Feb. 13, 2023 - Bannon's War Room
48:45
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
|
unidentified
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Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people. | |
| I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
| MAGA Media. I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
unidentified
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
|
unidentified
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There's been a total of four objects shot down now. | |
| So what is going on? | ||
| What are your concerns? | ||
| Please explain to us. | ||
| I think you're seeing the confluence of two things. | ||
| The first thing is what General Venner, my old commander, referred to as intelligence gaps that existed with our systems of detection across North America. | ||
| As he said in his briefing after the initial shoot down of the Chinese attributed balloon, that they have since closed those gaps. | ||
| And it's been referred to as to adjusting the filters on those systems. | ||
| I think there's maybe a little bit more to that, but what it does is it allows these systems to be seen more often. | ||
| The second thing, and this is just conjecture from my perspective, I think you're also seeing the confluence of distinctive activity by our adversaries to test our systems. | ||
| I think it's the confluence of both of those things that we're producing these number of events. | ||
| Does that mean you think it's China? | ||
| No, I do not. | ||
| And I think that General Van Erk's prudence with respect to attribution of these last three is well-sounded, especially when we think of the tensions that already exist in the relations between China and the United States particularly, but let's just say China and the Western world. | ||
| Over the Straits of Taiwan, over its economic dealings, over its flouting of international laws. | ||
| Canada has been demarched by them in the past for a number of things. | ||
| So his prudence in making sure that we can recover the objects before attribution is smart. | ||
| But what I'm saying is it smells to me, as the guy who was directed to conduct operations to defend North America, I'd be very suspicious and I'd be on high alert to make sure that all of our adversaries are being countered. | ||
| Can you just follow up on something you said? | ||
| You said distinctive what to test our system and why now? | ||
| Why so? Well, I think that I think that's what we're trying to get out of the recovery and analysis of the payloads of the devices that have been shot down. | ||
| It's not just where they were. | ||
| It's not just the critical infrastructure or defense Infrastructure, nuclear fields that they flew over. | ||
| It's also the type of sensors that they had on board. | ||
| And then finally, what you're really trying to ascertain is what was the overall intent of doing this with these devices at this time? | ||
| It looks to me to be a concerted effort because you have any more than one object, then it looks like a coordinated effort. | ||
| And it might not be over even the infrastructure that you fly over. | ||
| You might fly over infrastructure attempting to see inside of our networks or command and control systems the reactions so that you can play out those reactions for the future. | ||
| I continue to share as much information with the American people as we can as we learn more about these objects. | ||
| The truth is that we haven't been able to gain access to the three that were shot down Friday, Saturday, and yesterday, in large part because of the weather conditions. | ||
| And the third one yesterday was shot down over Lake Huron, so it's underwater. | ||
| So we're going to do everything we can to recover them, and as soon as we do that, we'll learn more about them, and we will absolutely share what we can learn with the American people. | ||
| In the last hour or two, the foreign ministry there has accused the United States since the start of 2022 of flying balloons ten different times over Chinese airspace. | ||
| Can you respond to that accusation? | ||
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unidentified
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Not true. Not doing it. | |
| Just absolutely not true. | ||
| So the U.S., let me just push you a little further then. | ||
| So the U.S. is not using these balloons technologies at all over China? | ||
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unidentified
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That is right. We are not flying balloons over China. | |
| That is absolutely true. Okay, and then lastly then, will that viewpoint be expressed directly to Beijing beyond here on the friendly confines of Morning Joe? | ||
| When do the next conversation start between Washington and Beijing over a matter that's clearly inflaming tensions between the two countries? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, two points there, Jonathan. | |
| First of all, we still have diplomatic relations with China. | ||
| We still have an embassy there. | ||
| It's not like all communications between us and the PRC have shut down. | ||
| Obviously, there are certain vehicles, like military-to-military vehicles, which are not open to us right now, and that's unfortunate. | ||
| But we do have the ability to communicate directly with the Chinese leaders, and we have in private settings about our concerns over that spy balloon. | ||
| Monday, 13 February, in the year of our Lord, 2023, you're in the war room, and we're here to be your nerve center for the Third World War. | ||
| Reuters just reported that the United States government has called for all U.S. citizens to leave Russia immediately. | ||
| Let me repeat that. | ||
| The United States government... He's put out a warning. | ||
| Reuters just reported that all U.S. citizens should leave Russia immediately. | ||
| And obviously no one should travel to Russia. | ||
| Put a travel warning on that. | ||
| But all U.S. citizens should leave Russia immediately. | ||
| A domain awareness gap. | ||
| You're not going to have that in the war room. | ||
| All you've heard all weekend is spin, obfuscation, happy talk. | ||
| I got Kash Patel, Steve Kortez, Seth Keschel in. | ||
| In the second hour, we're going to load up today with experts and tie this to the economy. | ||
| And what exactly is going on here? | ||
| Kash Patel, the head of NORAD, the head of NORAD, a four-star general, also, I think, head of Northern Command, right? | ||
| NORAD reports him, Northern Command. | ||
