Jan. 29, 2021 - Bannon's War Room
48:08
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Well the virus has now killed more than a hundred people in China and new cases have been confirmed around the world. | |
| You don't want to frighten the American public. | ||
| France and South Korea have also got evacuation plans. | ||
| But you need to prepare for and assume. | ||
| Broadly warning Americans to avoid all non-essential travel to China. | ||
| That this is going to be a real serious problem. | ||
| France, Australia, Canada, the US, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, the list goes on. | ||
| Health officials are investigating more than a hundred possible cases in the US. | ||
| Germany, a man has contracted the virus. | ||
| The epidemic is a demon and we cannot let this demon hide. | ||
| Japan, where a bus driver contracted the virus. | ||
| Coronavirus has killed more than 100 people there and infected more than 4,500. | ||
| We have to prepare for the worst, always, because if you don't and the worst happens, War Room. | ||
|
unidentified
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Pandemic. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| It's shocking to me that a bunch of individual investors could muster enough buying power to do this. | ||
| But it just shows you the power of the Internet and forums like Reddit. | ||
| Now, the problem is, is that the question is, are they just doing it? | ||
| You said the word banded together. | ||
| Now, that could also mean colluded. | ||
| It's a very fine line between collusion and trading. | ||
| And the reason, if you want to understand why the platforms are shutting this down, I believe it's not so much that they're on the sides of big business or big hedge funds. | ||
| They have massive liability. | ||
| on their side because here's what's going to happen. I promise you this will happen when this is over and it will end and all these stocks come crashing back down to their fundamental values. There are going to be lawsuits flying and you know who's going to be named everyone? Robinhood, Ameritrade, all the platforms that did the trades are going to say you should have known better, you knew there was fraud because all it takes is if they prove collusion or manipulation, the platforms had a fiduciary responsibility to protect people so that's why | ||
| they're shutting these things down because they have massive liability. | ||
|
unidentified
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Let me jump in because you're, yes, and one of the questions is like, is this legal? | |
| But I don't know if you read, let me back up a step. | ||
| So there was this whole letter and we have quoted part of the letter that, how shall I say, is like the cleanest section for television. | ||
| This is from Wall Street Bets and this is part of what they wrote. | ||
| We don't have billionaires to bail us out when we mess up our portfolio risk and a position goes against us. | ||
| We can't go on TV and make attempts to manipulate millions to take our side of the trade. | ||
| What do you say to that, Jordan? | ||
| I say it's, I love you guys, but it's laughable, because what, yeah, what you will do is hire a class action attorney who will file a class action and sue everybody on your behalf, and you'll have 8,000 people, average people, suing in one giant class, and it's the same thing. | ||
|
unidentified
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Doesn't it seem like there's two sets of rules here? | |
| I mean, the perception of Wall Street from a lot of Americans is that you see these super ultra wealthy, you know, some billionaires, and they're trading and they get richer and richer on Wall Street. | ||
| How is this any different from what hedge funds and these activist investors do every single day? | ||
| Brooke, I'm not saying that. | ||
| I'm on the side of the investor. | ||
| All I'm saying is I understand why. | ||
| All I'm saying is I understand what's going on, why they're shutting me down. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, and I'm not asking you to take sides. | |
| I'm just presenting the full picture to everyone, trying to follow along. | ||
| Sure, yeah. | ||
| But I don't want to say I'm not sympathetic. | ||
| I get it, and you're right. | ||
| There's massive fraud, manipulation that goes on all the time at the big firms. | ||
| We saw it back in 2008. | ||
| If you watch the movie The Big Short, you can't believe They got away with this stuff where they artificially inflate the market and wait till they're out of their position then allow it to crash and America pays the bill. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| You're absolutely right. | ||
| So, of course, that's where the outrage comes from because Wall Street rips off America all the time and then now when the little guy finally had their own little chance to get in on the action, the big firms shut it down. | ||
| You're 100% right. | ||
|
unidentified
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Christine, and something remarkable is happening in this economy as well, and that's what we talked about yesterday. | |
| What's happening this morning with GameStock, this video game store, up 2,500% this year. | ||
| But then this morning, something huge happened, and that's this trading app, Robinhood, just halted anyone's ability to buy GameStock, to buy AMC movie theaters, to buy Nokia stock. | ||
| Can you explain why it matters so much? | ||
| And also, isn't this really just a pushback against the establishment? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Big picture? | ||
| It absolutely is a pushback against the establishment. | ||
| It's almost as if these social media platforms, there's this online populism that is pushing back at the Wall Street insiders and the Wall Street elite, and they're actually piling on into some of these stocks to really hurt the professional short sellers. | ||
| And the more these stocks go up, the more the big guys are getting creamed and losing billions of dollars. | ||
| It really puts a lot of question about the integrity of the market, right? | ||
| And it really kind of everybody scratching their heads over this. | ||
| What should happen? | ||
| What is the right thing to do to control this or stop this? | ||
| Not unlike what we saw on January 6th at the Capitol, right? | ||
| If you don't have the police in there at the right time, And that's kind of feels like what's happening with this much different, much lesser degree. | ||
| It's financial harm, not personal bodily harm. | ||
| But but certainly that's the same kind of, you know, platform created frenzy that that people are operating under. | ||
| And these are these are very trying times. | ||
| Wow, that former was an SEC Commissioner. | ||
| SEC Commissioner essentially calling the Reddit rebellion, the online populism of the little guy versus the system, calling it financial, basically financial insurrection, right? | ||
| Financial insurrection. | ||
| You have to control, got to stop. | ||
| Integrity of the markets. | ||
