Article 2, which is, you know, the executive power shall be vested in a president.

00:38:16.680 And so the whole point here is that you need people that understand those mechanisms as much as the people that have been in those mechanisms for 30 years.

00:38:26.180 So we can – you can label it.

00:38:27.940 You can say, oh, it's the CIA.

00:38:29.000 You can say, oh, it's DHS.

00:38:30.200 It's this.

00:38:30.600 It's that.

00:38:30.980 No, no, no.

00:38:31.420 It's practice, right?

00:38:33.080 And so we need people, and we have people, whether it's Ezra, myself, I mean, you know, National Security Advisor Walls, the team that he's assembled.

00:38:42.620 Many of the people on that team have this type of expertise.

00:38:46.400 I'm quite pleased with the folks that he's assembled there.

00:38:49.360 But the whole point is you need folks that understand the mechanisms, understand the bureaucracy, and then are able to utilize those tools in order to affect the president's priorities.

00:38:59.500 When you don't have that, when you have people that don't have experience in these areas or maybe they've had some, you know, a year or two of experience on the Hill, then those folks can get snowed by the true professionals that have been living in that environment for 20, 30 years.

00:39:16.040 So, you know, do I think that there is some, you know, man behind the curtain?

00:39:20.760 No, but I just think that there's a lot of people that understand this complicated system that we've created.

00:39:26.860 I think we should absolutely simplify that system.

00:39:29.140 I think that these things are unnecessarily complicated, and they can be boiled down very simply.

00:39:35.920 But the whole point here is you need people that can cut through the BS, cut through the bureaucracy, and continue to drive the process towards the outcomes that the president has directed, which is completely constitutional.

00:39:49.260 Josh, your Twitter feed, you did a thread, I think about a week or so ago, about the National Security Council that was very illuminating to many people.

00:40:01.520 Where do people go and get you on social media, sir?

00:40:05.220 Yeah, it's just, I'm on Twitter, Joshua Steinman.

00:40:08.460 And that's my, that's my, that's my at.

00:40:11.600 Yeah, feel free to, feel free to hit me up there for folks that want to, want to follow along.

00:40:19.180 Brilliant analysis, as usual.

00:40:21.320 Last, Ezra, you just put out a tweet that said that the media is really pulling their hair out about the 160.

00:40:29.280 Are they friends of these guys?

00:40:30.840 Why, why would the media have any comment besides the fact that we're, we're less safe tonight?

00:40:36.340 What, what other reason would the media have for, for gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair about 160 national security bureaucrats, apparatchiks, going back to their departments, sir?

00:40:50.000 Well, Steve, it's simple.

00:40:51.220 They want to get the call transcript for the president's foreign calls, which are going to happen this week, passed through the White House fence.

00:40:58.080 And, you know, the people that did that are, are the people that were held over last time around.

00:41:05.160 And what Mike Waltz has done is just taken all their sources off the playing field.

00:41:09.780 You know, I mean, it's that simple.

00:41:14.020 Very powerful.

00:41:15.000 So that's why people have to follow you on social media.

00:41:17.240 Where do they go, Ezra?

00:41:19.100 Ezra A. Cohen.

00:41:23.840 At, on Twitter?

00:41:25.680 On Twitter, yeah.

00:41:26.500 Ezra A. Cohen on Twitter.

00:41:28.080 I used to refer to, uh, to Ezra, uh, Cohen and, uh, and, uh, Steinman as the special projects division of the White House.

00:41:39.000 They were over in EOB and always causing trouble.

00:41:41.640 Guys, thank you very much.

00:41:43.000 Fantastic.

00:41:43.680 Uh, very insightful for the war and posse.

00:41:45.720 People, I can tell that your people are very appreciative.

00:41:47.740 So thank you guys.

00:41:49.360 It's great to be here.

00:41:50.360 Thanks a lot, Steve.

00:41:51.360 Thank you.

00:41:51.780 So I'm not a conspiracy theory guy.

00:41:55.360 I never have been.

00:41:56.240 But I know what I know.

00:41:59.800 And when you get in there, you talk about the deep state.

00:42:01.960 Not that the deep state might be, it might have been overselling it.

00:42:04.700 It was not overselling it.

00:42:05.880 In fact, it undersells it.

00:42:07.280 There is a permanent government here, a, a fourth branch that was never, ever envisioned by the founders and framers at all.

00:42:15.840 And you've got the administrative state, which is that massive fourth branch that kind of runs the bureaucratic nature of it.

00:42:20.440 And that's why DOGE is so important and why what, uh, what, um, um, um, Elon has been working on is so important because we're 60, we're 58 days away from, uh, having to get a budget, no more CRs.

00:42:35.440 And DOGE has got to be doing that.

00:42:37.480 Uh, incredibly important.

00:42:38.920 The only way you're going to deconstruct is you got to cut off their oxygen first.

00:42:41.740 But on this interagency process, which is the way they kind of come to consensus of what you're going to do in the National Security Council, the advice you're going to give the president, the CIA is everywhere.

00:42:51.180 And I'm not a guy that runs around, oh, the CIA, this, say this, but ask anybody.

00:42:54.440 And you watch this show.

00:42:55.520 Have I ever done that?