| Northern Command basically has, he's a combatant commander, and they have responsibility for the continental United States, in Alaska. | ||
| They are responsible for For the defense of this country as a combatant commander. | ||
| He says yesterday on the Lake Huron situation, which looks like it might have been from Montana to Michigan to Lake Huron, he said that they could not rule out this being an alien aircraft or something he would not say is either CCP, Russian, or something normal. | ||
| You were chief of staff in the Defense Department under President Trump. | ||
| Is that highly unusual for a four-star NORAD northern commander whose specific responsibility is the military defense of the homeland to actually say, I can't rule out aliens, sir? | ||
| Hey Steve, it's great to be with you and you set it up beautifully. | ||
| Look, as the guy who was Chief of Staff at DOD, Van Herc used to work for me. | ||
| I know the guy. And you're right. | ||
| NorthCom is responsible for the geographic territory that is the United States of America and North America. | ||
| And for the military's leader at NORTHCOM to come out and say we are maybe talking about space aliens is the most hyperbolic statement that a military uniformed officer could make. | ||
| And one that he no doubt made in conjunction with the White House so that the Internet and the media could set itself ablaze talking about aliens. | ||
| The only thing we should be talking about. | ||
| Is China, the CCP and Russia and what they've been doing to our country and in terms of intelligence intrusion operations since Joe Biden took over. | ||
| That is the one glaring thing that his deputy didn't talk about. | ||
| Of course he didn't say, well, no, no, I don't think it's all from China or Russia. | ||
| That's exactly where it's coming from. | ||
| And it's very telling, Steve, that you have John Kirby from the White House saying explicitly, I think they're going to eat their words, that we have no coverage over CCP, mainland China and Russia. | ||
| I want to go to – because we're going to connect a few dots here. | ||
| I want to go to all the happy talk we've been told about the Russian army and what's happening because we're sending tanks over, battle tanks because we're about to pivot for a big spring offensive. | ||
| A big spring offensive to – we're going to leave Bakhmut and we're going to have a big spring combined arms offensive to liberate Crimea. | ||
| We report this morning, Reuters, BBC, everybody, there's a 12-point, 12 different village on a broad range front outside of Bagmut, shelling those people back into the Stone Age. | ||
| It's an escalation. | ||
| Does the United States just normally tell people to leave a country, particularly a major country like Russia? | ||
| Is that an escalation where the government comes out and says, leave, all U.S. citizens must leave immediately, sir? | ||
| An escalation is an understatement, Steve. | ||
| It's the very last thing our government tells our citizenry overseas when they are in harm's way or when they know they're about to be in harm's way because their counterpart government has escalated things to basically one level below calling out for full-fledged conflict. | ||
| So having the Russians expel, that's the word, Or basically they're saying to America, you better get your guys and gals out of here because we have had it with you. | ||
| This has been a continuous uptick because of the Joe Biden administration's failure on the national security front because they have no respect from Putin or Xi Jinping in mainland China. | ||
| And now we are learning the disastrous consequences of those actions. | ||
| One, two, three, four, five balloons and objects flying over our skies. | ||
| And you have, disgustingly, our military walking it back, saying, oh, it's an intelligence gap. | ||
| That is incredibly offensive to the men and women of this country who serve in uniform to protect our nation. | ||
| There's no intelligence gap. | ||
| There's a leadership gap. | ||
| Oh, hang on, hang on. But hang on, hang on. | ||
| We spend $848 billion, and that doesn't include the $80 billion for Intel. | ||
| So it's at $900 billion, and I round it up to a trillion dollars for intelligence defense. | ||
| Explain to the audience the term. | ||
| We love getting concepts out here so the audience can start thinking about them. | ||
| Domain awareness gap. | ||
| That is Pentagon speak. | ||
| That domain awareness gap is my new hook. | ||
| Because you've got to be master of your own domain, right? | ||
| Your domain awareness gap. | ||
| What does that mean? It is Pentagon-created verbiage to say we are retroactively covering our hides because this White House has screwed up the military operations of this country so much that what they want to do is say, oh, no, this was happening in the Trump administration. | ||
| No, the difference is these countries, Russia and China, would never do this in the Trump administration because they know we would take them out. | ||
| In this administration, the Biden administration, they don't care. | ||
| So what do they come up with this clever verbiage? | ||
| Domain awareness gap. | ||
| What do they somehow go through the intelligence again retroactively and say, oh, actually, there's a picture of the UFO that we should have seen, but we didn't see. | ||
| It's an absurdity. | ||
| And this is what happens when you weaponize and politicize The national security apparatus of our country. | ||
| And when you have four-star generals and, of course, the likes of Mark Milley and company going out and theorizing about what they could have done in the past, about things that maybe happened, we now know how far our DOD has fallen from protecting America and how much of a political tool it has become. | ||
| It might as well be just another extension of the White House and Joe Biden and John Kirby telling us more lies. | ||
| Cash, I've got a couple of minutes. | ||
| I'd love to hold you for a minute or two on the other side. | ||
| I know you're jammed for time. We've got Steve Cortez on deck. | ||
| But I want to go back. Mike Gallagher, the great Mike Gallagher, a Marine Corps officer, now head of the China Select Committee, was on the John Katsumati show. | ||
| He went full war room. | ||
| He said we talked about domain awareness gap. | ||
| He said they knew about it on the 28th or earlier, but they hid it from the American people, knowingly hid it from the American people until the Billings Gazette because they wanted Blinken to go to China and kowtow to Xi Jinping. | ||
| Do you see any domain awareness gap? | ||