| Give me a break, ma'am. | ||
| The integrity of the markets, all the all the scams Wall Street have run on people over the last 20 years, including the financial implosion. | ||
| This is payback for the financial collapse in 2008 and the bailouts and how Wall Street was taken care of and the little guy was crushed. | ||
| OK, I want to bring in now. | ||
|
unidentified
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Barely started. | |
| Barely started. | ||
| We're the top of the first in this. | ||
| This is why this is the next phase of populism. | ||
| Right? | ||
| This is what we talked about when I said, hey, the fuse that was lit in the Oval Office with Bush in 2008 when they bailed out all these companies and didn't bail out Lehman and it collapsed. | ||
| The fuse that was lit in the Oval Office that day, I think it was September 18th or 19th of 2008, exploded on November 8th or the early morning of 9th of 2016 with the election of Donald Trump. | ||
| Now Donald Trump's first term is over. | ||
| They're impeaching him again. | ||
| His trial is going to start next week. | ||
| That battle's being fought from Wyoming to the halls of Congress, but on Wall Street and throughout the country, these reddit rebels have taken on, the first guy you heard there is the wolf of Wall Street, that's Jordan Belfort, and he knows a little something about... | ||
| How do I say this? | ||
| The darker side of stock trading. | ||
| Okay, you're live in the War Room. | ||
| It's Friday, the 29th of January, the Year of Our Lord 2021. | ||
| You know, I told my team the other day, I want to bring in Boris Epstein, who's been a Wall Street guy for a long time and really knows what's happening at capital markets. | ||
| I have Steve Cortez, Jack Posobiec later. | ||
| We're going to cover this nonstop, plus all the other fights of populism throughout the country, including President Trump's upcoming trial. | ||
| But I told I told my guys, I said, hey, you know, you guys talk about how hard you work and, you know, we're working 24 7. | ||
| We started with the impeachment. | ||
| we went to the pandemic we're ahead of. | ||
| Then we had the greatest election in American history in 2020 on the thing. | ||
| Then we had the, then we had Stop the Steal, which that was another eight weeks of intensity. | ||
| You know, now the Biden administration doesn't rate. | ||
| Nobody cares. | ||
| It's sleep. | ||
|
unidentified
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However, you've had a populist revolt on Wall Street. | |
| That's the very beginning. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, it's the, it's financial Stop the Steal. | |
| Financial Stop the Steal. | ||
| That's exactly what it is. | ||
| That's why we want it up there. | ||
| It's online populism. | ||
| And look, Jordan Belfort's correct. | ||
| And we're going to get Cortez in here, and we're going to get Boris in here. | ||
| Hey, we're not a financial advisory show, right? | ||
| We're not telling you to do anything. | ||
| But I will tell you, he's right. | ||
| There's a lot of money going to be made. | ||
| There's a lot of money going to be lost as these things go up and down. | ||
| So don't take the family's mortgage. | ||
| Don't mortgage the house on this one. | ||
| But, that's not really the case. | ||
| I want to bring you in, Boris. | ||
| You're going to give us some details. | ||
| By the way, John Frederick's radio audience is just still blown up. | ||
| We're on the John Frederick's radio network. | ||
| You were great in the John Frederick Show. | ||
| The short interest on Wall Street against these companies has been, I think, identified now as $71 billion. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And that's unleveraged. | ||
| 71 billion dollars. | ||
| Most of that bet against American entrepreneurs. | ||
| You know, the Chinese can come over here. | ||
| They don't have to apply Sarbanes-Oxley. | ||
| They don't have to really go. | ||
| They can get full access to American capital markets, but they don't have the same accounting standards. | ||
| Don't even have to give real accounting reports. | ||
| Most of the CCP companies and not all of them, all the numbers are phony. | ||
| But American entrepreneurs got to go do that and they have to have the pressure. | ||
| Now it's harder to get public. | ||
| And if you're not a company that has nine employees and just has an algorithm, if you're just a good old bricks and mortar, if you're a good old manufacturer, if you're a good old something that makes something in the United States and employs American citizens in the United States and pays them a decent wage, the problem of getting public is brutal and then they're going to start shorting you. | ||
| That's 71 billion dollars. | ||
| People have to understand one other thing. | ||
| For the American people, you're on both sides of this trade. | ||
| The institutional Wall Street guys, remember, it's your money. | ||
| This is about how they've bet your money. | ||
| For instance, Melvin Capital, you take a $3.5 billion blow-through, there are pension funds out there that now have a big, yawning gap. | ||
| Because they bet on, they put their money with Melvin Capital. | ||
| These are all institutional investors. | ||
| They basically get a 1-2% management fee and about 20% of the ups. | ||
| So they have nothing at risk. | ||
| They may have to put a little bit of capital, but they have nothing at risk. | ||
| They're playing with your money. | ||
| It's institutional money on one side of the trade. | ||
| And the retail guys, which now I think the subreddit's got 5.5 million or 5.8 million people on it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Did somebody in that first clip say fiduciary responsibility? | |
| I didn't hear that phrase. | ||
|
unidentified
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And they're talking about fiduciary responsibility of Robin Hood to protect people from getting rich off doing what they want in the stocks. | |
| You want to talk about fiduciary responsibility? | ||
| Let's talk about Melvin Capital, right? | ||
| Let's talk about fiduciary responsibility there. | ||
| Those are the investigations. | ||
| Okay, I want to bring in Boris Epstein. | ||
| Boris, set the stage for us. | ||
| We've got Cortez going to follow, but set the stage. | ||
| Exactly where are we in this populist revolt on Wall Street? | ||
| Steve, absolutely fascinating. | ||
| Thanks so much for having me. | ||
| Great to be on the John Frederick's Radio Network twice in one hour here. | ||
| And always an honor to be with the War Room of the Magna Brain Trust. | ||
| Here's the latest. | ||
| So if you're looking at what's happening so far right now, we are 41 minutes in. | ||
| The four stocks and full disclosure, I own the stocks. | ||
| I own GameStop. | ||
| I own AMC. | ||
| I own Nokia. | ||
| I own BlackBerry. | ||
| I do not right now own Blue Star Airlines. | ||
| And that's a joke for those who get it. | ||
|
unidentified
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So, these stocks are skyrocketing back up, especially GameStop. | |
