Feb. 22, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
59:49
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
|
unidentified
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Pray for our enemies. | |
| Because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| You're not going to free shot all these networks lying about the people. | ||
|
unidentified
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The people have had a belly full of it. | |
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
|
unidentified
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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
|
War Room, here's your host, Stephen K. Babb. | |
| Welcome to War Room. | ||
| It is February 21st in the year of our Lord 2024. | ||
| I am here at CPAC in National Harbor, Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C., here with our own host of Law & Border, Ben Burquam. | ||
| Ben, it's great to be at CPAC this year. | ||
| Yes, it's awesome. | ||
| And by the way, Steve just kicked off an amazing four and a half hour long event. | ||
| Action, action, action. | ||
| He's going to be bringing it to you live the entire time here. | ||
| So stay tuned for that. | ||
| We've got some incredible speakers. | ||
| Laura Trump's going to be coming up here on an international summit in just a minute. | ||
| I'm wearing multiple hats. | ||
| So for those of you that don't follow me, and shout out to the War Room Posse and everybody who's already out here. | ||
| We're in an awesome place this year. | ||
| We've got a guy with a cat on his shoulder walking through. | ||
| You see everything at CPAC. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| But this is... So those of you that don't know, when I travel, I MAGA travel. | ||
| I ULTRA MAGA. | ||
| I ULTRA EXTREME MAGA travel. | ||
| So that, you know, when we're going through these airports, I want the left to know where I'm coming from. | ||
| We got the cat in the background! | ||
| We actually got the cat in the background! | ||
|
unidentified
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It's on the fly! | |
| Yeah, so why don't you turn in? | ||
|
unidentified
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The cat's name is Jixie, and she's going to SeaCat. | |
| Okay, she's going to SeaCat. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
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I think you might have just started a new opera, a new event. | |
| I love that. | ||
| But I also, just so you guys know, I rock many hats. | ||
| So you mostly see me in the Real America's Voice hat. | ||
| This is it. | ||
| But I'm going to be heading to Panama. | ||
| Actually, Oscar's down there right now, to the Darien Gap next week. | ||
| And I want to give a huge shout out to Patriot Mobile, PatriotMobile.com, promo code RAV, who's sponsoring that trip. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| War Room's gonna be incredible. | ||
| CPAC's gonna be incredible. | ||
| We are pumped. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, well tell us, Ben, about the event. | |
| The Force Multiplier Academy that you were at all day today. | ||
| Steve Bannon hosted it at War Room. | ||
| What did you learn today? | ||
| You know, it's really about what you can do to have an impact, to be a force multiplier, Steve calls it, in your community. | ||
| So wherever that might be, whether that's on elections, whether that's in social media, whether that's on the media side of things. | ||
| So a lot coming out, a lot. | ||
| We had some incredible guests out there, you know, Frank Gaffney from Real America's Voice News talking about the CCP, China, and the existential threats to our country. | ||
| But mainly it's about what you guys can do. | ||
| So that's, you know, using the app, the War Room app, to contact your representatives. | ||
| It's impacting people through social media. | ||
| It's, you know, through writing books and getting, having an influence. | ||
| Not just sitting there and arguing on Twitter or arguing on Telegram or, you know, it's actually having an impact in your community. | ||
|
unidentified
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What you can actually do to make a difference. | |
| Instead of just, a lot of people feel like, what can they do, right? | ||
| They're so upset, they're so frustrated, and they're like, what can I do? | ||
| So it's kind of like a step-by-step, what you can do in your community, in your local area, to make a difference. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| And that's the whole point, because people come to this, especially this year. | ||
| You hear this, it's become kind of a platitude, but we say this is the most important election of our lifetime. | ||
| You hear that? | ||
| Seriously, this year it's not an exaggeration because we're at a divergent place in American history and it was never clearer than it is right now when you have people on the left that want to destroy this country and all you have to do is look at what they're doing on the border. | ||
| You have Hamas marching in the streets of America alongside of Antifa and BLM, and these are the people that are dictating to the people that are running our government right now policy. | ||
| That's one trajectory that we could continue down. | ||
| Or you have the other one, back to America first, resetting American values, getting America back to the country that it was founded on. | ||
| Those are the stakes. | ||
| It's really the destruction and death of America, or the rebuilding of life and light of America. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, and like it says in the Bible, what is good is called evil, and what is evil is called good. | |
| Today we're really living in those times where they're just distorting everything. | ||
| Like you said, you have Antifa, you have Hamas, and they're looking at them in support, and you're standing in support of them, and they're clearly evil. | ||
| No, go ahead. | ||
| Another point to that, and I want to give a shout out to Ken Paxson, Attorney General from Texas today. | ||
| We know the ones that are evil, that you know are evil, but it's the ones that pretend to be good that are the worst to me. | ||
| He actually announced that they're going to be going after the NGOs, speaking of issues that matter. | ||
| The impact on our southern border, the destruction of American sovereignty through our borders. | ||
| Ken Paxton and Texas are going to be going directly after the NGOs that are aiding and abetting the invasion of our country. | ||
| So that's one of those things. | ||
| You want to know what you can do to have an impact? | ||
