Oct. 16, 2023 - Bannon's War Room
48:55
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unidentified
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The sentence before what you just played, I said, in fact, that this was for now and that it could all change. | |
| And the two threats that I identified that were the most acute on my mind at the time were tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, as I mentioned, and the threat from Iran. | ||
| And so, yes, it is true that those two threats remained a real challenge to the long-term stability of the Middle East region. | ||
| And we've just seen this absolutely tragic attack. | ||
| But at no point did the Biden administration take its eye off the ball of the threats to Israel. | ||
| In fact, President Biden saw Prime Minister Netanyahu just weeks before this attack to discuss the security challenges facing the state of Israel. | ||
| And we've continued to support them. | ||
| God is the greatest! | ||
| significant or greater an extent than any previous administration. | ||
| The storm was expected to reach the city of Qais Qasim in the afternoon, but it was not possible to reach the city of Qais Qasim in the afternoon. | ||
| The storm was expected to reach the city of Qais Qasim in the afternoon, but it was God is great! | ||
| I mean, a little bit, but honestly, it's like 80-20. | ||
| So, I mean, the way my voters feel, they look at the country, they look at the direction that we're going, and they don't think that we get out of this without pain or discomfort, and neither do I. I didn't come up here for status quo. | ||
| I came up here to try and change the way this town works, and that's what they wanted, so therefore they're not too worried about it. | ||
| So the big question is really, what is next if Jim Jordan does falter? | ||
| There potentially could be other candidates who have made their intentions known privately that they could run if Jordan falters. | ||
| Or do they decide to prop up the interim speaker, Patrick McHenry, give him more power, things that he has not Let me ask you about Iran, Senator. | ||
| The broader region, of course. | ||
| the law to allow legislation to move forward in its position, but it just shows you the desperate position Republicans are in as no legislation can be acted upon until they elect a Speaker of the House. | ||
| Still so many questions about how Republicans resolve this mess of their own making. | ||
| Let me ask you about Iran, Senator. | ||
| The broader region, of course. | ||
| You said this week that the only way to keep the war from escalating is to hold Iran accountable, part of what you're talking about now. | ||
| and that it might mean bombing their oil refineries. | ||
| Have you had any discussions with the Biden administration about this? | ||
| A bit. | ||
| I want to applaud President Biden for his strong statement in support of Israel. | ||
| I just got off the phone to the Israelis. | ||
| Their goal is to destroy Hamas in the south and try to save as many innocent Palestinians as possible to prevent escalation north from Hezbollah. | ||
| Here's my message. | ||
| If Hezbollah, which is a proxy of Iran, launches a massive attack on Israel, I will consider that a threat to the state of Israel. | ||
| Existential in nature, I will introduce a resolution in the United States Senate to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the oil business. | ||
| Iran, if you escalate this war, we're coming for you. | ||
| Are you effectively poised to declare war on Iran? | ||
| That's very strong language. | ||
| I am poised to use military force to destroy the source of funding for Hamas and Hezbollah. | ||
| The idea that Iran read about this operation in the paper Our own television is laughable. | ||
| 93% of Hezbollah and Hamas's money comes from Iran. | ||
| They're the source of the problem. | ||
| They're the great evil. | ||
| So if Hezbollah escalates against Israel, it will be because Iran told them to. | ||
| Then, Iran, you're in the crosshairs of the United States and Israel. | ||
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| I got a free shot on 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 line? | ||
| 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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War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | |
| It's Monday, 16 October in the year of our Lord 2023. | ||
| We've got a lot to go through today. | ||
| We're going to start. | ||
| We're going to go to work right off the bat. | ||
| Congressman Matt Gaetz joins us. | ||
| Walk us through what's happened since, I guess, Thursday night or Friday with with Jim Jordan. | ||
| We were kind of shocked that that Congressman Jordan had had an affirmation vote Privately, right? | ||
| Anonymously, right after the speaker nomination. | ||
| Now, Jake Sherman and the team at Punchbowl reported this morning that McCarthy did that. | ||
| They said McCarthy put up that. | ||
| He wanted to and had the affirmation vote. | ||
| Why would that be done and where do we stand over the weekend? | ||
| Well, I think we can safely say, and with, you know, breaking news just from before we came on the air regarding some of the holdouts now switching over to Jordan, that the wind is at the back of Speaker-designate Jim Jordan. | ||
| And I want to spend our time walking through what that means, what that doesn't mean. | ||
| I don't believe that Jim Jordan is some, you know, messiah here to deliver the war room posse every single dream that it could possibly envision from the speakership. | ||
| I think we go into this with a good dose of realism and sobriety, but the wind is at our back, and here's why. | ||
| We went into a contest between Jim Jordan and Austin Scott, and in that contest- But Scott was just a placeholder for the opposition. | ||
| Well, he wasn't someone who had been long campaigning for the job, but had become, in a lot of these struggle sessions we've been having behind closed doors, a leading voice for a good contingent of the caucus that was critical of me and some of my efforts. | ||
| But that's not to say that their opinions should be discounted. | ||