| We actually picked it up where you should have picked it up, maybe over mainland Russia, or China, but you definitely picked it up outside the Aleutian Islands. | ||
| There was no awareness gap. | ||
| There was a transparency and truthfulness gap, was it not, sir? | ||
| You're absolutely right. The detection occurred. | ||
| We allowed it to traverse the United States for seven days before shooting it down. | ||
| And so there was no actual gap. | ||
| If you go to the field level operators, I bet you they saw this thing from miles and miles away, thousands of miles away. | ||
| But the domain awareness gap is from political brass and leadership like Millie and Austin and this Van Herc guy coming in to cover Joe Biden's failures on the national security front. | ||
| This domain awareness gap is nonsense. | ||
| It's political garbage. | ||
| Recycle through the Pentagon to give them top cover at the White House. | ||
| What should happen is the intelligence should be publicized immediately and our intelligence committees at Congress should demand it and subpoena it and then put these guys on blast. | ||
| And oh, by the way, Mark Milley and Austin, how come the CCP's leadership isn't taking your phone calls? | ||
| I thought you were the guys that were going to warn them about if the US were going to war, you'd call them advance. | ||
| And now all of a sudden they won't even pick up your phone? | ||
| That is a gap in leadership. | ||
| That is striking and is the only gap we should be talking about. | ||
| Cash, we're going to hold you for a minute. | ||
| Cash Patel joins us. | ||
| He's the author of this blockbuster book, Government Gangsters. | ||
| It couldn't be more perfectly timed. | ||
| We're going to talk about government gangsters. | ||
| The gangsters are going to punch back. | ||
| Who tells us that? | ||
| The Hill newspaper this morning. | ||
| They're going to weaponize. | ||
| They're going to get anti-weaponization on the Weaponization of Government Committee. | ||
| They're coming hard at the members, anybody that testifies, all of it. | ||
|
unidentified
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next in the war room Your host Stephen K band Unidentified aerial phenomena | |
| That's the new Pentagon nomenclature, so remember that. | ||
| Unidentified aerial phenomena. | ||
| An alien craft or UFO or something we don't know. | ||
| You had NORAD, the head of the warning system, and I guess he doubles as, or reports to him, he's also Northern Command, which is the combatant commander that's in charge of protection, the military protection of the United States of America, the continent, and Also, Alaska. | ||
| Cash, you were chief of staff. | ||
| Did it come in to you on a Sunday afternoon to NORAD? You shot this thing down. | ||
| You had pilots, and we know the pilots said different things about what it looked like. | ||
| Also, we know they tried to jam or, quote unquote, interfered with their communications and their radars. | ||
| At least this is what the pilots were saying. | ||
| If that had come in to you on a Sunday afternoon, Would you regroup in the Pentagon and maybe say, hey, look, maybe we had the Super Bowl, maybe we don't, but would you talk about going to DEFCON 2 if this had come across your desk, if he actually said it and meant it? | ||
| I mean, look, it would have been handled so differently. | ||
| I know how the conversation would have gone with President Trump. | ||
| A, this would never have happened. | ||
| B, if it did, take him out. | ||
| And also, let's just highlight the buffoonery that is the collection effort, the recollection effort that these guys are talking about. | ||
| They're shooting things down, and they're like, oh, it went underwater, so we don't have the ability to go take it. | ||
| Why weren't our men and women staged on the shores of Lake Huron ready to go recover this thing and out in the waters off the coast of South Carolina? | ||
| It's as if they had no idea where this object was going to come down and land. | ||
| They are overhyping the situation because they want to escalate the political In this country to say, look at what we did to defend America. | ||
| And that's the sheer difference, Steve. | ||
| We did less escalation when we took out Baghdadi from the Situation Room in the White House where I was at with President Trump than these guys are doing with the balloon from the CCP. They are over hyperventilating and they are causing the American public to do so. | ||
| And by doing that, they are weakening our global footing even further. | ||
| And that's why you see the likes of Russia and China and the CCP issue dire warnings and now our government is all of a sudden withdrawing American citizenry from around the world. | ||
| That can only happen when you have people who don't do the reps and sets like Chris Miller and I did to protect this nation. | ||
| These are things that we know how to handle and we do it internally. | ||
| We don't set the world ablaze because it's a good political headline to then say, look at what Joe Biden saved us from. | ||
| This is what Joe Biden led us right to. | ||
| You have a lot of bad narratives going right now for the regime. | ||
| You've got the CCP's humiliating you. | ||
| You've got all the bad. | ||
| The panels last week investigating in the House was fantastic. | ||
| Weaponization of government, the oversight, the Hunter Biden, all of it. | ||
| The social media was terrible for the regime. | ||
| You've got the cratering situation in Ukraine. | ||
| All their lies and misrepresentations are coming up as the people in Ukraine get pounded by the Russian military. | ||
| You've got the situation in Ohio that Pete Buttigieg is not down there having a... | ||
| Having a press conference and actually telling us what's the tradeoff between doing a controlled burn of those 24 cars versus some other way, maybe getting it out, sweeping it up and getting it out before putting in the atmosphere. | ||
| They're trying to train. | ||
| Is there any doubt in your mind that they're trying to change the narrative? | ||
| If they weren't, if this was real, you would have a heightened military alert. | ||
| They would put everybody on heightened military alert by going to a higher DEFCON status, Kash Patel? | ||
| My fear, Steve, it's even worse than that. | ||
| They've put so many political hacks into leadership positions of national security in the Department of Defense is they don't know how to go to a heightened DEFCON position if it were required. | ||
| And that's the ultimate test of an administration. | ||