| Go after these organizations. | ||
| Go after your legislature to defund these organizations. | ||
| And ultimately, we need to end up prosecuting them as well. | ||
|
unidentified
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Because you're down on the border and you see a lot of those NGOs and you see how they're actually breaking the law right in front of you, correct? | |
| Yeah, with our dollars, with our tax dollars. | ||
| So we're paying for it and we are destroying our country with our own money by these organizations. | ||
| And it goes across the board. | ||
| That was one of the things in the summit today with Steve in the War Room was connecting the dots, whether that's AI and the impact that has on our lives or schools and transgenderism and your kids' education and our choice to homeschool our daughters. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| To the southern border, to election integrity, all of that. | ||
| Joe Allen, I think Joe Allen's hanging out over here. | ||
| We're going to have him on in just a minute. | ||
| But all of this has a direct impact and it's all organized by the same enemies of this nation. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And are you really seeing, I talked to a lot of people at that event today as well. | ||
| They came from all over the country. | ||
| They had to get babysitters. | ||
| They had to, you know, it's an inconvenience for a lot of people to come here, but they're coming. | ||
| And do you think you're going to see a full house, anticipated attendance? | ||
| And, you know, it's interesting. | ||
| Matt Schlapp was up there. | ||
| He had his pirate's hat on for the Matt Schlapp and Mercedes Schlapp, the creators of CPAC. | ||
| And these, you know, it's interesting is the fake news media, the propaganda media, really the enemy of the people, as President Trump calls them. | ||
| We could talk a whole subject about that, how they've they've been instrumental in the destruction of America. | ||
| They're already writing stories about the negative CPAC and all of the bad that's going to happen. | ||
| And you see the people here and it's like, man, the people are hopeful. | ||
| The people want to see America stave. | ||
| It's the exact opposite. | ||
| So whatever is reported in the mainstream media, you should basically just take that and say, it's the opposite. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I mean, there is more, they had to have more chairs brought in today for Steve's event. | ||
| That was incredible. | ||
| It went longer than was anticipated. | ||
| It was a full house. | ||
| And this is the battle in America. | ||
| It's the establishment, the Nikki Haley's, the Ronna McDaniel's, all of these establishments that are stabbing, constantly stabbing in the back. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're not only having to deal... Speaking of Nikki Haley, she's not here. | |
| Of course not. | ||
| Yeah, she wouldn't, she'd get booed out of the building. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| She, it's not only that we have to deal with the enemies that are coming to our front. | ||
| It's not, you know, just Joe Biden and George Soros and all of these leftists, the fake news media, CNN, MSNBC, Morning Joe, Morning Mika, all these guys. | ||
| It's the ones that claim to be on our side, constantly stabbing us in the back. | ||
| We would crush the enemy. | ||
| We would crush, and we will crush the enemy. | ||
|
unidentified
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If we were united as the Republican Party. | |
| We will crush them, but it is. | ||
| It is those people. | ||
| It's the Nikki Haley's who is... Think about this. | ||
| She is betting on the left winning and taking down President Trump. | ||
| She's basically being paid off by Democrats to run in open primaries, betting that President Trump is going to be taken out by the deep state in this law fair that we have going against President Trump, thinking that somehow that will gain her victory on the Republican side. | ||
| She may as well be working for the enemy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, well absolutely. | |
| She's going to be dividing the vote there, and like you said, pulling from the Democrat vote. | ||
| And do you think that she's going to continue that, Ben, after South Carolina? | ||
| Because it's going to be very humiliating, especially in her home state. | ||
| I think the only, so there's only two options at this point. | ||
| She is, she's doing this because she's getting paid off. | ||
| and she's in it for some sort of financial benefit to herself, or she really believes that she's in a place that if they take President Trump out, if these fraudulent indictments against President Trump are successful, and you see what they're doing in New York, and somehow they're able to get President Trump off the ballot, that she will be in that position to take that spot. | ||
| And if that's her mindset, I don't see her stopping. | ||
| The problem is she automatically loses. | ||
| She's already doing the work of the Democrats because she'll never get my vote. | ||
| I will sit out of voting rather than voting for someone who bet against America, who bet for our enemies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So some of the speakers that are here this weekend, who are some of the ones that you're really looking forward to hearing from? | ||
| Well, by the way, I want to say one other thing about that event with Steve Bannon, the war room, the posse. | ||
| There's a reason why that room was full, 500 people were in that room, standing room only. | ||
| It's because MAGA is ascendant, and that's as the mainstream and as the establishment Are in their death throes and don't know what to do and are spending their time attacking MAGA. | ||
| MAGA is growing and that's why that room is full and that's why the folks that are coming to this are MAGA and that's what DC is so afraid of. | ||
| That's what DC, the establishment, Rick Grinnell just walking by, we got all kinds of amazing people that are gonna be here. | ||
| That's why they are so afraid because they know If we coalesce, if we come together as a people, especially in places like the inner city of Chicago, as they're losing the black vote and the Hispanic vote, there is nothing, they cannot create enough fraud to steal it again. | ||
| Speaking of that. | ||
| The person I'm really looking forward to, you know, Vivek, he's on right now, I believe, actually, or he was on just a little bit ago. | ||
|
unidentified
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He just spoke, and Laura Trump is going to be speaking soon in South Carolina. | |
