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March 8, 2023 - Bannon's War Room
47:28
WarRoom Battleground EP 247: Wag The Dog With China; Higher Unemployment Helps No One
Participants
Main voices
s
steve bannon
27:15
Appearances
j
jerome powell
02:19
j
john kennedy
04:18
Clips
e
elizabeth warren
00:53
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
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 quarter 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.
China in the last 24 hours has been ratcheting up its rhetoric against the U.S. as there is growing U.S. concern about the possibility that Beijing is at least considering arming Russia in the war in Ukraine.
Today, China's new foreign minister said that the U.S. and China are hurtling towards, quote, confrontation and conflict, unless Washington changes course.
And this is China's President Xi.
In a very rare statement, blamed Washington for the deteriorating relations Monday, saying the U.S. is trying to contain China.
That is a Cold War buzzword, according to state media, saying Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-around containment, encirclement, and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country's development.
According to China's official news agency.
Joining me now, Jeremy Bash, former Chief of Staff at the Pentagon and the CIA. So, first, I want to untangle what's happening with the U.S. and China, and then get to Bakhmud in Ukraine, and whether that city is worth it.
The casualties that Ukraine is suffering to try to hold it.
But these are very unusual statements by President Xi.
Why now? And why so confrontational?
Well, at the end of 2022, Andrea, in the beginning of 2023, China was on sort of a charm offensive.
They realized that their zero-COVID policy had utterly failed.
They realized their growth was only about 3%, which is, for China, a recession.
And they were reaching out to the West.
They actually believed that their integration into the global economy required better relations with Washington.
But China was trying to have its cake and eat it, too.
And they were talking openly about arming the Russians in their fight against Ukraine.
And that's when Secretary Blinken...
went to the Munich Security Conference and called his Chinese counterpart out on this.
And the United States publicly described some of this information it was collecting.
And this has U.S. policymakers very worried.
Right now in Ukraine, it's a frozen conflict.
If China gets involved on behalf of Russia, that could materially help Moscow.
And the United States is putting maximum pressure on China not to do that.
What about the China balloon?
Did that add to it?
Was that an embarrassment? Yeah, I think my view of that is that probably Xi Jinping wasn't tracking the exact whereabouts of the balloon, but certainly that has inflamed tensions because we've grown concerned over many years about Chinese surveillance capabilities, both their cyberattacks Their use of social media platforms like TikTok and other platforms to collect data on Americans.
And this balloon surveillance was yet another manifestation of Chinese efforts to surveil the United States and collect intelligence on our military.
Kevin McCarthy, the speaker, of course, had campaigns saying that he would go to Taiwan, as Speaker Pelosi did to the annoyance, aggravation, of course, of the White House and the State Department.
Well, now he's not going.
According to all reports out of Taipei, The Taiwanese president is coming here and will meet in California.
That's kind of dodging a real irritant.
Or will it be an irritant just to have her on U.S. soil?
Yeah, and I think what's happening is we're getting some signals from Taipei.
Both the House speaker is getting some signals as well as the executive branch is learning what the Taiwanese really want to see unfold in the context of U.S.-Taiwan relations.
One of the things that's very important, though, is that we're going to continue to arm Taiwan and provide it with important capabilities that it can use to become a porcupine, as they say in military parlance, which has basically become a very difficult animal to swallow so that China cannot create the military capability to invade Taiwan by 2027, which is what Xi Jinping has said he potentially wants his military to be prepared to do.
And there was real concern that the military reactions from China to a visit by the Speaker would be even worse than throwing missiles, you know, which they did over Taiwan last time around.
Let's talk about Ukraine.
And is that really worth Ukraine, you know, standing to fight?
Zelensky has now confirmed again that they're going to stand and fight.
Yeah, it's the modern-day Stalingrad.
I mean, it's been totally decimated.
The population has been evacuated.
So it no longer really has strategic value, but it has powerful symbolic value, Andrea, because the Ukrainians don't want to see that Russian flag hoisted over the city of Bakhmut.
And here is where there's been not just block-to-block, street-to-street fighting, there's been hand-to-hand combat.
This has been the toughest fighting of the war, and the Ukrainians, to their unbelievable credit, have held tough.
Fought not just the regular Russian forces, but the Wagner Group irregular forces, and they have been able to really hold the Russians at bay there.
To win, do they need F-16s or some sort of air-powered drones, something?
