The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz ｜ Steve Bannon

00:00:00.000 Now, it's time for the Anchorman Podcast with Matt Gaetz and Dan Ball.

00:00:16.220 Welcome back to the program. I'm here with my good friend and longtime mentor, Steve Bannon.

00:00:21.740 And I got to know Steve Bannon in the early days of Bannon's War Room, a show that he still hosts

00:00:27.280 now on Real America's Voice. It's an incredible podcast. But more than that, it was the launchpad

00:00:33.240 for the defense of President Trump during the first impeachment. I remember those days when

00:00:38.020 in any given moment, we had half of the cabinet and members of his own government, members of

00:00:43.820 House leadership working to install Mike Pence as the president of the United States. And we had

00:00:50.580 this band of pirates led by Steve Bannon and the brilliant Jason Miller and the ever productive

00:00:57.820 Raheem Kassam. And we would get together and strategize. And we built this army of patriots.

00:01:05.500 And now more than a television host, what Steve Bannon really is, is the leader of a group called

00:01:12.000 the War Room Posse. And what's interesting about this group of Americans is they range from Wall

00:01:18.020 Street executives to CEOs to people that are, you know, cleaning out dumpsters in the middle

00:01:25.320 of the night. It's every walk of life of American. And what Steve does every day for four hours a day

00:01:32.620 is direct these people into action. It's not it's not an audience. It indeed is a posse. They call

00:01:39.500 lawmakers. They show up at rallies. They donate to candidates. They buy books and become

00:01:45.940 the pollinators of key information that the MAGA universe needs to thrive. And it's in the

00:01:53.180 leadership of that group, Steve, that I really want to direct our conversation tonight. Good to be

00:01:57.620 here. Yeah. Thank you. Love the podcast. And by the way, people people I don't think even really

00:02:02.880 fully understand the extent to which in in some of our toughest moments in Congress, you were right

00:02:09.180 there. I mean, you weren't just a television host. You and I were having 11, 12 conversations a day.

00:02:16.540 And so were a bunch of my other colleagues who were trying to kind of find their way around

00:02:19.920 fighting this crazy system. But you made this pitch to the War Room Posse to fill the billets

00:02:26.520 at a Republican executive committee. Right. Precinct strategy, all that. Right.

00:02:31.420 The posse is white, but not whiter than your normal Republican club meeting. And it's boomer, 0.56

00:02:40.960 but not more boomer than your normal Republican club meeting. And so you had people that were a

00:02:45.260 little more diverse, a little younger, working class, and they started showing up at these meetings.

00:02:50.820 And now what has happened is they started seeing who was coming around to like run for county

00:02:56.100 commissioner or mayor or state representative, and they've started to run for office. Yes. And what

00:03:01.800 I want to use some of our time on today is for that posse member or that American that says, you know 1.00

00:03:08.360 what, I've got the ability to go and actually build a campaign. What is the Steve Bannon C-Spot run plan?

00:03:16.640 How does that integrate with my own experiences? Because here's what I've noticed. While they have

00:03:22.660 the vigor and the drive that you've instilled in them, there is a tactical feature to running for

00:03:29.080 office that sometimes evades even your most loyal posse members. Oh yeah. Remember, most of these

00:03:34.600 people have never really been engaged in politics and definitely not elective politics. So the first

00:03:38.620 thing is just to convince them that the way through here is human agency. And that really started

00:03:45.720 because we went through phases of the show. It was the, it was the Borum impeachment of which you

00:03:50.820 were essential in. Then we had pandemic in the run-up to 2020. Then the fight to stop the big

00:03:55.960 steel. And then kind of what the, the nuclear winter of January, February, March, April of 2021,

00:04:02.560 when it looked like the world had abandoned President Trump, you know, even half the MAGA

00:04:06.140 movement was so crestfallen. How could Trump have won and won so big and, you know, 74 million votes

00:04:11.820 and been destroyed. That's when we really started revving up the precinct strategy. And the first thing was

00:04:16.300 just show up. If you show up in most of these precincts, there's going to be empty billets.

00:04:19.540 And so you can get voted in. Now the, the establishment, whether, whether it's in

00:04:24.300 central Florida or central Arizona or North Carolina are going to have a huge fight, right?

00:04:29.440 But the first thing you got to do is get your chops at the precinct strategy by just the,

00:04:33.920 because the Republican party structure is actually a grassroots structure. It's actually, you know,

00:04:38.600 it's, it's got, I think 250,000, um, 250,000 open seats or, or seats that you can go all over the

00:04:46.000 country to do. And our first thing is just get off the couch, go get engaged. And people,

00:04:50.760 you know, by the way, love it. Now, a couple of years into this process,

00:04:55.380 the resistance is so strong, like in Texas at this, we control the state parties of Texas,

00:05:01.160 Georgia, uh, North Carolina, South Carolina, uh, Nevada, uh, Oregon, uh, Nebraska, Colorado, but

00:05:09.780 we really don't. It's this big fight between the grassroots and the, and the businesses. So I tell

00:05:14.240 people, go get engaged, work up the thing, get to the state level, uh, go to the state convention.

00:05:18.920 Uh, and then if you want to, it's county super, we had so many people go to county supervisors,

00:05:23.220 school board, school board, school board is huge. That school boards came in for the,

00:05:26.680 that really came in for the moms of America, moms of Liberty. I started noticing the school board,

00:05:31.580 you know, the, the, the, the, the, that's a terrible job. My dad was on the school board,

00:05:35.960 screaming and yelling at him every day. There is a special place in heaven for anyone willing to be

00:05:39.440 on. When people would come up and say, I'm running for the school board. Yes. Part of me would think,

00:05:43.040 why? But it was. And even that's less controversial than it is today with the libraries and what

00:05:48.080 they're teaching the kids. So that was a huge one. And of course, these have gone back and forth

00:05:52.220 already the first wave of the Maha mother or the mother's gauge. We've already, we've won school 1.00

00:05:57.880 boards and had them flip back as, as the liberals are getting engaged. So it's constant war.

00:06:01.600 Here's what we know is that for the hoplites, for the, for the grundoons, for the war and posse, 0.95

00:06:06.580 it is a great training ground. And what it does is also expands, you, you, you know, our audience,

00:06:12.860 you know, is a little older, right? But no older than the Republican party. But here's the thing,

00:06:17.760 you talk to people and their lives get narrower and narrower as they go on. Once they join one of

00:06:22.320 these things, it opens up, they meet new friends, they get new relationships, there's a new sense of

00:06:26.440 purpose. And so by and large, people are very happy about it. Now it is an absolute grind. And that's

00:06:30.980 why like today we had Steve Stern on, they had like 200 guests on half the show was Tina Peters,

00:06:36.680 who's in prison out in Colorado. The other half was about election integrity, a bunch of things

00:06:41.080 come up in primaries that you got to get on top of. We had, uh, but when people make that decision

00:06:45.900 to run, like what's, what's the Steve Bannon checklist that you say, write down, do these

00:06:51.400 things to prepare yourself for candidacy, not just within that structure. First, I say that first,

00:06:56.440 I say, Hey, everything that you ever done, they're going to throw up against you. So you got to have

00:07:00.200 courage just to work through that. I honestly think that we're so much more resilient to that

00:07:03.840 these days. Maybe just I am, but, uh, I think as a society, Facebook and the fact that a lot of

00:07:10.500 people have had every stupid Halloween costume posted on Facebook, we don't have the, 0.99

00:07:16.260 well, the pearl clutching of the boomers. But you see the fights, you know, Trump came down 10 years 1.00

00:07:20.020 ago, uh, this June, right? 10 years ago. If you look at, and I keep saying this 10 years is the

00:07:26.300 preamble to what is in front of us in the Trump movement, right? Over these particularly next

00:07:31.120 hundred days, couple of hundred days. Trump's a moderate in our movement. Oh, very much a moderate.