| But Bukele is one from El Salvador. | ||
| I'm really looking forward to seeing. | ||
| You know, you talk about an example. | ||
| We were actually down in El Salvador, Oscar and I, this summer. | ||
| You're talking about an example for what Central America should be doing. | ||
| He's really the MAGA of Central America. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Talk about that, especially on the border with the cartels. | |
| He is very strong on the cartels. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| Look at El Salvador. | ||
| Just look up news stories of El Salvador prior to 2015 to now. | ||
| President Bukele took a country that was the most dangerous country in the world. | ||
| You know, we think of MS-13. | ||
| You talk about MS-13 in America. | ||
| That is, MS-13, it was created in America, but those are all El Salvadoran gangs. | ||
| So they were basically created in American prisons, went back down to El Salvador, took the country over. | ||
| MS-13 and Barrio 18 went down, took over the country of El Salvador, and basically had people living in fear for a decade. | ||
| President Bukele came in and within months went in and destroyed the entire network, has 60,000 of these low-life evil demons in prison, and has turned that country from a beacon of darkness and evil and death to a beacon of light and really the one shining example in Central America for the rest of Central America to emulate. | ||
| It is an incredible, incredible story. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, and how does that impact what he's doing there, impact our border? | |
| Well, hugely, because you're not getting El Salvadorans coming. | ||
| The only ones that you're getting from El Salvador now that are coming illegally are the MS-13 members that are trying to get away from El Salvador, that are fleeing there because he's actually holding them accountable. | ||
| Thankfully, he caught most of them, but their family members are starting to flee and come up here. | ||
|
unidentified
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And his tactics are very strong, right? | |
| Yes, but the people of El Salvador are staying in El Salvador because they see a future for their country. | ||
| So it is the example of what other countries should be doing that others aren't. | ||
| And so really, to me, it's Bukele in El Salvador. | ||
| You look at some of what's happening in Panama. | ||
| We're going to be heading back down there with Oscar at the end of this week. | ||
| I'll be joining Oscar down there. | ||
| And then Mille in Chile. | ||
| So there are a few examples of what's good. | ||
| And then, of course, I know we're going to throw to the stage here in a second, of course, President Trump on Saturday. | ||
| I think obviously that's the headline. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| But let's go over. | ||
| I believe the International Summit is about to begin, so we will tune in there. | ||
| Give us understanding in what you need us to do to serve your purpose and to help unify this incredible movement that has expanded broadly across the globe. | ||
| We ask you to bless us, to bless our families, to bless those who are traveling from far away, To be here to join us in order to protect our values and our freedom and our God-given rights. | ||
| We ask this God with you. | ||
| Amen. | ||
| I love always starting off with a prayer or reading Gordon Chang's Twitter feed, which is kind of like a constant prayer. | ||
| So very strong game, Gordon. | ||
| We're going to change things up a little bit. | ||
| I want to start off, Steve, you're used to this, but we're going to put you on the hot seat. | ||
| Could you do some table setting about maybe just a couple of minutes on why what we're doing in these countries and our collaboration with them are so important? | ||
| And the reason why it's important to start with Steve is, as Jay Aiba knows, Steve made that first trip out to CPAC Japan and caused quite a stir. | ||
| I've never been to a press conference quite like that, Steve Bannon going to Tokyo. | ||
| But Steve, can you kind of set the table here about what we're doing and why it's important? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think it's one thing for us to say it, but I brought this week's Economist, and it's the Economist saying it, right? | |
| The Economist, and remember, the Economist magazine is the tip sheet for the globalists, right? | ||
| They absolutely detest everything that populist nationalists do. | ||
| And of course here they call it national conservatism, but they talk about the rise of the national conservatism movement in Europe and other places throughout the world. | ||
| And I think CPAC and what you guys have done over the last couple years of going there and actually reaching out to people and having those people respond. | ||
| I mean, these CPACs have been unbelievable, whether it's been Brazil or Mexico, of course, Hungary, Japan. | ||
| And I think you see a commonality of what's happening. | ||
| We have these converging crises I think the biggest crises may be the This massive amount of debt that we have, the $300 trillion of debt that we have globally, and that no one government has a path to get out of here. | ||
| That is going to converge in a couple of years and lead to a massive financial crisis that will dwarf 2008 and will dwarf what happened in 1929. | ||
| And right now we don't have a political class that can deal with that. | ||
| In addition, you've got the beginning of a kinetic third world war on the Eurasian landmass. | ||
| That has many attributes of even the Second World War, but you've got a kinetic war underway right now. | ||
| And underlying all that is a mass invasion of Europe and a mass invasion of the United States. | ||
| Those three crises are all going to converge here in the next couple years. | ||
| And governments are going to fall because of that. | ||
| And that's why I think the populist movement, the nationalist movement, is going to be a solution to make sure that the people that are citizens of these countries, citizens of individual countries, are going to have a response to the populist nationalist movement or the The National Conservative Movement, whatever it's called in Europe today. | ||
| So I think this conference, when you say where globalism comes to die, I just don't think it's tongue-in-cheek. | ||
| I think it's absolutely dead serious. | ||
| And on top of that is obviously the Chinese Communist Party and how they're in back of a lot of this and they're spreading money all over. | ||
