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Dec. 16, 2021 - Bannon's War Room
48:44
Episode 1,489 – Build Back Better and Federal Takeover of Elections CollapseEpisode 1,489 – Build Back Better and Federal Takeover of Elections Collapse
Participants
Main voices
p
peter navarro
05:37
r
raheem kassam
07:18
s
steve bannon
19:30
Appearances
r
russ vought
04:05
s
sam harris
03:18
Clips
a
anthony fauci
00:07
j
jerome powell
00:50
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
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.
anthony fauci
We have to prepare for the worst, always, because if you don't and the worst happens, War Room.
unidentified
Pandemic.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
jerome powell
At today's meeting, the committee also decided to double the pace of reductions in its asset purchases.
Beginning in mid-January, we will reduce the monthly pace of our net asset purchases by $20 billion for Treasury securities and $10 billion for agency mortgage-backed securities.
If the economy evolves broadly as expected, similar reductions in the pace of net asset purchases will likely be appropriate each month, implying that increases in our securities holdings would cease by mid-March, a few months sooner than we anticipated in early November.
We are phasing out our purchases more rapidly because with elevated inflation pressures and a rapidly strengthening labor market, the economy no longer needs increasing amounts of policy support.
In addition, a quicker conclusion of our asset purchases will better position policy to address the full range of plausible economic outcomes.
unidentified
I want to start with the economic picture.
Inflation, a top concern for people in this country.
Do you think the government, this White House, is doing everything possible?
Well, no.
I mean, we've got to pass Build Back Better.
I mean, we're in December and you're going to have a lot of families who are going to lose the tax cut for families in January.
We got to get that done.
We have an opportunity to help cushion the blow for inflation.
And people are suffering out there at the gas pump, at the grocery store, trying to buy holiday gifts and Christmas gifts.
And so not extending that tax cut's a huge blow.
Not capping childcare expenses at 7%, that's a huge blow.
Not helping seniors pay for their glasses or their hearing aids, that's more money out of their pockets that they're gonna have to pay for those things with.
And I think we've got to get this thing done, and the White House needs to continue to push.
There's no excuse.
This is President Biden's signature initiative.
It needs to get done and the White House needs to push and the Senate needs to get online here.
steve bannon
That is Tim Ryan, who is not going to be a Senator in Ohio because he sees it all collapsing around him.
It's Thursday, 16 December, the year of our Lord 2021.
You're in the War Room.
OK, we don't want to spike the football, but we've got massive victories all around us.
Build back better, dead.
push till March which means it's dead.
Powell going to continue to take $100 billion of your money to try to fuel this regime every month but not going to go after inflation, not going to go after inflation hard because they understand to go after inflation hard they'd have to throw us into a recession now they so jammed this thing up.
And also the pivot which we're going to get in all this in the next two hours.
The pivot to the federalization of the elections.
The only way they can win is steal elections.
So the federalization of the elections.
Dead.
Dead.
Not happening.
Complete and total meltdown.
Total meltdown.
Pointing fingers at each other.
Circular firing squad.
It's all to come.
The only way they're not totally collapsed is Mitch McConnell And weak Republicans.
We're going to get Dave Bossie in here in the second hour to talk about throwing out of the Republican conference Cheney and Kinzinger.
So it's serious business now.
We've got to take care of what's on our side of the football because the war room posse, this audience, has jammed this illegitimate regime up and they're in full meltdown across the board I want to bring in.
So we've got Navarro, we've got Russ Vought, I've got Raheem, Boris, Bossie.
Financial analysis, political analysis, polls, all of it.
You're going to become the smartest person in your neighborhood or at your workplace on all of this.
Dr. Navarro, let's start with you.
Let's start at the Fed.
We're going to start at the Fed, then we're going to go through the rest of the government, what they're doing to try to keep this regime on a life support.
Walk us through your analysis, sir.
peter navarro
So the teaching point here, Steve, is that the Federal Reserve does not have the tools to control what's called cost push inflation.
There's two kinds of inflation.
Demand pull is all the Keynesian spending that Congress is doing and then the Fed has been accommodating that.
That's too much money chasing too few goods, okay?
Demand pull inflation.
The bigger problem we have now, and it's both a politician-made inflation and a made-in-China inflation, is what's called cost-push inflation, primarily energy shocks and food price shocks.
This is the same thing that bedeviled us in the 1970s and caused Stagflation, which you and I have been talking about for close to a year now.
Now, here's the problem.
Energy prices are going up.
That's a politician-made disaster.
That's a Joe Biden-made disaster.
If you just simply look at what he's done, you know, the first thing he does is he cancels the Keystone pipeline.
The next thing he does is he cancels leasing on Federal government lands.
That sends a signal to the entire oil patch that it's no longer profitable to go out and invest in fossil fuels.
So that goes down.
And so we get in a situation, Steve, where consumption in America is actually significantly down relative to pre-pandemic levels, yet prices are going up.