| GameStop is up. | ||
| GameStop is up 63% for the day. | ||
| AMC is up 45% for the day. | ||
| Nokia, BlackBerry up about 8% each. | ||
| What is happening there is that the MAGA buyers, let's call them, the American buyers, the everyday buyers held strong went through Robinhood's market manipulation yesterday and now are continuing to buy these stocks, continuing to put the quote unquote short squeeze on the shorts. | ||
| But hang on a second, you had a loaded word there. | ||
| I just want to make sure people understand this. | ||
| By the way, after market trading, they tried to, the system, just understand this, the system tried to shut this down yesterday. | ||
| Actually, there's an update on that, Steve. | ||
| There's an update on that breaking news. | ||
| They leaked out, oh, the SEC is looking, Southern Dictionary of New York is looking, but they're looking into the subreddit. | ||
| They're looking if there's collusion among these guys. | ||
| Actually, there's an update on that, Steve. | ||
| There's an update on that breaking news. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| The SEC released a new statement. | ||
| The commission will closely review actions taken by regulated entities that may disadvantage investors or otherwise unduly inhibit their ability to trade certain securities. | ||
| In English, that means they're looking at Robinhood, I believe. | ||
| Yeah, okay, so good. | ||
| Let's take it back. | ||
| What did Robinhood, from a structural basis, how did Robinhood and the establishment try to shut down? | ||
| Remember, Citadel owns a big piece, if not all of it, of their biggest investor or lead investor in Robinhood. | ||
| What did Robinhood try to do yesterday to try to shut down Wall Street bets and the Reddit rebels? | ||
| So Citadel and Robinhood do have a relationship. | ||
| I'm not sure, and I'm still looking into this, Steve, if it's an ownership relationship. | ||
| But from what I understand, 60% of Robinhood's business goes through Citadel, through market making and other activities. | ||
| So there's a dependency there of Robinhood on Citadel. | ||
| And what Robinhood did, which I've never seen in my life, never seen in my experience, now almost 15 years on Wall Street, is they shut down buying, buying in these stocks. | ||
| You could not buy GameStop on Robinhood. | ||
| You could not buy AMC on Robinhood. | ||
| And Robinhood is supposed to be the entity free of fees, which is all about free market. | ||
| Think of the name, Robin Hood. | ||
| But no time came until they completely bent and cowed down to the establishment. | ||
| Okay, hang on a second. | ||
| We need you over the next break. | ||
| Remember, in 2008, at the bottom of the financial crisis, they banned short-selling of banks. | ||
| Yesterday, they banned going long. | ||
| Essentially, they banned going long these entrepreneurial companies. | ||
| Okay, short commercial break and return. | ||
| Boris Epstein, Rahim Ghassan, Stephen K. Bannon, you're in the War Room. | ||
|
unidentified
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War Room. | |
| Pandemic. | ||
| With Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| The epidemic is a demon and we cannot let this demon hide. | ||
| War Room. | ||
| Pandemic. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Okay, I want to bring back in Boris. | ||
| I got two questions. | ||
| One, you've got something you want to say about free markets. | ||
| What do you got? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| We are a free market capitalist country at our core. | ||
| That is what's made America the greatest country on earth. | ||
| And what those words out of the former SEC commissioner could not be more offensive, frankly, disgusting. | ||
| Say, oh, you need big brother and establishment to think for everyday Americans. | ||
| If an American family could buy a car, If an American family could choose which restaurant to go to, why can an American not decide what stock to buy? | ||
| Americans are smart. | ||
| We are not stupid. | ||
| We are not dumb. | ||
| We are not ignorant. | ||
| We are not everything the Democrats think we are. | ||
| The American people, the war room crowd, the war room audience, the MAGA movement, we are smart. | ||
| And that is what you're seeing. | ||
| You are seeing the MAGA movement rise up and say, we like these stocks, we're going to buy them. | ||
| And if Robinhood or any other broker tries to stop us, we'll find another way and we're going to buy them. | ||
| Now, as I've said, everybody should follow the law and be smart. | ||
| Follow the law and be smart, but continue to be strong. | ||
| Go ahead, what's your second question? | ||
| Also, these evaluations got a little frothy. | ||
| Okay, real quickly. | ||
| McCarthy was down there yesterday. | ||
| He accused President Trump of having a role in this. | ||
| There was no announcement about Cheney. | ||
| Gaetz is out there firing up Cheney and no call about, no demand that he call a blower out of leadership. | ||
| The trial's coming up. | ||
| It still looks like they're playing the Lindsey Graham thing of going small, but Democratic senators are saying today that we're going to take our time and we're going to prosecute Donald Trump. | ||
| The central part of this is that this election was illegitimate. | ||
| This is why Biden's got no support. | ||
| Where do we stand in your mind with actually pressing our case on the floor of the Senate and making sure that President Trump got a full chance to adjudicate this election fiasco? | ||
| So the Democrats are totally on their heels. | ||
| They saw only five Republicans defect on the motion to dismiss, but nevertheless, the motion to dismiss of this ridiculous, empty impeachment article did fail. | ||
| But the Democrats, they're now struggling. | ||
| What are we going to do? | ||
| They thought of doing this totally made-up censure with a disbarment for holding office in the future, completely unconstitutional. | ||
| They can censure, but they cannot disbar. | ||
| And now they say, well, we'll take our time. | ||
| Here's the bottom line. | ||
| The Democrats have nothing. | ||
| This impeachment is empty as an empty jar, okay? | ||
| There's nothing in it. | ||
| And they don't know what to do with it because now they're pregnant with it. | ||
| The Republican Party, the MAGA movement, and President Trump have to continue to stand strong and insist that, A, the whole thing is unconstitutional. | ||
| B, there was absolutely no incitement. | ||
| The president said, march peacefully and patriotically. | ||
| N.C. | ||
| It is not a quote-unquote big lie, a term used by Jake Tapper, Claire McCaskill and others, which was born by the disgusting Adolf Hitler. | ||
| That's who the term comes from. | ||
| It is not a big lie to insist that there was election fraud, voter fraud throughout the 2020 election. | ||
| In fact, it is reality and truth that there was. | ||
| And we know there was because we talked about it. | ||
| We saw the receipts. | ||