I think eventually we are going to have to provide them air power in some form or fashion, whether it's unmanned systems like MQ-9 Reapers or F-16s or some other capabilities to give them standoff air power so they can strike Russian targets as they advance on Ukrainian elements.
And we're now training for the first time two Ukrainian pilots on the F-16s here in the States.
Yeah, I think we're getting ready, Andrea, to evaluate their capabilities and figure out exactly what the right formation would be.
But I think eventually the Biden administration is going to go there.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's Tuesday, 7 March, in the year of early 2023.
That is the madness you have to deal with if you're America First or MAGA. Because think about it, everything with the Chinese Communist Party, and what's happened over the last 48 to 72 hours is the Chinese government, from Xi to its foreign minister,
I mean, they could not have been more blunt that if the U.S. does not back off this quote-unquote confrontation, does not back off the Indo-Pacific strategy, does not back off this what they call containment or strangling China, that we're basically on the path to a kinetic war.
But right there, you see the administration or the administration adjacent individuals.
Everything with China's behavior that's bad is not all the infiltration they've done, not what they've done to disrupt American society, not what they've done in influence peddling with the Uniparty here in the United States.
But it's all about Ukraine.
It's all about their beloved Ukraine.
Oh, well, you know, Xi has mentioned that he may send arms to Russia, and Tony Blinken chewed out the foreign minister at the G20 conference.
It's all about Ukraine.
First off, it's not all about Ukraine.
The Chinese have been in a partnership, like the Molotov-Ribbon Trough Pact of 1939, which was the Nazi-Soviet pact.
Their partnership that led to the invasion of Poland and really the kickoff to, I guess, the formal part of the kinetic war in Western Europe in World War II. They have the no-limits partnership that they announced last year at the Olympics when Putin went over there for so long.
The Chinese have been underwriting this financially.
The Chinese have been giving them Non-lethal military aid.
There's tons of intelligence out there.
The Chinese are now reinforcing them with ammunition.
So the Chinese are their active partner.
But everything related to how the Third World War, the unrestricted, remember my favorite, the unrestricted warfare, Of the Chinese Communist Party that they've been against the West since the unrestricted warfare.
They've been against the West since the late 1990s and have really stolen the march on us.
Everything gets wrapped up in the Ukraine.
It's all the Ukraine, the Ukraine, the Ukraine.
The thing out of the Ukraine today, and here you have the madness of this regime that's running things through the United States.
You've got to send F-16s.
You need combat air support.
We're going to do combined arms because this spring they're going to pivot And they're going to go drive south and take back Crimea.
It's this type of insanity that you hear all the time.
Where in Bakhmut, which is quote-unquote strategic, or maybe not so strategic, or crossroads, or maybe not so crossroads, in eastern Ukraine has been shelled in.
You know, he called it Stalingrad.
It's maybe not that scale, but it's a difference in degree, not in kind.
They're shelling it out of its existence.
I think there's under 5,000.
I think there's 2,500 civilians there in a town that was 70,000.
They've either fled or been killed in the shelling.
And right now it's become very symbolic.
We can report today that Zelensky has said and his top military advisors and generals have said that they're sending reinforcements into Bakhmut to hold it because it's of symbolic value.
The Russians, it's being reported, and we can tell from intelligence people we're talking to, are running out of the shells.
They're shelling so much that they're running out and they got to be reinforced, not just with personnel, but with more material, particularly shells to keep the shelling up from their artillery.
So Bakhmut is stood as very symbolic.
Where the West, once again, just triples down.
We're going to give them unlimited weapons, unlimited arms.
There's all this conversation now about F-16s.
Boris Johnson saying they ought to send the Royal Air Force over there.
You just heard right there talking about The biggest drones that we have, not the small drones going around, but I mean the platforms that are the drones that go around and actually fire missiles off of it and continue to come back and be rearmed.
So this thing is doubling and tripling down.
Here on the Chinese side, Finally, you got the Chinese companies.
We're doing what we need to do, which is cut.
And this is investors saying, I don't know if I'm going to get my money yet.
Right here is China companies switched to Zurich for raising cash after the U.S. and U.K. turned sour.
And right there is that we've cut them.
We started cutting them off from IPOs.
That is not a geostrategic effort as we at the Committee on the Present Danger have been saying that you need to cut off China of all access to capital.
That is because investors are getting very afraid that now with everything heating up about Taiwan, the Taiwan Straits of South China Sea, that it could be a bad place to get your money back.
Here on the cover of the Financial Times, they talk about McCarthy's, and this is, look, if the Chinese think this is a major blank, you see right there the headline, McCarthy is going to meet The President of Taiwan, but it's in a stopover, a layover she has, which is an old trick they pull.