And the Fed can do nothing about that.
That's a politician-made disaster in the White House.
Now, think about this.
We go to food price shocks, which are, I mean, just beef, eggs, pork, whatever it is, vegetable, whatever, going up.
Part of the big problem is the energy price shock.
Why?
Because fertilizer is made from natural gas.
We are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas in Pennsylvania and Ohio with the frackers.
And that's going through the, you know, the joke, and I've told it, Once, I'll tell it again because it's funny.
People at tailgate parties are eating caviar because it's cheaper than cooking hot dogs with propane.
That's where we are.
The point, Steve, is that the Fed, whatever it does, cannot do anything about energy and food price shocks, which is the cost-push stagflationary pressures.
Because when you have cost-push inflation, Steve, here's the important point.
It raises the price of doing business and therefore slows things down.
So everything's set up.
Powell basically is trying to deal with the demand pull issue.
Last thing here, Steve, and I'll turn it back to you.
Tim Ryan, right?
Okay, here's the Tim Ryan equation.
First of all, the government creates all the inflation with its demand pull Spending, Keynesian spending, and cost-push stupid things on the attack on the energy and food price sector.
And then what are we supposed to do?
We're supposed to spend more money to put money back in the pockets of the Americans we stole money from.
That won't cut it.
And remember, I got this thing behind me.
This was the 70s.
High food prices eat up our wages.
Inflation is the cruelest tax.
And last thing, wages, real wages, are now going down under the Biden regime.
Admiral.
steve bannon
Okay, a couple things.
Number one, in the 70s, I just want to make sure people understand, if we calculate it when they used to call the misery index on a card, if you calculate it the same way today, I think it'd be a 13%.
I think it's an energy that's not calculated.
peter navarro
Yeah, but let it be higher, Steve, because remember, let me say this, this is really important, do not drink the Kool-Aid of a 4.2% unemployment rate.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
There's plenty of people who have dropped out of the workforce who are not counting when you put them back in.
unidentified
We're close to 9%.
peter navarro
Don't fall into the CNBC thing.
No, no, no.
This is not a boom.
Life isn't great and inflation is going up because it's sunny.
No, no, no.
steve bannon
No, if you take the 9% real unemployment, you add it to the 13% real inflation, you're at 21%.
That's the Biden Misery Index.
We'll talk more about that later.
You're hearing it first here on War Room.
This is why the numbers, it's inextricably linked to his numbers.
People out there get it.
They're not dumb.
This is why his numbers, his polling numbers are so bad.
Boris will be on later about that, but hang on.
The Fed is still expansionist monetary policy.
It's still quantitative easing.
They're just tapering the quantitative easing.
They're not going for their inflation.
Because he doesn't want to kick the thing into recession.
Then he knows he's done.
In addition, in addition, we've got, uh, you've got this, uh, with the child care tax, the tax credit, which basically they're sending them a check for three, what is it, $300 per kid per month.
That's what they're arguing about right now.
They need that to extend.
And here, let me give you a dirty little secret that the working class people, they haven't dropped You're going to get taxed on that in April.
The Democrats are totally jammed up.
Build back better, it's done.
Finished.
Into this next year, which means not going to get it done.
They're scrambling right now for the tax credit to keep the cash going, but they're going to have to get a waiver.
Folks are going to owe taxes on that money.
Taxes, I believe in April they're going to have a tax bill.
They're in panic mode right now.
That's where you see the Tim Ryans of the world pushing us.
Dr. Navarro, the reason I want to have you on here, given the misery index, it's really in the high teens to 20s of Biden.
Given the Fed is talking about, hey, they could waive that off.
Oh, we're going to get a couple of rate increases next year.
You're the first guy to call stagflation.
You're the first guy to say, hey, I'm calling, I'm calling a short on this market.
As we sit here on the 16th of December, heading towards the end of the year, walk us through, you got about three or four minutes, walk us through where you think this, how we progress with Biden understanding he's jammed up and only Mitch McConnell's two and a half trillion dollars is keeping him on life support.
Dr. Navarro.
peter navarro
Well, history is always important here, Steve.
I go back to the 70s when Burns, Nixon, and then Gerald Ford, and then the Congress didn't understand cost-push inflation.
Remember, cost-push inflation is the stagflation, right?
You raise people's costs with energy and food price shocks, and you slow your growth.
That's what we're facing, but they didn't get it then.
Powell and Biden's not going to get it now.
So what I'm going to predict is you're going to see this this back and forth between trying to cure inflation, trying to cure recession.
Powell will likely back off from raising interest rates because the economy is starting even now as we speak.
to go into down mode and it's going to be just an ugly scenario right up to November 22.
The big issue, Steve, is whether the Republicans can regain the House with a Trumpian majority, mind you, before the Democrats do too much damage to the economy.
And I think a lot of that damage has been done.
steve bannon
Let me pitch Dr. Navarro's economic policy, the economic nationalism.
