Jan. 5, 2023 - Bannon's War Room
47:51
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is what you're fighting for. | ||
| I mean, every day you're out there. | ||
| What they're doing is blowing people off. | ||
| If you continue to look the other way and shut up, then the oppressors, the authoritarians, get total control and total power. | ||
| Because this is just like in Arizona. | ||
| This is just like in Georgia. | ||
| It's another element that backs them into a corner and shows their lies and misrepresentations. | ||
| This is why this audience is going to have to get engaged. | ||
| As we've told you, this is the fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All this nonsense, all this spin, they can't handle the truth. | |
| War Room Battleground. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Okay, welcome. | ||
| It's Wednesday, 4 January in the year of our Lord 2023. | ||
| In this hour, we're going to try to track down, there's a lot going on, a lot of moving pieces. | ||
| Just to get you up to speed is that they had a couple of votes, I think three votes today, all basically the same. | ||
| Kevin McCarthy didn't make any real He didn't make any progress whatsoever in lessening the gap that he had. | ||
| In the 20s, he came under tremendous vitriol from everything from the Fox News people to donors, all of it just unrelenting, just basically dumping all over these guys all day, these men and women. | ||
| They hung tough. | ||
| And remember, McCarthy and these guys said very simply is that, hey, what we're doing is we're going to we're going to sit there. | ||
| We're going to vote. | ||
| We're going to vote nonstop. | ||
| We're going to keep you up there and we're going to vote. | ||
| And Kevin McCarthy actually said that this was kind of one of the words that was going around. | ||
| He's telling people, in fact, if we vote to adjourn, we have to leave the floor, go to conference. | ||
| I'm going to resign from Congress and leave because I'm staying until I'm only going to come off the floor when I'm speaker. | ||
| And what you've had is they've been totally caught by surprise back in the hills. | ||
| They had no earthly idea there was anywhere close to this level of really not just anger and disappointment, but really not personal, but it needed a change. | ||
| A change needs to happen. | ||
| And this is what's called command by negation. | ||
| In command by negation, you have a small group of people that are very focused that can change the dynamics. | ||
| We're going to get Bob Goode. | ||
| Just give me the heads up, producer team, when Congressman Goode is up, one of the original members of this. | ||
| And somebody said from day one, hey, the change has to be made is that it's got to be Kevin McCarthy's got to go. | ||
| So where we are went to another three votes today. | ||
| No change whatsoever except another. | ||
| Brian Donald's from Florida was the name they put up as the alternative today. | ||
| The congresswoman from from Indiana is kind of voted president. | ||
| She said she didn't like the process. | ||
| She wants to engage in negotiations. | ||
| Ken Buck. | ||
| As we let off the last hour, the first hour of the show, Ken Buck came up to CNN. | ||
| Jake Tapper, you know, late in the afternoon said, hey, and he's a big Kevin McCarthy guy. | ||
| He said, if Kevin McCarthy can, if Kevin McCarthy can sit there and show me a path to 218, we'll do that. | ||
| If there's no path, then there's got to be some changes made here. | ||
| And so with voice acclimation, because they couldn't get Congressman Good, can you hear me? | ||
| I can hear you, Steve. | ||
| Congressman Walker, just get us up to date. | ||
| five, the nine that signed the letter, the others that came up to 20. | ||
| They said, no, no, no, no. Let's play by your rules. | ||
| You want to keep voting? Let's keep voting. | ||
| We don't want to adjourn. We want to be in there. | ||
| So they went to a voice adjournment. | ||
| Do I have Congressman Good? Is Congressman Good up and ready? | ||
| OK, fine. We're trying to work out his. | ||
| OK, we are. Congressman Good, can you hear me? | ||
| I can hear you, Steve. | ||
| Congressman Walker, just get us up to date. | ||
| You've been you've been very adamant since you started this. | ||
| You've been kind of like the rockers. We'll say, hey, look, we can start to have a meaningful conversation about going forward and what we're going to do here when they understand that Kevin McCarthy is not going to be speaker of the House. | ||
| They were going to keep you guys on the floor constantly for three or four days and break you. | ||
| So what's the status right now? | ||
| We're supposed to come back at 8 on this adjournment. | ||
| ones running around want adjournments all the time. You guys are sitting there going, no, unless you guys, you told us the other day, you're gonna strip us of our committee assignments. Let's roll. Let's, let's, let's play ball. So what, what's the status right now? We're supposed to come back at eight on this adjournment. | ||
| Is that going to happen? | ||
| And what's happened in the interim, sir? | ||
| Well, you're right. | ||
| We were told, you know, a few days ago that we would stay on the floor. | ||
| Kevin McCarthy would stay on the floor. | ||
| We would never stop voting until he was elected speaker. | ||
| They're going to do whatever it takes. | ||
| And frankly, we're ready to do that. | ||
| We're ready to keep on voting. | ||
| We've held strong at right about 20 on each of the six votes, as you know. | ||
| And I think reality is beginning to set in. | ||
| Indications are that there may be starting to falter a little bit or recognition may be starting to come. | ||
| Uh, through to some of the members who've been supporting Kevin McCarthy, that they're not going to break the 20, that we're going to hold strong, that we realize this is too important to save the country, that we've got an opportunity here to bring transformational change to Congress, and we're going to see this through. | ||
| So you're correct. | ||
| Yesterday, the Republican leadership team, the McCarthy team, made a motion to adjourn yesterday, and they did the same again today. | ||
| We're supposed to come back together at 8 o'clock this evening, and hopefully we can grow the number of members who are voting against Kev McCarthy. | ||
| I'm very confident we'll at least hold our 20, and time is on our side. | ||
| We're willing to do this for as long as it takes. | ||
| It's worth taking what now has been just a little over 24 hours. | ||
| Hopefully it won't go on too much longer, but this is too important of a decision to rush through it to make a bad decision. | ||
| They talk about chaos, and you're 20, because they'd never expect you to be 20, that they're going to have these five extremists. | ||
| That's because there are five extremists, we can deal with that. | ||