00:07:35.520 He's not close because he's a, he's a, he's a, he's got a good heart. He's trying, he tries to

00:07:40.580 accommodate people. He's a deal maker. He's a deal maker. And he comes from the hospitality industry.

00:07:46.020 Principally, that's where his roots were. That's what he, he understand media and hospitality,

00:07:49.560 mass communication. You totally know that when, when you're around him and you see the way

00:07:52.760 Trump is so attentive to everyone's comfort. Yes. So attentive, uh, laser focused. It's why he

00:08:00.620 doesn't like people to even consume alcohol around him because he wants you at your sharpest so that

00:08:05.740 when he engages with you, that it's going to be mutually productive and beneficial and joyful.

00:08:10.760 What I tell people is know yourself, prepare for combat. You'll obviously learn the issues.

00:08:16.300 You will win if you don't quit. That's the key thing. You will win if you don't quit. And we've got-

00:08:21.160 Wait, wait, wait, wait. No. I know a lot of people who like run every single time for sheriff and-

00:08:27.080 No, no, no. I'm not saying, I'm not saying about that. I'm saying the precincts right,

00:08:30.060 which is our entry entry level. Right. And once you get to that, and I actually recommend that-

00:08:34.480 But these people who become the precinct people, they're not just moving up in the Republican

00:08:37.920 party. No, no. They're going, no, they're going, they're going to town councils. Yes. As soon as they

00:08:41.960 get to- They're paying attention. Yes. And they're like, look, I just saw this, this just total-

00:08:46.860 County supervisor. You know, limp rag rolled in for state representative. I don't want to vote

00:08:51.460 for that person. I have better ideas than they do. And they're running. And I think a lot of them

00:08:56.640 would say to me, could I just get 10 minutes with Steve Bannon? And I want to give everyone that

00:09:02.620 right now. When you say, you know, all right, know yourself, know they're going to throw everything at

00:09:07.280 you. Like, what do you tell people about how to resource a campaign? Because it's, it's an

00:09:11.300 uncomfortable discussion. Well, first off, you're not going to probably have a big donor. I say,

00:09:14.800 just go out small, put your things out. Some do. You got posse members who are

00:09:18.220 self-unders. Oh yeah. No, no, no. You do. But I'm saying the average person.

00:09:21.800 You know what? That's the first question I ask. The first question I ask anyone, it's deeply crass.

00:09:26.500 How much of your own money are you going to put into your campaign?

00:09:29.260 Well, I do that at a certain level, like for Congress or state level, state house. But I'm

00:09:33.520 saying for the entry, for the precinct and above. I mean, state Senate race in like Florida

00:09:37.480 costs like five million bucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, the guy's running for,

00:09:41.560 wants to run for Congress in Connecticut. It just came two days ago. First question I asked him,

00:09:46.460 stop. I said, how big a check are you prepared to write to get off? And he gave me a number. I said,

00:09:50.820 I don't think that's going to be enough. I think you're going to have to be,

00:09:53.500 you're going to have to think this through and see if it's, you know, really worth it.

00:09:55.860 Well, you have to build a finance strategy. Yes.

00:09:57.280 And it's not one size fits all. But what I tried to do was open up every vector. You know,

00:10:02.920 there might've been four or five big donors that cared about who the state representative was in

00:10:06.640 Destin. So man, if you could get one or two of them, fill out that vector, even if it's small

00:10:11.620 at the beginning, get you a small dollar donor base. People that, I call it the Christmas card

00:10:16.720 list, you know, and get that working. That's actually the smart, I think that's the smart

00:10:21.600 because it also breaks the ice, which is the hardest of people actually asking for money to

00:10:27.740 actually do this, right? People need that self-confidence. And I think doing that small

00:10:31.000 donor is where they start to break the ice of actually asking their friends. It's like an angel round.

00:10:35.720 Friends and family round in venture capital, right? You've got to make the ask.

00:10:39.360 You know what? Every single time a member of Congress meets a new person, the first thing

00:10:45.180 that comes to their mind is, can this person become a donor to my campaign? And what is the

00:10:49.120 maximum amount of money I can extract out of them?

00:10:51.320 But that's the way the system has done it though, because it takes so much money. You're,

00:10:54.260 you're extraordinary. I think you're the only person in the house that didn't take any PAC money

00:11:01.600 or lobbyist money or lobbyist money. And how tough was that to, to, to, to, what lessons did

00:11:06.120 you learn in that? I never, ever felt the pinch of it. I felt relieved. I remember when I made the

00:11:11.680 announcement and then just saying to myself, win or lose, I never have to go to one of these like,

00:11:17.700 you know, 8 a.m. breakfast fundraisers where the Southeast regional pipe distributor is wearing a, 0.98

00:11:24.440 you know, a name tag and giving me $500 and asking me to sign on to some stupid amendment. 0.97

00:11:29.000 When you got to the house to get to your committees, didn't they give you a number? 0.99

00:11:32.600 Like you're, you're on armed services, right? That's the money.

00:11:35.100 $75,000.

00:11:35.800 $75,000 for the committee.

00:11:37.680 And they gave me 10 days to turn it in.

00:11:39.260 10 days.

00:11:39.860 Which is, and my assumption.

00:11:41.260 And you had never raised for, Pat, you'd never gone to those folks before.

00:11:44.380 No. But what I knew was more people might be willing to come up with the 75 G's than there

00:11:50.080 were slots. So I paid double. I, I, I got a check for 150 and brought it. And that's how I got on

00:11:55.880 the judiciary committee. They looked at me and said, boy, you're a real comer.

00:11:59.900 I'll bet you still 90%, 95% of the audience doesn't understand that. That once you get

00:12:04.960 up here, regardless if you've been Matt Gaetz and saying, I don't want corporate money.

00:12:08.580 I don't want lobbyist money. Once you get into the system, the system demands that you pay

00:12:14.180 something just for staying around. Otherwise you're going to be on the, the, the agriculture

00:12:18.580 committee or some committee that doesn't not even tie to your, it's tied to your district.

00:12:22.480 Well, the, what you have to pay to get on a committee is directly tied to what, what the

00:12:28.740 algorithm says you can extract from the lobby core that services that committee. And the people who

00:12:35.220 traditionally pick who goes on the committee are the people who lobby that committee at freshman

00:12:41.020 orientation. When they told, when I said, I'm real interested in armed services, they said, go sit at

00:12:45.920 table 11. And it was like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, L3. And they're, they're sitting there

00:12:51.420 and they're, they're sizing you up saying, if we give this guy the money to get on the committee,

00:12:56.260 is he going to play ball? Is this somebody we're going to be able to work with?