She's going to layover in California, he's going to meet her in California.
He's not going to go to Taiwan.
I think that's a big mistake.
I think now more than ever, not sure we just reinforce the Taiwanese, but we have to send a message to the CCP that you're not going to push us around, that we are going to defend Taiwan, we're going to defend against an air or naval blockade.
The latest on this Third World War could not be more grim.
One of the things that people should also understand is that it's a leak today in the New York Times, a completely ludicrous story.
And the ludicrous story was that a Ukrainian-affiliated paramilitary group or some A group entity related to Ukraine intelligence are actually the people that blew up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Well, first of all, if that's true, and they had not told us, they committed an act of war on one of our allies, Germany.
That wasn't just Russia to cut off the gas coming from Russia, but the entire structure of German industry.
It's structured on cheap and plentiful natural gas from Russia, and they've gone through tremendous perturbations to get off that.
Cy Hirsch did a story a couple of weeks ago.
Now, there was one unconfirmed source, a source that did not want to go public.
That laid out the whole thing, how it was military intelligence, it was CIA, it was DIA, it was Navy SEALs, it was American commandos and paramilitary.
Now we're hearing that it's the New York Times reporting, oh, intelligence is sort of telling them that it is Ukrainian related.
Well, Ukrainian related is the CIA. It's impossible for the Ukrainians to have done that.
If they did that, they committed an act of war against probably our closest ally or our most important ally, On the continent, which is Germany and the one that we've had, it's been so recalcitrant to actually rearm and to make sure that they can meet their 2 % of GDP commitments for NATO and really start, if they're gonna be a player in the Ukraine war, step up and be a player.
Right now, you gotta, I think, gotta bring them kicking and screaming To do anything.
But that story that you see in this Third World War, this has started to converge and conflate and still the Biden administration on any confrontation with the CCP. Everything is a...
It's something to, it's below anything that happens in Ukraine.
In fact, they're mad at us with the Chinese, not about the infiltration, not about the Chinese military, you know, what they've sent over Taiwan, the spy aircraft you saw.
Andrea Mitchell, she goes, well, what about the spy?
You know, he talks about the Ukraine.
She goes, what about the spy? Oh, yeah, yeah.
You know, he says, yeah, that's important, too.
We shouldn't forget that. It's nothing about the direct confrontation of the CCP with us, which they're pushing us around all over, from Micronesia to the Caribbean to Latin America, obviously to the situation with the full partnership with the Russians.
But everything's a subsidy to...
To Ukraine. It's always about Ukraine.
Now the Chinese are talking to the Russians, and they're thinking of being partners.
If they send weapons, they really have crossed the line.
It is this obsession with Ukraine, which is that Ukraine has nothing to do with the vital national security interests of this nation.
And it is absolutely an obscenity that we're saying that level of money and material are paying for their pensions, we're paying for their healthcare, we're paying for their entire government.
It's a war on the Eurasian landmass between two Slavic entities that have been fighting for 5,000 years, and they'll fight for 5,000 years in the future.
At best, this is a European war, and we should be out of our last European war.
We were there for World War I. We were there for World War II. We were the deciding factor of both of those.
We were, you know, in it for the Cold War, the deciding factor there three times from 1914 to 1989.
All that money, all that treasure, all of that American manpower, it's over.
We're not a European power. We don't want to be a European power.
So it is absolutely unsatisfactory.
And I got to tell you, this over the next couple of weeks, the Republicans have got to force have got to force Biden to come forward under the War Powers Act or the War Powers Resolution that lays out his strategy, because right now you've got Zelensky saying, well, I'm going to take Crimea.
Biden's saying, well, we support unlimited time and unlimited money, resources.
Ukraine, you've got Zelensky's got this big war plan.
I want to take back all of our territory the Russians are in.
That means all of Eastern-speaking Ukraine.
That means Crimea, which the Russians have told you is a Russian territory now, and they'll fight to the death there, including new tactical nuclear weapons.
Zelensky also says that I need reparations.
It could be a trillion dollars or more to rebuild.
The country has been shattered in this one year of fighting.
And then he says we've got to have war crime trials, that these are war criminals.
And Garland went over this weekend.
Kamala Harris took the Munich Security Conference.
She says, we formally determined.
We have formally determined.
We, the United States, are formally determined.
Have you seen a formal determination of that?
Have you seen any evidence of that?