By the way, the other thing that's hurting the cost push, ladies and gentlemen, is the Green New Deal infrastructure bill.
Remember, the reason energy prices are so high, they've been cutting stuff down, trying to get to a decarbonized economy, with all these half-baked ideas.
I don't know if I'd have a big enough problem with it if it was fully baked.
It's not.
It's just slapdash all around.
That's one of the reasons you go from full-spectrum energy dominance under Donald Trump to now $5 gasoline in California.
Right?
This is how it happens.
The infrastructure bill that the Republican traders passed is also a big part of this cost push.
That's another debacle brought on to you by the Republican establishment.
peter navarro
Hey, Steve, do me a favor.
On the war room, just say fake infrastructure bill.
Just remember, it's only 20% infrastructure.
Okay?
It demeans the whole concept of infrastructure when you call that a friggin' fake infrastructure bill.
steve bannon
Let me tell working class Democrats out there, working class Democrats and the working poor, This tip they're giving you, the $300, and now they're making the biggest deal in the world, we're taking kids out of poverty.
If we close the borders to illegal immigration that they're bringing in here to compete against your wages, if we force Wall Street to force the jobs to come back from China, manufacturing jobs, you wouldn't need to take a $300 a kid tip.
You would have a high-paying manufacturing job that paid wages that an entire family of four can live off of.
This is the central beating heart of it.
Economic nationalism works for the poor.
If we put in Trump's policies of stop the illegal immigration because it's crushing the working class and the poor, because you're flooding the zone with cheap labor, and if you force the Chinese Communist Party and their paymasters on Wall Street to bring those high value-added manufacturing jobs back to take care of the structural problems of the supply chain, This would be nirvana, and you wouldn't be living off tips from AOC and the Progressive Caucus.
That's what they've got you doing.
Dr. Navarro, thank you very much.
How do people get to the book, In Trump Time, and your podcast all about it?
You've got 30 seconds, brother.
peter navarro
PeterNavarro.com for the In Trump Time.
But go to Amazon today, get it as a gift for your Never Trump friends.
Real Peter Navarro.
Getter is the Twitter killer.
It is killing Twitter.
And Twitter is just shadow banning everybody.
So make that move, Admiral.
Looking forward to hearing the rest of the crew today.
steve bannon
By the way, I appreciate you being a mentor.
I can do your rap now better than you can in 30 seconds.
Come on, dude.
I got that economic national thing down.
You got that, brother.
My mentor from across the river.
peter navarro
Hey, I'm just Sundance here.
I know my role, baby.
I know my role.
unidentified
I'm the advisor.
peter navarro
You're the principal.
steve bannon
Thank you, sir.
Short break.
unidentified
Russ vote back next.
It means standing up for someone.
I'm standing up for someone.
Oh, my thoughts are tearing us apart.
Let's hope it drives to Qingdao and light?" The whole crowd cheers!
The whole crowd cheers!
Might have created grounding the people could end up a part, more fools in winter, the winter's near.
The whole crowd cheers!
The whole crowd cheers!
And on the spot I found you and on the bloody talk, as clerk is feeding.
Well, you've got to do multiple things.
Because while the average American is not thinking about the preservation of our democracy, that is what voting rights are all about.
And that is now the President's top priority.
Republicans, they would love for people to just stay focused on inflation so they don't pay attention to Republicans putting more and more restrictive voting laws in place across the country.
How do you convince people?
Stephanie Ruhle, the propaganda department over at MSNBC is in high dungeon now.
when they're just talking about kitchen table issues.
If we don't have a functioning democracy, nothing else even matters.
steve bannon
Stephanie Rule, the propaganda department over at MSNBC is in high dungeon now.
They're revved up because they pivoted last night, two nights ago, to voting rights.
Because they understand the only way they can win in the future, because of your sense of agency, that now that you're fully engaged, this audience is fully engaged, and the polling backs that up, the only way they can do it is they've got to continue to steal elections.
They've got to federalize it so they can do the mail-in ballots.
Remember, they live off non-certified Uh, non-chain-of-custody, uh, illegal ballots, uh, from, uh, folks that, uh, the only ballots that count are American citizens, the chain-of-custody, legitimate, legal, all that.
Those votes counted, we win.
Any other votes counted, they win.
Look at New York City.
800,000 non-citizens, they want to vote, because the only reason they can win, continue to win.
I don't care if they like when I say that or not.
Suck on it, okay?
And now your voting rights thing is completely cratered.
I want to get Russ's vote now.
Last OMB director under President Trump.
Russ, just walk us through.
They've had to collapse the bill back better.
We've had the collapse of any of their radical economic plans.
You saw the Fed yesterday.
They're not even going after inflation.
So they're trying to pivot.
Don't worry.
The problem is we don't want to worry about inflation.
We've got to get away from the kitchen table issues.