| I'm there in the struggle sessions to listen to people's criticisms of me and to try to be a better lawmaker for my constituents, for the country, and certainly for the Republican caucus. | ||
| I want us to win. | ||
| So Austin Scott had really taken a leadership role in a lot of those discussions. | ||
| He mounted a campaign. | ||
| He got 81 votes. | ||
| So there were 81 votes against Jordan. | ||
| Then just about 30 minutes later, there were only 55 votes against Jordan. | ||
| So you could see the more we're voting, the more the momentum kind of builds for the eventual Speaker of the House, Jim Jordan. | ||
| Now I believe we should have gone right to the floor and that 55 in an anonymous secret ballot in the basement of the Longworth building probably would have dwindled to about 12 or 15. | ||
| And then I think we could have had that vote if people needed to get a no vote on Jim Jordan They could have gotten it out of their system. | ||
| And then we should have come right back on Saturday, Sunday if necessary. | ||
| You wanted to stay all weekend and just pound it out. | ||
| Here's what I know. | ||
| The closed-door struggle sessions are only going to get you so far where people can hide behind their anonymity on behalf of their favorite lobbying group or interest group or special interest PAC or super PAC group or billionaire donor. | ||
| When you got to go on the House floor in front of all the lights You cast your vote and you make your argument. | ||
| And by the way, if people want to stand in the way of Jim Jordan, the way I stood in the way of Kevin McCarthy back in January, they should have to do it just like I did. | ||
| On the floor, risking your political career, risking your committee assignments, risking all your capital, and I went and made the argument. | ||
| about the things that had to change in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And the people came to my side, and ultimately McCarthy came to my side. | ||
| Now, turns out, we saw over the last nine months he didn't really mean it with all of the commitments he had made, and so now we have to move forward with Jim Jordan. | ||
| We just got news before we came on the air. | ||
| Is it okay? | ||
| It's blockbuster because all weekend we've been putting up that, and you had led the charge on this, that there was these old bulls, particularly from the South, these Armed Services Committee, Appropriations Committee, that had locked together and were actually cutting a deal with the Democrats. | ||
| Well, here's what I was worried about. | ||
| I was worried that you'd get some of these defense hawks My friends, my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, and some of the appropriators particularly lashed into kind of the defense vector of appropriations, and you had those folks actively talking. | ||
| I just want to make sure the audience understands this. | ||
| You're a defense hawk, and you come from probably one of the most heavily defense areas, districts in the nation. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know if it makes me a hawk, a dove, or an eagle, but I think we should have a strong military, the most capable military in the world, a military able to vanquish any foe, and then we should use it strategically. | ||
| Not for the benefit of someone's quarterly profits, not to answer some geopolitics question at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, but to actually advance the interests of Americans. | ||
| So, some people say that makes me a hawk, some say it makes me a dove, but I believe in spending on America's defense, because I'm not here to have my grandkids speak in Mandarin. | ||
| So, you know, that, I think, created a coalition, and those people were publicly saying over the weekend that they were willing to work with Democrats in a coalition government rather than working with Republicans. | ||
| Now, that deeply troubled us. | ||
| It deeply troubled a lot of state party leaders. | ||
| That coalition, McHenry, would stick around, or would this bring McCarthy back? | ||
| Well, I think that this is what we might have been facing today. | ||
| Uh, that at the beginning of the struggle session, some of the defense hawks could have stood up and said, we've made a deal with the Democrats. | ||
| And the choice for all of you is whether or not we're going to take McCarthy back like some sort of jilted X, uh, or we're going to go into coalition government with the Democrats and that that would be a way to block our ability to even have the first floor vote on Jim Jordan. | ||
| Because they would say Scalise had 60 votes against him or 40. | ||
| Jordan's got 40 against him. | ||
| Gates only had 8 against us. | ||
| We're the least worse of the alternatives. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That would have been the conceivable argument. | ||
| Now, you know, the math problem there is my 8 doesn't look like 8. | ||
| My 8 is way more than 8. | ||
| And we could demonstrate that. | ||
| Because they've had a belly full of this over the last week or so. | ||
| And don't take my word for it. | ||
| To Kevin McCarthy's credit, He stood up before the conference when Tom McClintock attempted a resolution to re-nominate McCarthy, and he said, you all deserve to know that I've lost way more than eight, and it would be a higher number. | ||
| So he not only knows that, he acknowledged it to our Republican colleagues. | ||
| And so I don't want to hear Kevin McCarthy saying anymore this 96% 4% talk because he stood up and said himself that there were more than eight people that would stand against any attempt for him to return to the speakership. | ||
| Now all of that, that was what we were working against. | ||
| That was the battle space as we saw it. | ||
| And so we had a lot of state party leaders, local activists, really trying to encourage our friends and colleagues Uh, on these defense committees and on the appropriations committee to back the Republican nominee for speaker, Jim Jordan. | ||
| So, so the Warren posse worked all weekend on this on social media. | ||
| People weren't taking a lot of phone calls about social media. | ||
| Do you believe that? | ||
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unidentified
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Cause, uh, uh, Oh, they knew about the phone calls. | |