I'm not saying it doesn't exist.
I just know that in World War II, we got the fighting done first, and then we said, hey, there looks like some stuff here that was not correct.
Let's look at, oh, these are war crimes.
Let's have war crime tribunals, crimes against humanity.
Then people are hanging.
It's totally different now.
And Garland goes over this weekend.
Instead of Garland being in East Palestine, Ohio, instead of him being there, right, to prosecute Norfolk Southern and to prosecute the EPA director and Josh Shapiro's guys and maybe Josh Shapiro and Mike DeWine and all this for criminal negligence on the controlled release and the controlled slash out-of-control burn.
He's in Ukraine. Janet Yellen was in Ukraine last week.
And you want to see how out of control that is?
Let's go ahead and play. I want to play.
So we have the geopolitical military part of World War III out of control.
And now I'm going to make sure you fully understand and embrace how out of control the economic situation is.
Let's go ahead and play. I think it's the hearing we have today.
It's Powell in response.
Let's have that and I'll have some commentary.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
And when Congress borrows money, To spend even more, that stimulates the economy even more, does it not?
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
At the margin, yeah.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
Okay. If Congress reduced the rate of growth in its spending and reduced the rate of growth in its debt accumulation, It would make your job easier in reducing inflation, would it not?
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
I don't think fiscal policy right now is a big factor driving inflation at this moment, but it's absolutely essential that we do slow the pace of growth, particularly for the areas of the budget.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
All right, let's try to unpack this then.
I'm not trying to trick you.
You're raising interest rates.
You're raising interest rates to slow the economy, are you not?
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
Yes, to cool the economy off.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
And one of the ways you measure your success, other than fluctuation in gross domestic product, is the unemployment rate.
Is it not? Yes, one of the measures.
Okay. So in effect, I'm not being critical.
When you're slowing the economy, you're trying to put people out of work.
That's your job, is it not?
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
Not really. We're trying to restore price stability.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
No, you're trying to raise the unemployment rate.
I know you don't like the phrase, so let me strike it.
You're trying to raise the unemployment rate, are you not?
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
No, we're not trying to raise it.
We're trying to realign supply and demand, which could happen through a bunch of channels, like, for example, just job openings.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
All right, let me put it another way, okay?
The economists did a wonderful study.
They looked at 10 disinflationary periods in America going all the way back to the 1950s.
Disinflation is what you're trying to do.
It's a slowing in the rate of inflation.
Am I right? Yes.
In other words, prices don't go down.
They just don't go up as fast.
Deflation is when prices actually go down.
You're trying to achieve disinflation, are you not?
Yes, we are. Okay. Based on history, in the ten times that we got inflation down, disinflation since the 1950s, in order to reduce inflation by 2%, unemployment had to go up 3.6%.
Now, that's history, is it not?
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but yes, the standard has been that there have been recessions and downturns when the Fed has tried to reduce inflation.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
Now, right now, the current inflation rate is 6.4 percent, and the current unemployment rate is 3.4 percent.
Now, if history is right, I'm not asking you to, again, blame anybody, but if history is right, unless you get some help in order to get inflation down from 6.4 percent To, let's say, 4.4%, and the unemployment rate's going to have to rise to 7 % based on history.
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
That's what the record would say.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
Okay. And to get inflation down to 2.2%, based on history, an immutable fact, unemployment would have to go to 10.6%.
Would it not?
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
That's what the history shows.
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, I don't think that kind of a number is at all in play here.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
I mean, I know you're reluctant to admit it, and you don't want to get in the middle of a policy dispute.
But I think it's undeniable.
It's undeniable that the only way we're going to get this sticky inflation down is to attack it on the monetary side, which you're doing.
And on the fiscal side, which means Congress has got to reduce the rate of growth of spending and reduce the rate of growth of death accumulation.
Now, I get that you don't want to get in the middle of that fight.
But the more we help on the fiscal side, the fewer people you're going to have to put out of work.
Isn't that a fact?
Please answer. It could work out that way.
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
Sir? It could work out that way.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, sir.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Senator Reid. Okay, we're going to go into a lot more of this.
By the way, can I play, can Memphis just take that from the top?
I want to play that again. I want to reemphasize, too.
And I'll tell you when to stop, so keep my mic on.
But this shows you the confusion of Powell in exactly what the problem is here.
And remember, slow the rate of growth.
We don't need to slow the rate of growth of spending.
We need absolute, in absolute numbers, strong, determined cuts in spending, dramatic cuts in both social spending and defense spending, or we're done.