That's her words, not mine.
We've got to get away from the kitchen table issues and they've got to focus on the insurrection.
That's what they need to focus on.
Right?
They need to focus on that.
And passing a new takeover of state elections, which is against the Constitution by the federal government.
Russ, economically, programmatically, it's over for them.
It's collapsing all around them.
Is that correct, sir?
russ vought
It is.
I don't think they have a plan about what to do, and we saw that with her comments on MSNBC, but we also saw that when Bernie Sanders was asked about where the state of negotiations were a few days ago with Senator Manchin.
To say that they don't want to focus on kitchen table issues is a revelation that they are understanding the political peril that they are in, and to some extent Manchin is proving an immovable object.
This is only going to get worse.
Economic news is not going to get better.
Inflation is going to continue into the next year.
The Fed does not have an aggressive plan.
They're not even going to stop quantitative easing until March.
And no one's even talked about the fact that they have about $8 trillion of assets on their books.
steve bannon
Okay, hang on, stop.
I've got to slow down.
I want to make sure the audience understands this.
I understand sometimes economics gets confusing.
You've got to understand this, because this is what's driving everything.
This is signal, not noise.
Yesterday, Pal, not only aggressively not going after inflation, The whole expansion is monetary.
They're going to keep printing money on your back, at least through March.
He says that we're going to taper, but they're putting in, I think it's still $100 billion, is it $100 billion a month of money?
Fusing the system to keep the entire illegitimate regime's economy going.
Is that correct, Russ Vought?
russ vought
Yeah, they're tapering down from $120 billion to $90 billion.
Next month it'll be $60 billion.
But think about that.
$60 billion of quantitative easing in the midst of 7% inflation.
Stop it now!
Have the conversation about raising interest rates earlier to be able to think through this.
Have a conversation about what you're going to do with the trillions of dollars that are already on your balance sheet at the Fed.
They don't want to sell those because that would imply their ability to have treasury auctions to finance new government debt and keep this thing going.
So, every step of the way, I think what Powell is doing, he's never been someone who's concerned about inflation, and he's now going through a confirmation hearing.
And so he doesn't want to do any of the tough stuff on his watch.
steve bannon
I want to go to this child thing you're going to hear in the next couple days.
You heard it with Carvel starting last night or the night before about they've pulled so many kids out of childhood poverty.
It's this child tax credit, which is basically a three.
I think it's 300 bucks a kid per month per child per month.
They've got to keep this going.
They're going to say that the Republicans are the biggest demons in the world for letting this go.
Walk us through this.
And this is the last lifeline they've got.
Walk us through what this is mechanically and how can it be stopped?
russ vought
Yeah, so remember it's important to remember that the Child Tax Credit has existed for quite some time.
They have expanded it in a series of these bills over the last several months and years, the last two years really, of COVID relief funds.
And so one of those expansions is coming to an end at the end of this year, and they want to be able to continue that.
And they're treating this as some kind of end of the world cliff.
To some extent it is for their view of government.
Over the time, these expansions have basically turned the child tax credit into something that was designed to get people off of welfare and actually turned it into something that's just another welfare payment.
And so to the extent that that's expiring, they're treating this as a hard deadline.
It's not a hard deadline.
And so we've got, this would be a perfect opportunity, once again, to block passage in the Senate with a filibuster and to continue to be able to shut their agenda down.
And it's incumbent on Senate Republicans to do that.
steve bannon
The reason this is important, it goes back to how did we get this runaway inflation in the first place?
It was the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan they did back in the in the spring, right, to kind of take care of aggregate demand because of the COVID, the CCP virus crisis.
Write it down right now, ladies and gentlemen.
They're going to come back in the spring, and they're going to be talking about the Omicron stimulus they're going to need.
That's what's going to keep the regime exist on your money, right?
The ability to print dollars that you're obligated for, that they just feed the system.
This is really though, Russ, the guaranteed basic income, isn't it?
That's what they've turned it into.
They've turned this into the basic guaranteed income, and that's why they want to keep going?
russ vought
Yeah, no, I think that's a great way of framing it.
It's something they've had long designs and doing to be able to have this, you know, solid paycheck to the, instead of getting people off of work or getting back onto work in a moment where, you know, folks are, we're trying to get them back into the workforce right now.
steve bannon
We want robust families.
We want happy families.
We want families with wage earners making real wages with real jobs.
High value added manufacturing jobs.
Okay?
How many times do I have to say it?
This is why the Hispanics, and Boris is going to be in the second hour, this is why the Hispanic community is coming to our side.
This is why they back populism.
They understand the scam.
They don't want to live off a tip.
They don't want to live off of near poverty and a tip.
They want a high-paying job and they don't want everybody in the world in the United States competing for that job.