| Not can you operate on a Monday morning when you have balloons in the sky, but can you operate in the dark of night when you have your adversaries not just tacking you operationally, but coming at you with cyber offensives. | ||
| And mark my word, Steve, I bet you Mainland China and the CCP and Russia are running buck wild on our cyber systems as we speak because we're looking left and they're coming in and looking in from the right. | ||
| And this is the biggest problem that is my greatest fear. | ||
| People are hyperventilating and the Biden administration is grasping for victory by saying look what we did and all the while our adversaries are coming in hard and fast. | ||
| And our inability to be prepared for an actual DEFCON situation from our military brass, because you know who's leading it, Millie and Austin. | ||
| They're more worried about climate change than they are worried about terrorist actions, the CCP and Russia. | ||
| That's my greatest fear, and unfortunately we're seeing it play out. | ||
| And if there is a serious escalation, I don't know that America's military leadership is prepared to take it on, because they've been doing reps and sets that revolve around buffoonery in politics rather than protecting the men and women of this country. | ||
| Should McCarthy in the House right now get much more aggressive? | ||
| I don't think we've had a Gang of Eight briefing yet on the original timeline of the 28th. | ||
| At least it has been. Maybe it's been hodgepodge. | ||
| But you haven't heard any. | ||
| They would be touting this all over. | ||
| Should the House get much more aggressive? | ||
| And they're gone for two weeks. | ||
| Come back. At least send the intel guys back and demand the White House come. | ||
| When you talk about aliens, wouldn't you think that would say, hey, maybe we get together in a skiff and you run that by me for a second? | ||
| I'd like to talk to the pilots, right? | ||
| I'd like to see the footage. | ||
| Are we just, once again, completely passive in this, talking to Fox News, talking to the news outlets, but not demanding immediate action, sir? | ||
| We are. So two things need to happen. | ||
| One, subpoenas need to go out the door for McCarthy and leadership on Intel and the Armed Services Committee immediately. | ||
| The documentation must be presented to leadership. | ||
| And you talk about Gang of Eight, just for your audience, most of it's familiar, but that's the eight senior leaders in the Congress and the House and the Senate. | ||
| That oversee the intelligence community as a check on presidential actions. | ||
| But, Steve, the Gang of Eight briefings are done by this Director of National Intelligence, by this Secretary of Defense, by this Attorney General. | ||
| I don't have any faith in their delivery of a Gang of Eight briefing because they are going to piece together intelligence that they want to provide and not necessarily the actual intelligence so we can see the gaps That we actually know exists versus the leadership that we talk about. | ||
| I agree with you 100%, but it gets them on the record. | ||
| It gets them on the record for their lives. | ||
| It's like when we demanded that they give it to the Russian collusion. | ||
| When they show up, they got nothing. | ||
| Okay? It's all talk. It's all stuff that leaking the shifty shift and going on. | ||
| You put them on the record. | ||
| By the way, that gang of eight came about... | ||
| Because of, wait for it, the church committee back in the 70s. | ||
| Right now, the Hill newspaper lead story is how all the forces of evil, all the forces of the left are going to go on an anti-weaponization of government tirade, and that means, Kash Patel, they're coming after you. | ||
| What is your sense? | ||
| They're very nervous about what they saw last week, correct? | ||
| That's why all of a sudden the Hill newspaper, they're going to weaponize the, they're going to go weaponization against the weaponization committee. | ||
| Kash? You know, that's a very astute political point, Steve. | ||
| You're right. We need to get them on record. | ||
| We need to get our government gangsters, the leadership on record when they're caught lying in the future. | ||
| So I think it is smart to get those folks in immediately and not just brief the gang of eight, but put them under oath and demand questions and answers be recorded so that they can be shown to the American people at the appropriate time. | ||
| These people don't have a collective narrative straight because they are running away from the truth. | ||
| They are trying to get their story straight in the media rather than actually basing intelligence decisions to protect this country on actual facts. | ||
| You have the head of NORAD talking about UFOs and aliens instead of talking about how we protect against China and Russia. | ||
| And if that is not the biggest failure of this administration when it comes to the last two weeks, I don't know what is. | ||
| By the way, we are in World War III, the early phases of it, okay? | ||
| And the first casualty of war is the truth. | ||
| Kash Patel, how do we get to all your writings, all your podcasts? | ||
| How do we get to this great new book that hopefully comes out and every page is not totally redacted, sir? | ||
| Yeah, thanks, Steve. Go to fightwithcash.com, fightwithcash.com with a K, and check out my new book, Government Gangsters. | ||
| You can also get it at governmentgangsters.com. | ||
| Steve's right. The manuscript's done. | ||
| The book's done. We, as President Trump, called it two weeks ago on Truth Social. | ||
| It is the blueprint for how we take back the White House and restore our agencies and departments to serve the American people. | ||
| I call everyone out by name, how they failed us, and how we can succeed. | ||
| And I'm on Truth Social at Cash. | ||
| Follow me, Truth Social at Cash. | ||
| Only place to fight. I want that book... | ||
| I want everybody to pre-order that book. | ||
| The day it actually comes out, because the wood chippers are out in back of the Pentagon. | ||
| They're shredding machines out there right now for Cash's manuscript. | ||
| It's beyond redaction. Cash, thank you so much for taking time to join us to kick it off. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks so much, brother. Have a good one. | |
| Hey, Cortez, you're just some dumb kid from Southside Chicago, a boxer, a football player. | ||
| But you've been pretty spot on about Ukraine. | ||
| Tell me, is this an escalation when the U.S. government kicks off? | ||
| It's supposed to be a new holiday. | ||
| The Monday after Super Bowl, half the people got a food hangover, the others got a real hangover. | ||