But let me play the, I want to play the beginning of that to show you how far, how confused Brother Powell is here.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
Go ahead and play it. Well, and when Congress borrows money to spend even more, That stimulates the economy even more, does it not?
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
At the margin, yeah. Okay.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
If Congress reduced the rate of growth in its spending and reduced the rate of growth in its debt accumulation, it would make your job easier in reducing inflation,
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
would it not? I don't think fiscal policy right now is a big factor driving inflation at this moment, but it's absolutely essential that we do slow the pace of growth, particularly for the areas of the budget.
john kennedy ▲ ● ▼
Let's try to unpack this then. I'm not trying to trick you.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop right there, stop right there. He's just that wrong.
We have these massive deficits that we're running, and as we told you, it's going to be a trillion and a half dollars.
It's a three and four. And those congressional budget offices, it's going to be two trillion dollars.
That is a Keynesian stimulus.
This is one of the things, this fiscal domination, this ability to have these to pass these massive deficits and then have the Federal Reserve just punch a button and finance it, right?
By just creating money in the way of these treasury securities, right?
These kind of phony securities that are on the balance sheet of the Fed.
is one of the biggest single drivers of inflation.
This concept you're hearing for the audience, understand this slowing the rate of growth is not what we're talking about.
That's the old Washington swamp game of how you get to $1.5 trillion deficits annually and $32 trillion in debt.
You must dramatically take cuts, absolute number cuts, cuts In federal spending, it also is a reverse Keynesian stimulus.
You can't have these massive Keynesian stimuluses that you're having every year.
You pass these unfunded deficits in massive federal spending.
That's what needs to be cut.
Powell is very confused here.
Let's take a short commercial break.
We're going to go a lot more into the numbers, a lot more into the politics of all.
Maybe even go to England if we have time.
unidentified
Short commercial break, back in a moment.
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
The process of getting inflation back down to 2 percent has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy.
As I mentioned, the latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.
If a totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we'd be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.
Restoring price stability will likely require that we maintain a restrictive stance of monetary policy for some time.
Our overarching focus is using our tools to bring inflation back down to our 2 percent goal and to keep longer-term inflation expectations well anchored.
Restoring price stability is essential.
To set the stage for achieving maximum employment and stable prices over the longer run.
The historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy.
We will stay the course until the job is done.
We are taking the only measures we have to bring inflation down.
elizabeth warren ▲ ● ▼
And putting two million people out of work is just part of the cost and they just have to bear it?
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
Will working people be better off if we just walk away from our jobs and inflation remains 5%, 6 %?
elizabeth warren ▲ ● ▼
Let me ask you about what happens if you do this.
Since the end of World War II, there have been 12 times in which the unemployment rate has increased by one percentage point within one year.
Exactly what you're aiming to do right now.
How many of those times did the U.S. economy avoid falling into a recession?
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
You know, it's not as black and white as...
elizabeth warren ▲ ● ▼
Very, very... Just looking at the numbers, it actually is pretty black and white.
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, no, no. Alan Berliner's written a book on this and...
elizabeth warren ▲ ● ▼
There have been 12 times that we've seen a one-point increase in the unemployment rate in a year.
That's exactly what your Fed report has put out as the projection and the plan based on how you're going to keep raising these interest rates.
How many times did the economy fail to fall into a recession after doing that out of 12 times?
I think the number is zero. I think the number is zero.
That's exactly right.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I may have to play that again because she had him.
Look, here's the thing that she doesn't get into, and this gets to immigration.
Remember, they've talked about this forever.
They said how the biggest problem they had, which is a lie, it's a misunderstanding of the problem.
They said that the biggest problem they have is the rising wages of the working class, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, right?
And that's why they need immigration.
They need mass immigration to solve that.
It's one of the reasons that Biden Just one reason why Biden is having this invasion of the southern border.
In the last report, as Peter Navarro and Cortez and Brad have broken out for you, they actually are proud of they have one million illegal aliens now in the workforce, right?
Our new arrivals, right?
Essentially illegal aliens into the workforce.
That's one of the reasons I'm hoping to cap wage increases.
They're only 22 months in a row that they've had negative, you know, inflation's running greater than wage increases.
But Elizabeth Warren cuts to the heart of it.
In their policy, what they're trying to do now, they're trying to increase, they say, oh no, what we need to do is increase unemployment.
That unemployment is, according to their math, there's going to be too many people.