| So three converging crises that no individual government to date has come up with a solution for, that we're going to have to work together. | ||
| Because we're not isolationists. | ||
| We're the last thing from isolationists. | ||
| We believe in the Treaty of Westphalia and the Westphalian system. | ||
| We will make sure we bequeath that system and our constitutional republic and your great countries to generations to come if we fight now for the next two or three years. | ||
| So, this conference, this meeting, in and of itself, belies the two main charges, which is, first of all, we hate people that look different from us, or talk different from us, and that we're isolationists. | ||
| We're doing more diplomacy and good work than all these globalists ever thought about doing. | ||
| And I was thinking here, as I sit at this table, I'm with three survivors, three high-ranking Trump officials who made a big difference in the world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not so sure I survived. | |
| Okay, fair enough. | ||
| No comment. | ||
| But Rick Grinnell is a new member, and KT McFarlane over there, she's another one. | ||
| Rick Grinnell and Carla Sands, of course, another one. | ||
| So, like, we got more. | ||
| We got more out there. | ||
| Rick Grinnell, we're proud to have you on the board of CPAC. | ||
| You've played an important role in putting together our approach to foreign policy at this CPAC. | ||
| We have this interesting question about, you know, what is the Trump doctrine? | ||
| What is Trump's view of what should be happening in terms of American diplomacy? | ||
| And you've advised him on these questions, so maybe you can help table set why these two things coming together are important. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, thanks, Matt. | |
| Thanks, Mercedes, for organizing this conference. | ||
| It's amazing to be here yet again. | ||
| I'm struck by the fact that Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump are the two who consistently keep coming to CPAC, right? | ||
| We know that Ronald Reagan always came to CPAC, Donald Trump is always coming to CPAC, and Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump have One thing that really stands out, that they're both about peace through strength. | ||
| They're not wimps, but they want peace. | ||
| And peace is popular. | ||
| And look no further than the four years of the Trump administration, where we get to say, Vladimir Putin did not invade and start a war. | ||
| We didn't have war between Arabs and Israelis. | ||
| Peace Accords between the Arabs and the Israelis. | ||
| We had no war in Europe. | ||
| We warned Europe to pay your fair share. | ||
| We told Europe you shouldn't be having a Putin pipeline into Europe. | ||
| That Russian pipeline was sanctioned by the Trump administration, and that Russian pipeline had the sanctions dropped at the request of Chancellor Merkel to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden and the Democrats immediately voted to drop the sanctions on Nord Stream 2. | ||
| I think when you combine the attack on energy and the fact that you don't have individuals Who are willing to do tough diplomacy. | ||
| You know, the Liberal Party in America, the Democrats, mocked tough diplomats. | ||
| Every time we had a diplomat that was out front doing something tough, they said, you're being mean to our allies. | ||
| And I would argue That when you have a credible threat of military action, you don't need to use that threat. | ||
| You don't need to use the military action. | ||
| Because people believe, like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, that they mean what they say, and that they just may do something that's unpredictable. | ||
| And that's the recipe for peace. | ||
| So we get to go into November of 2024 and say the economy was better, We had more peace. | ||
| You're the party of war. | ||
| And I think, you know what, I've waited 25 years to be the party of peace and the other side be the party of war. | ||
| And let's let's remember, we should start every conversation and finish every conversation by saying Vladimir Putin wants Joe Biden to be reelected. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| And as we discussed in our board meeting, Joe Biden is using some Vladimir Putin tactics to keep his opponent off the stage as well, which is really repugnant. | ||
| We'll be talking about that later in the meeting. | ||
| So the intent is for this to be conversational. | ||
| Feel free, if you have a comment to interrupt, I can't wait to hear from Nigel and KT has some special comments about you, Nigel. | ||
| We appreciate you being here with us. | ||
| I would first of all thank you everybody for what you've said and particularly thank you everyone from all over the world who's attended. | ||
| advisor to President Reagan, understands peace through strength because she helped live it and develop it, and is a wonderful and outstanding and talented member of our board. So, KT, take it away. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would first of all thank you, everybody, for what you've said, and particularly thank you everyone from all over the world who's attended. I think it's important right now to acknowledge one person who's here, and that's Nigel Farage. | |
| Because every movement needs the spark. And 30 years ago, Nigel Farage, member of the Conservative Party of the Tory Party of Great Britain, With a potentially fantastic political career in front of him, walked away and founded his own party. | ||
| And he led the nationalist movement. | ||
| If it wasn't for Nigel Farage, Britain would still be right in the middle of the European Union. | ||
| He was the champion of Brexit. | ||
| And so I really think hats off to you, Nigel. | ||
| You started it all. | ||
| Now, for a little housekeeping. | ||
| Everyone here has a big title. | ||
| And some of you have many titles. | ||
| We're Americans. | ||
| We don't believe in titles. | ||
| We believe in first names. | ||
| So we are all going to call you, including former ministers of state and prime ministers, we're going to all call you by your first names. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| All good? | ||
| Number two, I'm a TV person. | ||
| I know that you can get your point across in a couple of minutes. | ||
| So I am going to interrupt nicely and try to get you in a conversational mode by asking questions. | ||
| So I'd like to start by asking Nigel, you founded the movement of nationalism in Great Britain. | ||
| Why? | ||
| How? | ||
| What roadblocks did you have as you did this? | ||