| They say, flash, leave Russia immediately. | ||
| You're just some kid from the south side of Chicago. | ||
| You've kind of been right on this Ukraine thing. | ||
| Are they trying to change the narrative here, brother? | ||
| Yes. And Cash is right, as usual. | ||
| This is beyond just escalation. | ||
| This is typically the very last move before all-out war. | ||
| And you're exactly correct. We're already at war with Russia, a very dangerous war, a war that doesn't involve a discernible, definable, vital U.S. national security interest. | ||
| But we are at risk of that war becoming an absolute all-out war, a conflagration with the greatest nuclear rival in the world. | ||
| Steve, we are right now, I believe, at the most dangerous point in terms of national security, the most dangerous point for the United States since the Cuban Missile Crisis, because we have never been closer to war, to all-out war, with what was the USSR and what is now Russia than we were then. | ||
| But here's the crucial difference. | ||
| At least back then, while it was very dangerous and those were precarious times, We had in the Oval Office John Kennedy, who on national security matters was an absolute hawk, was a steeled anti-communist, and I think mostly a fantastic leader. | ||
| You also had in the military a leadership, the brass of the Pentagon, a bunch of warriors who had just won World War II and had effectively won Korea. | ||
| What do we have now? We have a CCP-compromised Addled, cognitively-impaired Joe Biden as Commander-in-Chief. | ||
| And then we have on military leadership, people like White Rage Millie, who are more concerned with talking about the latest social justice warrior agenda rather than confronting the CCP and defending the United States. | ||
| We have generals out there who are talking about aliens. | ||
| I mean, please. Unfortunately, the brass of the US military is absolutely laughable at this point, and they answer to a commander in chief who is even more laughable, and not just because he's incompetent, Steve, but because he's compromised by the CCP. Okay, we're gonna...Cortez is here for one reason. | ||
| He's gonna show you why they want to change the narrative. | ||
| The American people got pretty good common sense. | ||
| We're going to connect the horrible polls, even in the Democratic Party, among the working class and middle class to Joe Biden, to Biden's lived reality in his economy. | ||
| All next in The War Room. | ||
| There is a debt bomb, and the clock is ticking right now. | ||
| You, the taxpayers, are on the hook. | ||
| Why is it getting so much worse right now? | ||
| Well, let's look at the data in Chalk Talk. | ||
| Biden's inflation. | ||
| When Biden took office, 10-year yield, the benchmark interest rate was just above 100%. | ||
| It is now 3.74%. | ||
| Crude oil was only $48 a barrel. | ||
| It is now $79 a barrel. | ||
| As interest rates soar, so do your costs to service the staggering federal debt. | ||
| In 2022, you spent $475 billion just on interest payments. | ||
| That was up 35 % versus Biden's first year in office. | ||
| But the trend is getting even worse. | ||
| So far in 2023, interest costs are up 41 % versus that terrible comparison of 2022. | ||
| Consequently, looking forward, interest costs are going to exceed what we spend on national defense by 2026. | ||
| Patriots, it is imperative that the House GOP hold the line in these upcoming debt ceiling negotiations and get this madness under control. | ||
| This is the signal. This is what they want to, you know, they're going to wag the dog here. | ||
| They got to get away from the lived experience of the American people. | ||
| And Steve, when you and Navar talk about how many months in a row, what, 21 or 22 months in a row we've had declining real wages. | ||
| Right. They never talk about what you do is you add on top of, I think Heritage is the only one that's done it, but they haven't pushed it enough. | ||
| You add on top the interest charges that you're having to pay everywhere, and particularly now on your credit card just to live. | ||
| You add that, the American people are getting sucked out to sea on this, particularly the working class and the working poor, sir. | ||
| No, exactly. And by the way, just a very tangible kitchen table reality for Americans regarding the costs of higher interest rates. | ||
| Cars have never, in all of American history, cars have never been less affordable than they are right now. | ||
| And I think the best metric for that is look at how many weeks of work does it take to buy a new car. | ||
| It has soared by eight weeks under Joe Biden. | ||
| You have to work an additional two months to buy a car right now than you did during the Trump administration. | ||
| Well, the same is true on a much grander scale, of course, for the federal debt, for the gargantuan federal debt. | ||
| For a long time, I think we were lulled into a complacency. | ||
| We talked before. Too many Americans, I think, are lulled into complacency on the national security side about how dangerous it is, how precarious this situation is. | ||
| We're playing with fire with Ukraine while China is very clearly testing us in a significant way here in the U.S. There's a similar kind of complacency, I think, unfortunately, regarding the federal debt. | ||
| Because of artificially low interest rates that were suppressed by central banks around the world, but especially here in the United States by the Fed, we effectively got away with borrowing and spending far too much. | ||
| We got away with the profligacy for a time. | ||
| But the bill always comes due, and the bill has come due. | ||
| Why? Because of Joe Biden's massive inflation, as I detailed there briefly in the Chalk Talk. | ||
| I think this also, Steve, isn't getting enough attention. | ||
| Just because oil prices aren't as bad as they were last summer at those truly horrific levels, they're still staying at really high levels, okay? | ||
| Very stubbornly staying in the 70s and even into the 80s, massively elevated above where they were when President Trump unleashed American energy to its full spectrum dominance. | ||
| So the reality is inflation is still very high. | ||
| Because inflation is still very high, interest rates continue to tick materially higher. | ||
| And as they do, Steve, This debt bomb, the clock is ticking, okay? | ||
| That projection, by the way, is being conservative that by 2026, we're going to spend more on interest on the debt than we are on defense. | ||
| I mean, it could happen even sooner than that because right now in this current year- We're on track to spend more than $700 billion. | ||