And she correctly points out that every time you've done that within a year to increase one percentage point, Of unemployment, then in all 12 times you eventually went to recession.
Look, this still gets back to the core problem is you've got a government that spends way too much money.
Money that we can't afford.
We don't have the ability to finance it.
And you've got a Federal Reserve that heretofore accommodates that.
That's why we're in this jam.
You've printed too much money, and this is one of the reasons you've got the inflation.
And you can't wring that out of the system.
They're trying to wring it out. But right there at the beginning of that segment, It was the bad news for investors.
That's why Dow Jones Industrials are off almost 600 points today, I think 570 points.
It was a bloodbath today, and I think the Dow is down now for the year.
It's a bloodbath today, because he gave you old-time religion there right at the beginning, kind of gave it to you with both barrels.
We're going to have to do it quicker, we're going to have to do it higher, and we're having a tough time of bringing inflation out of the system.
Because they're so far gone, this goes back to Biden, and this goes back to Mitch McConnell, and they're the ones with this American recovery plan, which we said on the show at the time was going to be inflationary.
We said on the time that if you do this, that aggregate demand is back up.
You're not at the depths.
That you were in the pandemic.
Area demand is back.
The supply chain has not totally worked out.
It has problems. But you don't need to pass, I don't know, $1.9 trillion.
You don't need to put... Remember, people are sitting on this cash forever.
This is one of the reasons they had a tough time getting people back going to work.
Just this week, they cut the SNAP, the food stamp program.
So McCarthy and these guys are still dancing around what this budget is going to look like, what the appropriation is going to look like.
You've got to start to have dramatic cuts.
You just cannot go back to this game.
I'm going to slow the rate of growth.
No, you cannot slow the rate of growth.
You must have absolute cuts.
It must have significant cuts in social welfare.
It must have significant cuts in defense.
And you have Russ Vogt. He's finally laid out $2 trillion over 10 years on cuts to Medicaid.
And the rest of it's a lot of just cut out what he calls the woken weaponization of the administrative state of the federal government against you to get to the rest of it.
Matt Gaetz is talking about very strict work requirements.
We'll cut out another trillion dollars over ten years.
Then you start to get, you know, you got to get, I think, the nine or ten trillion dollars, eleven trillion dollars in cuts just to get to a balanced budget.
And this is because right now, because the entire structure of our interest was built on zero or negative interest rates when all this money was starting to be accumulated.
Now, And today, the entire structure of our interest rates are all over 4%.
First time in living memory, I think it's been over 4%.
You've got an inverted yield curve, and it's getting worse.
Why? The bond market is rejecting the business plan of Congress and the Biden regime.
It's not going to wash.
You can't come through. And all you hear is this kind of namby-pamby talking on the sides.
We have to have an adult conversation.
You're going to have to have, you can't let, CIS says at the end of the Biden regime term, 12 to 14, 15 million illegal aliens will be in the country.
Already six to eight million here now, all being picked up by some sort of federal program or out in the workforce, driving down wages for the American people.
And that means what? You're going to have to have Medicaid for people.
You're going to have to have more SNAP and food stamps for people because people, their jobs aren't paying enough.
Why? Because you're sitting there bringing in illegal alien labor.
This is a, you know, if you think of the crimes of this government, you think of what they did on J6 and how they withheld that information and that footage and fought like hell, never have it released because they understood it, cut against their lies and their misrepresentations and their narrative.
Then you see what they're doing on the economy.
You're seeing what they're doing geopolitically.
There has never been a worse This rivals the Bush junta as far as how horrible they're doing, what they've done to this country, and I think goes back to the time of Buchanan before the Civil War for total incompetence.
So the economics, and I've got to tell you, Powell, we've told you Powell was eventually going to have to come before the American people and speak the truth.
And today he spoke the truth.
He said, we haven't gotten control of this.
We're going to have to have quicker and more intense rate hikes to try to wring this inflation out.
And there's going to be some collateral damage.
And Elizabeth Warren called him out.
That's principally going to be an unemployment.
And it's going to be tough.
And you're not going to have a soft landing.
Any fantasy about soft landing is out the window.
Because he finally spoke straight talk today.
Finally, which we said he should have done months and months and months ago.
Finally, Powell did that.
In addition, you have people like Elizabeth and others that are very focused on what could be the collateral damage, and it could be substantial.
But the bottom line, no soft landing.
Get ready to strap in.
And for you people, particularly for young people living on credit cards, What he told you today, you think your life is bad now, you have no money.