| Trust me. | ||
| Trust me. | ||
| Even if the phone calls aren't getting answered, they know, they know when the lines are running down. | ||
| Crenshaw came out yesterday though and said he was supporting Jordan. | ||
| However, our efforts were too over the top and were counterproductive. | ||
| Well, I will not share that opinion. | ||
| I think sometimes hearing from constituents can be a very encouraging experience. | ||
| That's certainly what I found. | ||
| And it seems as though Congressman Rogers has been sufficiently encouraged. | ||
| Because just before... Mike Rogers? | ||
| Yes, just before we came on the air, Mike Rogers, who had said publicly that he was contemplating working with the Democrats, is now endorsed Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House. | ||
| He said they had multiple positive, cordial conversations about the need to pass defense bills, the need to meet the functions of government, and Mike Rogers is now a yes on Jim Jordan. | ||
| Thoroughly deflates this effort from red district Southerners to serve as a ballast against Jordan. | ||
| I think that is far less likely to happen. | ||
| Can you just repeat that because this is huge. | ||
| This has been a big focus. | ||
| Mike Rogers is an incredibly well thought of senior member, a chairman. | ||
| He's the chair of armed services. | ||
| Arguably one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful of all the committees. | ||
| A made guy in Washington, D.C. by far, and he's a friend of mine, and we work closely together on a lot of priorities I care about. | ||
| Look, the reason we have a great defense bill that really uproots a lot of the wokeness is because Mike Rogers was bearing down on it. | ||
| Mike Rogers knows that this DOD is trying to take mission out of states like Florida and Alabama and Mississippi and move them to states with abortion on demand. | ||
| And that they care more about whether or not your third grade teacher can, you know, identify the gender of your kid than whether or not we're putting military members and materiel in places to defend the country and advance our interests. | ||
| So I'm not here to criticize Mike Rogers. | ||
| I think it's a great thing, but to catch the signal here, if you're one of these other old bull made guys in Washington sitting in a ruby red district south of the Mason-Dixon line, I think that this is a message that holding out against Jordan is ultimately a fool's errand. | ||
| It is not going to be productive. | ||
| The Jordan train is coming. | ||
| You need to get on board or you could be run over. | ||
| Let's take a short commercial break. | ||
| Congressman Gates is going to stay with us into the next segment. | ||
| We've got a lot to go through on this topic of the rise and ascension of Jim Jordan. | ||
| Also, we're going to get a take on Congressman Gates' thoughts on the current geopolitical situation in the world. | ||
| All next in The War Room. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're all gone, we rejoice when there's no more, let's take down the CCU! | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| For people who have been doing this for a while, particularly maybe some people who have been doing this when you were in short pants, I'm just kidding you, but Jim Jordan is a historic figure for many people in this movement. | ||
| You got to remember, we took out Cantor with Bratt, we took out Boehner, we took out McCarthy the first time, then Paul Ryan quit, now McCarthy and your amazing first time in history with a speaker. | ||
| So much of this audience has been, you know, doing this for 10 or 12 years with us. | ||
| Remembers the foundation of the Freedom Caucus and a fire breather that was Jim Jordan. | ||
| I take them all on, you know, armor-piercing shell. | ||
| It appears to some of our audience that as he's ascended to an office, and particularly in January, there were people who were incredibly disappointed that he was not a stronger voice in backing the Hard Eight or the Magnificent Six at that time. | ||
| Also, since then, they just haven't seen it on Judiciary. | ||
| Many people come back and say it's like Trey Gowdy all over again. | ||
| The Jordan that is beloved is Jim Jordan 1.0. | ||
| What can we do on this Jim Jordan 2.0 to getting back to the 1.0? | ||
| I want people to bookmark this discussion we're about to have because I don't want to pretend to this audience or anyone that Jim Jordan entering the Speaker's office is going to mean we get everything we want on all fronts. | ||
| It's quite different. | ||
| And what I've seen in Jim Jordan is someone who will make the principal objective of his speakership uniting a disparate caucus with a lot of people who really dislike one another and do not have muscle memory of working together. | ||
| That's going to mean everyone's going to have to give, and that's going to mean there are going to be things that Jim Jordan says and does that I'm not going to like, that this audience isn't going to like, and that you aren't going to like. | ||
| Jim Jordan as Speaker will not be the same as Jim Jordan as Judiciary Committee Chairman, and you've already seen that Jim Jordan as Judiciary Committee Chairman is different than Jim Jordan, Freedom Caucus founder. | ||
| So let's acknowledge that, let's put that out, but here's what I will say. | ||
| Jim Jordan is as good of a man as I have ever met in this process. | ||
| He is godly, he is humble, he is loyal, he is honest, and He is conservative. | ||
| All of his conservative wishes, dreams, and fantasies aren't going to come through in a speakership with a four-seat majority. | ||
| You see people like Mike Lawler and Nicole Malliotakis and Dusty Johnson and Brian Fitzpatrick endorsing Jim Jordan, not because they agree with his ideology or his viewpoint on particular things throughout the years, But they believe in his leadership style. | ||
| So that's what you're getting. | ||
| An honest leadership style that is not beholden to the lobbyists and special interests. | ||
| You see, there's something about breaking the fever here and breaking the DC cartel in the swamp that comes with dislodging Kevin McCarthy and moving to someone who hasn't sold shares of themselves their entire political career. | ||