00:42:56.300 How many times have I done that?

00:42:58.600 They're everywhere.

00:43:00.660 And the way they control the system is through process.

00:43:03.560 They're experts at process and the way the bureaucracies work.

00:43:07.480 They've put a ton of time in thinking that through.

00:43:09.460 Very smart people formed this thing.

00:43:12.640 Some of the original founders of it were some of the senior partners at Sullivan and Cromwell.

00:43:16.980 At that time, the Dulles brothers.

00:43:18.260 Remember them?

00:43:19.540 Say what you want.

00:43:21.620 Tough, smart hombres that knew what they were doing in setting up a permanent Praetorian Guard.

00:43:28.000 And this is why supposedly in the next 72 hours they're going to release all the documentation on Jack Kennedy.

00:43:33.220 Can we play, add a few comments.

00:43:34.800 Now, the other side of the Stargate situation, can we play my comments about Elon Musk?

00:43:39.680 Can we go ahead and play that?

00:43:42.020 I think you're ready.

00:43:43.160 Let's go ahead and hear this.

00:43:44.240 And I'll talk about the other side of Stardust or Stargate.

00:43:50.540 Okay, guys, we're going to play this.

00:43:51.820 Steve, you made peace with Elon yet?

00:44:12.560 You made peace with Elon?

00:44:13.540 Elon's got to make peace with the president.

00:44:15.260 What's he dumping on the joint venture for?

00:44:17.280 He's criticizing the president, criticizing the D.A. yesterday, says the guy's going to get $10 billion.

00:44:22.300 The president says he has $500 billion.

00:44:24.200 He can't have that in the White House.

00:44:37.420 I did not reverse what the president's already talked about.

00:44:41.860 It's unacceptable and unsatisfactory.

00:44:43.940 Mr. Bannon, why weren't you at the inauguration?

00:44:45.740 I didn't even hear that.

00:45:06.940 So that's Elon.

00:45:07.720 I didn't even hear the other question.

00:45:08.760 Why were the inauguration?

00:45:09.620 Lady, we're doing nine hours in the freezing cold of doing the best coverage of the inauguration

00:45:14.660 and prepping for, bang, Days of Thunder, which was actually as important as the ceremony,

00:45:21.760 President Trump firing off the football.

00:45:24.160 So, Elon, you heard Stargate, and Stargate's got all kind of complexity to it about artificial intelligence,

00:45:29.420 gene splicing, vaccines, a whole dog's breakfast there. 0.67

00:45:33.720 And, of course, the war room posse's all over it and a lot of concern about that.

00:45:36.700 But, in addition, there's another way to handle this.

00:45:40.260 Elon came out.

00:45:41.160 President Trump presented his $500 billion, understanding all the money wasn't put in yet.

00:45:45.360 These are major corporations or hedge funds or, you know, OpenAI is a major operation now with tons of money coming through it.

00:45:53.140 And then Elon later said, hey, and this is what his fight is with Altman, says, hey, there's only $10 billion that's been raised.

00:45:59.400 They can't raise – implied the rest of the money was not going to be there.

00:46:02.420 This is all a hoax.

00:46:03.840 And my point is you've got to get together.

00:46:05.500 Elon, your mandate is very specific for Doge.

00:46:10.040 We are burning daylight.

00:46:11.200 We're 58 days away from the end of the CR.

00:46:14.400 We're not going to have another one.

00:46:15.880 We have to have a full budget, and that is you and Russ Vogt working together.

00:46:19.700 You've committed to a trillion dollars of cuts on a $6.5 trillion budget.

00:46:24.380 We've got to see it.

00:46:25.300 It's essential.

00:46:26.260 For President Trump's plan going forward, remember, it's significant spending cuts coupled with tariffs are now part of an external revenue service.

00:46:35.260 They're looked at as a cash flow that comes in, not just punitive tariffs on Mexican avocados.

00:46:41.500 So if people got to get to work, we're burning daylight, and your mandate, your remit does not include investments the president makes.

00:46:50.800 If you've got a problem with it, instead of implying that the president has not performed appropriate due diligence before he takes time away in these crazy first three or four days to go to the Roosevelt Room for the first time,

00:47:02.600 which is right outside the door of the Oval Office, and put up Larry Ellison in SoftBank and OpenAI as paragons of the future, understanding you have all these problems, you tell him that privately and tell him even beforehand, not probably get into your feud with OpenAI.

00:47:23.620 And I understand you guys are fighting at a whole different level about this, but the place not to do it is outside.

00:47:29.380 And this is why I think, and I've advocated this, there's got to be guardrails.

00:47:34.640 Number one, your focus is probably the most important focus we can have now on getting the financial plan together, which is deconstruct the administrative state in massive cuts in spending.

00:47:44.200 That should be occupying yourself 24-7.

00:47:49.200 It just is.

00:47:50.200 It's that complicated.

00:47:52.220 So here we have today another kind of unforced error when people just don't have time for it.

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00:49:24.920 Slap. 0.80

00:49:25.200 Slap. 0.80

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Bannon's War Room - January 23, 2025

WarRoom Battleground EP 692： Keeping America Safe; Rules Of Unforced Error

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Summary

Transcript