| You had 19 coming out of the box, and you could tell they're back on their heels. | ||
| This, I think, for people, particularly a lot of our audience, maybe doesn't watch the minutiae of the house every day. | ||
| They're kind of in shock that McCarthy, who's supposed to have this very sophisticated team, looks like they're back on the heels or always misreading the situation, and they look a little chaotic. | ||
| And you guys are very steady. | ||
| Hey, you say you're going to stay and vote until we finish? | ||
| Let's go and vote. | ||
| We don't want adjournments. | ||
| We want to vote. | ||
| Why is this emblematic of his team of how unprofessional they are? | ||
| Well, I don't want to speak specific to his team members. | ||
| I don't really have a lot of interaction with his staff. | ||
| I've not really been on the Christmas list for my first two years in Congress. | ||
| But I can just tell you, Steve, we're doing what we know is right for the country and, quite frankly, what we know is right with our constituents, the voters who sent us to Washington, who sent us to Washington to hold the line, to make change, to do everything we can with the majority in the House to stop the Biden-Schumer agenda. | ||
| And, you know, past history is the greatest indicator of future performance. | ||
| And there's nothing from Kevin McCarthy's past history that tells you he's the right person to fight. | ||
| You know, I think I might have said this to you yesterday, but we saw this anger and this intensity and this toughness on display in a Republican conference meeting yesterday morning, where he essentially declared war on the 20 of us and really made threatening remarks and really got very emotional and very intense. | ||
| And, you know, if we had seen that same kind of fight directed at Democrat policies, directed at the Biden administration, directed at the Democrats controlling both houses of Congress over these last two years, or even over the 12 years he's been in leadership, you'd probably be in a different situation than we find ourselves today. | ||
| Because that's what we're all, you know, America is hungry for leadership. | ||
| America is hungry for someone to stand up and fight for them. | ||
| Americans realize that there are so many crises that are afflicting the country. | ||
| And they're just starved for that, and we're just willing to risk everything to give us the best speaker we can get. | ||
| When they say that they want to adjourn and have some negotiations... | ||
| In your mind, what do they think there is to negotiate? | ||
| It seems to me like I was in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs for many years, and there's certain times it's just unbridgeable. | ||
| You're just not going to get the deal done, right? | ||
| That seems to me where we are, but they keep saying, oh, there's grounds for negotiations. | ||
| We need to talk to people. | ||
| We need to pull people aside. | ||
| In their mind, what do they think they're negotiating? | ||
| Great question. | ||
| I think that they haven't fully realized is this is different. | ||
| There's a reason this hasn't happened in 100 years. | ||
| I think when we began to meet with Kevin McCarthy back in July and to present changes we wanted to see brought to how Congress operates, rules of the House, rules of the Republican Party, and we wanted to ask him about what his vision was to fight against the Biden agenda in the next two years. | ||
| And we began to meet with him and ask him and to press him on that to express our concern. | ||
| And then, of course, we begin to express a greater concern after the election that we weren't sure that we could support him. | ||
| Some of us were immediately where I was, of course, where we weren't going to support Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| Others expressed concern, but they're willing to at least talk and have discussions about what changes he was willing to make. | ||
| But I think we've moved past that point where I can't speak for all 20, but I would say the vast majority, I believe, are resolved that Kevin McCarthy is not the answer. | ||
| My position certainly is, and I know there's a number of colleagues who agree with me, that we're done with Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| We've moved past him. | ||
| We need to move to the post-McCarthy discussions. | ||
| You know, we've put forth three candidates who we think would be outstanding speakers. | ||
| Andy Biggs from Arizona, Jim Jordan from Ohio, Byron Donalds from Florida. | ||
| They've, you know, we've been around 20 votes for those, as you know, to this point. | ||
| But until Kevin McCarthy He reads the handwriting on the wall and does what's best and right for the country, for the Congress and the Republican Party, and pulls out and withdraws, because it shouldn't be about one person. | ||
| It's not about ambition or pride or selfishness, or at least it shouldn't be. | ||
| Until he does that, you're not going to see more candidates come forward. | ||
| But what we need to do is to have him withdraw, move past him, get all the Republicans in a room, and let's put forward the candidates we think should lead the party. | ||
| And let's go ahead and have that vetting process, that interview process, see who has Greatest amount of support. | ||
| Then go back on the floor and vote in our speaker. | ||
| Do you think Ken Buck went on CNN earlier today, the Jake Tapper show, and said, hey, look, he's a big supporter of Kevin McCarthy, and he was going to continue to vote for a couple more of these rounds. | ||
| But he said, look, if it looks like there's not a path to 218, we just can't sit here and do this forever. | ||
| And we're going to have to have a conversation with him. | ||
| We've got to get past that. | ||
| Are you seeing that, you believe, in the conference? | ||
| That there's a number of people that are ardent McCarthy supporters, but they understand that there's a core group here that's just not going to budge, and now they will start to entertain what we call the post-McCarthy structure of this? | ||
| Ken Buck's a good friend of mine. | ||
| He's a strong conservative. | ||
| He's a very bright, strong member of Congress. | ||
| We're obviously have been in a different place for the first six votes, but I think Ken's, and I'll let Ken speak for himself, but I will say that I think what has been reported that he said, I of course didn't see that interview or those remarks directly to the CNN post, but I think that there's a number of members who are right there where that's been reported that Ken Buck said he was, and they're ready to vote against McCarthy. | ||
| They're ready to move forward. | ||
| They're ready to move past McCarthy to a path forward to get us to 218. | ||
| One of the things that's been said today by, you know, Vox and the Wall Street Journal, others are saying, hey, it's now dawned on them that this is not simply about the speaker. | ||