Russ Vought is the only way that we've allowed this thing to go on is passing this bizarre fake infrastructure bill and now McConnell lifting the debt ceiling in this cute gimmick that's now got the federalization of the vote all over us, but the cute gimmick to waive the filibuster to give them two and a half trillion dollars to spend between now and election day, sir?
russ vought
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, we only have limited leverage points.
You can't be a serious opposing party and give the other side all of the leverage points that matter to them to be able to keep this government going in a way that is not conducive to the American people's economic interest.
And so they just gave them two and a half trillion dollars to get them through the next election, and they give them A lifeline when it comes to the continuing resolution.
Now, we will have an opportunity in February, if sense comes into the Senate Republicans, to be able to tackle that and have a leverage point again.
But you just can't keep ceding these things to the other side and be taken seriously by your enemies, your adversaries, or the American people who put you in office.
steve bannon
Perfectly said.
And that's why, the only way you're going to get sensitive to the Senate Republicans is beat them.
With a stick.
And that's what we're going to do.
Remember, the continued resolution to get you the nomenclature, that's just the annual budget.
Still not, still not approved yet.
The appropriations not approved.
You know why?
They don't want to come to the American people and say, hey, we have a structural issue here.
That structural issue we have one trillion to one and a half trillion dollar deficits in perpetuity.
In perpetuity!
Until we change the economic model of this country to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States of America.
In perpetuity!
And nobody will have the decency or the respect for the American people to stand up there and say, hey, we've got a problem, and here's what the problem is.
Because the American people are tough enough to go, okay, let's think this through for a second.
Here's what we should do.
And that's what it's going to come to, and this show's going to do it.
Mitch McConnell's not going to let them kick down the road anymore.
He's going to be gone.
Okay?
This demon has caused this.
He put this illegitimate regime on life support.
Russ, vote.
Tell people how you're educating folks.
You got your getter account, you got your site, because people need to know the nomenclature here.
You're going to have to get your hands down in this to understand it, because this is what's driving, really, the politics of America.
This is pure signal.
No noise.
Russ, vote.
russ vought
At RussVote, both Twitter and Getter, AmericaRenewing.com, and when people learn from this show the lingo that the politicians use, continuing resolution, debt limit, the procedure, when politics, procedure, and policy, when you know all those three things, and you have a conversation with a member of Congress, you can change their opinion because they realize that you know more than they do and that the game is up.
We try to provide that kind of information through our center.
steve bannon
Amen.
And you're doing an amazing job.
One more time, how do people get you on Getter and Twitter?
Because there's a learning experience just to follow you.
How do they get to you?
russ vought
Sure.
At Russ, vote on both of them.
steve bannon
Remember, in the second Trump term, Russ Vought's going to be a major player.
So listen, when he has something to say, it's best that you pay attention.
And listen, Russ, thank you so much for doing this, and thank you for all the education that you're giving the American people.
Really appreciate it.
russ vought
Thanks, Steve.
steve bannon
When working class people are armed with information... Remember, it's the working class people in England that had the back of Winston Churchill.
The Nazis have been all over the place.
The working class, it was Labour Party up in Midlands, England.
Because they understood what the threat is.
When the working class in the world understands what the problem is, and the scales are ripped from their eyes, positive things happen.
And that's what's going to happen.
And you see it's happening in this country right now.
We're bringing this regime to its knees.
Next, Rahim Kassam in the War Room.
unidentified
This is a test.
Next, Rahim Kassam in the War Room.
be sure to spoil your wishes of me, will be thy God.
If thou wilt spoil thy foes with joy, then do this not from me, sin and hate.
I told the sword and the whip, and under the deep talk, as Turkish fienden, written in their book, Deo gratias, Deo gratias.
Deo gratias, Deo gratias.
A lot has happened, but there's still one group that is not eligible.
Children six months to four years.
There are trials underway and one local doctor says those trials are promising.
In early 2022, expect news that almost the entire population is eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine.
Right now at Texas Children's Hospital, they're studying data from trials of all ages down to six months.
While they admit teens have some rare side effects like myocarditis, the 5 to 11 year old age group had fewer side effects.
Hardly any fever in most cases.
And the babies, six months to four years?
They are tolerating it better.
Dr. Flor Munoz leads the research on this age group for Texas children's and she says young babies and toddlers will get a tenth of the dose adults get.
They make the same amount of antibodies, so protection that adults get with that very tiny dose.
Sometimes, you know, parents try to guess whether they had vaccine or placebo in the trial and it's impossible.
I can tell you that because they do very well and that is on purpose.
It's by design that we want a vaccine, again, that is safe and effective for children of all ages.
Right now, only 63% of the Houston and Harris County eligible population is fully vaccinated, while COVID is still mostly targeting the unvaccinated.
And cases are on the rise, according to the Department of State Health Services.
Dr. Linda Yancey encourages everyone to opt for vaccine protection before gathering and traveling through the holidays.