| The last time I sat at a desk behind a flag like this was the day Britain left the European Parliament and I waved my flag and they cut the microphone off, which said rather a lot, didn't it? | ||
| It's exciting for me to be here because I first came to CPAC in 2012 and I was the only foreign speaker on the stage. | ||
| The only one. | ||
| And as the years have gone by, we've seen more and more people coming together. | ||
| CPAC itself has been an extraordinary international movement. | ||
| I've been a couple of times to your Australian events. | ||
| And you're right. | ||
| You know, the globalist narrative that somehow we're isolationist, we don't want to work together. | ||
| Not only do we want to work together internationally, we need to work together internationally to combat the great threats we face in the world. | ||
| So I'm very excited to be back here. | ||
| I think it's terrific. | ||
| And yes, I've been doing this rather a long time. | ||
| I mean, the Tea Party, they're just a bunch of kids compared to me. | ||
| I've been doing this forever. | ||
| Why what? | ||
| Do you know, it just always seemed to me, Katie, that the nation-state was the essential building block that we believed in. | ||
| The nation-state was something that gave us a sense of identity. | ||
| The nation-state was something we were happy, well sometimes reluctant, but happy to pay our taxes to. | ||
| The nation-state was something that, in extremis, we would be prepared to put on military uniform and go out and defend. | ||
| That the nation state was the extension of our family, if you like. | ||
| There was a sense of togetherness about the nation state. | ||
| And provided it was democratic, and it's back to the point that Rick made about peace, you know, there is no example of two mature, functioning nation states going to war with each other. | ||
| Not one single example. | ||
| It's something I wish the universities taught. | ||
| So that was my fundamental belief. | ||
| Democratic nation-state accountability, direct accountability of those that made the laws and made the rules by which we lived. | ||
| So that was why I started. | ||
| And I kept going for all those years, well really just through sheer bloody-mindedness I think. | ||
| Total determination. | ||
| And yes, we got Brexit, which was an amazing achievement. | ||
| But I think the other threat we face, and Steve has talked about the massive debt problem, the problems potentially of war in the world, but we also face a huge internal problem. | ||
| The scenes that we've witnessed today in London, in Parliament Square, and indeed within the House of Commons, is a new phenomenon. | ||
| Religious sectarianism now beginning to dominate British politics. | ||
| Parliament Square as we speak is full of thousands of people waving Palestinian flags. | ||
| That somehow what is happening, this religious hatred that exists against Israel, against the Jewish people, and if we're frank about it, this has happened because successive Labour and Conservative governments have pursued Completely irresponsible immigration policies. | ||
| Not encouraged integration. | ||
| Not encouraged a sense of working together. | ||
| And now we have radical Islam. | ||
| Is becoming mainstream in British politics. | ||
| We will have, by the 2029 general election, we will have a radical Islamic party represented in Westminster. | ||
| And this is why borders, you can't be a proper country unless you control your borders. | ||
| And I'm very hopeful that the American people see sense. | ||
| and that put back a president in November that says we must defend our borders. | ||
| If we lose our borders, we lose a significant part of our culture. | ||
| So I'm delighted to be here, but I think we can talk about the external threats, but the internal threats of religious divide and sectarianism, they're happening to us first, but if you're not very careful, by the way, Hungary is very careful about this sort of thing, and well done you. | ||
| If we're not careful, all of us will face it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| OK, so you meant it. | ||
| Awesome. | ||
| And as with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, you did it first, we did it second. | ||
| But I want to now turn to Hungary, because as Nigel said, you guys have done it very differently. | ||
| Now, Miklos, let me start with you, and I'll get to the ambassador in a minute. | ||
| First of all, thank you very much for the invitation, Matt and Mercy. | ||
| It's a pleasure to be here again. | ||
| I mean Hungary, is it a nationalism thing? Is it an anti-woke thing? Is it an immigration? | ||
| First of all, thank you very much for the invitation, Matt and Mercy. It's a pleasure to be here again. To put it in a nutshell, the problem, the so-called problem with Hungary is that Hungary is, as I usually say, no country for woke men. | ||
| So Hungary stands firmly for the three values of God, homeland and family. | ||
| And it's not some kind of Nonsense, but very practical things. | ||
| We enshrined the importance of our Jewish-Christian heritage and tradition in our Constitution. | ||
| We do protect our borders. | ||
| We are trying to protect our state's sovereignty. | ||
| And we say that the best figure, the best number of illegal migrants is zero. | ||
| And actually in Hungary the number of illegal migrants within Hungary is zero. | ||
| And last but not least, we also go against the liberal, globalist, progressive mainstream by refusing this LGBTQA plus ideology. | ||
| And we do protect the family, because there is only the family. | ||
| And we do protect the children, the minors, against this nonsense gender sensitization. | ||
| And to tell the truth, although they are coming with this democracy and rule of law bullshit, sorry for using this word, in and from Brussels, their core problem is with this, that there is a country, there is a government, there is a rising force in the heart of Europe, in Central Europe, standing up firmly for those values. | ||
| And what we see nowadays, From the side of Brussels. | ||
| Brussels is our deep state. | ||
| It's like the federal government here in the US. | ||
| We are proud members of the European Union, we Hungarians. | ||
| But we are members of the European Union because it is in the interest of Hungary and not because it is the European Union. | ||
| But what Brussels, the deep state, does nowadays, first of all, politically, institutionally, let's say, is that they are outsourcing decision-making from the local level, from the member state level, to the federal level. | ||
| On a daily basis, they do invent new competences that should be in the hand of Brussels, not in the member states, contrary to the founding treaties of the European Union. | ||
