Steve Bannon joins Lou Dobbs to discuss the Ukraine crisis, the Ukraine conflict, and China's relationship with Russia, and the ongoing trade war with the United States and other NATO allies. Steve Bannon's War Room is a wildly popular podcast hosted by the irrepressible Steve Bannon.
00:05:29.600The EU tapped these people along for years.
00:05:32.740The entire reason we're in this situation is the European Union and NATO pressed their bet in Ukraine.
00:05:39.460They overthrew a democratically elected government.
00:05:42.520By the way, that was kind of a puppet to Putin.
00:05:45.440But it was elected by the people, right?
00:05:48.100They overthrew that in a color revolution.
00:05:50.960And with promises, the EU promises of NATO, none of those promises have come to fulfillment.
00:05:56.300Zelensky said over the weekend, hey, maybe I don't want NATO membership because NATO's not really here for me.
00:06:01.800The EU meets in Versailles last Thursday, and a couple of members of the EU say, hey, I think we've got to slow this whole thing down in Ukraine.
00:06:10.020I think it was the Dutch and a couple of the other countries that we've got to slow this down, the application.
00:06:14.620The EU, Brussels and Davos drove this, and the Ukrainian people are paying the price.
00:06:22.880And this is a fiasco, and the United States cannot be sucked in to any further military involvement of what is really a regional issue.
00:06:29.620When you take the EU and NATO out of it, which they've all backed off, right?
00:06:33.760When you get them out of the way, now the elites are still pressing, but essentially, you see Zelensky, these guys have lost their appetite for it.
00:06:41.080You see, this is about the eastern border, these Russian-speaking provinces in the eastern border of Ukraine.
00:06:47.080I mean, simply, I don't really care about the sovereignty of Ukraine.
00:06:51.080I'm not really concerned about the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and I'm not really that concerned about the self-determination for Ukraine.
00:06:58.840That should be worked out with the Ukrainians, Russia, other people in the area.
00:07:03.400I'm concerned about the sovereignty, territorial integrity of the southern border of this country and the self-determination of the American people.
00:07:13.760And this president will never, ever secure that border.
00:07:20.280He will not in any way take a step toward assuring the territorial integrity of the United States.
00:07:27.400It's not even a question of sovereignty anymore.
00:07:30.380This president has given us no clue what is of importance to him beyond the climate crisis, as he suggests, beyond attacking every basic, fundamental, traditional institution in this constitutional republic.
00:07:49.480It's stunning to me that people will not look at this for what it is.
00:08:08.380Well, I don't even know if we're putting up a fight.
00:08:11.840Look, our fight principally to me is with the EU, the Brussels, and the guys in Davos and the elites on Wall Street and in this town.
00:08:21.260This town last week with us in a very shaky position about being the prime reserve currency in the dark of night, passed a $1.3 trillion discretionary spending bill.
00:08:31.780We don't have the money to pay for it.
00:08:32.700We're just going to print more money because the elites in the city don't care.
00:08:35.700Right now, the enemy we have is the globalists, and the globalists are driving the situation in Ukraine.
00:09:11.060And he's going to lecture the American people again, and he's going to demand that we set up a no-fly zone, of which will lead to a kinetic war.
00:09:19.720Look, everybody in your audience is already a combatant.
00:09:23.060We're in the modern warfare, which is called hybrid warfare or unrestricted warfare, information war, cyber war, and economic war.
00:09:30.840Every bit is important or more important than kinetic.
00:09:33.060What you're seeing in the streets of Ukraine is from 1939.
00:09:37.640Well, modern warfare is in the 21st century, and every citizen of this country is now at an offensive economic war with the Russian people, not the oligarchs, not the Russian people.
00:09:49.120We swept two-thirds of their reserves, right, everything in dollars and euro.
00:09:54.980We've attacked the central bank and tried to take the central bank down.
00:10:00.560Because we understand by destroying Biden and these guys, by using an economic offensive weapon that we never used against the Nazis, we never used against the fascists, we never used against the Soviet Union, we never used against Tojo and the military junta in Japan.
