On today's show, Steve K. Banno and Ben Harnell discuss the latest in the ongoing saga of Joe Biden's ouster from the U.S. Senate and the ongoing investigation into the matter.
00:05:58.480This is, it's coming out, it's changing hour per hour.
00:06:02.400But there appears to be the consensus.
00:06:06.320All sides have agreed to a summit in the coming days between President Trump and President Putin.
00:06:13.000This will obviously be the first time the two leaders have met since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
00:06:19.640And I think it builds on the incredible work that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff has been doing.
00:06:26.340He finished his third summit yesterday directly in talks with President Putin and Sergei Lavrov.
00:06:32.540And on the back of those final discussions yesterday, it appears that the terrain now finally is there to have these two leaders to sit down.
00:06:41.400Zelensky obviously wanted to muscle into this.
00:06:44.180And the Kremlin said no, so it's just going to be a bilateral at the moment.
00:06:50.620I have to say that the actual facts on the ground behind this seem to be scarce and slightly contradictory.
00:06:59.920First, it was put out that the Kremlin, Putin had asked for this.
00:07:03.720And then the Kremlin said, you know, that Russia has acceded to this request, has granted this request for a meeting.
00:07:11.040It is important to find out who actually pushed for the meeting to get some of the background here.
00:07:16.900Steve, the reason I'm saying even though the facts on the ground at the moment and they're sort of changing and being refined hour by hour are important.
00:07:26.020I have to say there is something going on here that I think this is serious in a way that I never truly bought into the earlier peace round talks that we've seen over the last three and a half years.
00:07:41.680Because the ingredients didn't seem to be there.
00:07:45.700I think they are there now and something will happen.
00:07:48.200I don't want to get ahead of myself, obviously.
00:07:51.700But I think the needle can move this time around as these two sit together.
00:07:56.200If you give me 30 seconds, Steve, there is some background going on in Ukraine, I think, that will perhaps be part of the context behind these meetings.
00:08:08.940The first is that a poll from Gallup, one of the most respected pollsters in the world, pushed out the result.
00:08:16.740And Semaphore carried this analysis this morning, that seven out of 10 Ukrainians now want a negotiated deal with Russia.
00:08:25.280And obviously the reason is because they're fed up with being fed into the meat grinder.
00:08:30.760And the only thing to show for that is territorial losses.
00:08:35.240There are also soundings coming out, Steve, that say really the Ukrainian front line could probably crumple in around three months or so's time.
00:08:43.080So those things there are in the background of these forthcoming talks with regards to the viability of the Ukrainian position in the long term.
00:08:53.840I will simply close with this and hand back to you the fact that the Kiev Independent was reporting a couple of days ago that protests in Ukraine,
00:09:04.080not to do with the anti-corruption legislation this time, but anti-protest against the centres, the drafting centres, where people are being press ganged.
00:09:14.920Thank you very much, Denver, for putting that up on the screen.
00:09:17.400People are so frustrated with their young guys being press ganged off the streets.
00:09:24.320They now had protests which sort of braided and entered these military drafting centres.
00:09:31.080The Western press hasn't particularly carried that, but it does show the degree to which the war fatigue has set in now in Ukraine.
00:09:43.420I mean, they just allowed, like you said, the 60-year-olds.
00:09:46.520I mean, they have a massive manpower crisis.
00:09:48.580And people, I think, this is one of the issues on the Western Front in World War II.
00:09:53.420The guys that fought, particularly the British Army, fought all the way from North Africa to Sicily, to Italy, then Normandy.
00:09:59.580When they saw the end of the thing in sight, when you can see the door, you kind of sit there and go, hey, you know, is my ticket going to get punched now or can I avoid this?
00:10:11.380That was an issue in World War II, right?
00:10:14.480The people that had fought for so long or were so, had really worn out is thinking, you know, what do I have to do to get out of this thing, right?
00:10:23.980And I think you've seen the Ukraine said that the casualties are horrific here.
00:10:27.860The Russian casualties are almost unbelievable.
00:10:30.600But the Ukrainian civilian, and particularly the fact that parents from the beginning and now they're really adamant about it,
00:10:36.620why are my sons and daughters going to get into this meat grinder with the Russians as they continue to grind when there can be some – it looks like there may be a ceasefire.
00:10:46.340It looks like there may be some peace deal, and particularly when they're so desperate, they're allowing 60-year-olds – I don't think they're being drafted, but to volunteer.
00:10:56.100So how real – because they've got a battlefield advantage.
00:11:01.100How real do they think that Putin's coming – if he's coming to the White House, they're coming to make a deal.
00:11:05.320You don't come to the White House not to make a deal.