| And secondly, they do use this federal institutional level to push through their work agenda. | ||
| So just one last sentence. | ||
| one last sentence. The EU is keeping back funds, very relevant money for Hungary, which should be money for EU funds for the Hungarians. | ||
| And the only reason, and this was admitted by the President of the European Commission, von der Leyen, a few weeks ago, that they do withhold that money. | ||
| Because of the Hungarian Act on the Protection of the Children, which directly goes against this LGBT sensitization. | ||
| So what my point is here, that the ultimate goal that we do have in this election year, for the EP elections and for the American elections, is to build a global coalition. | ||
| Can I say one thing? | ||
| One of the things I learned in going to your beautiful country is you talk about zero illegal migration or immigration, but yet very generous when it comes to the Ukrainians who have had to flee the war and stuff. | ||
| So they mischaracterize what that policy is. | ||
| You allow it when it's the right time to allow it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course, Hungary launched its largest humanitarian action program and aid for Ukrainian refugees and for Ukrainians in the state of Ukraine. | |
| And of course, they can accuse us of being pro-Putinist as they do accuse President Trump of being pro-Putinist, but our only goal is to reach ceasefire and peace negotiations. | ||
| Let me ask the Ambassador, let me just interrupt for a second. | ||
| I'd like to continue on with Hungary and the experiences you're having. | ||
| You know, you're getting a lot of bad press, right? | ||
| Viktor Orban, you've been with Viktor Orban from the very beginning and he is receiving all of the same kind of criticisms Donald Trump is. | ||
| In fact, people call him the Donald Trump of Europe. | ||
| So can you talk to us about the pushback you're getting from your European allies and what the pushback you're getting, right, probably from your own government in a lot of ways. | ||
| Your elite establishment. | ||
| Thank you very much for the opportunity, Matt, and for the invitation. | ||
| I'm in a difficult position because I should sum up 1,100 years of history, and it's not that easy why we are conservative. | ||
| Don't do it, don't do it. | ||
| As a matter of fact, we have to survive our own history, and for us, being conservative, as a matter of fact, is not a political ideology. | ||
| But it's a way of life, because we believe in our country, we believe in our identity, our culture. | ||
| The backbone of our identity is our language. | ||
| We speak a language that nobody understands, so we are very fortunate. | ||
| It's internationally not very competitive, but sometimes politically it's difficult to translate as well. | ||
| And also, we believe in family, because that's the most important, most basic unit for survival, I believe. | ||
| Of course, talking about immigration and the rule of law. | ||
| I mean, first of all, if something is illegal, this is not legal. | ||
| That's very easy. | ||
| And if you talk about law and the rule of law. | ||
| And the European Union. | ||
| Of course, we understand our British friends when they organized the referendum in 2016. | ||
| Our line was that the decision is yours, but we were very happy to work with you in the European Union. | ||
| So do you think Hungary potentially leaves the European Union? | ||
| No way, because we are not in a position to leave and we do not want to leave. | ||
| I mean, we were left out in the dark alone after our British friends left. | ||
| So we have to reform the European Union alone. | ||
| So we want to make it lucrative for the British to come back. | ||
| But as a matter of fact... Whoa, I'm not sure Nigel liked that idea. | ||
| You know, not at this stage, but the European Union was founded by Christian democratic politicians right after the Second World War. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| and Adenauer and all the others. They were sensible people and when our British friends left we left the last hope of sensibility. And now the European Union leadership is ruled by progressive liberals, vocists, Marxists, communists and thank you very much we survived Nazism and what the Holocaust meant to us was... | ||
| In communism I want to point out. | ||
| Yeah, you know, deepest tragedy. | ||
| We had to survive the communists as well. | ||
| And 30 years ago, we got back the chance to build back our country with dignity, the backbone. | ||
| And we are very respectful to our neighborhood. | ||
| And of course, Ukraine is just the last example. | ||
| Hungary opened up the borders. | ||
| We received more than 1.2 million refugees and we are a country of 10 million. | ||
| And Ukraine is even a neighbourhood. | ||
| We are promoting peace. | ||
| Promoting peace doesn't mean that we are pro-Putin, pro-Russian. | ||
| That's nonsense. | ||
| That's the liberal press that wants to make you believe. | ||
| It's not that. | ||
| Of course, for us this is not a question. | ||
| And we respect, of course, the decisions of other countries. | ||
| We don't question the legitimacy of this current administration here. | ||
| But I think we are an example that you can win elections democratically based on traditional conservative values and this is our message and we are alone and that's why we need friends. | ||
| We need friends in the European Union, we need friends in the United States of America and that's what we are doing. | ||
| My job as an ambassador is to build bridges but I always put up the question that do I really want to build a bridge to a land where I don't want to go to? | ||
| Of course, I mean, in a way we meet an existential threat to us and immediately when we articulate our position on illegal immigration, on genderism, what is happening in our schools, whatever, they immediately position it as if it was a democracy debate. | ||
| Because our liberal Colleagues, they don't tolerate other opinions. | ||
| There is a monopoly of thought. | ||
| I think that's an important point to make, that our liberal colleagues do not tolerate another opinion. | ||
| And for that, I want to turn to the former British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, who, when she became Prime Minister, there was a collective cheer in the conservative movement in the United States saying, wow, Margaret Thatcher is back, look at those policies she's got. | ||
| But you got a lot of blowback. | ||
| Well, that is absolutely true. | ||
| I mean, I ran for office in 2022 because Britain wasn't growing. | ||