| We have the receipts from Pennsylvania to Georgia to Wisconsin to Michigan to Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. | ||
| The stronger we are as Republicans, as the MAGA movement, and as followers of President Trump with his leadership, the weaker Democrats become and the more on their heels we are. | ||
| We cannot cow down to them because weakness begets losing. | ||
| Boris Epstein, quickly give us your social media coordinates so the audience can keep up with you. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Add Boris Eppie on Twitter. | ||
| Boris underscore Epstein on the gram. | ||
| Boris underscore EPSHTEYN on Instagram. | ||
| Add Boris Eppie on Twitter. | ||
| Stay strong. | ||
| God bless. | ||
| See you soon. | ||
| Wall Street, the nation's capital, Mar-a-Lago, all interconnected here. | ||
| This is a populist revolt against the established order that has done nothing, nothing but eviscerate the working class and middle class in this country over the last 20-30 years, okay? | ||
| This is American people standing up. | ||
| This is why they're holding Liz Cheney, the example of the Republican establishment, accountable out in Wyoming. | ||
| McCarthy's going down to kowtow to President Trump to try to make sure, in all these articles right now, the Republican Party understands they can't move forward without President Trump. | ||
| President Trump and the Trump movement is the Republican Party. | ||
| The Republicans got the consultants, they've got the lobbyists going to FET, Liz Cheney, they've got the donors, okay? | ||
| We have the votes. | ||
| We have the muscle of the people, right? | ||
| We have the ability to go door-to-door. | ||
| You got all the grassroots power. | ||
| That's why everybody comes in this audience. | ||
| When you guys light it up and you send your emails, you send your text messages, you go to their sites, people are saying, wow, this audience is so powerful. | ||
| That's what you're seeing on Wall Street, the bonding, banding together. | ||
| And it's not perfect. | ||
| It's very imperfect. | ||
| You got to be very, very, very careful. | ||
| When you get involved in this, right? | ||
| Because like I said, these stocks are all over the place. | ||
| It's fairly speculative now. | ||
| Money's going to be made, but money's going to be lost also. | ||
| So make sure that you're very, very set. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's the way the world works. | |
| The way the world works, but you're independent. | ||
| And by the way, at zero interest rates, tell me what the alternatives are. | ||
| They've crushed your ability to save money. | ||
| You've crushed everything. | ||
| So we're going to have Nigel Farage from London later. | ||
| We're going to have Jack Posobiec. | ||
| We're covering this on every aspect of it to connect the dots for you, Raheem Kassam. | ||
|
unidentified
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You ever notice Boris always wears the same clothes? | |
| We gotta get a new picture, boys. | ||
| He never blinks! | ||
| Always has the vest and the three-piece suit and all that. | ||
| He's old school. | ||
| He makes a good point, but something that stood out to me in there, he says, you know, we're not stupid, we're not dumb, we're not unsophisticated, we're not ignorant. | ||
|
unidentified
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Even if we were, it does not give them the right to do what they pulled yesterday. | |
| And the administration, by the way, where is the regime? | ||
| Where's the Biden regime on all of this? | ||
| Because he's a neoliberal, he's going to defend Wall Street. | ||
| People are accusing us, oh, this is an abandoned thingamajig plot to bring down the Biden administration. | ||
| They're bringing themselves down. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, I like that theory. | |
| They're bringing themselves down. | ||
|
unidentified
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But where is the media? | |
| Apart from putting people on to excuse the way Robin Hood behaves, and excuse the way Melvin Capitole behaves, and excuse the way Sylvester Stallone behaves. | ||
| Have you noticed the advertisers? | ||
| When the content's not on, the real content shows. | ||
| The advertisers. | ||
| CNBC, Bloomberg, they're not going to go against who pays the bills over there. | ||
| That's the advertisers. | ||
| Even Fox News and CNN, you look at the financial services companies, the money market companies, all that, they're not going to go against that. | ||
| That's the established order. | ||
| Wall Street bets, and here's the thing, remember, the analysis you're seeing coming out of there is as sophisticated as the quotes because you've got young people, the same kind of cubicle culture, doing the analysis, right? | ||
| That said, hey, there may be some opportunities here. | ||
| The ticking time bomb. | ||
| Is the 71 billion dollars of short interest that's out there, that's unleveraged, you leverage that 10 to 1, you get close to three quarters of a trillion dollars bet against companies. | ||
| Remember, ladies and gentlemen, something that nobody else is talking about, that I will talk about, is that Money on the other side of the trade is also your money. | ||
| Remember, the oligarchs in Silicon Valley, all of these companies, Zuckerberg and these guys didn't put their own money in. | ||
| The stages of institutional capital starts at venture capital, goes to private equity, then it goes to the IPOs. | ||
| You've got the hedge funds, you've got the money managers, you've got the guys managing your money, the rest of it. | ||
| That's the stages of how you get capitalized as an entrepreneur. | ||
| None of these guys had any money. | ||
| They all went to venture capital, first did an angel round, then went to venture capital, then went to private equity, a couple of rounds there, then went public. | ||
| Nancy Pelosi, her rise to power, her brilliance out in San Francisco when she was on I think a school board, when she ran for Congress, she understood, they call them the four horsemen, the investment banks out there, Back in the 80s and 90s, they were doing all the IPOs, Robertson, Stevens, and these. | ||
| She went down and started the shakedown of those and Silicon Valley. | ||
| She was the biggest fundraiser because she shook down Silicon Valley and then she got kissed in all those deals. | ||
| Peter Schweitzer had it in his book. | ||
| She got into the friends and family round of all these transactions. | ||
| By the way, did Nancy Pelosi, I think correctly, she and her husband went long out of the money Tesla options. | ||
| Right, out of the money in December, and oh gosh, I guess nobody in the Biden administration ever told her they're going to sign an executive order on day one converting all the federal fleet, which is massive, I think they're the biggest purchaser of vehicles, to electric vehicles. | ||
| Gosh, Tesla popped, you know, who'd have thunk it, right? | ||
| So it's an insider's game. | ||