00:11:06.980That's not what Trump – President Trump wants.
00:11:09.420So how real do you think it is, Ben, that we would actually see either a ceasefire or some framework for peace in this area?
00:11:19.240Well, my age pick up when you suggest that this meeting will be held at the White House.
00:11:23.300I haven't seen any press confirmations of the venue yet.
00:11:28.520The one country that I have seen referred to is the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, is potentially hosting these discussions.
00:11:35.460Obviously, if it's hosted in the White House, that sets – the implication will be is that President Trump will be – they're primed to push out the victory message that I have achieved peace.
00:11:51.880Look, I don't know if you're going to have Trump go to – I don't know if you have Trump go to the UAE.
00:11:55.420But even if it's some third-party location, President Trump's not prepared to come and have it, particularly at the level with him and Putin, where they don't think that there's something they can't hammer out here, correct?
00:12:06.980Yeah. I mean, both of them are – aren't going to want to be invested in the hype of this imminent meeting if there's any possibility that it's going to end in diplomatic failure.
00:12:22.240Neither of them, neither President Trump nor President Putin will want that, which is why I think Steve Witkoff has done such an important role here over these sort of meetings that he's been having, four meetings, as I was saying.
00:12:37.020Directly with Putin and Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister.
00:12:41.500If – and I don't think Witkoff is going to allow the president to enter that meeting, either – President Trump, that is.
00:12:48.740He's going to – will allow this meeting between the two heads of state to take place if it could rebound in any way badly on President Trump.
00:12:57.520So if the meeting takes place, I think it's because all sides expect it to produce something positive.
00:13:04.120So let's – President Trump driving – we're going to have – we're going to have the situation in Armenia in the second half of the show.
00:13:09.000So hang on for a second. Let's bring in Tom Dance. Tom, you're back from the Arctic Conference.
00:13:13.080I wanted to get you on today about the – to kind of talk about this meeting with Putin and President Trump.
00:13:19.640The new great game is shifting from, you know, places like Ukraine to the Arctic, and this is part of our hemispheric defense.
00:13:29.600Give us some updates coming out of the conference.
00:13:32.800Particularly, this is a great power struggle.
00:13:37.660And this is the United States of America.
00:13:39.140What – coming out of that conference, do you feel more confident that people in the United States are understanding the importance of the Arctic as far as the defense of the United States of America, sir?
00:13:50.440I do, certainly at the top level of MAGA from President Trump on down.
00:13:56.660The key thing now is going to be to get the people who can actually implement these plans, putting them into place.
00:14:04.200One thing, I think Steve Wyckoff's done an exceptional job, as Ben was just talking about, with Russia.
00:14:10.300But we need to kind of realize that the U.S. and Russia are neighbors, right?
00:14:17.480We never really think about it that way.
00:14:19.400But we have a 1,500-mile maritime boundary, right?
00:14:23.380That's the second longest in the world between – except for Canada and Greenland.
00:14:28.680And I'm not counting Greenland as part of the U.S. for these purposes.
00:14:32.220But at one point, we're separated by two and a half miles between big Diomede and little Diomede Islands, right?
00:14:39.340So what we need to do is focus more on our Arctic.
00:14:43.020I think that's a key part of this conversation that's going to occur.
00:14:46.660And like we talked about in Alaska, the posse is ahead of the news here, right?
00:14:52.740The other big pacing threat that we have is China, China and the Pacific, right?
00:14:57.160We talked about the Aleutians and their relevance as kind of a key first island chain, if you will, for the U.S. and the gateway to the Arctic.
00:15:07.520Well, just today we read not only one Chinese vessel, five Chinese vessels in icebreakers, in a conga line heading up to the Arctic.
00:15:17.520What's more, Russia and China together in the Pacific taking target practice on mock enemy submarines, right?
00:15:52.260We need to also get more active on these Aleutian Islands and protect them.
00:15:56.600Remember, we talked about Atu and the American sacrifice there in World War II.
00:16:01.200This is our westernmost point in the United States, a part of Alaska, only miles off the Russian coast of Kamchatka, but today abandoned with all the World War II infrastructure still in place.
00:16:13.700We have ADAC Island that, you know, has a 22 million gallon fuel depot there.
00:17:00.460That's in the way one big, beautiful bill gave us $8.5 billion to do that.
00:17:05.100I think we're going to see some action here shortly from the DHS and the Coast Guard, which is great.
00:17:13.100There's been a lot of noise about Canada and Finland, but I think we also have to look at other groups.
00:17:17.520Actually, one of our partners in NATO, the Dutch, and one of their leading shipbuilders has probably built more icebreakers on the water in the last 10 years, over 100 that are in service around the globe, including the most sophisticated polar research vessels on the water.