| The state wasn't delivering. | ||
| We needed to do more. | ||
| I wanted to cut taxes. | ||
| Reduce the administrative state. | ||
| Take back control, as people talked about in the Brexit referendum. | ||
| But what I did face was a huge establishment backlash. | ||
| And a lot of it actually came from the state itself. | ||
| And I think what's happened is... I just want to clarify. | ||
| When you say the state itself, you mean the bureaucracy? | ||
| I mean the bureaucracy. | ||
| See, what has happened in Britain over the past 30 years is power that used to be in the hands of politicians has been moved to quangos and bureaucrats and lawyers. | ||
| So what you find is you find a democratically elected government actually unable to enact policies. | ||
| So, for example, on illegal immigration... Liz, I have to just... Where does the coin go? | ||
| A quango. | ||
| A quango is a quasi-non-governmental organisation. | ||
| Oh wow, that's a really good one. | ||
| We just found three letter words. | ||
| In America you call it the administrative state or the deep state. | ||
| But we have more than 500 of these quangos in Britain and they run everything. | ||
| So we've got the Environment Agency, we've got the Office of Budget Responsibility, we've got the Bank of England, we've got the Judicial Appointments Commission. | ||
| So Tony Blair changed 1,000 years of British history in 2005. | ||
| He got rid of the traditional role of the Lord Chancellor, who sat in the cabinet and was the head of the judiciary. | ||
| He instead put control of appointments in the hands of a quango. | ||
| So what you have is, rather than democratically elected politicians being accountable for decisions, Often those decisions are now in the hands of people who aren't elected. | ||
| And what I wanted to do as Prime Minister, I believe, would have improved things in Britain. | ||
| Our taxes are too high. | ||
| The government is too big. | ||
| We need to get a grip of our welfare bill. | ||
| All of those things we wanted to do, but there's a whole bunch of people, and I describe them as the economic establishment, who fundamentally don't want the status quo to change. | ||
| Because they're doing quite fine out of it, they don't really care about the prospects of the average person in Britain, and They didn't want things to change, and they didn't want their power taken away. | ||
| So I think that's the issue we now face as Conservatives, is it's not enough just to will Conservative policies and say, we want to control our borders, or we want to cut taxes, or we want to reform our welfare system. | ||
| Because we have a whole group of people now in Britain with a vested interest in the status quo, who actually have a lot of power. | ||
| And power has been taken away from democratically elected politicians and it now sits in the hands of bureaucrats. | ||
| And people don't want to admit that. | ||
| No minister wants to admit that they can't actually do things. | ||
| And I think that has become a big problem in Britain. | ||
| You know, I'm going to go totally off script and turn to Steve Bannon and Rick Grinnell. | ||
| In the Trump administration, President Trump came in to do exactly the same thing. | ||
| We call it draining the swamp. | ||
| And there were sand thrown in every gear of everything President Trump tried to do, whether it was on foreign policy issues, whether it was on economic, health care, it was everything. | ||
| So do you see, at the second Trump administration, is this going to get only worse, Steve? | ||
| I think the reason, well, it'll try to get worse in one regard, in that the administrative and deep state, after President Trump wins, starting on the afternoon of the 20th of January, every day will be like Stalingrad, right? | ||
| It'll be a war to the knife. | ||
| Here's what will be different. | ||
| Last time we won in this come-from-behind upset, and MAGA had not fully developed. | ||
| The personnel or even the policies, all the D policies, the second and third tier that you have to do. | ||
| Now you have Project 2025. | ||
| You have Heritage. | ||
| You have 100 groups. | ||
| We had Paul Dan speak today. | ||
| 100 groups have come together to actually get personnel and policies. | ||
| They're working every day. | ||
| Now, this is not the Trump transition, but it's to give us those 3,000. | ||
| 3,000 political appointees that controls our government. | ||
| An administration comes in, they have 4,000 appointees. | ||
| 1,000 have to be Senate-confirmed, so Mitch McConnell and the establishment can slow walk it like they did for President Trump. | ||
| But 3,000 can hit as landing teams and beachhead teams immediately. | ||
| Last time we didn't have that. | ||
| In fact, we went through the whole four years, I think, Ambassador Grinnell, and there were tons of billets we never filled because we didn't have the personnel. | ||
| Now, People are developing that. | ||
| They're developing the policy. | ||
| So, on the afternoon of the 20th, in the transition, we'll have beachhead teams and landing teams, and we'll be able to go get that second and third level where the work really gets done and where the administrative state actually makes a difference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, remember, in ours, we have 2.25, I think, federal employees. | |
| I think we have 2.5 million or 3 million in the military, but we have 17 million contractors. | ||
| And those contractors, so it's essentially, take the military out, it's 19 million, 18 and 19 million people that run an apparatus that spends $7 trillion a year. | ||
| $7 trillion. | ||
| And so, I think President Trump's going to be ready to go this time. | ||
| They've already said. | ||
| Remember, the Federal Reserve Treasury is working today to stop President Trump. | ||
| The law affairs to stop President Trump. | ||
| The national security apparatus to stop President Trump. | ||
| It's all there to stop President Trump. | ||
| So, it's going to take fortitude. | ||
| I mean, Ambassador Grinnell knows this. | ||
| You go into these massive bureaucracies like the State Department, Defense. | ||
| Every day is going to be a war to the knife. | ||
| And somebody's going to, there's no compromise here. | ||
| If we want to save our country, we have to take down the administrative state. | ||
| I mean, the Prime Minister has seen this up close and personal. | ||
| You have to take down the administrative state. | ||
| It is an out-of-control, fourth branch of government that our founders not only never envisioned, but would warn against if they came back, they'd be furious. | ||
| And so I think this fight, that internal fight, is going to be absolutely vicious, and we have to win it. | ||