00:10:15.420By going on offense and destroying their currency, we're going to impoverish the Russian people, and we're hoping for a regime change that way.
00:10:23.520People have got to understand there's going to be blowback on that, and you're already seeing blowback.
00:10:26.780The blowback is now China, which is the big winner here, is setting up an alternative financial system.
00:10:31.860And once the genie's out of the bottle, there's no going back, and we've got many, many, many decades of tough road ahead of us, Lou, brought about by not just feckless Democrats like Biden.
00:10:44.240He's clearly an illegitimate president, and illegitimate elections have catastrophic consequences, but the entire Wall Street, corporatocracy, media that props him up.
00:10:53.800Yes, and there is no, it seems on one level, no comprehension of how far along, a broad comprehension of how far along this attack on the dollar is, the attack on the international payment system is.
00:11:10.760We have, right now, India setting up a separate payment system for the importation of Russian goods, energy, oil, basic metals, and we have also the Chinese, as you said, setting up the RMB backup to the yuan.
00:11:29.840It is, and by the way, giving great assurance to Vladimir Putin, that they will have that bilateral payment system ready to go as soon as he needs it, and that is what will pay for the arms that she sends to Vlad.
00:11:50.900And it's that straightforward, that simple, and meanwhile, what is not in that circle?
00:11:56.000The United States, Europe, nor any other Western power or nation on the planet.
00:12:03.260We are looking at the absolutely fundamental reversal of the international payment system and the so-called New World Order that has worked for a very long time, but has come untethered in the last decade, don't you think?
00:12:22.360Look, Lou Dobbs taught me this 30 years ago, and here's where it was.
00:12:26.260This post-war international liberal rules-based order atrophied enough that it allowed the rise of China to become an economic superpower by shipping all of our manufacturing base over there with our pension money funding it, Wall Street taking fees off it, ship our manufacturing base.
00:12:42.680Once you lose your manufacturing base, you're in decline, and that's where we've been.
00:12:46.460That system worked for a while, but it came apart when the Soviet Union fell, and the reason is that the Chinese gamed the system.
00:12:54.480They gamed the system because our elites were in on it.
00:12:56.800They made money with China's rise and our decline.
00:13:03.100And here's the thing, what you just said that's so important.
00:13:05.420In addition to the payment system, if you notice today in the Pentagon and all these great geniuses at the Atlantic Council and Aspen Institute, it's all now the Indo-Pacific strategy.
00:13:17.600Well, this is what Donald Trump, remember, he had the biggest gathering of Hindus in the world outside of India when he had the Howdy Modi, 50,000 people in Houston came to see President Trump and Modi together.
00:13:30.380Modi, India is the key that picks the lock and the strategy we had to confront the Chinese Communist Party.
00:13:37.520Note to self, India today voted with their currency.
00:13:40.580They said, ah, we've seen what's going on in Washington.
00:13:44.760We think we're going to kind of show a little leg here and start to partner with the CCP and the Russians because it looks like they're going to win.
00:14:18.160These are monumental geopolitical and geoeconomic decisions that – here's the point for your audience.
00:14:26.380This is not going to get turned around quickly.
00:14:29.780We are now on a path – this is the dark valley of the 1930s.
00:14:33.920And people are going to rue the day we allowed that election to be stolen, and we allowed this illegitimate regime to take charge in Washington because everything they have done has been a total disaster.
00:14:44.300And that's not Steve Bannon saying that.
00:14:46.380That's people in Riyadh and people in Delhi saying that.
00:14:49.640And nothing is any more clear than the UAE and Saudis refusing to take a call from the president of the United States.
00:15:01.060In my living memory and in my reading of history, I have never heard of any government not taking the call of the president of the United States.
00:15:12.420And then these idiots, these morons who are doing PR for this president, tried to kill the story and deny it, which had already been confirmed and validated by at least three governments two days before that.
00:15:32.780And when you're late and stupid, you don't win.
00:15:34.940Lou, and I mean this, not just you've been a mentor and a friend and a colleague, we need more Lou Dobbs out there talking reason to the American people.