| More than $700 billion just on interest. | ||
| Steve, think about that. Folks in the audience out there, you get nothing for that. | ||
| You don't get a road. | ||
| You don't get medicine for grandma. | ||
| There is no return other than to the bank, effectively, to the bondholder. | ||
| We are on track for a nightmare scenario. | ||
| That's the reality with rising interest rates, and it's why it's absolutely imperative on Kevin McCarthy, and I believe he's going to do this, but we have to keep the pressure on from the right to hold the line when it comes to these debt ceiling negotiations. | ||
| It's also why, Steve, to connect this discussion to the prior one, it's another reason why we shouldn't be escalating unnecessarily wars overseas, not just because it's dangerous, but, Steve, we also can't afford it, okay? | ||
| We can't afford our own priorities here at home. | ||
| Forget about sending $100 billion and counting to the corrupt oligarchs of Ukraine. | ||
| We can't afford that nonsense for even a second. | ||
| It's time to focus at home, protect the homeland, get our fiscal house in order. | ||
| You know, this is why, you know, down at CMP over the weekend, and I'm hearing, you know, they are going to hold the line, but... | ||
| We're the dead-enders. Not one penny increase in this debt ceiling. | ||
| This is the ultimate form of leverage. | ||
| And you still have the Federal Reserve cranking out fiat money like crazy. | ||
| The elites are getting wealthier. | ||
| Working class and middle class people are getting crushed every day. | ||
| This has got to be tough. | ||
| We can't have any gimmick here to kind of like kick the can down the road. | ||
| So we're not going to burden the new buzzword to watch out for. | ||
| They don't want to burden a presidential candidate. | ||
| With any kind of tough calls. | ||
| We're going to have to have some tough calls. | ||
| You've already put Social Security and Medicare off to the side. | ||
| We're going to have to have some tough calls. | ||
| This is not going to be easy. The first thing you got to do is get all over this defense budget. | ||
| When they say, well, Bannon, how can you do that when in the beginning of the Third World War? | ||
| I could bring the CCP to its knees in 100 days, break them back in 100 days and never go kinetic. | ||
| You never want to go to Connecticut. | ||
| Do some Sun Tzu on them. | ||
| Yes, sir. On that point, two aspects of economic retaliation against the CCP, which I think are 100 % warranted. | ||
| First of all, regarding these incursions into the United States, violating our sovereign airspace, why aren't we at least threatening, if not actually following through, On closing our West Coast ports for some period of time to Chinese goods. | ||
| I mean, do you realize what that would do to the CCP if we said, hey, guess what, CCP? Because of what you just did for the next three days, ports are closed to Chinese goods. | ||
| Now, listen, admittedly, it would create problems for the US and for our supply chain. | ||
| It would, near-term problems. | ||
| But it would create massive cataclysmic problems for the CCP. That kind of action, that kind of retaliation It has to be on the table. | ||
| It certainly would have been if we had Donald Trump in office. | ||
| There's no way it's on the table with Joe Biden. | ||
| Yeah. Hold on. | ||
| Before we leave that point, though, we also need a wake-up call for the unawakened American people to force their political officials and companies to get the supply chains back here. | ||
| Yes, it would be quite uncomfortable here in the U.S., and you'd hear a lot of people squealing. | ||
| It'd be quite uncomfortable. But it's a death blow to the CCP. It's a death blow to them. | ||
| But this would reinforce we must get the supply chains back, not talk about the supply chains. | ||
| Cortez. No, correct. | ||
| And again, there would be pain for us, okay? | ||
| But it would be a cut to us while it would be a decapitation for the CCP. And again, I think it's necessary given their threats to our sovereignty, their incredible disrespect for the American people. | ||
| And remember, these balloons, these objects flying over the United States, I don't believe they're really about gathering intelligence that they can simply get from satellites. | ||
| They are about humiliating and testing the United States, humiliating the American people, about showing the greatest republic in history, the strongest military in the world, that we can effectively do what we want and you can even watch it up in the sky and we're going to humiliate you. | ||
| But here's the second aspect connected to the debt. | ||
| We still are not really having a serious discussion in this country, which amazes me, about reparations from the CCP for the virus, about biological war reparation. | ||
| Peter Navarro did a fantastic analysis where he believes the total reparations due from a reasonable fact-based analysis around $20 trillion. | ||
| I think he's probably right. But at the least, at the least, as a down payment on reparations, We owe the Chinese a trillion dollars, a little more, trillion dollars in Treasury debt, okay? | ||
| That number should go to zero as a down payment on biological war reparations for the epidemiological Pearl Harbor that they unleashed upon the United States. | ||
| That doesn't solve the debt problem. | ||
| We have $31 trillion of debt, but it's a nice start. | ||
| It's a nice start to try to get that number under control, and it makes sense From an economic perspective, it makes sense from a perspective of justice for the American people. | ||
| Cortez, you saw at the State of the Union, Joe Biden literally just lifted pages of Navarro's speeches used to craft for President Trump, right? | ||
| Economic nationalism. But the numbers and the polling doesn't show that it's getting traction. | ||
| I want to play Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. | ||
| Let's play the clip and have Cortez respond. | ||
|
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Boy, I mean, look, Kansas is a pretty conservative state, so in itself, I'm not sure there's a huge mystery. | |
| But, yeah, I think, you know, you mentioned, or Dowd mentioned, that Barack Obama was supposed to be the transformative one. | ||
| It's really Joe Biden who has prepared time for how democratic politics works in this country right now. | ||
| You know, free trade, kind of technocratic stuff. | ||
| It's much more labor-oriented. | ||
| It's much more economic populism. | ||