00:12:58.820 And you said that because your district is Pensacola. It's one of the most significant

00:13:02.340 naval bases in the world. I think there's, there's air force assets down there, but the way they

00:13:08.480 judge is how much money. And they thought you were a comer very early on, correct?

00:13:11.880 Yeah. But do you think that like for new candidates, getting back to that, do you think that you have

00:13:17.160 to impose some realism there? Because what I've seen, I've seen some policy members who they say,

00:13:23.580 you know what, I have $50,000 that I can put into this race. And I have some friends who might be

00:13:28.340 able to raise me another 50,000. So I'm going to go run for Congress when the reality is that is just

00:13:34.020 not table stakes. And, and you may have the ability to do the job, but you can only do the job that you

00:13:41.840 will get elected to do. Yes. Whereas if you took that a hundred thousand and put in a state delegate

00:13:46.000 or a town, or city hall, and then, and then build a coalition. That's our recommendation. Yeah. So how

00:13:51.920 do you, how do you have that conversation with people? What are the benchmarks you set? Well, first

00:13:55.860 off, you know, we have a big screening element. So we have people that do this, but when they come,

00:14:01.280 it's, you know, how realistic is this? It's going to be several million dollars to get a house seat.

00:14:05.540 Are you known in the community? Do you have a track record? What's your message? How good are you

00:14:09.480 at actually selling yourselves? You know, do you have a real, has you ever done really

00:14:14.040 tough interviews? Have you been out there in the hustings? Do you understand this is every day of

00:14:17.900 your life? You're going to have to be to the primary. So you're looking for drive and commitment.

00:14:20.980 Driving commitment and also, and realistic, because so many, but I think it's not as bad today as it

00:14:25.960 used to be. The worst I saw it was around the Tea Party effort in 2010 with a big, and that time

00:14:31.420 around there when the Tea Party first started, you had people coming in, wanted to run for Senate,

00:14:35.400 want to run for governor, particularly Congress. I think it's, I don't think you've got those,

00:14:40.540 because I think one of the things is media. People watch the shows. They're more attuned to

00:14:43.740 what's going on. They see what a grind it is. It's not as bad as back then. Back then, you had

00:14:48.120 people showing up. Hey, I've got $15,000, which is a lot of money for somebody. I want to run for

00:14:53.940 the house. I can upset this guy in a D plus four district, et cetera. But you have a responsibility

00:14:58.540 with this posse to direct them to the winning, to the winning places. Well, to make sure that they make

00:15:03.720 their own decision and think this thing through, right? That they're just not running out there.

00:15:07.860 Here's the other thing that I think the consultant class gets totally wrong.

00:15:11.400 They all talk about building your bio as a candidate. Like, have you been the president

00:15:15.460 of the Rotary Club? Were you on the Little League board? I don't think bio matters nearly what it

00:15:22.180 used to be. And it might not matter at all. I think even Trump, yes, I agree that that's why

00:15:25.900 governors, you know, in the old days, particularly like in the Democratic Party, run things. I think

00:15:30.080 it's a new thing with media. But you've got to know what the issues are and how you play into

00:15:36.760 these different interest groups. Are you known in those groups? Are you a leader in those groups?

00:15:40.400 Are you showing up at like school boards that people know who you are? So more importantly than

00:15:44.820 having the checkbox of, I've done Little League, I've done the PTA, all that. What have you actually

00:15:50.240 accomplished and have people know you? And can you break through the kind of the white noise of media?

00:15:55.840 Do you have a personality? Is that because people want to see authenticity? They want to see fighting

00:16:00.620 spirit. They want to see stick to it, stick to it in this. They don't want to vote for phonies anymore.

00:16:05.900 That's much more important, I think.

00:16:08.060 When I first ran in 2010, you would have never thought to ask somebody how many Facebook followers

00:16:13.260 or Twitter followers do you have? Email was just starting to be a function of real political force

00:16:19.120 after Obama. Does that stuff matter?

00:16:21.320 I think so. I think it's to get a social media presence, to be interconnected people,

00:16:25.440 to know how to be a force multiplier. One of the things we do is teach people at these academies

00:16:29.800 how to be force multipliers and push out content, push out your own content, build your brand.

00:16:35.080 I think it's absolutely vitally important. In fact, I remember when I took over the term

00:16:40.420 campaign or came in as CEO, you know, we're in a dead sprint to get this thing finished.

00:16:45.500 And in Florida, we had to get some gap in Florida and stop spending so much time down there

00:16:50.180 because we're trying to pierce the blue wall. So Ohio and Florida, my two, I said,

00:16:54.660 with polling, we've got to see if we've got a gap going here. And every time we would go somewhere

00:16:58.420 towards even close to the western part of the state, you would show up in the tarmac.

00:17:02.600 And Kayleigh McEnany would show up in the tarmac at the rallies. I said, this guy is dedicated.

00:17:08.100 So I think that paid off well for you.

00:17:10.620 I miss the rallies. It was like a family reunion. It was an emotional experience.

00:17:16.380 There was so much joy. I think all of these left-wing haters should like have to go to a

00:17:23.200 Trump rally because what they will find is they'll feel better about themselves. They'll be happier.

00:17:28.300 Yes. And I...

00:17:29.940 They talk about the anger in the media and everything like that. There's no anger.

00:17:32.860 This is working class joy for a guy up there that's stepping up and trying to put him in the room.

00:17:37.180 Can J.D. put it together this way?

00:17:39.240 Well, Trump's running at 28. So we're going to have another run.

00:17:41.380 We're going to have another shot at the rallies.

00:17:45.280 They were different in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

00:17:48.600 Oh, yeah.

00:17:48.960 They all had a different flavor.

00:17:50.400 Different flavor. In 2020, 2024.

00:17:52.920 In 2024, actually, I think they were not just bigger, but they were also a little more intense

00:17:59.020 because people realized the stakes.

00:18:00.440 They were way more diverse.

00:18:00.880 Yeah, big time.

00:18:02.060 Way more diverse in 2024.

00:18:02.200 And that's what I'm saying. Even the Warren Posse, we're getting more of a black audience,

00:18:07.120 a lot of Hispanics, particularly in South Texas.

00:18:09.440 Well, I think it's just that it's gendered. 0.98

00:18:10.900 I have a theory that we've broken down our politics over race for most of your and my

00:18:17.460 life. And now something very different happened where a bunch of working class black and Hispanic 0.85

00:18:22.300 men showed up and said, whoa, you're telling me the third grade teacher gets to decide the

00:18:27.700 gender of my kid?

00:18:28.720 Yeah, not going to happen.

00:18:29.380 And you're telling me that a bunch of my friends and people I grew up have to go fight in some

00:18:35.220 war in Ukraine or the Middle East. And it was the machismo of Trump. It was the policy wins.

00:18:44.340 And also the hectoring of the credential class and particularly the female credential class 0.79

00:18:49.060 of the left. The MSNBC crew hectoring these guys every day.