00:15:44.840And this is – and I want people to understand something.
00:15:48.220Look how quickly this has come on time.
00:15:49.880Now, Lou Dobbs has been talking about it for 30 or 40 years.
00:15:52.480I've been talking about it for 10 or 15 years, and I was fortunate enough to work with the president on his campaign and then in the White House to actually take some action on this.
00:16:00.220But right now, if you see these events, this is what happens in fourth turning.
00:16:05.760Events start to pick up, and they start to pick up speed and accelerate at an accelerating rate.
00:16:12.940I mean to have the Saudis and UAE not take a phone call from a commander-in-chief, to know that they're having state visits by Xi, to know that Xi is meeting in Rome, and once again lecturing the United States for seven hours with Tiger Yang.
00:16:24.960And anybody that would send Tiger Yang – send Jake Sullivan to meet with Tiger Yang doesn't understand what's going on.
00:16:31.440You know, Tony Blinken didn't want to go because he already got beat up in Alaska.
00:16:36.680You know, it's been said there are decades in which nothing happens, and then there are months in which decades happen, and that's why we're in one of those now.
00:16:47.100We're having weeks in which decades are happening.
00:16:49.800And so, Lou, that's why I'm so glad to have you on the show all the time and be a part of this podcast.
00:16:55.100And I would just tell you, I'm glad you're doing this podcast every day because we need Lou Dobbs.
00:16:59.960Lou Dobbs' judgment and reason and wisdom more than ever.
00:17:05.400Well, same back at you, and I thank you for everything you're doing, and I appreciate all of your support and counsel over time.
00:17:15.240And I really – I think you're right, and it's something that I know Americans don't really yet understand, that this is not about Ukraine.
00:18:23.260Victoria Nuland, by the way, the evil princess who's had her hand from Iraq to taking down the government of Ukraine
00:18:30.840and now defending and denying that there are biological research centers with biological research material we don't want the Russians to get.
00:18:38.840This is what the American people need to be tuned in now more than ever because you're a combatant.
00:19:00.780In addition, I hope and pray that we're not combatants in cyber.
00:19:04.720But if we are, we're about to find out how out-of-date our infrastructure is that Lou and people like Frank Gaffney have been warned about for years.
00:20:53.880And what you're saying is, I am sure, shaking a number of people to the soles of their shoes.
00:21:04.940But the fact is, we have two political parties, most of which don't really understand what they have done.
00:21:14.820We watched Mitch McConnell actually sign on to a letter of 40 Republican senators demanding that the United States government allow the polls to send us MiG-29s at Ramstein Air Force Base
00:21:30.060for the use of the Ukrainians against the Russians in a war in which Vladimir Putin has already said that would be considered an act of war.
00:21:39.360This is mindlessness on a supreme stage, don't you think?
00:22:40.160But it can come to a conclusion if you actually put – if you actually act like adults and get these two in a room, they can figure things out.
00:22:47.580There's obviously some issues with that eastern border.
00:23:49.380Luke, you brought up Joe Biden's history.
00:23:54.200The Chinese Communist Party have less fear of him than Corn Pop.
00:24:00.640And Corn Pop didn't have a lot of fear of him.
00:24:04.920And when Joe Biden, quote unquote, wrapped a chain around his arm, Corn Pop, I don't think, backed off an inch.
00:24:12.460The CCP is not going to back up an inch on Joe Biden.
00:24:16.460But, no, listen, this would be funny unless it was so deadly serious.
00:24:21.120And I think this gets back to 3 November.
00:24:23.620And, you know, I keep saying elections have consequences.
00:24:26.320Stolen elections have catastrophic consequences.
00:24:28.580Even for people, and I know, I'm sure there's not a lot that listen to Lou Dobbs that hate the sound of Trump's name.
00:24:35.840But I say this on the show, and I tell it to everybody, particularly liberals.
00:24:38.520Even if you hate the sound of Donald Trump's name and you spit on the floor, does anybody, anybody believe that Saudi Arabia wouldn't take its phone call?