| And I think that's something that, you know, there's a lot... | ||
| When we talk about blue-collar, that can be a pretty loaded word. | ||
| But reconnecting with a part of the electorate that the Democratic Party hasn't, you know, connected with in the last generation. | ||
| But, you know, you have to say, you look at... | ||
| You know, where Democrats get their votes on the income scale and stuff. | ||
| You know, doubts coming about the elite is a little questionable. | ||
| You know, most working people, most low-income people vote for Democrats. | ||
| That's still the case. I don't know if you can back that up, brother. | ||
| Maybe the poor, but I'm not so sure the working poor or definitely the working class. | ||
| Cortez, they're whistling past the graveyard, but they know what they got to do here, right? | ||
| But the numbers... | ||
| Your economic analysis, I think, shows you why Biden's real numbers are so horrific. | ||
| Am I incorrect on that, sir? | ||
| No, you're not incorrect at all. | ||
| You mentioned earlier that heritage analysis, which was fantastic. | ||
| When you put it all together, the loss of real wages plus the increased debt service costs on things like mortgages or a car loan, the median American household has lost $7,000 per year, not total, per year since Joe Biden took office in real disposable income. | ||
| That is It's unprecedented in American history. | ||
| What's also unprecedented is right now 21 straight months of decline in real wages. | ||
| We're going to get inflation numbers out tomorrow, and we'll see if sadly we go to 22 months. | ||
| We probably will. | ||
| A couple of quotes there that I found almost comical of the situation weren't so serious. | ||
| First of all, in the chyron, They continue to want to call him Scranton Joe, which is such an absurdity. | ||
| He is Corporatist Joe. | ||
| As you correctly point out, he was in some ways the perfect senator for Delaware, the home of corporatism, of multinational conglomerates. | ||
| This guy left Scranton, by the way, in the 1950s, before most of the audience was even born, this guy left Scranton. | ||
| He does not represent Scranton literally or figuratively in any way. | ||
| And that commentator also said that Joe Biden is very labor-oriented. | ||
| Labor-oriented. Look, take a look at the trade deficit. | ||
| You don't have to take my opinion for it. | ||
| Take a look at the trade deficit, which was thankfully starting to improve in 2018, 2019, particularly with China, because of finally the United States realizing that we have the strong hand to play when it comes to global trade. | ||
| Every country in the world, but particularly China, wants and needs access to the US consumer. | ||
| It is the gold mine of the world in terms of markets. | ||
| As I've said before, if it were a poker game, the United States acted for decades like we had a pair of eights when we had a straight flush. | ||
| That's the reality. Finally, we started to play that way. | ||
| The trade deficit was getting better. | ||
| Not enough, but it was getting better. | ||
| Now the trade deficit is exploding again. | ||
| An exploding trade deficit with China combined with crashing real wages, and that's labor-oriented? | ||
| Only on the sets of MSNBC and in the newsrooms of the New York Times can that somehow be spun into a reality. | ||
| Now listen, the America First movement, which is all about cultural conservatism combined with economic populist nationalism, has effectively taken over the GOP in a friendly way, in the right way. | ||
| It is a friendly takeover of the Republican Party. | ||
| And because of that, the Republican Party has now become the home for workers in the United States. | ||
| And that is statistically true. | ||
| It is a trend that is pronounced and it is continuing. | ||
| It continued all the way into 2022. | ||
| Even though we didn't do as well as we wanted to do, clearly, in these elections last November, we still won the House by a 51-47 margin nationally in terms of the popular vote. | ||
| Steve, Republicans are not used to winning the national popular vote by 4%. | ||
| The reason that the Republicans did that is because it's becoming a workers party. | ||
| It is broadening out in every way. | ||
| Six million votes, I think, are a difference. | ||
| Brother Cortez and I may disagree on just one small point. | ||
| I kind of think it's a hostile takeover. | ||
| We're going to have the precinct strategy guys in the next... | ||
| I think we've got to get... | ||
| I think when Cortez becomes a precinct committeeman out there in the great volunteer state of Tennessee, short break. | ||
| Cortez on the other side. | ||
|
unidentified
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| We're going to try and get Michael Patrick Lay and the folks around his Ohio Star, some other folks, we're going to try and get some reporting on this, about this controlled burn that they did on the railroad incidents. | ||
| Remember also that railroad... | ||
| With derailment. This is what we had the railroad union guys on before. | ||
| This is the big thing they're fighting for. | ||
| They want to have, at the end of the day, just these 10,000 feet or yard collection of tanks going across with hazardous material with a computer and one guy at the front. | ||
| That's where they want to go. | ||
| And I noticed, you know, Cortez, I noticed Alfred E. Buttigieg was not there in front of them. | ||
| You know, he's always running to a microphone over at MSNBC Studios. | ||
| I noticed he's not there in a hazmat suit in front of the school where the kids, by the way, they put the kids back in school day. | ||
| They will give the kids a year off because of CCP COVID-19. | ||
| But you put, and they did this control burn. | ||
| I think the question is, how do they come up with this control burn? | ||
| Why would they put that in the atmosphere? | ||
| Because it changes, you know, it changes into a whole different chemical. | ||
| And then there was virtually no media coverage of this. | ||
| It's been virtually suppressed. | ||
| I call people in the highest. I said, hey, you know what, even local TV is not really talking about it. | ||
| Cortez, your thoughts on that? | ||
| Regarding the media coverage, by the way, a reporter arrested, pretty violently arrested, for simply trying to ask questions from News Nation, which I think is a pretty straight news organization, not some fringe element, you know, trying to cover that. | ||
| And regarding Buttigieg, you know, I think this part is important. | ||