| This is also about a kind of a attitude or an angle of attack. | ||
| And the first thing they mention is the debt ceiling in the appropriations, because this is about money and power at the end of the day. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| How is this effort? | ||
| Informing those massive decisions that have to be made, and they're going to have to be made, let's say the summer or the fall, I think it will be as early as maybe March or April, given where the tax revenues are. | ||
| How does this inform, really, these critically and massive decisions that have to be made about the finances of the country, sir? | ||
| Yes, setting aside the shortcomings relative to Kevin McCarthy about the trust gap that he has with the membership or his track record of not standing up and fighting strong for conservative or even Republican objectives in the spending packages that everyone that's ever massive spending bill that's went through the House with During his time as Majority Leader, he did so with a majority of Democrat support instead of Republican. | ||
| Setting that aside, you've got the latest example with the Omnibus, the $1.7 trillion spending package that Mitch McConnell in the Senate and some members of the House passed with the Democrats, which stripped away our leverage, our funding, spending leverage for nine months into the new year. | ||
| We ought to be using that leverage right now, but the Republicans stuck it to us in helping the Democrats pass that bill. | ||
| So you're exactly right, Steve. | ||
| The next big battle on the horizon, now that we don't have that leverage, is the debt ceiling. | ||
| Whether or not that's reached, you may be right, in the spring, or certainly I would think by the summertime, we've got to have a true principal leader who has understands leverage, has strong negotiating skills, has a steel spine, and is willing, quite frankly, to shut down the government if necessary to bring us onto a path of fiscal responsibility. | ||
| We cannot raise the debt ceiling without cutting spending. | ||
| And I don't mean a promise to cut spending, but commensurate cuts in spending going forward that will get us on a path of fiscal responsibility. | ||
| And if the Democrats don't want to do that, then quite frankly, the government doesn't have to shut down. | ||
| All they've got to do is just cut the non-mandatory spending, cut the discretionary spending to meet the provisions of the revenue that's coming in. | ||
| And call the Democrats bluff. | ||
| If they want to shut down the government, let them do so. | ||
| And of course, as you know, essential government functions continue anyway. | ||
| If they're not essential, then cut the funding for those non-essential aspects of the government. | ||
| Because we know the guys at Bloomberg and the Journal and the FT watch the show because we do so much capital markets. | ||
| I just want to make sure that we're clear. | ||
| When we talk about the debt ceiling, and this is the type of creative, hard-nosed, but good for the country. | ||
| In the debt center itself, it actually wouldn't have to be increased. | ||
| You could have a waterfall. | ||
| You could still pay the face amount, whatever's coming due, of the government securities. | ||
| You pay all the interest, then you pay Social Security and Medicare. | ||
| There's plenty of cash coming in for that. | ||
| Then you get to discretionary spending and then, hey, you're going to pay what you got money for. | ||
| Is that a process? | ||
| Did you think that your colleagues would support as a as an opening salvo and saying, hey, look, if we have a debt ceiling conversation, we've got to get control of spending. | ||
| Because here's what they did today, Congressman. | ||
| There was a split screen and the split screen was Mitch McConnell and Governor DeWine out there with Sherrod Brown and Joe Biden rubbing up on each other about this infrastructure bill, another trillion and a half dollars spent. | ||
| And they're saying, well, this is what people want. | ||
| This is good. | ||
| And look at these guys right here. | ||
| Look at these extremists right here. | ||
| That's the way the media is portraying it. | ||
| The reality is that you and your colleagues are saying we have to be good stewards, but we have to have an adult conversation. | ||
| We can't just have this happy talk anymore because the con is basically over. | ||
| Do you think other of your colleagues are thinking in that kind of sophisticated way that, hey, the big fight is going to be debt ceiling and the spending, sir? | ||
| Well, I think we're going to have enough conservatives in the Congress To have the leverage on the Republican side that we're going to be able to apply a lot of leverage if we stand strong to prevent the House from participating without cuts in spending. | ||
| And you're exactly right, Steve, with what you said. | ||
| Without raising the debt ceiling, all you got to do is prioritize your spending and decide where you don't have the money. | ||
| The things that the American people have to do every week, every month in their family budgets, we obviously need to be doing that from a government budget standpoint. | ||
| You know, one of the things that we've asked for Kevin McCarthy, by the way, to do is to support a balanced budget, to support a balanced budget amendment, but also to adopt the RSC budget, Republican Study Committee budget. | ||
| I'm on the task force for that budget, where we've put forth a balanced budget the last two years in a row, and that should become the Republican budget, unless we come up with a better one. | ||
| Congressman Good, before we let you go, can you just walk us through how you think this is going to play out tonight? | ||
| Because you're clearly one of the key strategists of this for the 20. | ||
| Walk us through. | ||
| It's supposed to be back at 8 o'clock. | ||
| They could once again ask for another adjournment. | ||
| But as you see it now at, what, 615 or 620 Eastern Standard Time, how do you think this plays out for our audience? | ||
| Well, my hope would be that we will have more votes against Kevin McCarthy or not for Kevin McCarthy in this first ballot if we have that at 8 o'clock, as we expect to do so. | ||
| And again, it will become increasingly clear to those members who've been supporting him. | ||
| Again, I believe his support is a mile wide and an inch deep, and they're just looking for a reason not to support him anymore. | ||
| They're only in favor of him as long as it's in their own interest to do so, and prolonging this process is not in anyone's interest to do so. | ||
| So my hope would be that we may be able to come to a conclusion tonight that it's not going to be Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| And that he will withdraw and then we can begin tonight to meet together as Republicans or at the latest tomorrow and begin to do that. | ||