| Remember, up until the STOCK Act, until Peter Schweitzer got there with Throw Them All Out, the book that came out when I was chairman of the of the government accountability thing years and years ago. | ||
| Peter came out with that. | ||
| Insider trading was legal for these guys. | ||
| That's why you wanted to be on Schumer's. | ||
| By the way, Cameron Wallace, our producer, has AOC announced, Rahima's, AOC announced that she's primering, she's primering. | ||
| By the way, AOC, it's great you're giving tutorials on stocks and stuff like that. | ||
| It's fantastic. | ||
| You know, on Twitch, your thing, that's fine, and call Ted Cruz if you want to. | ||
| If you're not looking for Alex, hey, that's fine, all good. | ||
| Hey, don't eat the rich, primary the rich. | ||
| Why are you not primarying, you know, put up or shut up. | ||
| Why are you not primarying Chuck Schumer? | ||
| Chuck Schumer, Bernie, all the Bernie bros, it's your administration, right? | ||
| It's your Senate. | ||
| Where are they to support the Reddit rebels? | ||
| Where are they to support the populist movement? | ||
| Where are they? | ||
| Where's Chuck Schumer? | ||
| You know where Chuck Schumer is? | ||
| Chuck Schumer's defending the apparatus. | ||
| That's what's had him in office. | ||
| That's what he's the stalwart for. | ||
| So AOC, where is your primary challenge? | ||
| If you want to be a populist, primary, the establishment, the established order is Chuck Schumer. | ||
| Where's sleepy Joe Biden? | ||
| His brother's doing ads. | ||
| You see his brother's doing an ad? | ||
| His brother's doing ads for some ambulance-chasing law firm. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is... I mean the Biden's... Leveraging the Biden name and the access to the White House just very quickly as well. | |
| Stay classy, Biden. | ||
| Stay classy. | ||
|
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She is such an empty vessel, AOC. | |
| Such an empty vessel. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I disagree. | ||
|
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It's so sad. | |
| I disagree. | ||
| She has the potential to be a populist left leader and she's an actress. | ||
| She goes up there, she works as a safety valve, a pressure release valve for the left. | ||
| She has no interest in actually challenging that power. | ||
| She doesn't. | ||
| She wants to go up there. | ||
| She'll challenge it. | ||
| She'll challenge it. | ||
| She knows I'm right. | ||
|
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I'm waiting. | |
| I'm goading her. | ||
| She's going to do it. | ||
|
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I'm waiting. | |
| Okay, AOC is going to primary Chuck Schumer. | ||
| AOC's gonna primary Chuck Schumer. | ||
| She's got to. | ||
|
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She doesn't have to. | |
| She's got to. | ||
| She absolutely do. | ||
| You're seeing the defense of the established order. | ||
| Every millennial out there, you're a serf. | ||
| You're a Russian serf. | ||
| You and Gen Z. Okay? | ||
| You don't own anything. | ||
| You're not gonna own anything. | ||
|
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Yeah, but Steve, she's in the... Remember that George Carlin talked about the club? | |
| You ain't in the club. | ||
| She's in the club now. | ||
| She don't care anymore. | ||
| Okay AOC, show them all wrong. | ||
| Show the haters wrong. | ||
| Show the haters wrong. | ||
| Show the haters wrong in primary. | ||
| This is why it has to happen. | ||
| The populist left and populist right can come together here on the central aspects of economic populism and economic nationalism. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| It's all before us. | ||
| That's what this revolt's about. | ||
| We're going to return in a moment with the great Steve Cortez. | ||
|
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War Room Pandemic with Stephen K. Bannon. | |
| The epidemic is a demon and we cannot let this demon hide. | ||
| War Room Pandemic. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Our country faces a stark choice between the capitalism that made our nation great or devolving into crony corporatism. | ||
| Let's consider this comparison. | ||
| Back in 2008, during the worst parts of the credit crisis, a lot of bears who were negative on the stock market were targeting Wall Street and short selling was banned. | ||
| This week in 2021, a lot of bulls who are optimistic on certain stocks were targeting Wall Street and longs were banned. | ||
| Buying was banned. | ||
| Do you see the consistency here that Wall Street uses its leverage over corporate media, big business, big tech, and the government to protect itself to the detriment of regular Americans? | ||
| This crisis in 2008 led directly Okay, I want to bring in one of the smartest guys in the country in explaining this. | ||
| the America First political movement. I believe this present controversy right now is going to solidify and build the American economic populist nationalist cause. Okay I want to bring in one of the smartest guys in the country and explaining this and and here for everyone in the audience this is about the context in the framing of your life, your family's life, your children's life, and your grandchildren's life. | ||
| OK, here's what's happening is that the remember we started the show in pandemic. | ||
| What was the mantra I do every day? | ||
| It's a it's a pandemic that triggered an economic crisis, both on the collapse of aggregate demand and also the supply chains. | ||
| And that economic crisis was going to trigger a capital markets crisis. | ||
| And that would trigger a political and then geopolitical crisis or geopolitical that would go to a political. | ||
| All of that's come to pass. | ||
| And here's why. | ||
| Because the government has made decisions that they're going to bridge, they're going to bridge this economic crisis with massive spending. | ||
| And what we've had, we have a situation now that, you know, we're destroying the dollar. | ||
| But on the reverse side of that, we've taken interest rates down to virtual zero. | ||
| Once you go to zero interest rates, you're in uncharted territory. | ||
| Steve Cortez has said we're not like Switzerland, we're not like Japan, we're not like Germany, we're not these kind of smaller countries that you can control things more and go to zero interest rates. | ||
| We are now seeing the triggering of the capital markets crisis but it's been around, it's been there for a while brewing as people are having their life savings essentially destroyed by these zero interest rates and now you're seeing this rebellion, this open populist rebellion against the way Wall Street works. | ||
| Here is what the crisis is. | ||
| The working people in this country, you're on both sides of this trade, okay? | ||
| You're on both sides of the trade. | ||
| It's not just the Wall Street elite. | ||
| When Melvin Capital lose 3.5 billion dollars of institutional money, there's pension funds out there that's a whole blown through them, okay? | ||