We anticipate this will continue to rise after the Christmas and New Year's holidays, and mirror the surge, the post-holiday surge that we had last year.
sam harris
There's an opinion that has solidified on the right politically, and it appears at other points on the political spectrum, but it's mostly on the right, I would say, and it's also taken hold out in the alternative media wilderness among podcasters and substack newsletter writers.
That much of what has been communicated about COVID by the government and by the mainstream media has amounted to really a hoax, right?
And much of what we've done and demanded that others do in response to COVID has been, therefore, unnecessary and even unethical.
And so everything from lockdowns, to school closures, to mask mandates, to the vaccination campaign itself, to downplaying the efficacy of ivermectin, right?
All of this has been done for sinister political motives and based on corporate greed, right?
So what we have now is something, I mean, the tens of millions of people, at least, believe that our entire response to COVID, I mean, basically everything we've done for the last 18 months or so, has had the ulterior purpose of increasing social control.
Right, I mean, basically, we've got people, this is the explicit claim, one here is from all these quarters now, that the whole purpose of this has been to soften us up for some kind of Orwellian acquiescence to state power.
And then with respect to the vaccines in particular, it's also being driven by just the sheer profiteering motive of pharmaceutical companies.
unidentified
Now, there are many specific Which is odd because, of course, the vaccines are free to the citizenry.
sam harris
But anyway, go on.
Right, right.
So we should just unpick all of this.
But I mean, there are specific policies that one could debate, obviously.
I mean, I guess I'm at the moment, I think I'm currently uncertain about why kids in schools where all the kids have been vaccinated are still wearing masks.
I think you could wonder about the wisdom or necessity of that, and I'd like to talk about that kind of stuff.
But it seems to me that this basic idea, which has, again, it's infected, these are not just uneducated rubes who believe this.
I'm not talking about the QAnon cult, although obviously this includes the QAnon cult.
I'm talking about many people who are quite smart, many, several friends and colleagues who have prominent podcasts, right, have fallen into this paranoid picture of what's going on and that, you know, they're extreme endpoints of this paranoia.
There's the idea that Bill Gates is putting tracking devices into us with the vaccines, right?
I mean, so there's the crazy end of crazy.
But it seems to me that this basic picture, even without the craziest flourishes on it, is more or less insane.
I mean, the idea that we are dealing with something akin to the Chinese Communist Party here, and that all COVID-related policies have been implemented merely to abridge our freedom politically, That does strike me as patently insane.
steve bannon
OK, welcome back to the War Room.
And we would appreciate that with Sam Harris, one of the founders of what's called the New Atheism.
He was considered a member of I think it was called the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism, which was Richard Dawkins.
And Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, who's kind of a minor player, but really Hitchens and Dawkins being the two majors, and Sam Harris.
He's the author of many best-selling books, including A Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, How Science Can Determine Human Values, The End of Faith, Waking Up, A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion.
So he's a very prominent thinker on the left.
And he lays out the case.
It's kind of what I call the bid and the ask, right?
The bid and the ask.
So about what he's putting out is what what they think he thinks it's insanity.
And of course, what we walk through here every day, we think is science, not scientism.
Want to have Raheem Kassam join us to walk through this.
And I want to announce, we're actually going to do a special about this topic, this very topic, and kind of deconstruct what Harris's, what his argument is.
And we're going to have Bobby Kennedy Jr.
is going to join us on Saturday.
Naomi Wolf, Raheem Kassam is going to be there.
I think Dr. Malone hopefully is going to be there.
We're going to get prominent people on The other side of the argument to make the case what we want to do is we think we've got the compelling evidence science data and facts on our side and of course Sam Harris and you heard at the beginning broadcast from Houston Texas where they're now testing six-month-old babies right as we told you back when Fauci first implied this back in February of this year when we told you that this day was coming they're gonna get to the babies right out of the womb.
So, Rahim, I know you were always, and I think Harris was a guy that knew Hitchens quite well, I think the way it worked out.
I know you actually think Hitchens is a major thinker.
Hitchens was obviously a strong voice on the right, but a hardcore atheist.
Walk us through your thoughts, preliminary thoughts, as we're going to get more into it this weekend, on Sam Harris and what Sam Harris is, what he lays out as the insanity of the right on this.
raheem kassam
Yeah, look, I mean, I heard that clip.
I listened to it several times, Steve, and I wasn't particularly impressed by the exposition.
I'll tell you why.
Sam Harris, Sam Harris does this podcast and he's done podcasts with people like Ricky Gervais, some very interesting ones, some very detailed ones.
But this one, this one just wasn't.
What this one appeared to be was an attempt By Harris to kind of further ingratiate himself amongst this consensus class, right?
steve bannon
And what he talks about there, all of the- What is the- Hang on, explain, explain, and this is very important, the nomenclature of our audience.
What is the consensus class?
And why is it important?
raheem kassam
Well, I think if you don't mind, I've got a picture of Christopher Hitchens right behind me here on my bookshelf.