| That would be my hope, that he will do that for the good of the country, recognize we're not going to move, we're not going to cave, no matter how long that it takes, and I hope that we can get there tonight. | ||
| Counselor Good, last question. | ||
| The people in your district, you guys have been bombarded the last couple of days from every direction. | ||
| Where are the people in your district on this issue of Kevin McCarthy? | ||
| As they get the phone calls, as they get, as they're calling and talking and calling to you, where do you think your constituents stand on this? | ||
| Overwhelmingly supportive. | ||
| Overwhelming supportive. | ||
| You know, I'm doing what I believe is right. | ||
| I'm doing what I know is necessary for the country. | ||
| But it's certainly reassuring and encouraging when you know that's also what the people in your district want you to do. | ||
| They've been telling me that for three years since I first started my run for Congress in 2019. | ||
| And it's overwhelming support now. | ||
| You've got some orchestrated efforts paid for by the McCarthy machine, getting calls from outside the district, from outside the state, sort of robo-type calls, but not concerned about those. | ||
| People in the district overwhelmingly support what we're doing. | ||
| Congressman, how do people get to you on social media? | ||
| Where do they go? | ||
| Go to good.house.gov. | ||
| Just go to our official website and on there has all of our social media connections. | ||
| Congressman Good, fantastic. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Appreciate you coming on. | ||
| Great to be with you once again, Steve. | ||
| Take care. | ||
| A true fighter and a patriot right there. | ||
| One of the original of the original five. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Just to get you, you heard Congressman Goode right there. | ||
| Congressman Goode is saying, hey, they should come back tonight. | ||
| They asked for an adjournment. | ||
| Even the way they asked for the adjournment, I want to make sure our audience understands this, is that, you know, Bob Goode and Matt Rosendahl and Andy Biggs, Ralph Norman, the original, they were told that we're going to sit there and we're going to vote and continually vote. | ||
| Until we break you. | ||
| And they challenged these men and women and said, you know, we're going to sit there. | ||
| We're going to vote around the clock. | ||
| Eventually, we'll break you and Kevin McCarthy will be speaker. | ||
| So as soon as they got there, they had no earthy idea. | ||
| They thought it was five. | ||
| And this talks about, I think, the professionalism of the whip and also a little bit of the arrogance. | ||
| I said, we just got these five. | ||
| These are extremists and we'll, we can take care of this. | ||
| And then, uh, and what happened is they came out and they had, they had 19 and they had 19 pretty quick in the, uh, they had 19 pretty quick in the, uh, in the, uh, in the, in the roll call. | ||
| And they were in shock. | ||
| This thing, I think NBC, they were sitting there seeing an MSNBC sitting there with the Chiron going. | ||
| And as soon as you get to five, you know, he's lost the round and they were saying, Hey, we're into the C's. | ||
| Only into the season, he's lost. | ||
| If the Democrats hold him, they will. | ||
| This thing, this run, he's lost this round. | ||
| And so all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you say last night, boom, hey, we got to have a, we got to have a, we got to have an adjournment. | ||
| And the talk was beforehand, they were going to sit there and vote continually because they thought they had this. | ||
| In fact, as I said, and I repeat myself, I guess, McCarthy said, Hey, if I leave to go into a conference or leave the floor for an adjournment, I'm just going to resign from Congress. | ||
| I'm going to go catch a plane, California. | ||
| I'm out of here. | ||
| Because that's how confident we are. | ||
| And here in the second day, remember this morning when they adjourned last night, no conference this morning, no conference, no getting together. | ||
| Let's talk this thing out. | ||
| No conference. | ||
| Uh, at noon, when we left the morning show, uh, they were sitting there going, well, hang on. | ||
| We want to move for an adjournment. | ||
| Till Thursday. | ||
| We want to move to an adjournment till Thursday. | ||
| This is not having, you know, they're talking about, oh, it's slowing down, things slowing down. | ||
| They come in, the folks in the cartel that have all the money and all the donors and all the apparatus, they have everything. | ||
| You've got these insurgents on the other side that are saying, no, no, we can't do this anymore. | ||
| Can't do it. | ||
| Can't play the game like this. | ||
| Can't do it. | ||
| They come and they're the ones causing all the chaos. | ||
| They're the ones slowing things down. | ||
| Oh, you could be passing bills. | ||
| You could be doing investigations, which is all nonsense. | ||
| And even the bills are talking about these messaging bills. | ||
| I love them. | ||
| I love the family bill and the IRS thing they're going to do and all that, but it's not going anywhere. | ||
| It's not going to pass in the Senate. | ||
| Biden's not going to do anything. | ||
| So they're just messaging bills, which is fine, but that's not really the work we need to do right now since they took the gavel away from Kevin McCarthy and he went along with it. | ||
| Let's be blunt, he went along with it. | ||
| He was in the Roosevelt room a couple weeks ago, before Christmas. | ||
| And they had Schumer, and they had Pelosi, and they had McConnell, and they had him. | ||
| And they had lunch with Biden. | ||
| We did that with President Trump all the time, to bring people. | ||
| In fact, bring Ryan and those guys in. | ||
| Schumer, have a lunch right there. | ||
| Talk things through. | ||
| And they came out. | ||
| He was fine with the omnibus. | ||
| It was only later, after this show and others started blowing up, said, what are you talking about? | ||
| The omnibus, not just the appropriate $1.7 trillion, which we can't afford because there's no tax revenue there to cover it. | ||
| You've got to borrow the money. | ||
| Other than that, it also takes away, makes Nancy Pelosi the speaker on the appropriation side, which is the anvil for another year. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| Then he got old-time religion, but even that was very half-hearted. | ||
| When he came to the mic, it was like, you know, it was too much spending and, you know, we got earmarks, all this, but no, it was missing the point. | ||
| The point is that's how you would bring the FBI to heel. | ||
| That's how you bring the Justice Department to heel. | ||
| That's how you bring the Biden regime to heel. | ||
| This is how you bring zero out to the Ukraine thing. | ||