If you're in college, you have no money to go out and hang out, go get beers, go get food on the outside.
Hey, it's only going to get dramatically worse.
And now that they lied to you about your student debt being written off, your student debt's not only going to be written off, if it's a variable rate, you're going to get crushed.
If you've got a variable rate mortgage, if you've got variable rate credit cards, which all the credit cards are, if you've got Verberate anything.
Get ready for heavy rolls.
The American people are going to get overwhelmed here by a tsunami of increased interest rates, and particularly the American people as far as the economy goes.
Remember, because of the increasing rate of financing the government debt, it's like we have a second mortgage out on your home.
I think the average family has now government debt $250,000.
It's like a second mortgage out on your home.
You're going to have to pay with higher costs everywhere, but they're also going to try to get you taxes, fees, all of it.
The two converging factors, the crisis, what I said on Friday, the crisis in capital markets and the economy and the crisis geopolitically and militarily are converging.
You saw that today from China and the Ukraine to the capital markets.
They're converging and conflating as they converge.
And now you're going to live in the law of unintended consequences, and things are going to spin out of control, and you're going to be less of a master of your own fate unless you step in there.
And this is why I'm saying, hey, even if you hate Donald Trump, he gave you four years of peace and prosperity, and you don't need all the job training.
You see when that got you with Biden, all his experience in Washington, blinking these guys, you see where this has gotten you.
A complete catastrophe.
Okay, let's go ahead and play. We had some very perceptive political commentary from on TV. I want to make sure this is played and then I will opine to it.
unidentified
I got to ask you this.
The other question that hits me is there seems to be a fundamental bind that Republicans running in 2024 are going to face.
They have to say one way or another how they stand on the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
If you come forward and say the 2020 election is legitimate and Joe Biden got elected, you automatically lose the MAGA crowd.
If you come forward and say the 2020 election was not legitimate, then you're acknowledging that Donald Trump should have been president, so how do you justify running against the guy?
How are Republicans, how is Nikki Haley, DeSantis or anybody else, how are they going to run and answer that question?
Well, Jason, I think the issue is the point you brought up at the beginning of the segment.
Republicans, if they want to win the nomination, if they want to defeat Donald Trump, they're going to have to confront Donald Trump eventually.
You're not going to beat this guy by being nice to him.
You're not going to beat him by agreeing with him.
To winning the Republican primary contest in 2024 is to take on Donald Trump head-to-head and to defeat him.
We'll see if any of these candidates actually have the courage to do that.
I think Ron DeSantis might.
I think DeSantis has an ego that can compete in size with Donald Trump and that might drive him to actually confront Trump.
And go toe-to-toe with them.
But for now, all these people being cautious and trying to dance around Donald Trump, I mean, that's fine.
They'll stay in the race. They'll get some attention.
They'll be on the debate stage.
But I don't know if they're going to be able to win.
And the guy who got a pardon from Trump, who ran his 2016 campaign, and they've been on and off too, but Steve Bannon, also in a sign that this seems to be somewhat orchestrated, went publicly after Murdoch to back Trump.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Okay, Murdoch, here's the way it's gonna be, brother.
unidentified
You've disrespected Donald J. Trump long enough.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
He hasn't been on Fox News since he announced for presidency.
Remember, Murdoch, you've deemed Trump's not gonna be president.
Well, we've deemed that you're not gonna have a network, because we're gonna fight you every step of the way.
The Murdochs immediately have to start covering President Trump.
unidentified
Pretty striking to see this all spill out there.
I mean, you could have skipped some of CPAC, but those moments right there we wanted to show you because it's all out in the open.
On the one hand, it shows the stakes of this thing and that this really is a channel to the Republican primary base at a time where Fox is under pressure to change while it's being exposed for being even worse than people thought.
On the other hand, the question I'm about to take to my next guest is, How weak of a former presidential campaign are you, the former president running, when your top people are out here publicly begging for one interview on Fox News?
Josh Marshall joins me, founder and editor of Talking Points Memo and a shrewd analyst.
I put that question and all of the above to you, sir.
You know, the one thing that occurs to me is, you know, we're all familiar with the HBO show Succession, which is a romantic clef about the Murdoch family and Fox News and so forth.
And so many of the things that you've been talking about over the last few minutes have Each few of them is like an episode of succession.
The Zoom call, the banning back and forth.
It's like these two old men.
I mean, Rupert Murdoch is, I think, over 90.
He's quite old. Just the back and forth.
One thing that comes out is this is what happens when you're a corrupt news organization.