00:18:53.320 And I took a lot of crap when I went to the television and said, we're going to lose some 0.95

00:18:56.500 Karens. But for every Karen we lose, we're going to we're going to find a Jamal or a Julio. 0.98

00:19:00.900 And that actually is what happened.

00:19:03.460 I noticed that the only thing I put out of Danbury prison was on the 26th, I think, of September.

00:19:06.940 I said victories at hand. My teaching up there at Danbury and living in one of the cell blocks, 0.95

00:19:12.780 it was obvious that black and Hispanic men hate the Democratic Party and are not going to vote

00:19:19.100 for Kamala Harris. It's just not going to happen. So I'm not saying they're going to vote for Trump,

00:19:22.940 although some were leaning that way.

00:19:24.380 They're not going to vote for Gavin Newsom or Pete Buttigieg.

00:19:26.580 No, not going to happen. I think if we deliver for that crowd, we've got to. If we can deliver

00:19:31.720 for black and Hispanic men.

00:19:32.780 What Democrat candidate do you think could assemble that coalition back for the Democrats

00:19:36.320 that you're most afraid of?

00:19:37.640 Of working class. 0.89

00:19:38.820 I've got one that I'm afraid of.

00:19:40.520 Robert Reich said the other day, there's no economic populism. I'm not afraid of it.

00:19:46.040 Stephen A. Smith scare you?

00:19:47.560 Well, I'm the one that's been promoting his candidacy. I have one on his podcast and

00:19:51.040 he's going to come on mine. I think he is somebody they need in that Democratic primary.

00:19:56.180 He's a five-tool player. And I think he's very serious about considering this.

00:20:00.260 I think they don't have anybody in elected office now that could assemble the coalition

00:20:05.020 that they need to win.

00:20:05.700 No, but they do have these governors. So you've got two brackets. You've got the governor's

00:20:08.460 bracket of Westmore, Brashear, Shapiro, Whitmer, that. And then you have what I call right

00:20:14.380 now the celebrity and all other. That's Rahm Emanuel, Pete Buttigieg. It's going to be

00:20:20.100 Polis, right? Because he's going to run it.

00:20:21.960 Give me that. Give me that vector.

00:20:24.200 Newsom. You're going to have Stephen A. Smith, I think. Like I said, Mark Cuban. You're going

00:20:28.500 to have a couple other people. AOC, I'm sure, are jumping there. 0.83

00:20:31.520 No doubt. She's got no downside to do it. Does Bernie run again?

00:20:35.960 Bernie is dying to run. The problem is he's 83. And I followed very closely all the populist

00:20:41.340 rallies. This is why Reich wrote the piece. There's no economic part of it. If you go

00:20:45.800 in and look at these rallies, and by the way, the people of their hunger, they're drawing

00:20:49.640 massive crowds. At one o'clock on a beautiful Saturday, you're drawing 35,000 people in

00:20:55.080 downtown L.A. People on the left are thirsting.

00:20:58.440 Well, they're leaderless. They're totally leaderless. And they don't stick the landing.

00:21:01.100 They don't never talk about economic populism. They're talking about Green New Deal. It's

00:21:04.160 all the, you know, all the crap. They're against all the oligarchies, except the ones in Ukraine 0.99

00:21:07.460 they're willing to fund. And the ones they created. Those Silicon Valley,

00:21:10.760 apartheid state oligarchs, all those five big oligarchs are progressive Democrats, right?

00:21:14.680 I understand now they're hanging out in Mar-a-Lago and they're seeing the light. But they

00:21:18.880 were created by Obama and the progressive movement and the Biden regime. Remember,

00:21:25.440 they had Lena Kahn and never unleashed her. She tightened up the FTC lawsuit against Facebook

00:21:33.300 that Zuckerberg went into the Oval Office five times and begged President Trump not to pull

00:21:37.760 the trigger on. Andrew Ferguson's got him in court right now. So no, we are the anti-oligarch 0.60

00:21:42.160 party. You see that in federal court. We got the, you know, the neo-Brandeisians in the Justice 1.00

00:21:47.220 Department. Biggest antitrust on the Gail Slater. You got Andrew Ferguson, FTC. You got

00:21:51.440 the FCC. Jim Jordan tried to break, Facebook got to him and they tried to break, tried to

00:21:56.640 get rid of the FTC two weeks ago in the one agency. Mike Davis came on. We got the article

00:22:01.820 three in the Warren Posse bombarded these guys. What these guys call about? 24 hours

00:22:06.680 later, they said. That was lonely for me on the Judiciary Committee defending Lena Kahn and

00:22:10.040 the FTC because I love Jim Jordan, but he was, he was never on the same page.

00:22:14.620 Oh, he's Facebook. I mean, he's a big tech guy. That's, he's been one of the torturers

00:22:18.660 of Mike Davis in this crowd. So the torture goes both ways with Mike Davis.

00:22:22.880 Yeah. Mike Davis likes it too. You mentioned Danbury prison. Yeah.

00:22:26.560 I did everything I could to see that you didn't go to prison. I thought that was a terrible

00:22:30.080 injustice. And Matt actually tried to come and see me. I just said, hey, you should have

00:22:34.880 seen when Matt Gates. Yeah, that wasn't very pleasant. No, no, no. I was threatening the

00:22:38.640 head of the Bureau of Prisons that they better let me go see you. And then they were saying

00:22:42.080 that you were refusing to see us. Yeah. And then I was saying to the head of the Bureau

00:22:45.620 of Prisons, we outrank Steve Bannon. Exactly. They put, you put shock. Apparently we didn't.

00:22:50.180 You put shock through the whole system. Well, I always envisioned you in prison taking like

00:22:57.020 20 minutes to be some sort of mafioso style cell block leader. That like people would be

00:23:03.400 bringing you tribute and like wanting to learn from you. Yeah. You don't do that because there

00:23:08.260 are, there are real guys that do that. What you have to do, and this is my thing to George

00:23:12.660 Santos, you got to stop whining. You just got to walk in there. You have to know yourself

00:23:17.760 and you have to be totally, completely focused every second of the day because these places

00:23:22.540 are incredibly violent. My cell block was 84 guys, 84 men, you know, a part of them are

00:23:30.240 child, you know, sex offenders, a part of inmates like myself and part are convicts, right?

00:23:35.520 People have either been in medium security and worked in, I mean, really hardened, hardened

00:23:39.960 people. Um, and you just got to be focused all day long. And the reason you got to be

00:23:44.080 focused, probably 20 focused on what you're focused on focus on just the present. What

00:23:50.520 is actually going on? What are you doing? What's the next evolution? What are you doing

00:23:54.700 that day? What are you doing for exercise? What are you going to do? And just a situation

00:23:59.900 awareness, wherever you move in a prison, cause things are changing. Here's why that sounds

00:24:03.660 like a good idea outside of prison as well. It is, but it's tough to keep that focus.

00:24:07.440 I can tell you, I was not as focused. When I was in, I was focused and I lost 30 pounds.