| No, if we're going to be at war with Ukraine, let's come and let's do it like the Constitution. | ||
| All the constitutional conservatives, where's your constitutional conservatism when it comes to the war in Ukraine? | ||
| Let's just do like the Constitution says. | ||
| Let's have Biden come down and make the case to the House of Representatives. | ||
| Let's roll. | ||
| Where's that? | ||
| None of it. | ||
| All gone. | ||
| And I think that's what got people so concerned. | ||
| Is this thing just going to roll? | ||
| And that's why the original people are so upset. | ||
| I tell you what, I've got Congressman Ralph Norman. | ||
| Let's go to him right now. | ||
| Congressman, we had you on this morning. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Walk us through. | ||
| Walk us through how the day played out. | ||
| And all of a sudden, for the team that said they were never going to adjourn, and they were just going to grind you guys into the ground with vote after vote after vote, they asked for a lot of adjournments. | ||
| After you left, they asked for an adjournment until Thursday. | ||
| They wanted to come in and adjourn. | ||
| Now they're adjourned tonight until 8 o'clock. | ||
| Why are they adjourning so much, sir? | ||
| And you guys are sitting there going, let's vote. | ||
| Let's continue to vote. | ||
| What's going on, sir? | ||
| Well, it's interesting, Steve. | ||
| It's kind of a moving target. | ||
| We've had six votes now, which is historic, since 1923. | ||
| We've had a case where Kevin McCarthy has not gotten to 218, and it's kind of been a solid block that has stuck with the guy that we're now backing, Byron Donalds, and then the people that are on with McCarthy. | ||
| You know, they really are trying to, at this hour, they realize this thing could go on for a long time. | ||
| We're not moving. | ||
| We don't have an exit strategy. | ||
| So they have reached out. | ||
| I just had a meeting with a group with McCarthy. | ||
| He is now reaching out because I think he knows he's got a problem. | ||
| And so, you know, there will be a point of no return. | ||
| The no return will be one that'll be just that. | ||
| We'll take this thing as long as it goes. | ||
| We'll have to come up with a candidate. | ||
| And so I think in McCarthy's world, he just wants to try to see what it's going to take. | ||
| To me, and I told him this again, that we would have never had this option to get rule changes that we should have had anyway if we had had a 30-seat majority. | ||
| It wouldn't have happened. | ||
| That's what we want to try to stop, and with the budget issues that you and I talked about this morning, it's got to be a sincere effort from anybody that holds it, to use leverage. | ||
| Nancy Pelosi, to give her her credit, she used leverage to get what she wanted. | ||
| It was the wrong path of the country, but she used leverage. | ||
| And whoever is the next speaker is going to have to be willing to use that leverage, and we'll see what happens. | ||
| Before we go to commercial break, were the talks substantive? | ||
| Did you feel they were substantive? | ||
| Particularly in your area that, hey, the debt ceiling and the spending and the appropriation is out of control. | ||
| Do you think these were substantive discussions? | ||
| The devil's in the details. | ||
| And I left the meeting saying, look, you need to look at every ask that we have on not just rules, but how are you going to, what position are you going to take in September? | ||
| of this year about shutting the government down or raising the debt limit. | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| What are you going to tell Chuck Schumer? | ||
| How are you going to handle the Senate when we get leftovers that increase the debt? | ||
| That's what's got to be decided. | ||
| And I said, from your standpoint, it's sooner rather than later. | ||
| Congressman, can you hang here for a second? | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| I've got a lot more to ask you. | ||
| In fact, all day after we left you, all the big newspaper, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and of course all the commentators are focused on, hey, we now see what they're talking about. | ||
| This is going to be even a harder deal on the debt ceiling in the appropriations bill. | ||
| Their heads were blown up. | ||
| And I want to get down to what this is really about. | ||
| Because unless we can get some sort of understanding, right, in a deal here, then this is going to spin out of control. | ||
| Because you see today in Kentucky, where the media was just fawning all over Biden and McConnell and this entire We have two years of this Congress in session. | ||
| us into oblivion. Okay, short commercial break. Congressman Ralph Norman from South Carolina, one of the lead leaders of this effort to sort things out, just left a meeting with Kevin McCarthy and his team. He's going to join us here after a short commercial break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Have two years of this Congress in session. Yeah. Can Republicans get stuff done? No, But I don't think they anticipate getting much done with a Biden administration and a Democratic-controlled Senate. | ||
| I think what you will see is they will pass kind of messaging bills to try to draw a contrast with Democrats going into 24 around issues of the budget and energy and labor and so forth. | ||
| But otherwise, what you will see is a healthy amount of investigations, right? | ||
| They want to use investigations. | ||
| Jim Jordan said it's all about beating Joe Biden, was his words at CPAC a few months back. | ||
| That's why they're going to have the investigations. | ||
| But the one thing they have to do, and Rep. | ||
| Lawler might say they're not going to be held hostage by these 20, but they absolutely will be, they have to keep the government open. | ||
| They both have to pass and annual appropriations bill to keep the government funded and they're going to have to raise the debt ceiling and there is no way that they're going to be able to keep their entire caucus to give them 218 votes to do either one of those. So here's the problem for McCarthy and others who met whoever becomes the speaker. They're going to have to work with Democrats to keep the government open and that is a death knell for their future because these 20 are going to try to pull the rug out from underneath that speaker as soon as they can when that | ||
| happens. | ||
| Okay, welcome back to the war room. | ||
| Congressman Ralph Norman from South Carolina Jordans. | ||
| Congressman, since you were on today, and actually the first time you came on I said, hey, I talked to him about the balanced budget, he wasn't serious, and that's why I'm part of this group they call the dissenters now, I guess, is they're all talking about the fact of the debt ceiling and the appropriations. | ||