00:17:38.380And that's in Australia, a ship called the New Yena.
00:17:41.920And I understand they may be able to have vessels newly built on the water in 2027, which would be fantastic for the United States.
00:17:49.940So all these things are coming together.
00:17:52.500I think we have a fantastic team, President Trump, Secretary Rubio, Secretary Noem, they all get this.
00:18:53.920Go back to the five icebreakers, the CCP icebreakers.
00:18:57.900Where are they coming from and where are they headed?
00:19:00.820They're steaming right up from China, different ports.
00:19:03.600They've kind of been doodling around Alaska, our Aleutians, up in the Bering Sea, the Chukchi Sea.
00:19:11.460They're kind of dividing up into the Bering Sea.
00:19:16.280And, you know, they're going to be working up there.
00:19:19.440We're not really clear where they're headed.
00:19:21.040We have one of our – the Healy, our medium icebreakers up there on a tour, and we've got our one last research vessel that's kind of on a tour up there.
00:20:48.740Hampton Sides, one of the great, great, great historians, popular historians, narrative historians, did a great job on Kit Carson and the West.
00:21:38.280Under my profile at Harnwell, which is simply my surname.
00:21:43.120Look, if I just follow and conclude with what Tom Dance was saying, anyone listening to him will have reminded for them just the absolute disaster in America's interest perpetrated on America by President Biden and his administration.
00:21:56.920Russia should never have been allowed to slip into China's clutches like this.
00:22:02.100It should have been enticed into joining the Western political philosophical bloc.
00:22:11.500And, of course, Russia has, I think, 53 percent of the control to the access to the Arctic.
00:22:18.180And China is pushing in this, trying to muscle in there.
00:22:22.340Even in the Arctic, there is a common line of alliance between the United States and Russia.
00:22:28.200This is one thing you say, you mentioned that President Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize.
00:22:33.300I tell you what, I don't know what prize would be more important than the Nobel Peace Prize, but there should be a prize for President Trump.
00:22:42.320If with his personal authority and charisma, he is able to do something to bring President Putin and Russia back into the Western orbit ever so slightly and away from China, in which case the Nobel Peace Prize would be something to hold the door open with.
00:23:03.420I promise next week you and I are going to spend time.
00:23:05.340We're going to go back to the perfect phone call and we're going to go back to that situation in Ukraine because you're absolutely, absolutely correct.
00:23:11.340It stole at least a year of President Trump's presidency and that all that nonsense.
00:24:24.060Supervision is supposed to help people rebuild, reconnect, and re-enter society, not keep families like ours apart.
00:24:31.580Jessica, the timing of this couldn't be more perfect.
00:24:37.560I went up to Danbury to collect my cellmate who finally got released, 44 years old, and I think he spent 18 or 20 years, something like that, in either state or federal prison on these kind of RICO charges of, you know, the distribution of drugs where they don't really find you selling drugs.
00:24:55.140But they get you in some sort of conspiracy, and he's going to a halfway house, but then to supervise release.
00:25:00.700We've got a couple of minutes on this side, and then we'll hold you through the break.
00:25:03.580What's the purpose, task and purpose of your organization, ma'am?
00:25:06.700Yeah, so the Reform Alliance was founded in 2019, and our purpose is to transform probation, parole, supervised release.
00:25:16.260We've been working all across the country, passed great bills, 22 of them, in states like Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and now we're working on the federal system and coming to reform supervised release so that families don't have to go through what Duke Tanner there, who you just heard from, has gone through.
00:25:37.120Hang on, we're going to take a short commercial break.
00:25:42.620Jessica Jackson joins us, and she's one of the reformers, and here's, I met her through the new team over at Bureau of Prisons.
00:25:50.160Jared Kushner, Peter Navarro, myself are all kind of in an informal committee to help folks.
00:25:56.380We've got a new reform group at BOP, the first time I think ever, and Jessica is one of the people that are very involved in this, and what she's talking about could not be more important.
00:26:05.580This whole issue and concept of supervised release to get people back out into the community and get them productive again, and so she's one of these great, unheralded, unspoken about heroes that are really trying to reform our system of justice in the United States of America, and nothing could be more MAGA.
00:26:25.900I've got to tell you, President Trump's effort on the First Step Act, absolutely heroic.
00:26:35.580Understand that the dollar's under attack, not just by the elites in this country, but the de-dollarization effort by the Chinese Communist Party and their running dogs in Brazil.
00:26:46.620Make sure you understand it, how it affects your community, your family, your country, and yourself.