00:24:11.780 I haven't eaten meat. Uh, I read meat. I just, the first steak I had was two nights ago from

00:24:17.640 the first day I showed up in Danbury because the food's like animal slop. The, um, but you,

00:24:23.160 you have to, the reason it's so dangerous is the feds have, have federalized these drug crimes

00:24:29.660 under RICO charges. So it's all these conspiracies to, to sell drugs. These kids are 25 years old,

00:24:38.100 Hispanic and black principally. They are in prison for 15, 20 and 25 years in a small place like

00:24:45.600 Danbury. So in Danbury, which is a hundred years old has 800 of accommodation for 800. I think we

00:24:50.760 had 1200 at one time there because of so many foreign nationals and child molesters. It's so overcrowded. 1.00

00:24:55.800 These young men get there. They have 20 years of their life are going to be spent in the confines

00:25:01.220 of Danbury prison. That's hard. It was hard for me for four months for 25 years. When you're 25

00:25:06.700 years old, it can break a person. And what they do is they start doing this drug K2 that K2 can get 0.84

00:25:12.180 into the prisons. And once that happens, it's they're violent, uh, uncontrollable, and that can

00:25:16.960 happen at any time. How do they take K2? They get K2. They, uh, I think they smoke it. It comes in on paper.

00:25:21.940 It's the one that's, it can come in on paper and legal documents on books. People send them books

00:25:26.380 and they got it on there. In prison, you can get anything you want. They get phones, they get drugs

00:25:31.100 in there. Uh, are the guards the ones getting into them? I would say that, uh, a third comes in from

00:25:36.340 drones, right? Which is crazy to think about. It's unbelievable. They've, we had, we had a drone,

00:25:41.960 they had a drone, uh, thing come in on the beginning of Labor Day weekend that dropped phones and,

00:25:47.320 and drugs down in the yard. Uh, they locked the yard down. Then they locked us all down for Labor

00:25:51.800 Day weekend. If we would have known this, we could have coordinated a posse drone attack

00:25:55.920 on Danbury prison, like dropping the constitution. Yeah. The problem is you get locked up. I mean,

00:26:01.220 they, they have a, they have a, they have a thing for that, but no, it's, uh, it's, this is why

00:26:05.900 I've tried to get involved with Jared and Peter on, on, on, uh, uh, prison reform. The article,

00:26:12.000 the, uh, the, uh, the first step act was absolutely brilliant of what Jared and you and you and these

00:26:17.180 guys worked on to get through. It was not been implemented. So your wing of the kind of

00:26:21.420 Breitbart, uh, side of the party was very critical of us as we were doing.

00:26:25.240 I was critical until the end. I started, I came on board towards the end when I saw the politics

00:26:29.880 of it and it came to me about what the politics are dealing with friends of mine, like Jeff

00:26:32.960 Quatnitz. It is the politically, the most brilliant thing I've ever seen. It is a way

00:26:38.700 to really get, because the federal prison system is set up to break families. And these people,

00:26:44.680 I'm telling you, the black and Hispanic men in those prisons don't support the democratic 1.00

00:26:49.400 party. I think the democratic party has screwed them over. 0.99

00:26:51.180 The Tom Cotton, uh, counter argument would be, you can't, you can't let these people

00:26:55.920 out into our communities. They become even more expensive wards of the state one way or

00:27:00.560 the other. They're better behind bars.

00:27:02.260 No, I think the rescission rates on, on guys coming out of first step is, uh, is, is, uh,

00:27:06.980 is lower. I think it's fantastic. And this has got to be implemented.

00:27:09.560 But first step is, is not the final step. Like the argument for prison reform ultimately

00:27:15.060 has to be a data driven argument about reducing the number of victims because eventually everybody

00:27:20.160 gets out. Yes. Very few people don't ever get out. Yes. Um, and by the way, the other thing

00:27:25.400 it has to be is the sex offenders. You got it. You got to figure out that they have the sex

00:27:28.700 offenders are in there. Also 15, 20, 25 years. And they're sitting in these prisons. They've

00:27:37.080 never had a traffic ticket except what they do, which is obviously I think a disease. It's

00:27:41.560 not a medical facility. It's a prison. And in that prison, like I said, you have inmates

00:27:46.020 and then you have convicts. So you do have predators in there. This is why for Santos,

00:27:50.340 my first recommended him, he's like, go on TV and crying on these things. Dude, you just

00:27:54.540 got to man up. You, whatever it was, uh, you got found guilty. You got sentenced for this.

00:27:59.800 You're going to go, you shouldn't, you should assume president Trump's not going to pardon

00:28:02.840 your commute to sentence. You've got to, you've got to, you've got to toughen up because

00:28:06.780 this is a very dangerous place. You don't want to look like you're going in there and

00:28:10.300 you're, and you're, and you're open to these types of emotional swings. You got to be very

00:28:13.880 hard. And so, but what you guys did in a first step is it's quite frankly, brilliant, absolutely

00:28:18.680 brilliant. And now we're trying to implement it more. People don't know this, but it's

00:28:21.140 actually one of the reasons I'm, I'm most disappointed that I didn't get the chance

00:28:24.600 to be attorney general because I have a real passion for prison reform. I chaired the criminal

00:28:29.200 justice committee in my state legislature and did everything I could to see that that time

00:28:33.720 was used effectively. It was like, to me, it's like a crime against humanity that you

00:28:38.120 would have that much humanity and not find as much useful purpose for it as possible,

00:28:43.460 even for the folks that aren't ever getting out. And we have so much to do on that front.

00:28:48.620 And I hope it took us a hard, by the way, it took a hurt and I, to Jared and Peter Navarro

00:28:53.120 just to find the Bureau of prison. I mean, it was so tough to find people, even they're qualified.

00:28:58.920 We finally got, I think, Will Marshall from, from West Virginia, Rick Stover, who was the

00:29:04.460 warden at Danbury, but left a couple of days before I left. But every guy, when I would ask

00:29:09.280 people who you thought, they said, this guy was fantastic. He's now, I think the deputy,

00:29:14.080 we got a guy named Josh Smith, who's a former felon, who's now a programming guy. So we're

00:29:18.440 starting to do that and it started to begin the process.

00:29:20.160 So you know all these guys, you talked to them?

00:29:21.520 I interviewed all these guys.

00:29:23.180 So in a way, you ultimately did become the prison ward boss, because now, now instead

00:29:28.500 of you being, being a guest of the state, you're, you're the one talking to all them.

00:29:32.340 No, it's, it's really Navarro and, and Jared, I got to tell you, the, the impression that

00:29:37.380 happened from his dad, right? And what his dad, ambassador to France, ambassador to France,

00:29:41.440 what his dad went through really. And I got to tell you, you guys were onto something way

00:29:45.800 before. Well, first of all, the Republican Party are conservatives. At first I dismissed the

00:29:49.480 thing. What are we doing this for? Later on towards the end, we jumped in the back of

00:29:52.900 it, uh, to help push it over to you guys done so much work, but it's absolutely, first

00:29:57.240 off, it's the right thing to do. Number two, it's great politics. Now what you're going

00:30:00.740 to find out, Navarro's working on this right now, it has barely been implemented. Oh yeah.