| They understand what this is really about at the end of the day of getting, sorting out the nation's finances. | ||
| Give us your perspective. | ||
| McCarthy or anybody else? | ||
| First off, you just had this conversation with McCarthy. | ||
| Do you think there's an actual attitude in the Republican conference and with McCarthy's leadership to actually understand that the debt ceiling is the massive piece of leverage we have and they're going to move heaven and earth to get us to raise that to some unlimited number of trillions of dollars, sir? | ||
| If he doesn't understand that the debt is a problem after he's lost six votes on the House floor, I don't know when he will. | ||
| And we told him, we met with Russ Vogt, who is having a budget plan that we haven't seen it yet. | ||
| But it's one that Russ knows the politics, he knows what can be, what's possible, he knows what a speaker can't do. | ||
| So what we're doing is, he's going to have to take this seriously. | ||
| You know, automatically just raising the debt ceiling, that's ludicrous. | ||
| That's why the Democrats have put this country in the shape that it's in now, and some Republicans too. | ||
| It's D-Day now, and we've managed to accomplish something to bring attention to the problem because of where we are with the voting up or down on who the Speaker's going to be. | ||
| And I think it's got their attention now, and the devil's going to be in the details. | ||
| What we told him, he needs to come up with a plan. | ||
| He's asking for this job. | ||
| It's up to him to come up with how he's going to solve the budget crisis. | ||
| And hopefully Russ votes. | ||
| It's one of the litmus tests we'll use on what he can and can't do. | ||
| But no, they get the message now. | ||
| And it's not business as usual when it comes to spending money. | ||
| And we're going to do everything we can to stop this Biden administration and the spending. | ||
| Congressman, isn't it pretty shocking? | ||
| This guy's been in leadership for this long, has been here, you know, with Cantor and with Ryan and with Boehner and been one of the top guys on TV all the time. | ||
| And it took a congressman from South Carolina to say, I hope you understand what this is. | ||
| And now he's going to work up a plan in the 11th hour. | ||
| Does that speak to the to the it's not about morals or ethics. | ||
| It's just the Not a sophisticated or an adult understanding of where the nation is right now. | ||
| It's pretty shocking when you say, hey, you know, we put it, now he understands how bad it is. | ||
| Your understanding of it, quite frankly, I think that's why it's so refreshing. | ||
| Ever since we've had you on here, people say, hey, that is a guy that actually gets it because you don't hear this kind of talk anywhere in Washington. | ||
| It's like they have this perception, the Federal Reserve can just keep printing money and the debt doesn't mean anything. | ||
| You brought up something so powerful today that nobody's talking about. | ||
| It's because you come from the real estate industry, which is so interest rate intensive. | ||
| You know, with the increase in interest rates, the payment on the national debt is very quickly going to... The defense budget is about a trillion dollars. | ||
| The accounting says $850 billion, but it's closer to a trillion. | ||
| Very quickly, the interest payment is going to be a trillion dollars. | ||
| Nobody even discusses that in Washington. | ||
| How can that be? | ||
| And what can you do? | ||
| Because you've done so much so far, but how can you lead an effort? | ||
| And do you think McCarthy and the guys around him are serious about this? | ||
| You know, that's a good question, Steve. | ||
| I don't know that they think it's that serious for some reason. | ||
| For any of us that have been in the business arena, it's all about finances. | ||
| It's all about, you know, solvency. | ||
| And it is shocking that he hadn't been more of a... When you look at McCarthy's record, He just has never been a fiscal hawk. | ||
| I mean, for the 14 years that look at the things he's voting on, go by any voting card, and he just hasn't, it hadn't been a focus. | ||
| He's just allowed, when he was with Paul Ryan and through the years, he just, he just has not been a leader with that. | ||
| And what shocked me was, you know, on this 1.7 trillion heist of the federal treasury, He wasn't months ahead of time, not that we had the votes, but calling attention to it, saying, this has got to stop. | ||
| And every day holding a press conference. | ||
| And he could have gotten a lot of us. | ||
| And that's what we brought up tonight. | ||
| He's got to be an advocate for that. | ||
| And it's just a symptom of why Washington is broken. | ||
| And that's why we're building in numbers. | ||
| You know, we started in five and everybody said we were crazy. | ||
| Well, we're up to 20 and going higher. | ||
| And this debt situation cannot be solved with business as usual. | ||
| If he doesn't understand it, and doesn't commit to the things that he can change and be an advocate for, then we've got a real problem. | ||
| And that's why I have no exit. | ||
| We don't have any exit plans. | ||
| It's not about what he can give or what committee assignment. | ||
| That's off the table. | ||
| It's what are you specifically going to do to get on, if it's not a seven-year budget, look at Russ Vogt's budget when we see that, and tell us what you're going to do. | ||
| It's up to him to come up with a plan now. | ||
| We listened. | ||
| And it's quickly getting to the end where it's going to be a point of no return for Kevin. | ||
| And I think he knows that. | ||
| He's lost six votes. | ||
| If we vote tonight, that will be number seven. | ||
| The 20 of us aren't going anywhere. | ||
| And I think he gets it. | ||
| It's kind of sad. | ||
| It takes this amount of, call it leverage, call it attention to, to bring him to that reality. | ||
| But it is what it is. | ||
| And I guess when you've been in politics too long, it taints you and it It makes you null and void to what the average taxpayer is going through, which is not pleasant at all at this point in time. | ||
| Ken Buck actually said one of his big supporters went on CNN and said, you know, uh, look, uh, I'm a McCarthy supporter, but it's going to come a point in time. | ||
| And that point is going to come pretty quickly. | ||
| He's got a choice. | ||
| He's got a path to 218, 218. | ||
| He doesn't have that. | ||
| We're going to have to talk about alternatives. | ||
| Your journey in this started with that conference where you said, you asked him, he said, Hey, walk me through you for the balanced budget. | ||
| And he kind of blew it off. | ||
| What if it's not Kevin McCarthy? | ||
| Regardless of who the person is, what do they have to tell? | ||
| Because you've kind of become a proxy, I think, for the movement of a kind of a hard-headed, tough business guy who needs to be convinced that this thing makes sense. | ||