| The Melvin Capital guys, yeah, they lose 20% of the ups, they'll be out of job, they lose the 1 or 2% management fees, right? | ||
| But, you know, they're still going to have their house in the Hamptons. | ||
| The 71 billion dollars of unleveraged shorts out there right now is a ticking time bomb. | ||
| And Steve Cortez and Steve Bannon are not against shorting. | ||
| They're actually short is part of the ecosystem in the natural kind of Darwinian environment of Wall Street and capital markets. | ||
| What happened here is kind of unrestrained and people just taking it for granted in the laziness and arrogance of the equity lords of Wall Street. | ||
| What you have in this country today is something the founders fought against. | ||
| We have a new aristocracy. | ||
| We have oligarchs in Silicon Valley. | ||
| We have this aristocracy of a permanent political class here in Washington DC that shields this aristocracy on Wall Street. | ||
| This 1%. | ||
| The concentrated wealth that happened so much because of how the financial crisis came about in 2008 and how it was handled and how the bailouts. | ||
| Remember they've socialized the risk. | ||
| They have capped their downside. | ||
| They have unlimited upside. | ||
| You didn't get a bailout. | ||
| And now at the first sign of a revolt. | ||
| First a revolt at the polls with Donald Trump in 16. | ||
| A second revolt for his victory when they put up the neoliberal neocon. | ||
| You know, stability. | ||
| This is all MSNBC and CNN are saying. | ||
| Stability. | ||
| Stability. | ||
| Well you're seeing stability. | ||
| Stability means all he's doing is guarding The failed, the managed decline of our country by a failed aristocracy, a failed elite. | ||
| If this elite were making great decisions, people might go along with it. | ||
| But the foreign policy, the nine trillion dollars spent in foreign wars, the tens of thousands of dead, Section 60 over in Arlington National Cemetery, the 50,000 wounded, the suicides every day by this new greatest generation. | ||
| The Millennials and Generation Z that are fighting back on Wall Street. | ||
| It's all inextricably linked and it's not going to go away. | ||
| They can't blame this on Donald Trump. | ||
| They can't blame this on Donald Trump. | ||
| The lion and winner is down in Mar-a-Lago and now they're going down because the Republican Party understands they can't exist without him. | ||
| Right? | ||
| What the NPR says a day, the strategist with no name associated, the strategist saying Trump's got the Republican Party in what they call a hostage crisis every day. | ||
| That's what they think of Trump. | ||
| That's what they think of you. | ||
| And what did they call it? | ||
| What did they call it? | ||
| What did the SEC Commissioner essentially said? | ||
| That the Reddit rebels are domestic terrorists, domestic financial terrorists, insurrectionists. | ||
| Mr. Steve Cortez, can you please put this in perspectives for us? | ||
| You bet. | ||
| First, because you're right, this is much bigger than the present financial market issues. | ||
| That's where we're mostly paying attention, of course, but it's bigger than that. | ||
| On the financial market side, Steve, to your point, it's important to state, I think, that shorts serve a really important function in the stock market. | ||
| They are effectively a truth serum for the market. | ||
| In recent years, for example, shorts exposed a lot of Chinese firms that were outright fraudulent, that got listed in America, that hoodwinked a lot of American investors. | ||
| They served a great service in exposing that. | ||
| I believe in shorts. | ||
| What I do not believe in is the ability of Wall Street titans, when they are short, to change the rules in the middle of the game because they've gotten caught. | ||
| And what I mean by that, too, and what I really put out in that video that I think is incredibly important, is think about this. | ||
| In 2008, when shorts were targeting the banks themselves, not just shorting the market broadly, but actually shorting the Wall Street firms themselves, Shorting was banned in 2008, okay, because bears were attacking Wall Street at that time. | ||
| Now, the bulls are attracting Wall Street. | ||
| People who want to buy stocks and save companies that they believe in, whether they truly believe there's value there, or it's because they want to punish Wall Street titans, is really irrelevant. | ||
| The point is people want to buy these stocks, and guess what? | ||
| Long buying is now banned in the market. | ||
| The point there is, Wall Street wins heads or tails. | ||
| You know, in 2008, Wall Street was considered too big to fail by the powers of the oligarch. | ||
| Well, now, investors are considered too small to succeed. | ||
| And there are two sets of rules here. | ||
| And this is why, Steve, to your point, this is way bigger than financial markets. | ||
| But I'm glad that I think this current controversy this week has awakened a lot of Americans who probably had an inner populism and just didn't know it, but it's awakened them to the Broader reality, which is our society is largely now an insider versus outsider game and we have an oligarchy in this country. | ||
| Their power was interrupted for sure by the America First Movement and by the Trump presidency, but the oligarchy is charging back and it's doing so In brazen ways, it's doing it right in our face. | ||
| The oligarchs didn't hide what they did this week. | ||
| Look at what big tech did. | ||
| Facebook shut down discussion groups of Robinhood traders. | ||
| Big business put enormous pressure on the brokerage firms to disallow buying in these stocks that people wanted to buy. | ||
| The power center of the oligarchs in the Washington establishment, the SEC, has put out some very vaguely worded but nonetheless alarming press releases and of course a lot of reporting that Janet Yellen herself | ||
| Vastly paid by some of these very Wall Street firms and hedge funds that Janet Yellen is privately Pressuring a lot of these firms to the brokerage firms in particular to restrain or even prohibit the ability of investors to trade so This is this is emblematic of a larger truth, which is that there is an emerging oligarchy in this country it is a great struggle against the citizens of this country against the populist revolt and | ||
| We just see the latest manifestation of it in this Wall Street controversy right now. | ||
| But I hope that it will crystallize this movement, and I believe it will. | ||
| Steve, can you tell people how historic yesterday was with all the apparatuses, everything that they did to try to shut this down? | ||
| Is he still up? | ||
|
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Steve, can you hear us? | |
| Yes, I sure can. | ||
| Okay, we're going to bring Steve back in. | ||
| Tell people how historic yesterday was after all the apparatus came together to try to shut down everything. | ||
| You couldn't buy stocks, you could only sell, right, to force the price down. | ||