One of the benefits of being a real news organization is that you keep basically on track by needing to cover the news.
Right. You're not in fights with the presidential candidate who you run or runs you or something like that or trying to get, you know, all this kind of stuff.
As you said earlier, there are...
Lots of problems with, you know, the big corporate news organizations.
But this is something that generally keeps them on track, is that you always know that you are supposed to report at least what you think is the truth at the moment, right?
And that can change. You can be wrong.
No one's perfect. But that's the big thing that jumps out to me.
One thing I want to mention, you know, this has been As you mentioned, Murdoch has been back and forth on Trump for a while.
They started off at the very beginning, back in 2015, treating him as a joke.
He kind of went to war with Fox.
Fox did with him.
But as soon as Trump was the guy, they got on board.
And I don't think there's any question that is what is going to happen again.
Let me build on your point, and then you finish.
That's why we're seeing this so early, because they know they either stopped Trump in this primary early, Or a former president who's also Donald Trump becomes the nominee, and then they're stuck with him in the general, and they're stuck with what everyone would gird to be a January 6 sequel with more training.
And I'm not trying to be alarmist, but Rupert Murdoch is not dumb, and he understands exactly what they're up against.
So we're flushing out earlier a fight that might have normally come later.
So that builds on, I think, the point you were making.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I'll let you go. This is one of the most important and perceptive between Ari Melbert and Jason Johnson.
Jason Johnson being a thinker professor at Morgan State, a very perceptive analyst of conservative and right-wing politics.
This is that Ken Griffin, Mitch McConnell donors, Rupert Murdoch, kind of Maginot line.
Remember, they have taken a blood oath that Trump will not return to the White House.
In the depositions, Murdoch says we're going to turn Trump into a non-person after January 6th, after he would leave the White House on the 20th.
We're going to turn him into a non-person.
They are bound and determined.
To stop Trump's return to the White House.
Now, if they can do that in a primary with the instrumentality of a Ron DeSantis, they will do that.
If it's not Ron DeSantis, then they'll look to Tim Scott or to Glenn Youngkin or to Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo or somebody that pops up after that.
And if they can't defeat him, They hope to mortally damage him so that he can then lose to what they consider a centrist.
Because remember, they don't really care about the social issues at all.
In fact, they hate the life issue.
They hate it. They would like that to go away.
These people are not evangelical Christians, trust me.
They're not traditional Catholics.
That's not what we're dealing with here.
We're dealing with secular, humanist, globalist people that are all about money and power in the material world.
This is not a...
This group is not...
They don't care about spiritual warfare because they're not spiritual.
They could care less. This is the material squad, right?
And they will take the side of the Democrats.
And then I want to make... And this is what I'm telling people every day.
When Trump does win the primary and Trump does win the presidency in 24, and when Trump returns to the White House, they will fight you every day that you're there.
They're going to be as negative on you as they are in source to the degree that they can't come in and get some, you know, some deals on don't take away our tax breaks, on carried interest, or do some deregulation in my industry.
They'll suck up to Trump like they did the first time.
But this is the battle.
And Jason Johnson lays it out.
If you don't believe the election was stolen in 2020, you're not going to be the nominee in 2024.
You're not going to be the nominee. The vast majority, I think 70-some percent of the Republican Party believes that.
In MAGA, it's 99%.
And you can't win a primary without MAGA. So number one, you have to commit to the fact that it was stolen.
Number one, and if by definition you think it was stolen, it was stolen from Trump, why are you running against Trump?
Trump obviously is the aggrieved party, is technically, he's actually the real president, had it stolen, and therefore deserves to return, particularly when he gave you four years of peace and prosperity.
That's what's before us today.
That's the fight. So don't, when people run around, yo, you got Tim Scott, you got Nikki Haley, it's just all, it's all, that's all noise.
That's all Interchangeable nonsense, right?
And that's how they're going to make delivery. Okay.
Tomorrow, I kind of like these second hours where I get to break down these bigger stories and kind of give you some context and some of our thinking here.
I think we're going to continue this.
Tomorrow morning at 10, today's shows were just absolutely on fire, and we're on top of it, I think, in the middle of what is important in the country, what's important in the world right now.
We're going to be back here at 10 a.m.
tomorrow morning. We will be on fire.
It will be lit, so make sure you don't miss an episode.
Tell your friends, if you miss it, go get our podcast, download the podcast, give us a review on the podcast, push it out, get your friends to sign up for the podcast, all of it.
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