| What do they need to tell you, Ralph Norman, on the debt ceiling and the appropriations, the finances, the spending of the country, to say, OK, you got my vote? | ||
| He's going to have to push the 12 appropriations bill. | ||
| on a timely manner. | ||
| He's got to get those out for us to vote on individually. | ||
| Any spending, any new spending, any cuts has to be voted on. | ||
| He's got to go to single subject legislation and germane this. | ||
| He's got to insist on 72 hours to look at these bills that are hundreds of pages long. | ||
| And he's got on the budget. | ||
| He's got to tell us that he is willing to tell Chuck Schumer and tell the Senate They're not getting anything through if they give us what they gave us with the 1.7. | ||
| And it's got to be hard numbers. | ||
| It's got to be the details have got to be there. | ||
| That's why we told him, you come up with what you're going to do and what you can commit to. | ||
| And if you can't do it, then we'll gauge that. | ||
| We'll get our 20 together and see what we can accept. | ||
| And we intend to take this to the floor and sell it. | ||
| I don't know how anybody, if you call yourself a moderate, that's just saying I'm willing to bankrupt the country quicker than or longer than what the Democrats are doing. | ||
| But we got a short runway and that we're going to hold them accountable. | ||
| And if it's not him, it's going to be somebody that recognizes the financial problems that this country has today. | ||
| And hopefully, we'll see how that comes out. | ||
| But again, we're not going anywhere. | ||
| Again, our boats are solid. | ||
| You notice we've been building, we haven't been subtracting. | ||
| Congressman, last question. | ||
| Do you believe that this exercise is the beginning of changing of how business is done in this city? | ||
| But there's a cutesy term, just drain the swamp, which I'd never like because it makes too light of this massive problem we have in this town. | ||
| Do you believe that this is the start of actually getting the federal government to actually be responsible, be accountable to the American people? | ||
| Do you think your constituents back home in this audience, do you think that this is actually a real start on this? | ||
| Not only is it a start, they're getting a front row seat to what goes on in Congress. | ||
| They're getting a front row seat how involved they need to be. | ||
| They need to know where the tax dollars are going. | ||
| They need to know what is the plan to get this country back on financial sovereignty. That's what they will see. And if we had not done this, would we have ever seen it? No. It would have been basically business as usual and more debt. And that's the good part about this. And to be honest with you, Steve, if this takes longer and longer, that's The good news is we're not spending the taxpayers money. | ||
| The good news is, uh, you know, the government is, uh, they say shut down. | ||
| Well, I think the sky hadn't fallen. | ||
| I think the sun came up and, uh, we're doing the work of the people and we'll stay here as long as it takes. | ||
| You're doing God's work. | ||
| I take a Congressman Norman. | ||
| How do people follow you on social media and what's the website they go to, to find out more about you? | ||
| RepRalphNorman.com. | ||
| Sir, thank you very much. | ||
| Honored to have you on here. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Uh, is that, uh, I think it's Mr. Smith goes to Washington right there. | ||
| This is what it's taken. | ||
| This is why guys like Rosendale and good and Norman have come to the forefront because they had the courage. | ||
| Courage is contagious. | ||
| They had the courage and I just want to make sure everybody at home understands. | ||
| They on a Tuesday morning, when this thing started, They had guys up there standing there going, we're going to strip you of every one of your committee assignments. | ||
| We don't care if your people back in your district are not going to have representation. | ||
| If you stand up there and vote, you're done. | ||
| And you're going to get primaried. | ||
| So your careers are over. | ||
| Everything you've worked for your career is over. | ||
| That's what it took. | ||
| This is a profile in courage. | ||
| In the mainstream media, in Fox News, it's chaos, it's all nonsense. | ||
| This is the beginning of explaining to the American people, not the world audience, you guys are into the details all the time, but for the rest of the nation, exactly what a mess this thing is. | ||
| And you see juxtaposed that, and it's just grotesque. | ||
| You know, Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell and Sherrod Brown and Mike DeWine over there. | ||
| And like, I'm not talking about the bridge and the bridge needs to be fixed, but it's the process. | ||
| It's now the trillions of dollars, no accountability, you know, on the infrastructure bill, all done by Republican collaborationists. | ||
| Biden would have accomplished nothing if we had been a party in opposition, a real party in opposition. | ||
| And now you're seeing, now you're seeing it's 20 of them. | ||
| But they are very maniacally focused on what these core issues are. | ||
| And the McCarthy's of the world can't glad hand them and can't kind of do the shuffle and get around it. | ||
| And that's what's so frustrating to them. | ||
| This is what's going to take. | ||
| And that's why the smart people, it's the smartest people. | ||
| At these block sites and at the financial, at the FT and the Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, they absolutely see exactly what's happening here. | ||
| And let me tell you, baby, it is about the debt ceiling. | ||
| It's about this appropriations bill. | ||
| And that's where we were so upset when the honor of us got done, because we're going to have the appropriations to do starting this afternoon. | ||
| And they understand that's leverage. | ||
| This town's about leverage. | ||
| You just mentioned Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| Look, I disagree with Nancy Pelosi on everything, and I'm not a particularly fan of hers personally, but let me tell you something. | ||
| She rules with an iron fist and she got a lot accomplished from what she believed in and what her people believed in and what they sent her to Washington to do. | ||
| And there's no games with her. | ||
| And she understands leverage. | ||
| And that's what we have to have sophisticated, we have to be as cunning, and particularly, we have to be as tough. | ||
| And you are seeing right now, this is getting very nasty. | ||
| Behind the scenes, it's as nasty and brutal as you could possibly think. | ||
| And it's playing out in full public view, right? | ||
| It's kind of Shakespearean in that way. | ||
| So that's why we're doing kind of wall-to-wall coverage, and I would continue to do coverage. | ||