| The rest of the apparatus, the SEC came out and said, hey, I think we're going to start investigating the Reddit room, not what the hedge funds are doing. | ||
| All the apparatus came together. | ||
| How historic was it that this group of individuals actually fought back in late trading and then overnight trading to be where we were this morning? | ||
| Just put it in perspective. | ||
| No, it's incredible. | ||
| As I said, on the social media side, look at what social media did to try to disintermediate. | ||
| We are the forces of disintermediation, of course, right? | ||
| And they tried to shut off the transparency, the ability of people to communicate with each other by shutting down these chat rooms, for example, by shutting down entire streams of communication online. | ||
| So that was critical that, unfortunately, big tech put its thumb on the scale and suppressed information. | ||
| We also saw corporate media. | ||
| Playing its part, unfortunately, and I mostly blame CNBC. | ||
| If you watch CNBC coverage over the last couple of days, what you see them doing is constantly acting as an apologist network for the titans of Wall Street, for the short sellers here. | ||
| And again, I'm not against short selling, but they don't need media apologists doing their bidding for them. | ||
| And then, of course, most importantly of all, I think, was seeing the brokerage firms actually prohibit the ability of individual investors to get in and buy the stocks they want to buy. | ||
| And look, I want to be clear here. | ||
| I think a lot of these stocks are at incredibly lofty valuations. | ||
| I would caution anybody who's playing in these that they better be doing it with money that is truly risk capital, not the milk money. | ||
| I leave that up to individual's discretion. | ||
| But regardless, what we should never have happening in America Yeah, I tell people this. | ||
| This is not venture capital you should be playing with. | ||
| This is adventure capital you should be playing with. | ||
| This is speculative. | ||
| I want to go back to the $71 billion of short interest and shorts out there. | ||
| How are we hurtling towards a crisis for the pension funds, Mr. Steve Cortez? | ||
| You know, I don't think so. | ||
| And by the way, in the case of GameStop, and this is one thing I would caution people about, too, in terms of individual investors, none of us know, of course, but it is likely that the large institutional shorts are no longer short that name. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| So I don't think that we're nearing a systemic crisis. | ||
| And this is a major caveat, a major qualifier here. | ||
| If, from here forward, there is real transparency, okay, and there's real fairness, if there's equity in the way that different parts of the market are treated, meaning small individual investors who only put a few hundred dollars to work at a time versus the massive Wall Street hedge funds. | ||
| If there's equity in the way they are treated, then I don't believe that there's a systemic problem here. | ||
| However, if we continue to see open collusion, and that's what's happening here, Steve. | ||
| I'm using that word advisedly. | ||
| There is collusion going on right now between these oligarchic powers. | ||
| This isn't a Russian hoax collusion. | ||
| This isn't that kind of nonsense. | ||
| This is real. | ||
| It's in our face. | ||
| It's right in front of us. | ||
| If the collusion persists and they continue to try to suppress, and I used this analogy yesterday in your show, it's like trying to keep a beach ball underwater. | ||
| You can do it for so long, but it is going to pop up. | ||
| And this populist revolt, we saw it in politics, now we're starting to see it in financial markets. | ||
| This populist revolt is real. | ||
| It is lasting. | ||
| It is a secular change. | ||
| And again, I believe this was a fulcrum week right now. | ||
| This was really, in my mind, it awakened a lot of people who are not particularly politically interested or politically involved. | ||
| But they saw, in a very clear way, they saw what the oligarchic powers of America are willing to do to protect their interests. | ||
| They also saw that they're willing to do so in a way that's incredibly obvious, that they're not even hiding it anymore. | ||
| There at least used to be a certain subtlety to it. | ||
| There was no subtlety to what happened this week, and I think that's alarming to a lot of Americans, as well it should be. | ||
| And I hope it's going to be energizing to them, to reclaiming this country. | ||
| Because we believe in capitalism. | ||
| Capitalism is what made this American Republic amazing. | ||
| What we see right now far too often is a crony corporatism. | ||
|
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And crony corporatism will be the ruin of this country. | |
| Hang on one second, I want to hold you over the break. | ||
| Steve Cortez is going to join us, take a short commercial break. | ||
| Raheem Kassam, Steve and Keith Bannon. | ||
| You're in the War Room. | ||
| We're going to discuss this deeper. | ||
| Capital markets directly relate to populism, directly relate to taking down the oligarchy in this country. | ||
|
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War Room. | |
| Pandemic with Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| The epidemic is a demon and we cannot let this demon hide. | ||
| War Room. | ||
| Pandemic. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Okay, we're back with the great Steve Cortez, and I want to put up, when we get a chance, we're going to bring Cortez in and do the establishment shot of him, but I want to bring up what was on the Bloomberg Terminal yesterday. | ||
| Bloomberg referred to this. | ||
| Remember, Bloomberg is the mother's milk of information for the world's global capital markets. | ||
| That terminal feeds information to traders 24-7. | ||
| Political information, financial information, pricing information. | ||
| It's the reason that Michael Bloomberg's worth, what, $60 billion. | ||
| Up there, you see it right there. | ||
| They referred to the Reddit rebels as stock insurrectionists. | ||
| Think of the terminology, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| They're going to be now deemed to be domestic terrorists. | ||
| Big article in, I think, Associated Press today, talking about the Christian nationalist part of the riot that took place. | ||
| The Christian nationalist part of the riot. | ||
| Therefore, that's all going to be domestic terrorists. | ||
| The stock guys are stock insurrectionists. | ||
| They're not retail investors. | ||
| They're not guys coming together. | ||
| Stock insurrectionists. | ||
| This is Bloomberg. | ||
| This is the key. | ||
| This is what the insiders think. | ||
| This goes to every terminal in the world. | ||
| In Singapore, in Tokyo, in Mumbai, in Frankfurt, in the City of London, Wall Street, San Francisco, Chicago, in the pits. | ||
| This is what it is. | ||
| Stock insurrectionist. | ||
| Stock insurrectionist. | ||