00:24:47.960That Saudi Arabia would say we're going to set up a different monetary system.
00:24:51.340That the Gulf Emirates would have a state vision for Xi.
00:24:54.420That Modi would sit there and say, hey, I think I'm on their side for right now.
00:24:57.480I'm going to work at a deal that was on the currency side so that we can buy their goods and be part of them for right now.
00:25:03.460Does anybody think that Vladimir Putin would have sent one tank?
00:25:06.900Does anybody think that Vladimir Putin would have taken down one building in all of Ukraine, including the eastern provinces?
00:25:12.460Does anybody think that what people have gotten in the grill of this administration, humiliate this administration, that even the NATO allies, which Joe Scarborough says is so organized, that they're still buying all their fuel and underwriting the Russians' aggression?
00:25:27.840Does anybody in the world think that would have happened on the watch of Donald J. Trump?
00:25:47.080And I believe that the Wuhan lab virus was part of that.
00:25:50.400That's all to be proven in days to come.
00:25:52.840But I can tell you, if you look back at the fall and Christmas of 2019, the economy we had, the lack of inflation, the growth of wages for working class people, the prosperity in the nation, and you compare everything since the Wuhan virus got here and Joe Biden illegitimately took over the presidency,
00:26:09.860it's going to stand out as a sore point in America in the great expanse of history of this republic.
00:26:17.540And anyone who thinks it's an accident that Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine, while at the same time, China raised its bellicosity toward Iran, and Iran fired missiles into Erbil, Iraq, next to our consulate.
00:26:38.060And the media kept talking about how they missed the consulate.
00:26:44.220They fired into a neighborhood that includes 2,500 American troops that most people don't even know are stationed there, for crying out loud.
00:26:52.560By the way, up in Kurdistan, really, the Kurd part of Iraq, which are really our best allies know.
00:27:00.360Look, Lou, people, this thing with the dollar is going to take a time.
00:27:03.260Today, the producer price is the highest in history, 10%.
00:27:13.280And this is pre-Putin, pre-the lockdowns in Shenzhen.
00:27:16.380But if people want to know, if China makes a move on the South China Sea or Taiwan, the economy is going to fall 30% overnight.
00:27:25.900We're going to go into a massive depression.
00:27:28.220We cannot run the country without the chips, the advanced chips from Taiwan.
00:27:33.080We now know that Captain Fennell and other members, former members of the Seventh Fleet, Intel, told us the Seventh Fleet cannot stop a blockade.
00:27:41.800And they can't stop an offensive operation against Taiwan.
00:27:46.600The Chinese are going to choke down Taiwan after this Ukraine thing dials down.
00:27:51.420And you're going to have Kamala Harris in the Situation Room.
00:27:54.600You'll have Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Kamala Harris, General Milley, General Austin, and, of course, the always on top of things, Joe Biden.
00:28:04.480That's a pretty picture you paint there, Steve.
00:28:07.000When I said that China was threatening Taiwan, the question arises because of the absolutely essential, critical value of all of the semiconductors that are manufactured in Taiwan, if for no other reason, the fact that it's a democracy, that it is a nation that we have supported for more than a half century.
00:28:28.240This is critically important strategic materials for us, and we won't step up and say we will defend Taiwan.
00:28:38.880How do you rationalize that for the U.S. government, Steve?
00:28:56.820We've allowed the chip – the great chip manufacturing, which we used to dominate in the United States, that the modern economy runs off of, has shifted out of Silicon Valley, and is in Taiwan.
00:29:07.700It's basically, I don't know, 80% or 90% of the chips.
00:29:09.640And people think they've had to wait six months for their F-100 to show up because of no chips in the refrigerator, their Viking refrigerator.
00:29:16.920If we lose that chip design, the economy will drop 30% overnight.
00:29:30.060Look, the tools that they're using against the Russian people in economic warfare, I advocated for a long time, get them off the SWIFT system, take down their currency, make a run on their central bank.
00:29:41.080We could defeat the Chinese Communist Party economically, but Wall Street's too invested in it.