| Now, do I think that McCarthy will still be a figure in Jordan world? | ||
| I do. | ||
| I don't think he'll be. | ||
| Because of the staff? | ||
| I think that there will be staff that will be common to both men. | ||
| I don't know the extent of that, but that would not surprise me. | ||
| Matter of fact, it would only surprise me if there weren't staff that were common to both men. | ||
| Some of the people who work in McCarthy's office now used to work for Jordan, you see? | ||
| So there's a little cross-pollination there. | ||
| But what I have committed to this audience is to upgrade the position of Speaker of the House. | ||
| Jim Jordan isn't the only man that could have upgraded the position. | ||
| I believe maybe differently than you and some watching that Steve Scalise would have been a substantial upgrade to Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| And maybe the distance between McCarthy and Scalise is larger than the audience really knows. | ||
| I could tell you McCarthy, I mean, he did everything he could to undermine Scalise. | ||
| And Scalise knew that, and he was probably going to be more anti-McCarthy than Jordan would be. | ||
| But it's not really about the personalities. | ||
| It's about can we get the Republican conference back into a productive fighting force. | ||
| I believed that every day under Kevin McCarthy was just another day of slower surrender. | ||
| That we were never on the balls of our feet getting into the fight, doing what had to be done. | ||
| Jim Jordan is a fighter. | ||
| And if there is anyone who can bring along some of these America's Last Republicans that do make up our majority, it's going to be Jim Jordan. | ||
| And the fact that he's now got so many folks who were hard against him just days ago publicly announcing their support for him means that we certainly have got a lot of momentum in upgrading the position. | ||
| But there are going to be things like Big Tech where we don't agree with Jordan on. | ||
| There are going to be things like January 6th... Because he's close to Google and those things. | ||
| Well, I don't think it's that he's close to Google. | ||
| I think that Jim Jordan has a neolibertarian perspective on those things that is sincerely informed by his viewpoint. | ||
| I have more of a neopopulist viewpoint on those things. | ||
| So we're not getting someone who agrees with us on everything, but when it comes to the oversight, I do believe that there were people in Kevin McCarthy's operation who were putting a chokehold on some of the subpoenas and document requests and witness demands that I wanted to get out, that Mike Johnson wanted to get out, that Dan Bishop and Jim Jordan and Chip Roy wanted to get out. | ||
| And so with Jim there, I think we're going to have a lot more runway, and we're going to see a green light more than we see a yellow light. | ||
| I want to get back to the CR and other things in a second, but I want to go back to something that, because I think this weekend is very important. | ||
| In this audience, this is another victory for you. | ||
| When it happens, because people went to the ramparts on social media for the phone calls and went to what, as I kept saying, the biggest disappointment I've had is that block of Southern Republicans. | ||
| And there's still some there. | ||
| It's not over. | ||
| Not over. | ||
| It's deflating for them to have Mike Rogers now on the team. | ||
| But Mike Rogers, you know, noted in his statement, he's historically a team player. | ||
| He was going to be a guy who was going to be with the team after this flirtation with the Democrats. | ||
| Did we learn from the grassroots getting up in people's grills this weekend? | ||
| Is this a way also to unite the conference? | ||
| Is one of the things because we have a disconnection between the voting base of this party. | ||
| right, the Trump populist, nationalist, America First voting base and the representatives in Washington. Is a way to do it what happened this weekend? Is that one way to help help Jordan bring the conference together? We will unite the conference or we will cleanse the conference because if they come at us with some sort of bluff that these old guard Republicans in ruby red districts are gonna go cut a deal with Democrats or force McCarthy down our throat Here's what I'm going to go tell them. | ||
| Go cut your deal with Democrats and see what happens to you. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| In a weird way, if these guys go cut a deal with Democrats, the Democrats were governing us all along anyway. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And the veneer of a Republican majority was just an illusion. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The whole time. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| If they go do that deal with Democrats, and in the upcoming election, it results in us wiping out 6, 8, 12, 20, 30 of the Republicans who stand in the way of the America First agenda, that might be the greatest blessing of all of this. | ||
| Let's talk about the critical path going forward. | ||
| There's going to be a conference meeting tonight. | ||
| Yes, another struggle session. | ||
| Another behind-closed-door struggle session. | ||
| And another one tomorrow morning before you go to the Florida Round New, I anticipate. | ||
| I hope, yes. | ||
| And then we'll start voting. | ||
| I think that there will be one final play by the McCarthy folks to try to delay a Jordan vote, to try to reinsert McCarthy in some sort of double backflip. | ||
| I'm not going to stand for it. | ||
| I think we need to proceed going forward with Jim Jordan. | ||
| But this is not a time to uncork the champagne and to celebrate the victory. | ||
| We have to see this thing through the floor vote. | ||
| 2-0-2, 2-2-5, 3-1-2-1. | ||
| You know what you have to do. | ||
| So let's get up on the ramparts. | ||
| Going forward, the 17th's here. | ||
| The Senate's back today. | ||
| And the Senate, their first order of business is not passing appropriations bills. | ||
| They're dealing on Jack Lew as ambassador to Israel. | ||
| Have the Senate done anything on appropriations? | ||