| Mr. Steve Cortez, you're a guy that uses your words, and the reason you're the best spokesman for the Trump movement and the MAGA movement, bar none, and if we had more Steve Cortez during the campaign up there, you know, we wouldn't have had to done the tangle where they're stealing it in Georgia by 12,000 votes and in Arizona by 10,000 votes. | ||
| You said open Collusion, sir. | ||
| I want to go back and define it. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| You're saying it's open collusion. | ||
| Collusion between what? | ||
| Media, social media oligarchs, the Wall Street equity lords, the permanent political class, the feckless Biden administration. | ||
| When you say open collusion, sir, against what Bloomberg is calling stock insurrectionist, what do you mean? | ||
| Right. | ||
| No, there is open. | ||
| By the way, let's be and I try to be extremely precise in choosing my words. | ||
| The Bloomberg organization is as well. | ||
| Why are they picking the word insurrection? | ||
| Because they're trying as that SEC commissioner that you played, what they're trying to do is connect it back I don't even think it's much of a stretch. | ||
| Of course, one has nothing to do with the other, but they're doing that in a skillful, albeit evil, way. | ||
| It's sort of like the phrase election denialism, right? | ||
| Again, which the corporate media is really running with because that's an extremely provocative phrase if we're skeptical of the election, we're engaging denialism. | ||
| But in this case, collusion is going on, Steve, right before us. | ||
| I don't even think it's much of a stretch. | ||
| I think anybody who's willing to take an honest look at this situation. | ||
| Seize what's going on here. | ||
| You have the suppression of information, shutting down chat rooms. | ||
| You have corporate media doing its best as a propaganda arm of Wall Street firms, doing its best to impugn the motives of those who simply, as individual citizens and as small investors, want to try to play the game the same way the Wall Street titans play. | ||
| And then you have, again, most effective of all, unfortunately, you have big business Putting massive pressure upon the brokerage firms to actually literally prohibit trading. | ||
| You know, I put a joke out on social media today from Caddyshack in the movie when they said the caddies can swim. | ||
| They said it's open swim for caddies from 1 to 115. | ||
| That's apparently what the Wall Street titans want to say regarding trading. | ||
| Peasants can trade today from 1 to 115 during the stock market. | ||
| But of course, it's not remotely a funny situation because the reality here is people like Mike Bloomberg, it's really interesting that Mike Bloomberg, somebody who has become one of the richest men in the world, Off of this business of Wall Street and largely, by the way, off of economic submission to China. | ||
| He is one of the foremost proponents of America being economically subservient to Beijing. | ||
| A man who, by the way, spent $400 million in Florida alone in the 2020 election to try to beat us there. | ||
| Thankfully, we prevailed easily in Florida because we had a far better candidate than he did. | ||
| And we also have far better campaigning that didn't need hundreds of millions of dollars to reach the voters of Florida. | ||
| But Mike Bloomberg, of all people, it's really rich, almost, that he has the gall to lecture regular individual investors, people who can't afford a Bloomberg terminal. | ||
| Bloomberg terminals are expensive. | ||
| I think now they're about $2,000 a month with a long-term contract. | ||
| What we have right now out there, through the democratization of information, is we've got regular Americans all over the place, many of whom are at home because of the unnecessary COVID restrictions that are put on our society. | ||
| We have them doing a lot of hard work and research, and we have them in many cases coming up with mathematical modeling that is in some ways better than what is done by the professionals on Wall Street. | ||
| We have them then communicating openly. | ||
| That's why it's not collusion on the side of the individual investors. | ||
| There's full transparency. | ||
| They are openly trying to convince people, arguing, persuading about market situations and market opportunities and what they're very smartly doing. | ||
| Is searching out what firms out there are shorted 100%, 120%, 140% as was the case in GameStop? | ||
| And is it possible that collectively we have as much financial firepower as these massive Wall Street firms do? | ||
| And can we squeeze them? | ||
| Can we literally enact a short squeeze? | ||
| It certainly happened in a few stocks. | ||
| I believe, Steve, it's going to happen in more stocks from here forward because we have shown the power of people and regular individual investors doing their homework, doing their due diligence. | ||
| And again, I'm not saying, remotely saying, that buying GameStop right here makes sense. | ||
| As a matter of fact, my professional opinion is it's probably really, really lofty here. | ||
| But the bigger point, I think, for our society and the bigger point, I think, for politics moving forward is that this is the latest outgrowth, the latest offshoot of the populist revolution against the oligarchs who have made our lives tougher for their own benefit. | ||
| Again, Wall Street was too big to fail in 2008, and now it's telling individual investors they are too small to succeed. | ||
| We've had enough of it, and a lot of people who are not Trump people, who would not call themselves MAGA, would not wear the red hat, a lot of them have been awakened to this this week, and because of this reality now, this new controversy, I think there's going to be a lot more energy and vitality and broadness to our movement. | ||
| Cortez, how do people get your minutes? | ||
| They're absolutely amazing. | ||
| How do they get the chalk talks, the whiteboard talks? | ||
| How do they get access to you during the day? | ||
| Follow me on Twitter. | ||
| I'm at Cortez Steve, Cortez with an S. | ||
| Okay, and by the way, we're going to have Steve back hopefully over the weekend or early next week. | ||
| We're going to talk about the lion in winter down in Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| President Trump McCarthy there yesterday to kowtow to try to save Liz Cheney. | ||
| Steve Cortez, thank you very much. | ||
| Look forward to having you back next week. | ||
| Smartest guy out there about the MAGA economics, Steve Cortez. | ||
| Make sure you go and sign up right now for his Twitter. | ||
| Raheem. | ||
|
unidentified
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And make sure you go and sign up at warroom.org forward slash join. | |
| Okay, and by the way, go to Telegram, go to Bannon War Room. | ||
| Rumble, go to Bannon's War Room. | ||
| Make sure you download the app with Real America's Voice. | ||
| Download the app. | ||
| Okay, back with Mosophic and Raheem next. | ||
|
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We rejoice when there's no more Let's sit down for T.T.D. |
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