| Secretary of Transportation, let's face it, in most administrations isn't all that important or all that high profile. | ||
| But in the last couple of years, so many of the crises, created crises of Joe Biden that face this country have involved transportation, all of the supply chain issues, all of the recent issues with airline flights. | ||
| around the country. Now this crisis in Ohio. | ||
| All very much transportation focused. | ||
| And yet we have a totally unprepared, totally, I think, distracted and disoriented political charlatan in that office. | ||
| who was only put there for one reason, because he's gay and he can constantly post on social media about his husband. | ||
| That is the reality. | ||
| There's a lot of terrible diversity hires in the Biden administration, but he's right up there in the running for the worst diversity hire of the Biden administration. | ||
| Two other things I want to make sure we get and put out there so we can develop it more this week, close to your heart. | ||
| Number one, the CDC, and we're going to have all the team, you know, Naomi, everybody back on tonight and then starting during the week. | ||
| The CDC put our favorite VAX for kids on the permanent list of 30 or 40. | ||
| How does that happen? | ||
| How does that happen, Cortez? | ||
| Yeah, well, listen, and first of all, the entire list is far too large, but that's another topic for another time. | ||
| Here's the reality, and this came out last week late, and look, we knew it was on the way because the committee had already, unfortunately, unanimously recommended that this happen, but it is now official. | ||
| from the CDC, the word that this is going to be on the recommended list. | ||
| But here's the thing, you know, don't put too much credence in that word recommended, because for most blue states and most blue jurisdictions in the country, believe me, they just rotely take the CDC list and say, this isn't recommended. | ||
| This is mandatory for your children. | ||
| And so this is something I talked about going into the election, that this was a real danger. | ||
| Now it's here. And I believe in places like California and Illinois and New York, you are going to very soon see those governors, as well as local officials who have been dying to do this, say that yes, for children, for a six-year-old who wants to go into first grade, it is going to be mandatory that you get these vaccines. | ||
| These vaccines that have no track record of being seriously tested, particularly for children, for a group of people, children, who are not vulnerable to the dire effects of the virus anyway. | ||
| Absolutely unprecedented in American history. | ||
| It's a crime. It's a total injustice. | ||
| And it's yet another reason, Steve, why public trust in the public health authorities of this country, particularly the CDC, but all of them, NIH, you name it, all the alphabet soup, public trust in those institutions has completely eroded. | ||
| And I would say to anybody out there with children, school-age children, especially if you happen to live in a blue city or a blue state, please be on guard about this. | ||
| Please be organizing together. | ||
| Get ready for this, because believe me, for next school year, this is coming your way. | ||
| Oh, no, no. Eric Adams, on cue, Eric Adams came out yesterday, said because of the explosion of the new COVID strand, he wants to go back to mandates, vaccine mandates, which they still have. | ||
| Wherever judges haven't thrown them out, they still have, and the mask mandates. | ||
| That's all coming again. Something close to your heart. | ||
| Now he's asking for a bailout because it's a sanctuary city. | ||
| People are dumping the illegal aliens there, and he can't afford it. | ||
| They want a multi-billion dollar bailout from American taxpayers from around the country. | ||
| Something close to your heart, as you say, is one of the linchpins of the economy imploding is the invasion of the southern border. | ||
| Mayorkas on Friday announces he lawyers up on taxpayer money, by the way. | ||
| He lawyers up on taxpayer money on a white shoe law firm. | ||
| Hey, Steve, I got a question for a Colombian kid. | ||
| Half-Columbian and half-Irish. | ||
| Man, what a combo. What a combo platter that is. | ||
| From the south side of Chicago, I noticed when Mallorca's got to save himself an impeachment, he goes pure white shoe, doesn't he? | ||
| He gets devil's wallet in Plumpton. | ||
| You can't get any more country club than that. | ||
| Tell me about it. Exactly. | ||
| The waspiest, most established firm that you could take. | ||
| And by the way, obviously not a cheap firm in any sense, right? | ||
| Don't think you're going to be getting a deal there. | ||
| And we are paying for this, okay? | ||
| I'm so glad you made that point because I didn't see this much in media. | ||
| I think a lot of the reports almost made it sound as though Mayorkas was getting a private attorney, which he probably also needs. | ||
| For himself personally, but that's none of our concern. | ||
| What is our concern is that, and this came out from The Hill, you showed the headline there, is that they are hiring this firm for the DHS, okay, on taxpayer time. | ||
| Here's the actual quote. | ||
| The contract signed with a New York-based firm comes a week after the second article of impeachment was filed by Representative Andy Biggs and represents a change in approach for an agency that had not previously assigned any staff to the topic. | ||
| Well, they are now assigning staff to the topic, and they have hired an incredibly expensive, incredibly sophisticated New York firm to help them because, thankfully, they know what's coming, okay? | ||
| And this is one of the wonderful outcomes of winning the house in 2022. | ||
| And look, it's not enough. | ||
| We can't only do the investigations. | ||
| I believe we have to use the debt ceiling to get the border closed now because we don't have time to wait with tens of thousands of people crossing every day. | ||
| We don't have time to wait. But we should be doing both concurrently, and we can. | ||
| It's not binary. It's not either or. | ||
| We should be doing both. | ||
| Use all the leverage we have to shut the border now and pursue these investigations. | ||
| Stop the invasion. | ||
| Unleash energy. Real quickly, what's your social media? | ||
| How do people get to you, Cortez? | ||
| Yeah, please find me on the Twitter. | ||
| I am at CortezSteveCortez with an S. Thank you, brother. | ||
| 90-second break. | ||
| Captain Seth Keschel from RU Intelligence joins us next in the world. |
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