| And where do we stand? | ||
| Because Jim Jordan is actually talking about another CR already, which as you know, this audience's head's going to blow up. | ||
| So just practically in governing, where are we? | ||
| You know, we have passed funding for over 70% of the government, including our defense, including our Department of State and Foreign Ops. | ||
| I mean, we made some deep cuts to Department of State and Foreign Ops. | ||
| We took it back to 2014 spending levels. | ||
| But that forced people to actually make zero-sum choices about how we deploy America's resources and which interests have primacy. | ||
| So we've sent that over to the Senate. | ||
| Today, the Senate could take up and pass our State and Foreign Ops bill, which, by the way, So the Jordan Doctrine, which I've got to say, I don't particularly agree with. | ||
| I'm voting for the man more than the plan. | ||
| And he knows that, and this audience should know that. | ||
| they could have seventy percent of the government ready to be funded right and would need to be included in a CR you go forward in conference and try to hammer it out. So the Jordan doctrine which I've got to say I don't particularly agree with. I'm voting for the man more than the plan and he knows that and this audience should know that but Jordan's plan is to pass this one percent cut CR and then to use that as leverage against big spending senators to try to get some | ||
| of the policy from our single subject appropriations bills woven in. | ||
| You're saying he'll take the policy wins and give up the actual money? | ||
| Well, no, it's quite the opposite. | ||
| I think he'll surrender more policy wins in exchange for bending the curve down on spending. | ||
| But just the 1%? | ||
| Right, which is, to me, low energy. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And what about an omnibus? | ||
| Well, I mean, this strategy is omnibus defense, but it's using as defense for the omnibus the prospect of a CR. | ||
| I don't believe in governing by CR or omnibus. | ||
| In this regard, we still have about a minute here. | ||
| In this regard, there was also discussion of Ukraine and all the border and all the invasion of the southern border. | ||
| Ukraine, New York just announced they had 4,000 illegal aliens show up last week. | ||
| It's getting worse in New York, not better. | ||
| Where does Jordan stand on Ukraine right now? | ||
| Well, Jordan and Scalise and Austin Scott, all these people who've run for Speaker, have had to answer pointed questions about that. | ||
| The real challenge, politically, is you've probably got about 20 members who don't want to vote for anyone who would send one more dollar to Ukraine, and you've probably got about 20 members who don't want to vote for anybody who wouldn't give Ukraine a blank check. | ||
| So we've got nuanced answers. | ||
| Jim Jordan has been voting with the America First agenda on Ukraine for a good majority of this. | ||
| I don't think it really matters, though, because if we abide by the Hastert rule, which Jim Jordan says he believes, binds him, you can't put that. | ||
| So the administration is going to try to lash border to Ukraine, to Israel. | ||
| We've got to be against that deal. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| A short commercial break. | ||
| Congressman Gates is going to stay for one more segment. | ||
| A short break. | ||
| We'll be back in The Worm in just a moment. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's your host, Stephen K. Banner. | |
| The lead story in the Sunday New York Times, three columns, right-hand side, was about how the IDF and Mossad and Israeli Defense Military Intelligence not just got caught unaware strategically, but also tactically, but also had the IDF, there weren't troops up there for eight or ten hours. | ||
| I mean, it is, in fact, they had a line in their very lead that said, You know, could this have happened just from incompetence, or was there infiltration into intelligence? | ||
| I mean, that's how bad the piece was. | ||
| Where do we stand right now? | ||
| What are your thoughts on what's happening over there, particularly... | ||
| Not so much what Biden's doing, but the whole region. | ||
| Because we can get sucked into a vortex here that you're going to be another 10 or 20 years. | ||
| You've been the number one voice. | ||
| You're not an isolationist, but you've been the number one voice of we've got to stop these forever wars. | ||
| And we have to put America's national security interests is paramount. | ||
| Yeah, I think the risk of a forever war here is pretty limited based on the military operations that are going on and the extent to which Israel is just laying siege to Gaza right now. | ||
| I think this is what got us to this position. | ||
| Iran is becoming increasingly isolated in the Middle East, because a lot of these Persian Gulf monarchies are run by guys my age, in their 40s, who were educated in London and New York and Los Angeles, and they want to turn westward, and particularly they want to get all their cash into Western real estate markets, Western financial markets, into other Western asset classes. | ||
| Those asset classes are being closed off to Iran as a consequence of these sanctions and then them being a player within Middle Eastern economies is diminishing as those assets are moving into Europe and moving into the United States. | ||
| So I believe Iran caused this attack in southern Israel in order to get Israel to lay siege to Gaza so that Iran would then have some twisted moral justification to launch strikes in Israel. | ||
| And then when Israel responds by launching strikes at Tehran, which I think is where this thing could be going, then you could see a lot of pressure from within the populace of these Gulf monarchies. | ||
| Because while the leaders in Bahrain and Saudi and Qatar want to turn westward, their citizens don't want to. | ||
| You hooked me at the beginning saying it's not going to be a forever war of the implication it could be. | ||
| It could be nasty but short. | ||
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unidentified
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Now all of a sudden you're telling me that we could be doing bombing runs in Tehran. | |