And I think if you don't mind, I think Denver has a clip of Christopher Hitchens where he explains the consensus class Far better than I can.
I think we can play that.
steve bannon
Does Denver, do we have, we can play it now?
If not, if we have the Hitchens clip, let's play it.
Yeah, here we go.
unidentified
Like, I don't know about you, every day I look at the New York Times and see, are they still saying all the news that's fit to print on the front page?
Are they still doing that?
So I, okay, I'm still pissed off with them.
Every day I also think, maybe there'll be some encouraging signs of polarization all the same.
Because in the New York Times every day you find the word consensus is always used as a plus word.
Unity is always used as a plus word.
Anything divisive, very bad word.
Bipartisan, very good.
Partisan, not so good.
Cretinism.
Bulls**t. Nonsense.
The building of a false consensus and the burying of history and the burying of dialectic.
raheem kassam
Impressive.
And that's what Sam Harris is doing?
steve bannon
Yeah.
raheem kassam
Pretty good, right?
I mean, you can't say that Sam Harris Is a is a disciple of that Christopher Hitchens, maybe on some other things, but not on the idea that actually consensus, especially when consensus seeks to centralize control.
And I doubt that Harris, despite what he claims about conspiracy theories and whatever, would reject the entire notion that control has been centralized over the past two years, whether it's into the hands of government bureaucrats, highest paid bureaucrats, Anthony Fauci and the like, Or whether it's medical consensus in the hands of a very small knit community of expensive lobbyist buying big pharmaceuticals companies.
So my question to Harris is, and you didn't hear any data there, you didn't hear any evidence, what you heard was sneering and snobbery and this idea that everybody needs to get behind these consensus views.
But my question to him would be, if you don't think, Sam Harris, that the purpose, he talked about the ulterior purpose of increasing social control.
If you don't think it's the it's been the primary purpose behind the, you know, the political machinations during the pandemic, which would he at least agree that it has been a corollary?
Would he at least agree that it has been an eventuality of that?
And if he does, if he doesn't agree to that, I'm afraid he's living in a different world.
I mean, I think he's living in a different world anyway, in a very, very privileged world is what I mean.
But if he does believe that that has somehow come to pass, then the question is, how long does he think that they as they say, the citizen citizenry should have to abide that?
steve bannon
His podcast does go into more depth.
That's one of the reasons we're going to take it.
We're going to deconstruct it.
We're going to get Bobby Kennedy Jr., Naomi Wolf, Raheem Kassam, Malone, some of the top proponents of the opposing view on here on Saturday to go through in quite a bit of detail because it's very important because it's the management of these ideas have consequences.
Ideas have consequences, and they have consequences in the life of the nation, your community, and yourself personally.
That's when we started with the Houston clip of where Fauci and these guys now are actually testing this on six-month-old babies, okay?
But I want to pivot now, Rahim, to the practical, political And how that's going to roll here to the United States, because right now you see Democratic governors are pushing back on these mandates.
They're in complete free fall.
We're going to have some polling later that they're losing their consensus, even as the Sam Harris's in the world in the New York Times try to build are the consensus class makers.
In England, what has happened?
You know, our mother country, the basic liberties on the 14th were taken away with the passports.
What's the latest update on the Tory government and how did that election turn out in Wales?
raheem kassam
Well, you have a special election actually taking place right now.
There was a Conservative Member of Parliament who resigned his seat as a result of a sleaze scandal or had second jobs and was doing some lobbying for some firms and it was seen to be unseemly doing that while being a sitting Member of Parliament and resigned the seat and the special election is taking place right now.
People are voting right now.
Two years ago, when Boris Johnson got that whopping majority, that 80-plus seat majority in Parliament, largest majority that he is, that a Prime Minister in the United Kingdom has had since Margaret Thatcher, that seat, I think, had a majority, a Conservative Party majority of about 23,000.
Unassailable, really.
Massive.
Right now, what we're seeing and what we're hearing on the ground, especially from Conservative Party sources, Is that they expect that they might lose that seat.
That 23,000 majority may be overturned.
That would lead to a lot of calls for Boris Johnson to resign.
unidentified
Wow.
steve bannon
And hopefully Nadja Farage to step into the fray here with Rahim Ghassan.
Okay, short commercial break.
We're going to come back.
I'm going to drill down on the Chinese Communist Party, Russia.
We've got a storm cloud on the horizon.
We're winning here, but we've got to stand firm against this geopolitical situation on next in the world.
unidentified
We're winning here, but we've got to stand firm against this geopolitical situation on next in the world.
We're winning here, but we've got to stand firm against this geopolitical situation on next in the world.
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steve bannon
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unidentified
Okay.
steve bannon
Chris, is it Hitchens?
Did you say it's the 10th anniversary of his death, sir?
raheem kassam
Yeah, Christopher Hitchens died ten years ago last night, and I found out overnight and wrote an article the next day, the next morning, called Thank You, Mr. Hitchens, and I've republished it this morning on The National Pulse.