00:29:45.820And so right now, it's going to be left to the seventh fleet.
00:29:48.760If they roll kinetically, we're going to have a tough road to hoe.
00:29:51.700And people have got to be getting ready for the stock market dropping 20%, for the economy dropping, not a recession, but I mean something, a 5% or 10% or 15% drop in the economy.
00:30:00.860We're going to have a massive layoff, right?
00:30:12.620And you have nothing but – from Powell at the Fed to Yellen at Treasury to the captains of Wall Street, they're all in it for themselves, the Jamie Diamonds of the world, to the hapless people in the Senate that signed this 2,700-page bill and never read it on Thursday night at 3 o'clock in the morning.
00:30:31.700There is no leadership in any institution in our country now.
00:30:35.680And so that's why it's got to be a populist movement.
00:30:37.740People have to turn to the polls in November, throw these bums out, and we basically have to have a – we have to have a repurposing of this government right now waiting for President Trump to come back in 2024.
00:30:51.580I honestly – and I don't mean to sound as negative as what I'm about to say and certainly will connote, but I'm not sure we can wait to 2024.
00:31:02.560This is not a time where we can repurpose our entire economy and shift from civilian to military goals and objectives and production.
00:31:16.920We had – people forget, as the socialists, if you will say, of FDR in the White House, but the man had the vision, and so did George Marshall, to prepare the nation for war.
00:31:31.060We had a surprise attack on Japan in 1941, December.
00:31:36.960But at that point, we had a standing army of 1.4 million people.
00:31:42.900That's because we were bringing in our – and recruiting that army and getting them ready, and they're drilling with broomsticks, for crying out loud, because we didn't have weapons.
00:31:53.940But the conversion had already begun in anticipation of what was happening in Europe.
00:31:59.920That is leadership, and there is this myth that suddenly we turned the machine in 90 days.
00:32:18.900And this is what's so key about even getting involved in – kinetically in the Eurasian landmass.
00:32:24.640And Roosevelt won in 1940 by committing to the American people, committing to the American people under no circumstances will we get engaged in another land war in Europe.
00:32:54.340When – on December 7th, after the Japanese hit us and hit us hard in Pearl Harbor and took out basically the Pacific Fleet, a cripple of the Pacific Fleet,
00:33:01.860that night there was a discussion in the White House about – because remember, the Germans had turned on the Russians in June of that year.
00:33:10.960And in December, they were close to the gates of Moscow in the first bitter winter.
00:33:16.380The next day, Roosevelt only declared war because Japan had attacked us on the imperial forces of Japan.
00:34:47.580And you know what frightens me more than anything about this?
00:34:51.380Steve, I'm worried not that he will be on the world stage filled with, you know, surrender by pomp and circumstance.
00:34:57.740I'm afraid he's going to fall, trip, stumble on the way, and that video is going to be blasted all over China and Russia as the man who is the fearsome leader of the free world.
00:35:10.840We are in a terrible spot, sort of damned if we do and damned if we don't.
00:35:16.640We need a leader who will go to Brussels, who will go to, if necessary, Ukraine, if that were a choice.
00:35:51.020The pain is going to get quite severe.
00:35:52.760We're in for very, very, very tough times ahead of us.
00:35:56.300And I will introduce one other factor.
00:35:58.520We have a Federal Reserve that is absolutely mumbling and bumbling its way through.
00:36:05.600Jerome Powell has been everything I was afraid he would be, a man who doesn't learn from clear lessons.
00:36:10.760He made mistakes in the Trump administration, raised rates when the president couldn't have been clear, President Trump, telling him, don't raise rates.
00:36:20.520Here's a man who understood markets and a Federal Reserve chairman who didn't, and he's still there.
00:36:28.020And Donald Trump, when he is most needed, most needed is not.
00:36:33.660What a choice that we have made historically.
00:36:36.960Jerome Powell to lead the Fed and President Trump having to watch all of this.
00:36:43.660Now, I would just remind you, that's not a choice the American people made.