| I'm not saying we, I'm saying Israel. | ||
| I think that Israel would respond to any missile strikes from Tehran. | ||
| The last time I looked, brother, the naval aviators that are trained in your district are sitting on two carrier battle groups right now in the Eastern Med as a warning to Hezbollah or anybody else. | ||
| Right, and I actually think that's the right move, because right now you're in an asymmetric war, and I think that having those carrier groups in the Eastern Med is the greatest deterrence for Lebanon or Syria or Iran or Iraq entering this war. | ||
| If you strike, we'll be there. | ||
| The deterrence is actually that we will give combat air support to Israel if it has a strike. | ||
| Not necessarily. | ||
| Not necessarily. | ||
| The destroyers that are out there right alongside those carrier groups can launch cruise missiles. | ||
| So it's not... Don't just read a carrier group as U.S. | ||
| participation in air operations. | ||
| It can also mean... I was one of those destroyers back the first time we took on Tehran in 79 in the North Arabian Sea in the Persian Gulf. | ||
| That did not end well. | ||
| Well no, the whole point is to deter any type of state-on-state conflict. | ||
| Do you believe that the, and this is why I'm so opposed to even special forces going for hostage rescue, as soon as any direct American involvement militarily in support of Israel, In the region, the whole place gets lit up from Egypt all the way to our allies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that all of a sudden the intrusion, you bring Turkey in, you've obviously got Persia in, but then you've got Egypt and everybody has to. | ||
| It's 67 all over again. | ||
| The Arabs, the Turks, and the Persians all have to unite to drive the infidel out. | ||
| Well, I don't believe that's the case because I think that presupposes this belief in a separation between the United States and Israel that doesn't exist now. | ||
| When it's U.S. | ||
| equipment and materiel and U.S. | ||
| planning, I mean, you go to these bases in Israel, there's U.S. | ||
| forces all over that are woven into the IDF Tactically and operationally. | ||
| I've been to those bases, I've seen it. | ||
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So I think if Israel is engaging in those... Hang on now, we're getting out of brass tacks. | |
| Let me ask you, do we even need, walk through the mechanics, do we even need a supplemental to the budget for Israel? | ||
| Don't we have automatic increases that we have nothing to do with? | ||
| Great question. | ||
| I see no evidence currently that we need to pass a supplemental for Israel because the billions of dollars that we've invested in Israel has given Israel such a qualitative military edge that is central to US foreign policy. Israel can exercise their will in Gaza in the Golan Heights in southern Syria. They can do that now without us. | ||
| When you say exercise their will, this is a nation that could not defend their borders. | ||
| First off, this has been two years in the planning, at max, and maybe a year. | ||
| Training, exercising, recruiting, all that, which they didn't see. | ||
| Not just that. | ||
| And synchronizing. | ||
| Synchronizing. | ||
| By the way, air, sea, land over a huge geographic area. | ||
| But even when the assault started, It was six or eight hours before the IDF even responded. | ||
| And let's be blunt, the IDF's response was, have you seen the IDF? | ||
| It's not, this is not, I think people are living in a fantasy land. | ||
| This is not 67. | ||
| Israel used to be the Jewish Spartans, 67 and even the 73. | ||
| Is that what, is that, this looks awfully like a woke military that you've been fighting here. | ||
| Are you absolutely convinced that this IDF, the reality of it, can actually take on the enemies that they're trying to take on right now. | ||
| Yeah, and I base that principally on their air superiority, advanced munitions, and far superior special operators. | ||
| Far superior. | ||
| And I watch this area of the world pretty closely. | ||
| It's one of the areas of the world I've been working for seven years. | ||
| And I believe that if Israel wants to lay siege to Gaza, that they will be able to do that. | ||
| And it will come at a tremendous Well, I think we need to be putting more pressure on Egypt. | ||
| I think there's a deal to be done here. | ||
| You know what Egypt wants more than anything? | ||
| MQ-9 Predator drones on cash flow financing to be able to do anti-terrorism stuff in the Sinai. | ||
| And we have not been willing to give that to them yet, in part because the Egyptian government engages in some extrajudicial killings of the Muslim Brotherhood. | ||
| So if we cut that deal with Egypt... Is that a bad thing? | ||
| Well, I mean, you know, there are some who view that differently, I'll say. | ||
| But if we did the MQ-9 deal, and we did it on cash flow financing... But those drones are to get the Muslim Brotherhood that actually have the bases out in the Sinai. | ||
| Well, sure, under the best possible interpretation of that scenario, that's what they'd be used for. | ||
| But I also think that that could get Egypt in a better position regarding the Rafah passage, regarding Refugee camps, humanitarian assistance. | ||
| Because I'm not for any of these Gaza refugees coming to the United States. | ||
| You're with the Santas on that. | ||
|
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100%. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| Not one refugee. | ||
| There is no reason for the United States to be taking refugees from Gaza. | ||
| You're a practical man. | ||
| Are we going to underwrite the... It's too many people have to go somewhere. | ||
| They can't clearly stay in Gaza, because it's going to be taken apart brick by brick, and particularly the underground tunnels, and not just tunnels, cities underground. | ||
| Do they go to refugee camps in the Sinai? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I think that is where... And the American taxpayer is going to underwrite that? | ||
| No. | ||
| What? | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| You should have a coalition with the Saudis and the Qataris and the Emiratis footing the bill for a lot of this. | ||