00:30:05.000 It's barely been implemented. At first I thought it was because it was Trump. Part of it's that,

00:30:09.420 but the other part is just the system. It's never really had the talent at the Bureau of

00:30:13.340 Prisons. That, that's, that's what I wanted to pour into really, really getting people

00:30:18.080 excited about those jobs. Uh, they're tough to fill. They are tough. You know why they're

00:30:22.540 tough, Phil? The reformers say it, the system's so ossified, right? You got unions, you got,

00:30:29.500 you know, administration. Well, the smartest people work at the private prisons. Yes. So

00:30:31.840 you have to convince people to come out of the private sector and, and to come and do

00:30:35.260 this. Uh, and, and it, uh, it, it, it's where we can do the best. We got to work on some

00:30:40.220 prison reform here. There's a lot to do and a lot to do. I know president Trump is, uh,

00:30:43.620 is, is, uh, very serious about this. I think it would be a major thing. And it's politically,

00:30:47.620 it's so smart. These people feel the democratic party has abandoned it, which it has has abandoned

00:30:52.900 the working class, uh, African-Americans and Hispanics. That's our greatest opportunity here

00:30:57.460 for this realignment. Look, we've all seen how unpredictable things can get, whether it's

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00:31:54.740 it right. I want to talk a little bit about what we're observing in the Congress and how they're kind

00:31:59.380 of going about their business. And like you've always taught me and the Bannonites, you find territory,

00:32:05.540 you seize territory, you occupy it. Try to seize institutions. Yeah, you utilize it for the benefit.

00:32:11.220 But one of the problems we have, let me be blunt because you're too, you're too self-effacing.

00:32:15.940 And I would love, and I love the fact you call me your mentor, but I'm not. You, you are an

00:32:20.500 extraordinary. I mean, you and I have probably spent on the, on the phone like a hundred hours.

00:32:24.900 We've been in the tough fights. That's a lot. That's a lot of time.

00:32:26.820 We've been in some tough fights. Look, you know this after you get elected, the purpose is to get

00:32:32.820 reelected, right? To get reelected. You, there's not a lot of profiles and courage up here.

00:32:36.900 There's not a lot of people who want to seize those grounds. There's a handful. There's like,

00:32:40.020 there's like two dozen. Yeah. And right now, you know, you had the, you had the hard eight

00:32:44.660 under you that changed history with the, with the speaker. But even guys like today,

00:32:49.060 like the Eli Cranes and this, they're looking for leadership. And some of our greatest,

00:32:52.660 some of our greatest people are punching out. Andy basically wants to go back and run for

00:32:56.340 governor. Everybody there, Byron Donalds, everybody's looking at.

00:32:59.940 Even your sentence ended. Yeah, exactly. All sentences have to end. Well, that's why it's

00:33:04.900 not looked at the people that are the best and the fighters and want to seize territory

00:33:10.660 and make some changes are not the ones that are looking at leadership and go up a leadership path.

00:33:15.220 I just don't, I don't see Congress as a savable institution in that regard. I actually,

00:33:19.460 What do you mean though? Because you did, you changed this institution more on the Republican

00:33:24.660 side than even Newt Gingrich did not change it as much as you changed it.

00:33:28.500 I believe that we gave hope to those who are fighting. I don't believe that we took the power

00:33:35.620 away from the lobbyists and the special interests that we had hoped. And until you do that, it's

00:33:40.500 failure. Can you do that in the system we have with the money? I don't really think so. I am

00:33:43.460 increasingly of the view that it takes the Donald Trump will and drive. It takes the Elon Musk intelligence.

00:33:52.980 It takes the, you know, the talented people coming into the agencies. But I have given up

00:34:00.820 my own fever dream that like one day there's going to be a Congressional Oversight Committee

00:34:05.540 doing programmatic view of the budget, review of the budget. That made so much sense to me.

00:34:10.340 When I went on the road, the people want it, even though it sounds wonky.

00:34:13.300 No, they love it. I believe when you talked about it, you said-

00:34:15.940 Single subject bills.

00:34:17.140 Yeah. Well, I just think they would actually save the Republic and no one really gets excited

00:34:21.380 about it. And I understand, I think President Trump is really informed by what happened to

00:34:26.180 him on healthcare last time. He tried single subject bills.

00:34:28.740 You mean the first and first thing? Yes.

00:34:30.580 Yes, we got-

00:34:31.140 Yeah. And because of that-

00:34:32.420 By some of our own allies, the House Freedom Caucus. Remember, we made a strategic mistake in allowing

00:34:39.300 Paul Ryan to sit there. So we triage what we're going to do about that.

00:34:42.260 What did he know about anything?

00:34:43.060 Well, he convinces, look, he convinces at the time of the speaker that,

00:34:46.660 let us go. We've passed 40, you know, anti-Obamacare bills. We're ready to go. We'll have this done.

00:34:52.900 And then we realized very quickly that the reason they had done it was all performative.

00:34:56.900 Right.

00:34:57.220 That the Republicans had no set. This was your freshman. You had just gotten there.

00:35:01.540 You saw the chaos. And even our, it turned out our biggest allies in the long run,

00:35:05.780 the House Freedom Caucus guys were the guys that fought us the hardest coming out of the box.

00:35:10.980 And remember, they actually passed something. And President Trump said, that's a mean bill.

00:35:15.620 I don't know if I want to pass a mean bill. So it was chaotic because the Republican Party

00:35:21.620 in the House wasn't used to governing, right? It was all performative. And so that is what got,

00:35:26.580 now finally we got the tax, his tax program done in the fall of that year, right?

00:35:31.380 But then that was kind of it.

00:35:32.500 That was it? That was legislation? The infrastructure never got done?

00:35:34.900 So don't you think that that's shaping how he's thinking about the big,

00:35:37.540 beautiful bill as a strategic vessel? That you better just put all your capital into one thing?

00:35:44.820 I think that's what Trump's thinking. My concern is that becomes a lobbyist smorgasbord.

00:35:50.340 Well, you see it right now. I mean, look, let's go back to what you fought for. And I said this on the

00:35:56.500 show today, but I think it's worth repeating. You actually negotiated hard in January of 2023.

00:36:05.300 And you presented a framework that Kevin McCarthy, if he had executed on the deal that he agreed with,

00:36:11.380 right, could have been one of the greatest speakers in the history of the country,

00:36:15.700 right? But as soon as it passed, all they were trying to do is get out of the one thing they

00:36:20.980 didn't want to do. And this shows you how powerful it is. Single subject appropriations bills,

00:36:26.500 right? They didn't want it. They fought that time and again. You finally, I think in the summer of 2023,

00:36:31.940 got it. And if you want to talk about USAID and all this, all those fights were in the summer of 2023.

00:36:36.980 Our audience, we were having 10, 15, 20,000 people a night stay up two, three, four o'clock in the

00:36:42.660 morning. Remember on the House floor, you were Republicans arguing against each other. Democrats

00:36:47.860 kind of off to the side. You'd had the fighters, the Eli Crane, you, the MTGs. Talking about USAID,

00:36:54.180 we got to cut this. And Republicans, the rhinos, you could really expose them, saying this had to go and

00:36:59.940 pass in the committee, starting passing these bills. And on the floor, override our amendments,

00:37:04.660 all the amendments. And so there you saw it, where change could really come from.