00:26:57.020This July, there is a global summit of BRICS nations in Rio de Janeiro, the bloc of emerging superpowers, including China, Russia, India, and Persia, are meeting with the goal of displacing the United States dollar as the global currency.
00:27:18.260As BRICS nations push forward with their plans, global demand for U.S. dollars will decrease, bringing down the value of the dollar in your savings.
00:27:26.300While this transition won't not happen overnight, but trust me, it's going to start in Rio.
00:27:32.420The Rio Reset in July marks a pivotal moment when BRICS objectives move decisively from a theoretical possibility towards an inevitable reality.
00:27:44.340Learn if diversifying your savings into gold is right for you.
00:27:48.220Birchgold Group can help you move your hard-earned savings into a tax-sheltered IRA and precious metals.
00:27:54.260Claim your free info kit on gold by texting my name, Bannon, that's B-A-N-N-O-N, to 989898.
00:28:01.900With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers, let Birchgold arm you with a free, no-obligation info kit on owning gold before July.
00:28:38.600A former CIA, Pentagon, and White House advisor with an unmatched grasp of geopolitics and capital markets.
00:28:44.720Jim predicted Trump's Electoral College victory exactly 312 to 226, down to the actual number itself.
00:28:54.600Now he's issuing a dire warning about April 11th, a moment that could define Trump's presidency in your financial future.
00:29:01.660His latest book, Money GPT, exposes how AI is setting the stage for financial chaos, bank runs at lightning speeds, algorithm-driven crashes, and even threats to national security.
00:29:13.840Right now, war room members get a free copy of Money GPT when they sign up for Strategic Intelligence.
00:29:20.000This is Jim's flagship financial newsletter, Strategic Intelligence.
00:29:53.020Criminals forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay small fee with your county, and boom, your home title has been transferred out of your name.
00:30:03.920Then they take out loans using your equity or even sell your property.
00:30:07.980You won't even know it's happened until you get a collection or foreclosure notice.
00:30:15.300So let me ask you, when was the last time you personally checked your home title?
00:30:21.000If you're like me, the answer is never, and that's exactly what scammers are counting on.
00:46:21.240I don't think that's gotten the proper elevation in the media, sir.
00:46:25.540Well, you know, like Carrie Lake, I'm not wanting to spend my time dealing with security issues,
00:46:31.680but we had these notices from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of Personnel Management that had gone on for a decade,
00:46:57.840It got to the point where people were revoking the agency's ability to clear people.
00:47:02.140I mean, they were taking steps, and we moved to do that.
00:47:05.380And I was accused of McCarthyism, of thinking there's a spy everywhere, you know, the spy under every desk.
00:47:13.360You know, but in fact, I did not really want to do this investigation, but I was called to do so by the intelligence services of the United States of America.
00:48:30.540And it's a sign of how unsupervised these agencies are.
00:48:34.960As you know, Steve, I wrote a piece recently in the Federalist on the difficulty of reforming these kind of agencies.
00:48:40.540You know, and I think it's our inability to communicate that adequately that puts Carrie Lake in an impossible position.
00:48:48.220Whenever Carrie Lake does anything, it looks like she's a lunatic, just like it looked like I was a lunatic, because there are we haven't made the case.
00:48:57.780I think Doge missed a great opportunity by only focusing, as that headline says, on waste, fraud and abuse.
00:49:12.040In my article that you highlight there, I give examples from the U.S. Agency for Global Media of that failure.
00:49:19.400But people are not against waste, fraud and abuse in the government, because the more people you're working for, you know, the more power you have.
00:49:27.960The other problem is a lot of these agencies, my own included, were doing things that were not aligned with what President Trump campaigned on.
00:49:37.380So when we eliminate, say, DEI programs in an agency, it's not because they're wasteful.
00:49:43.340We'd be against DEI programs if they were highly efficient.
00:49:59.060There are agencies that are completely unaccountable to the president.
00:50:02.680And in fact, most of the actual government bureaucracy is essentially unaccountable, like the people on my staff, the career people, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and they undermine the president.
00:50:16.140But there cannot be a fourth branch of government so that even if these independent agencies did everything right, they would still be unconstitutional.
00:50:23.960And we need to bring America back to the vision of the founders, the principles of the Constitution, three branches of government.
00:50:33.020If President Trump could do anything for the 250th birthday of America, I think the founders would appreciate that, bringing it back to its constitutional norms.
00:51:33.640We are back tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time when you will return to the War Room.
00:51:39.400We're going to leave you with the magnificent music of The Right Stuff.
00:51:43.320And when you get a chance this weekend, if you have not watched this film or particularly haven't watched it with your family, I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend it.