It's the lead story this morning on The National Pulse, called Thank You, Mr. Hitchens, Ten Years On.
And I know that Hitch as an avowed atheist is not necessarily going to be a fan in that regard, not going to find fans necessarily in this audience in that regard, but he was much more than that.
He was one of, I think, the most impressive thinkers of my youth, watching Hitchens in person, as I did at the Methodist Hall in London, debating against Ann Whitcombe, who was an MP at the time.
alongside Stephen Fry. He was somebody that taught us to think, you know, and to think critically and not to think like the way that Sam Harris appears to be thinking in that podcast, which is linear consensus view. And Hitch really was one of the last kind of thinkers of the left in that sense, and he found himself, of course, not on the left in his latter life as a result of it. But he took aim at people when Hitch had you in his sights. I mean, it was almost as bad as if Natalie Winters
has you in her sights.
You know he was he was ruthless the way he He went through people, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, as examples, his works on them, Kissinger, so on and so forth, and I commend to everybody everything you can find from Hitchens.
Whether you agree with where he's coming from or not, the thing that you can always say about Hitchens is he understood the topic back to front, he understood the weaknesses in his own arguments back to front, and he was honest, earnest, and forthcoming about all of those things.
He was so eloquent, intimidatingly so, And I'm just, I'm delighted that we get to honour him again today.
And my favourite book, if anybody wants from the Hitchens Library, is actually a very short book.
It's called Letters to a Young Contrarian.
And it's exactly about this.
It's about contrary thinking.
It's about being the angry young man, about being the gadfly, challenging authority wherever you find it.
Maybe I'll send a copy to Sam Harris.
steve bannon
Did, by the way, Sam Harris is also a neuroscientist and a philosopher.
He's one of the, you know, one of the four horsemen or the modern four horsemen of the new atheism, but he's also a neuroscientist.
So this guy has the intellectual background, just to make sure we got that.
Did Hitchens, the controversy of Hitchens on the right was his, not just atheism, Because, and unlike Natalie, who puts together evidence and data, not that he didn't, but she leads with her facts, he was one of the great debaters.
I mean, he would cut people up and bleed them out right on a stage.
There were very few people who could stand with Christopher Hitchens.
Did he not convert?
Wasn't there a big controversy about his death?
Did he not convert to Christianity?
Or there was a big controversy, he would not convert to Christianity, or he would not convert to non-atheism on his deathbed, sir?
raheem kassam
Right.
No, I mean, there was no chance of that.
I mean, Hitchens didn't regard himself as an atheist.
Hitch regarded himself as an antitheist.
He said, actually, the atheist position is that you don't believe in a God.
The antitheistic position is that you believe even if there were a God, it would be this intergalactic dictatorship and would therefore necessarily require rebellion.
So I don't think there was any chance of any deathbed conversions for Christopher Hitchens.
I'm sure he had a bottle of Johnny Black with him and a packet of cigarettes.
And in that regard, of course, his stick-to-itiveness was impressive because it came from rigorous intellectual pursuit.
He wasn't somebody that sat astride or beside a believer, a deist or a Christian, and sneered at them.
He would happily listen to them, appreciate them.
He did what you do, right?
He writes everything down in front of him and goes through the arguments and tries and seeks to understand.
And that's what we all could do with more of nowadays, rather than just taking these entrenched positions, appealing and arguing from authority, and then dismissing anything that the opposing side does.
I think we have our own problems with that on the right, but I think the left is probably the worst example of that myopia.
steve bannon
Correct me if I'm wrong, if my math is wrong, because I remember this happened because it was such a big impact on him.
But Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Breitbart, two towers, towering figures in this movement.
And I tell people, cannot be replaced.
Cannot be replaced.
These guys come along once a generation.
Hitchens and Breitbart died within 100 days of each other, correct?
Hitchens died right before Christmas of 2011, and Andrew died on March 1st of 2012, right after the CPAC.
Within 100 days, we lost two of them.
Now, I understand the conspiracy theory guys are going to go crazy with this, but...
Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Breitbart, two towering giants in this movement and two towering intellects, although they came about in two different ways, both died within 10 years ago, within 100 days of each other.
Is my math work out there, Ibrahim?
raheem kassam
Yeah, and it's especially haunting because, as you know, Christopher Hitchens was succumbed to cancer, esophageal cancer, because of all of his Smoking and drinking, I suppose.
And as he said, never taking any exercise.
And of course, Andrew had his health problems that he didn't tend to either.
So, you know, stress.
Stress of this job can do it.
steve bannon
Can you please stay over?
We're going to rearrange the next hour.
I've got to have you talk about the Chinese Communist Party and Putin next.
And we've got polling, we have Boris, we have politics of all this, the meltdown of the regime.
Dave Bossie here about Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
It's going to be a wild, hot and intense and urgent second hour, so stick around.
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