| And by the way, that might help those folks work together a little bit better and not blockade one another. | ||
| Biden's coming out this morning saying this is the beginning of a two-state solution. | ||
| The Palestinians have to have a state. | ||
| Doesn't that mean, by definition, they're not going to leave Gaza? | ||
| That's insane, because who do you cut that two-state deal with? | ||
| There is not a leadership structure within the Palestinian Authority to be able to manage this. | ||
| You are going to have to have a regional, multinational coalition led by Arab countries, and the United States should not be dead money at the table. | ||
| We are not the world's policemen. | ||
| We are not the world's piggy bank. | ||
| Okay, and I think that this is an Arab problem that needs to be resolved by Arabs, and frankly, I don't. | ||
| I think where you miss it is this notion that there's this desire of the Arab world to unite against Israel on this. | ||
| There is a lot more interest, I think, in preserving domestic politics for those monarchies. | ||
| I strongly believe To the core of my being, having worked on this, that that is all totally, completely superficial. | ||
| I think that's all. | ||
| You think that the Red to Dead Sea Water Project is superficial? | ||
| You think that the Qataris working with the Israelis on liquefied natural gas is superficial? | ||
| You think that they're working with the Saudis on capital markets is superficial? | ||
| I think the Bedouins, I think the Bedouins, I'll flip on you in a second. | ||
| I wouldn't, I don't trust any of those guys as far as I could tell. | ||
| Yeah, but they're not the Bedouins of yesteryear. | ||
| These are Ferrari Bedouins. | ||
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These are Bedouins who wear Gucci suits. | |
| No, just because they live in Belgravia, right? | ||
| Just because they bought up the west of London. | ||
| It's still, you watch, I believe it's totally superficial. | ||
| I think that these guys are trying to manage their domestic politics while at the same time not cutting off their future in the West. | ||
| Just walk the audience through. | ||
| You are an expert in this area. | ||
| What should we be looking for over the next couple of days? | ||
| What is Matt Gaetz going to be sitting there saying? | ||
| The number one thing is to keep this an asymmetric conflict and to not have this a multi-state conflict. | ||
| But how do you keep Hezbollah? | ||
| How do you keep... Deterrence. | ||
| I think the Biden administration made the right move moving those carrier groups into the Eastern Med. | ||
| I think the reason you have not seen Lebanon enter this war yet, the reason you haven't seen Syria enter this war yet, is precisely because you have those destroyers and those carriers out there, not to be bombing Arab countries, but to set deterrence. | ||
| And I think, right now, that's what I'm watching, because once this thing turns into some state-on-state action, then I do think the doomsday scenario, the dominoes falling around the Arab world, is considerably more likely. | ||
| If the deterrence doesn't work, What would be your recommended course of action? | ||
| Let's assume that, for this part, let's just say that Hezbollah comes in from the north. | ||
| Or is it enough back and forth of shooting that something happens in Hezbollah? | ||
| Well, hold on. | ||
| I think you have to create some distinction between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government. | ||
| I understand that Hezbollah is a political party there, they have a lot of authority there, but we have sent billions of dollars to the Lebanese army. | ||
| We're on every side of this trade. | ||
| We're on every side of this trade. | ||
| From Egypt, to Saudi Arabia, to Qatar, to Lebanon, to Turkey. | ||
| We're on every side. | ||
| And Persia, too. | ||
| We gave them $6 billion in Hamas. | ||
| You've mentioned Turkey, and I think that we've seen from Turkey that they behave very differently when they turn west than when they turn east. | ||
| So Turkey, that decides to be a part of this European crusade in Ukraine, very different than Is there any doubt in your mind the CCP, because they've got a long-term relation with Persia and the output deal, that somehow they're in back of this with Persia to say, let's suck the Americans into the Middle East. | ||
| I was in a briefing with Republican colleagues yesterday about that very question, the extent to which Iran's animating of Hamas is really buttressed by Iran's growing relationship with the CCP, with China. | ||
| And the case was made to me that while a lot of the world right now is looking at the relationship between Iran and Hamas, the relationship between Iran and China is actually more dispositive as to what's going on here. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Can we keep it one more? | ||
| I think I got a role. | ||
| How do people get to you? | ||
| At Matt Gaetz, at Rep Matt Gaetz. | ||
| My podcast is called Firebrand. | ||
| It's on fire. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Hang on. | ||
| People should call today. | ||
| Stay on top of this. | ||
| Yeah, we want all Republican representatives voting for Jim Jordan. | ||
| And the way you know this is going well is if there are no more delays. | ||
| The way you know this is turning south is if for whatever reason, whatever cause, this thing starts to creep back and back further. | ||
| More struggle sessions. | ||
| I've had enough of those. | ||
| Congressman Gates, thank you. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| Back, Derek Harvey. | ||
| We've got Natalie Winters and a special guest in the next hour. | ||
| Thanks, brother. | ||
|
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Appreciate it. | |
| Thank you. | ||
|
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Welcome back. | |
| Colonel Derek Harvey joins us now. | ||
| By the way, everybody get up to the ramparts. | ||
| We're ascendant right now. | ||
| I understand many of this audience may have reservations about Congressman Jordan, but you heard Matt Gaetz. | ||
| This is about as good as we're going to do, and we can make it great. | ||