00:37:09.220 The apparatus itself didn't want change. That's what I think has to happen. I believe President

00:37:13.300 Trump, I think a little bit, he may be getting tapped along by Johnson and leadership that are

00:37:18.820 not filling him on the details of what's in this. You don't think that Trump is actually farming out

00:37:25.540 the thought process of this to Johnson? I mean, you know, Mike Johnson. Not the thought process,

00:37:29.940 but my point is, it's so complicated. Look, he's got the world on his shoulders. He's

00:37:34.260 trying to stop the kinetic part of the Third World War. We're in a bloodier conflict in World

00:37:38.340 War II right now in the first couple of years. In the arc of instability from Ukraine all the way 0.52

00:37:42.900 down through Kashmir and Afghanistan, you've had 1.5 million casualties, right? We've had two

00:37:48.660 explosive conflicts, one in Ukraine and one in Gaza. And about that, we've had two U.S. Navy battle

00:37:55.300 groups. And coming from a Navy guy that was in a battle group 50 years ago in the North Arabian Sea,

00:38:01.140 we've kind of had them fought to a standstill. I mean, we've taken it to the Houthis, 0.71

00:38:05.140 but we've lost a couple of fighter aircraft. We've taken some incoming on destroyers.

00:38:10.580 So, my point is, this is- By the way, the neocons, and this is sinister and dark to have to say,

00:38:17.300 I think they wish we were already drawn into some war with Iran as a consequence of American casualties. 0.92

00:38:22.900 They would think that if we lost a ship full of sailors, that that would be their patriotic

00:38:29.460 duty to pay to give their life in that manner and to die at sea in order to get us into some

00:38:35.460 righteous war with Iran. We risk that. That's the problem with being up there. 1.00

00:38:38.980 It could be tomorrow.

00:38:39.540 Keeping the Suez Canal. And people don't understand, that doesn't bode well for the

00:38:45.060 Straits of Taiwan and the South China Sea when the flag goes up with the Chinese.

00:38:47.940 But wasn't that the best part of the Houthi group chat scandal? I mean, the best part of that 1.00

00:38:52.260 was seeing J.D. Vance, who I do believe is the caretaker of our movement going forward,

00:38:58.180 really articulating what we're saying about that being Europe's interests and

00:39:02.180 us not having to be the military largesse of that very crowded real estate.

00:39:08.820 I agree. What I didn't like about the group chat,

00:39:11.620 it was obvious President Trump is directly talking to CENCOM. I mean,

00:39:15.060 this is kind of a sidebar conversation of all of our leaders. Pete, J.D., Tulsi, you've got hitters.

00:39:21.860 I would like to have that in the situation room around the president, getting that guidance.

00:39:26.260 He's clearly talking to combatant commander, get ready to light things up.

00:39:30.260 So I think that the, this situation right now, and so when you talk about Trump

00:39:34.500 knowing the details of what's happening in the big, beautiful bill,

00:39:38.100 I think he's basically signed off on the fact, not two bills, one bill, because you're telling

00:39:42.260 me if we do two, I get the smaller one for the border and for the military, I may not get the taxes.

00:39:47.700 But see, that's the false choice. You and I would do 12. We'd say, you know what?

00:39:51.460 Exactly.

00:39:51.860 We are going to force feed them in our immigration agenda. 0.98

00:39:54.740 Yes.

00:39:54.900 And we're going to have all the smartest people on it. And they're going to have to vote no against.

00:39:56.980 And by the way, we're going to put them on the worst side of the worst 80-20 features of that.

00:40:00.660 Yes.

00:40:00.820 And by the way, right when that medicine's gone down, we are going to come in with trade.

00:40:05.460 Yes.

00:40:05.620 And it is going to be all of our trade policies.

00:40:07.780 Yes.

00:40:08.020 And by the way, right on the heels of that, our environmental D-reg and hit their budget.

00:40:11.940 Just stack them right up.

00:40:13.060 Because the American people voted for this.

00:40:14.260 And by the way, that's how you make it durable. That's how you draw people in.

00:40:17.700 So that's my problem. I don't think he's at that level. Look, he's over in the Middle East now. 0.80

00:40:21.940 He's got all these conflicts. Even Axios today said there's like, I talk about the convergence of all

00:40:26.660 the crises, right? The constitutional crisis that you talked about so articulately on the show today,

00:40:32.180 the Third World War kinetic part, which Axios did a great thing about how he's juggling five

00:40:37.540 different conflicts and trying to solve them peacefully. And then this massive kind of economic

00:40:42.340 model of the United States, including redoing world trade. At the same time, you start to do

00:40:46.980 these budgets and how we're going to finance it. The bond market's starting to speak.

00:40:50.260 Look, that's why we have to do the work we do. I mean, that's why, you know, in our roles with

00:40:54.340 audiences and with people who want to be more than just spectators to this process, I do want to

00:41:01.220 get into this Gaza-Israel thing. I mean, what do you think really went down on October 7th?

00:41:07.700 Look, I think it stinks to high heaven. It is impossible, impossible,

00:41:13.940 given CIA intelligence assets, Mossad intelligence assets, Israeli military intelligence,

00:41:21.300 the Saudis, the MI6, the Brits, to know that that group, because we covered it live,

00:41:28.580 we just happened to have it on a Saturday, to know they did over a 40-mile stretch air-sea land attack,

00:41:37.140 coordinated and actually, you know, knew exactly where to go, knew on the kibbutzes what room to go in,

00:41:42.980 the level of detail they had. I was sitting in that day going, hey, and the only reinforcements

00:41:48.260 that were coming down were the old guys that fought in the 73, 67, 73-4 in their own cars with

00:41:53.780 their own weapons. There's something, and that investigation should, I know Israel is at war, 0.84

00:41:58.340 but that investigation should have happened. This is why I think you're seeing a real split between

00:42:04.340 Netanyahu's government and the Trump administration. There's something wrong in this relationship right

00:42:09.140 now. There's a fundamental lack of trust. I think this is because they've continued to push as only

00:42:14.420 the military option. Do you buy that that really is why Michael Waltz has been moved to the UN?

00:42:21.860 Because, you know, there was that reporting that Trump believed Waltz was so cozy with Netanyahu and

00:42:29.300 Israel that he wasn't exclusively helping. Well, two things happened. Number one, first off, when

00:42:33.860 B.B. came, and I was a thing of Waltz, particularly this thing, I was pretty vocal, no scalps. We can't

00:42:39.300 get in the business we had in the first two years. As you know, no scalps, no scalps whatsoever. We can

00:42:44.500 win every fight we want to win. So you got to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, and we'll figure it

00:42:49.460 out after Labor Day. But I think what happened, when B.B. came over for the Trump-Gaza, you know, B.B. comes over,

00:42:56.260 and all of a sudden, Trump's talking about Gaza and going to make it, and B.B.'s like sitting there.