| To save this nation, we've told you if you don't get the finances of the country, you don't get the economics correct, particularly the spending. | ||
| If you don't get that right in the administrative state, this leviathan that we've allowed to grow up since essentially World War II, or I guess even beginning maybe let's say in the Great Depression, but really in our victory in World War II. | ||
| If you don't get control of the administrative state, which is something the founders never had in mind, ever, ever. | ||
| But they would come back to them and say, you've lost your mind, you've allowed really a tyranny to build up around you, of which you're financing on the backs of your children and grandchildren. | ||
| Remember, always remember, because this is going to be such a huge topic going forward, because if you think this is a nasty fight, if you think this is a tough fight, if you think you're being called everything in the book, domestic terrorist extremists, you ain't seen nothing yet. | ||
| You wait till it gets down to the money. | ||
| You wait till it gets down to the debt ceiling. | ||
| You're going to be called everything. | ||
| Always remember that you are the full faith and credit of the United States government. | ||
| You see that dollar bill, full faith and credit of a Federal Reserve note? | ||
| You know, it's called a Federal Reserve now because it's from the Federal Reserve, which you don't own. | ||
| Think about it. | ||
| 24 prime brokers. | ||
| It's so stupid. | ||
| It's so ridiculous. | ||
| Even 24 prime brokers own the central bank that prints the currency. | ||
| Your money is printed by somebody else. | ||
| And that's why I say on the debt ceiling, the debt ceiling, absolutely not one penny increase. | ||
| Look, I did M&A at Goldman Sachs after coming out of Harvard for many, many years, had my own firm and did this. | ||
| I worked on dozens, hundreds and hundreds of bankruptcies. | ||
| This is a bank, it's real simple. | ||
| You got a waterfall, cash comes in, you pay the priority payments, right? | ||
| Debt, payment. | ||
| Interest payment on the debt payment, Social Security payment, Medicare payment, everything else. | ||
| Okay, let's have a discussion. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Let's have a discussion. | ||
| Let's have a discussion. | ||
| But We're going to tie anything with the debt ceiling at all. | ||
| I'm not even talking about an increase. | ||
| Anything with the debt ceiling at all. | ||
| A sine qua non has to be a change in the ownership of the Federal Reserve. | ||
| The currency of this nation cannot be owned by 24 prime brokers who make money and a lot of money in the printing of that money and the putting of that money into the system. | ||
| This is insanity. | ||
| The system we set up is actually insane because the wealth concentration is all because of that. | ||
| And you pay for it. | ||
| You pay for not just your taxes, your pension funds. | ||
| You're getting crushed financially. | ||
| The average worker since 1971 adjusted for inflation has had a $0.12 per hour increase. | ||
| And of course, your network's been crazy. | ||
| We just, what, lost 30 trillion worldwide, 10 trillion in the United States. | ||
| OK, I got Crom Carmichael. | ||
| Crom, what we're going to do here is we're going to make sure we have a healthy year for the posse. | ||
| We need everybody at the ramparts. | ||
| And the way we're going to do that, number one, is have a healthy heart. | ||
| There's been so much stuff. | ||
| in the media about hearts recently. | ||
| I want you to tell me about Salty. | ||
| I want people to get this. | ||
| You've got to be healthy. | ||
| We've got a long tough fight ahead of us. | ||
| How do they get it? | ||
| Why should they get it? | ||
| And how do they get the big discount? | ||
| Krom Carmichael. | ||
| Steve, thanks. | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| And thanks for having me and all the good work that you do on The War Room. | ||
| Steve, the reason people should get Salty is that heart disease, even as bad as COVID was, heart disease killed more people in the United States during the COVID era than even COVID did. | ||
| And heart disease has been, was and remains the number one killer. | ||
| And over, there are a million times a year that somebody has a cardiac event. | ||
| 600,000 times people have a heart attack for the first time and half of the time people die. | ||
| And so I encourage people To take care of their hearts. | ||
| And one way to do that, and I'm a perfect example. | ||
| I'm 74 years old. | ||
| I've been taking our product for 18 years. | ||
| And our product is two soft gels that you take every day that contains a super enriched molecule from green tea called Theaflavin. | ||
| We increase its potency 22 times from 1% to 22%. | ||
| And two capsules a day. | ||
| We'll help you maintain lower cholesterol. | ||
| It lowered my bad cholesterol from 130 to 89, but it will also improve your entire cardiovascular system. | ||
| Just as it goes out through your intestines into your bloodstream, it will just help your cardiovascular system. | ||
| And the way to get Soul Teeth is to go to warroomhealth.com. | ||
| That's warroomhealth.com. | ||
| Use the code war room at checkout now what that'll do is it'll give you 50% off or $29.95 off your first order of a subscription and and then after that your subscription Will always be it'll be shipped every 90 days and it's three bottles for the price of two plus free shipping so it's a tremendous bargain and | ||
| And if you think about it, if you could pay somebody 70 cents a day to help you take care of your heart, to walk for you, to eat better foods and do all those things, most people would do that literally in a heartbeat. | ||
| And that's how much soul tea costs. | ||
| And so I strongly encourage your listeners to go to warroomhealth.com and use War Room at checkout. | ||
| And thanks Steve for letting me be on your show. | ||
| And let's do it. | ||
| The reason is so many people are getting it and love it. | ||
| I want to make sure everybody's got access. | ||
| We got to be healthy. | ||
| Okay, back here at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. | ||
| Thank you, Crom. | ||
| 10 a.m. | ||
| tomorrow morning. | ||
| It's going to be big. | ||
| I'm going to be up on Getter all night. | ||
| Ro Khanna, one of the smartest of the Democrats, said, hey, he's prepared to form a coalition government. | ||
| Just two conditions. | ||
| No shutdowns over. | ||
| Wait for it. | ||
| Dead ceiling. | ||
| RoeSmart. | ||
| And limited subpoena power for the GOP on investigations. | ||
| Hey Roe, we got your answer right there. | ||
| You're a very smart guy. | ||
| Answer is no. | ||
| They fear the dead ceiling and they fear the investigations. | ||
| I'll be up on getter all night. |
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