| Here's what you did over the weekend that is extraordinary. | ||
| You started to break these, what I call the old bulls from the South on these committees. | ||
| And you were lighting them up all weekend. | ||
| The stuff we heard from the grassroots and the precinct strategy people and the local state parties is just incredible. | ||
| So people stepped up here. | ||
| And this is the way you unify the Republican Party, is have people start acting like America First, start acting like MAGA. | ||
| With the principles. | ||
| So a lot more work to do today. | ||
| Do not, you know, don't leave the ramparts. | ||
| We're a long way from victory, but at least, like in football, you want momentum. | ||
| And we have momentum right now. | ||
| 2-0-2-2-2-5-3-1-2-1. | ||
| Colonel Harvey, your assessment, you're my go-to guy for the region. | ||
| And Matt and I disagree on that, and that's fine. | ||
| Matt has spent a lot of time and is very informed. | ||
| On this, I'm just from having been there for the first time as a young lieutenant junior grade in 79, I look at the entire area with a jaundiced eye. | ||
| Colonel Harvey, can you give us an assessment of where we are? | ||
| Yeah, Steve, I, you know, I really appreciate Matt Gates being on ahead of time. | ||
| And, you know, the focus needs to be on American interests, our economic interests, our security interests and the like. | ||
| And I think those right now are tied to a successful effort by Israel to destroy and emasculate the Hamas in such a way that the world knows that it happened. | ||
| And it has to be clear to everyone in the region and internationally that the IDF was successful. | ||
| Let's keep in mind as we think about this that we've shifted into another gear here. | ||
| We've gone from the administration saying they stand strongly with Israel, to being focused on and talking about babies' heads being chopped off, to saying, oh, the poor Palestinians. | ||
| And we're barely over a week into this. | ||
| And this is because our administration does not understand the stakes at play here. | ||
| If we are not successful, if the IDF is not successful, then it will rebound against Our stature and our influence and our, it'll increase our problems, not just in the region, but internationally. | ||
| And there's a tie in, and I think you touched on it in the previous segment, to what China and Iran are doing. | ||
| Why would Hamas go through with this, knowing that it would be almost committing suicide? | ||
| They were probably told that it was, they're going to take one for the team, Steve. | ||
| And, you know, they've been operating an open air prison. | ||
| They don't care about human rights. | ||
| And they're willing to go down in flames because they've got these extremist agendas. | ||
| But if they're successful in undermining the U.S., and there's an outcome here that, you know, is not one that Israel needs to reestablish deterrence and to show that they actually won, then that will impact us. | ||
| And it will open the door for Iran, China, and take pressure off of Ukraine. | ||
| And then that will then be to the benefit of Hamas eventually, because a weakened U.S. | ||
| Has a CCP, has a CCP, Janet Yellen's telling us this morning, the Secretary of Treasury, who's having a very difficult time selling the bonds that finance this fiasco, because China's not buying them anymore. | ||
| And the Fed has got to start doing some quantitative tightening. | ||
| They can't keep doing the quantitative easing. | ||
| So the Fed, it's tough for them to buy them. | ||
| We're having a very difficult time selling the bonds. | ||
| That's why the rates are continuing to go up. | ||
| And if we're financially crippled, that the U.S. | ||
| government's having a tough time. | ||
| She comes out today and says we've got plenty of capacity, plenty of capacity to fund both the Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas war. | ||
| Has the CCP, and Derek I want to know if you can stay through the break, is the Chinese Communist Party working with Persia? | ||
| Have the Persians and the CCP laid a trap here for the United States and laid that trap in Gaza? | ||
| Well, in part, yes. | ||
| And I'm not sure if it was intentional from the Chinese perspective. | ||
| The Iranians were clearly coordinating with this and supporting it. | ||
| But I just have to believe that there's, you know, some strategic scenario driven wargaming that's been done to take a look at opportunity analysis through a conflict like this. | ||
| And it's not just, you know, the buying of U.S. | ||
| Treasuries. | ||
| It's in what denomination our oil purchase is made in, and they've been going after the use of the US dollar as the reserve for the world, and this is another part of that attack. | ||
| We can always provide more money by printing it, Steve, and that's what we'll wind up doing. | ||
| Colonel Harvey, just hang on for a second. | ||
| I want to finish this block. | ||
| By the way, everybody go to birchgold.com slash Bannon to get all of it about de-dollarization. | ||
| Gold is the hedge for 5,000 years. | ||
| Talk to Philip Patrick and the team. | ||
| Now more than ever, in times of turbulence, gold's a hedge. | ||
| birchgold.com slash Bannon. | ||
| We're going to end this hour. | ||
| With one of the great icons in American music, the hillbilly Shakespeare, Hank Williams Sr., I'm bound for the promised land. | ||
| We'll be back in the next hour. | ||
| Colonel Derek Harvey, and we're going to be joined by Alex Jones, all next hour. | ||
|
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I am bound for the promised land. | |
| Oh, who will come and go with me? | ||
| I am bound for the promised land. | ||
| you you For all those wide extended plains shine on eternal days. | ||
| There God the sun forever reigns and scatters night away. | ||
| I am bound for the promised land. | ||
| I am bound for the promised land. | ||
| Oh, who will come and go with me? | ||
| I am bound for the promised land. | ||
| No chillin' winds, nor poisonous breath Can reach that helpful shore. | ||
| Sickness and sorrow, pain and death are felt and feared no more. |
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