00:43:00.740 He was there to push the military option. They're going to have to go to the East Room and have the

00:43:04.980 big press conference later. All Trump's talking about is Gaza. And you could tell, then they come

00:43:09.380 back, they're the first guys to come back on the tariff day. They came back on that Monday to talk

00:43:13.780 tariffs. Well, the tariffs with Israel is not a huge topic. It was there once again to push the military

00:43:19.700 option. And Trump's not having it. I mean, he kind of cut the guy off, you could see. Now, what we found out

00:43:24.900 from the reporting later is that Waltz, either staff or Waltz himself, was either meeting with

00:43:30.500 or having discussions. We know that the Israelis were quite upset with Pete Hexeth, that the Defense

00:43:35.540 Department hadn't really had alternative bombing operations or support operations. So you're seeing

00:43:41.460 a real breakdown. President Trump is not going to get sucked into another Middle East war. Not in

00:43:47.860 Persia, not in an ancient civilization. And the bombing you have to do there is so horrible. He said it

00:43:53.380 yesterday. The buried lead in that magnificent speech, which, by the way, the mainstream media

00:43:58.660 barely covered, the buried lead is when he said, it's not verification. We are not going to let

00:44:04.180 them get a nuclear weapon. It's impossible. And we have all kinds of economic warfare aspects

00:44:09.540 that do this, diplomatic. We're not going to do it. The Arabs almost stand an ovation. It was the loudest 1.00

00:44:14.180 applause line of the speech. And that's not the Knesset. That's the Arabs. 1.00

00:44:18.020 The Arabs. They're all going to have nuclear weapons. I mean, what Saudi said right there, 0.99

00:44:22.180 if they want one. In our lifetime, you're going to have Saudi, Qatar, the UAE, Iran, Kuwait.

00:44:28.340 They're all going to have nuclear weapons. If you were running those countries,

00:44:30.180 would you not have nuclear weapons? With the resources they have, the talent they can acquire,

00:44:35.300 and the way they think about deterrence. And you think Pakistan, Dr. Khan may make a visit.

00:44:38.980 By the way, I'm not entirely sure that there won't be able to be a sufficient deterrence there,

00:44:44.660 like you've seen in Kashmir. What you saw in Kashmir, this last week or so, is that you can

00:44:50.180 have a conventional scuffle that does not escalate. That's probably a good thing for the world.

00:44:57.300 I think it's a very good thing. And people should know, President Trump did get J.D. and Marco

00:45:01.700 involved. And I think they had a big influence over that. How will you know if at the end of this four

00:45:09.300 years we give ourselves the A? And don't say that it's if he's running in 2028. At the end...

00:45:15.940 No, no. On a policy basis.

00:45:17.540 Yeah. When you look back and say, this is the report card Steve Bannon is going to give this time.

00:45:23.540 Well, here's one thing I think that we need a Matt Gaetz, we need Matt back now, is that

00:45:28.820 on redoing the commercial operations, kind of what I said at CPAC in 2017, America first,

00:45:36.180 national security, economic nationalism, and deconstruct the administrative state.

00:45:39.940 I think on the economic nationalism, if we can get control of the spending, which we haven't

00:45:44.660 shown, but I think we're going to work through this. There's going to be some intense fights.

00:45:47.620 People are going to be yelling and screaming at each other. Sometimes President Trump's not

00:45:50.180 going to be happy. I think the bond market's going to also dismantle us. I think that's going

00:45:53.940 to happen. We're going to... We have to. On the America first national security side,

00:45:57.860 the hemispheric defense, what he's looking at, stopping the kinetic war, I think you're seeing

00:46:01.940 that. The biggest thing I think we get the D on right now is the deconstruction of the administrative

00:46:06.980 state. Elon took a crack at it. It hasn't been codified in the budget right now, but the deep

00:46:13.380 state part of that. We only have four years to do this. This combination of the Pentagon,

00:46:18.980 the Justice Department, the CIA, parts of DNI, this kind of, the permanent kind of government

00:46:27.540 underneath on the national security side, the Praetorian Guard, the group that kept

00:46:31.700 Biden propped up, as we're now finding out by liberal reporters, the reason that nothing changed

00:46:36.980 between really Bush and Obama, that has to be broken. That is a full-time job, because they're

00:46:42.820 not sitting there... They don't care if it's Trump now and AOC next. They're not going to change.

00:46:48.100 We have to break that. The report card from... How do we know if they're broken?

00:46:52.660 That if you make a decision in the Oval Office, it gets done like that, and you don't have...

00:46:56.580 Yeah, but how will regular people know? Like, how will they observing it know?

00:46:59.620 Well, I think, first of all, they'll have to hear it from people like us or President Trump to know

00:47:02.900 that, hey, we've decided that we're not going to get us sucked into a war here, and they're not

00:47:07.700 going to drag us into it, and here's what I'm doing, and here's what I'm commanding, and this is going

00:47:10.980 to happen right away. And guess what? No troops are going. People have to know that. Also, the exposing

00:47:16.020 of, like, the funding of the NGOs, the shutting down the American people, things of the Justice

00:47:20.260 Department. That's why I think there needs to be mass investigations, grand juries. That part of it,

00:47:25.220 I still think, you know, even when we had Ed Martin, he's now turfed out because of Republicans.

00:47:30.580 They whipped it for six votes against President Trump. Isn't it funny that it was like me and Ed

00:47:35.620 Martin that the establishment Republicans had the biggest problems with?

00:47:40.260 But I think he shows you guys are getting things done.

00:47:42.020 It's revealing in a way, isn't it?

00:47:43.940 Matt, you're target number one. Matt, I don't say this lightly. I'm a pretty good judge of horse

00:47:50.020 flesh in this area. If you continue on doing what you're doing and you have interest in this,

00:47:54.500 you're a future President of the United States.

00:47:57.300 Well, only if you're a future Chief of Staff.

00:47:59.060 No, no, no. I'm in the war room. I've got enough. I got enough going on right now.

00:48:03.700 Is that it? Yeah. Is that it for Steve Bannon? The war room is the final chapter?

00:48:08.340 No.

00:48:08.740 Would you go back into government?

00:48:10.020 Never. No chance. Zero. The war room is much more. You need a platform. MAGA needs this platform

00:48:15.700 for the vanguard. It's a vanguard of a revolutionary movement. You need this interactivity,

00:48:23.220 information sharing, esprit de corps. You need it. So I'm doing exactly what I'm doing now,

00:48:28.260 and this is what my legacy will be at MAGA, and I'll do it for as long as I can possibly do it,

00:48:33.220 but that's important. But it's to support the young talent I see like that. If we can get to the

00:48:37.780 2030 census and get the Matt Gaetz's of the world, we're going to be in good shape. But we got a tough

00:48:43.780 bridge thing, and one of the things we had to do, we had to take down the deep state.

00:48:47.060 And if we don't, they'll be in power again, and you and I will both be chatting under different

00:48:52.580 circumstances, but the good news is now we're familiar with them. Well, I went to Danbury,

00:48:55.860 so I don't have any problem. I now have to roll what your daily schedule's got to be like,

00:49:01.140 so I don't fear that. But we will go to prison if we don't take these guys down,

00:49:05.940 there's no doubt. These people are ruthless. I believe that. Steve Bannon, the jefe.

00:49:11.540 Thank you, my friend. Appreciate you. Make sure to subscribe to the show,

00:49:15.060 turn notifications on, and leave us a rating or review. Let us know who you'd like to see us

00:49:18.420 chatting with next.

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The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - May 16, 2025

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz ｜ Steve Bannon

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