00:36:52.240And we, Bill Barr and the people of the Justice Department and the people that didn't get focused on this allowed this stuff to be stolen by all the phony rules they put in, all the phony rules in the mail-in ballots.
00:37:04.240And who agrees with Steve Bannon in that?
00:37:06.260The appeals court in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth Court overturned and said 2.6 million ballots were unconstitutional.
00:37:13.940The $6 million that were cast in Pennsylvania, all the mail-in ballots.
00:37:19.800And you're seeing in Wisconsin what's happening there, Arizona.
00:37:22.760Look, it still gets back, to me, to the railhead of 3 November.
00:38:06.460But if we have to wait for Trump to come back in 2024, or really January 2025, actually, this country, I'm not so sure we could take three years of this.
00:38:15.100And that's what you're talking about, three years before Trump can take back over the executive branch.
00:38:19.400Now, the House can stop a lot of things starting this November, and we have to win an overwhelming majority and hopefully pick up the Senate, too.
00:38:26.580But, Lou, I've got to tell you, you're right.
00:38:39.580He said, of all the talk that's going on, and the producer price index being the worst in history at 10% today, we still have not raised rates.
00:38:47.700They're still tapping and talking about that.
00:38:49.860And we have not stopped quantitative easing.
00:38:51.680The audience has got to understand, we're still juicing.
00:38:54.620We're still putting liquidity in the system.
00:38:57.140That's the only way I think they keep this carcass going.
00:38:59.340And so this inflation is going to get worse, and it's going to eviscerate fixed-income people, working-class people, and the lower middle class are going to get eviscerated on this like they've never seen before.
00:39:12.760And it's going to cause dramatic changes in the country.
00:39:15.660I want to address that issue of Powell and the Fed raising rates.
00:39:22.440Indeed, in terms of the balance sheet, we're talking about $9 trillion as we continue to roll on and buy securities and inject money into the system.
00:39:56.540And we've got to have a Fed that is both has integrity, which it hasn't.
00:40:01.280To find out Federal Reserve members were trading stocks during the pandemic is enough to make me want to put every one of them who did in jail.
00:40:11.140I think they should be in jail, along with the folks in the House and the Senate who did so.
00:40:17.180It is time for this country to quit playing.
00:40:21.320As my father used to say, never be cute.
00:41:28.500He doesn't want to put out a contract with America.
00:41:31.680He doesn't want to tell anybody what he's got to do because he thinks he can just suck on his thumb for eight months and win an election because Biden is so dreadful.
00:41:41.080And by the way, he may be right, but it's a shameless way to go about leading a nation.
00:41:47.140And that's what he's supposed to do as a majority leader.
00:41:50.480Steve, as always, we give our guests the last word.
00:41:53.320And as much as that hurts me, I continue the tradition, and I've never been more comfortable with it than turning it over to you.
00:42:05.060We need this country and the American citizens need Lou Dobbs more than ever.
00:42:09.660I'm so honored to be on this, and I'm so glad that you started this and your voice is back out there.
00:42:15.800Because, look, you started, and you remember two guys, Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker.
00:42:23.080And of all the great characteristics they had as two real men of steel, one of the best they had was fortitude that showed that they could take political pain.
00:42:35.860The first couple of years of Reagan's first term were absolutely brutal.
00:42:40.500As he and Volcker rang inflation out, and they were able to take the pain.
00:42:45.360Today, you know, with Trump not around, look at this crowd right here, from Paul Volcker to Roberts at the Supreme Court, to Volcker at the Fed, to these feckless leaders, the Republican leaders too.
00:42:56.780And obviously, the Democrats are beyond saving.
00:43:00.740But Biden, all these guys, nobody can take political pain.
00:43:03.240They won't level with the American people.
00:43:05.120They won't tell the American people what's going on.
00:43:06.940And they do not have the intestinal fortitude to take the pain of the tough decisions.
00:43:26.920We're going to need to look for people who not just are authentic, not just can fight, but are also able to take a punch and take political pain.
00:43:35.500And that's going to be one of the great qualities.