| Liz, did you want to add to that? | ||
| Can I just add three very quick points? | ||
| Very quick points. | ||
|
unidentified
|
By the way, you probably all have heard the buzz that Rick Grinnell is probably likely to have an extremely important role in a Trump administration. | |
| I mean, we're not going to predict anything, but there are a lot of us who think that would be an extremely good idea. | ||
| All right now with that. | ||
| So very quickly I would say it'll be different this time because one we've learned collectively that we don't need the legacy media. | ||
| It was one of the reasons why they kicked Trump off Twitter was because he was successfully going to the people and going around the media and they didn't like it. | ||
| The second is the public is much more educated now about the swamp in D.C. | ||
| The public has to be our partner. | ||
| You can't sit back and watch what's happening and hope somebody else is going to do something. | ||
| You have to absolutely be at the forefront of holding your representatives to account. | ||
| And third, we've learned The hard way that we have to hire really brave people. | ||
| You have to hire people that believe in doing good work without having the D.C. | ||
| establishment praise them. | ||
| You cannot have anyone, I believe this, you guys are going to have to change your address, because I've told President Trump, anyone who has a Washington, D.C. | ||
| address on their resume, throw it in the garbage. | ||
| We do not need people from Washington, D.C. | ||
| who care about Washington, D.C., who care about their neighbors and their school kids and all of this swampiness. | ||
| We've got a lot of talent from outside of D.C. | ||
| What if they hate their neighbors? | ||
| Is that okay? | ||
| Move out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Move out. | |
| Liz, I'd like to turn to Liz and then I think we want to open it up to Gordon Chang. | ||
| I gave a speech a couple of weeks ago at our launch of popular conservatism and what I said was you have to be prepared to be unpopular at London dinner parties because it's true. | ||
| There is a group of people who want to maintain the status quo. | ||
| They work in big corporates. | ||
| They work in the civil service. | ||
| They live within the M25. | ||
| And unless you are prepared to be unpopular with those people, you will not succeed as a Conservative in actually changing things. | ||
| And just to make you all feel a bit sorry for us Brits, we get 100 political appointees. | ||
| And these political appointees aren't heads of departments. | ||
| They are special advisors that sit alongside. | ||
| So we have a major problem with our administrative bureaucracy not being responsible, responsive and democratically accountable. | ||
| And I think it's got a lot worse. | ||
| So certainly, even in the time that I've served in office, the level of leaking, the level of briefing has just increased a lot. | ||
| And now people are joining the civil service who are essentially activists. | ||
| You know, they might be trans activists, they might be environmental extremists, but they are now having a voice within the civil service in a way I don't think was true 30 or 40 years ago. | ||
| So we just have a wholly new problem. | ||
| And frankly, a hundred political appointees doesn't even touch the sides in terms of dealing with that. | ||
| So we think we have a problem with the unholy trinity, which is the media, the Democratic Party, and the administrative state, but you've got a bigger problem. | ||
| Okay, with that, I'm going to toss to my pal, Gordon Chang, China expert, fellow member of the board of CPAC, and very well versed on everything Asian and Pacific. | ||
| And let me just say, Carla, Ambassador Carla Sands, feel free to jump in because you've played this special role as a Trump ambassador. | ||
| You know, I might be able to root for you to get a new post in the new administration, but feel free to jump into this conversation as it moves forward. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, thank you, KT. | ||
| I want to start with you, Jay Aiba, CPAC Japan. | ||
| I want to start with you because you're a hero. | ||
| You're a hero because you hosted the first international CPAC in 2017. | ||
| in 2017. | ||
| APPLAUSE Got a question for you. | ||
| You know that the US ambassador to Japan is Rahm Emanuel. | ||
| Now, Rahm Emanuel, in his tenure in Tokyo, has been promoting Biden-woke social policies. | ||
| So the question is going to be, what has Rahm Emanuel been pushing on the Japanese people with regard to their children? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for the great introduction. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| So back in June of 2022, we had your former mayor of Chicago become the U.S. ambassador. | ||
| ambassador to Japan. | ||
| And he started off kind of quiet, but then when our former prime minister Abe was assassinated, he suddenly took a new tone and became a lot more active. | ||
| And he started off kind of quiet, but then when our former Prime Minister Abe was assassinated, he suddenly took a new tone and became a lot more active. | ||
| I don't know why the timing worked out like it did. | ||
| Speaking in Japanese | ||
| And his greatest achievement, and I mean this not seriously obviously, his greatest achievement was last summer pushing a law that forces LGBTQ ideology on the Japanese people. | ||
| That was his greatest achievement in Japan so far. | ||
| Sarcasm intended. | ||
| Okay, Rick Grinnell. | ||
| Let's say that you're the next Secretary of State. | ||
| Just for sake of discussion. | ||
| You heard Jay Iyeba talk about how Rahm Emanuel has been pushing LGBTQ+, whatever, policies on his country. | ||
| If you were Secretary of State, what would you be doing with regard to your ambassadors to Japan or anywhere else with regard to U.S. | ||
| social policies? | ||
| Well, first of all, I feel pretty passionate about protecting kids should not be a controversial issue. | ||
| So having a under 18, over 18 policy is what I believe in. | ||
| If you're under the age of 18, we should absolutely protect kids. | ||
| We don't let kids get tattoos. | ||
| We, in America, we tell them that they have to have an ID to go to an R-rated movie. There is a whole list of things that we don't allow kids to do. | ||
| We've selected the age of 18. | ||
| I think there's a huge debate on whether or not that's even old enough. But what I would say is protect the kids, and after the age of 18, live and let live. There's a whole bunch of things that I don't agree with. | ||
| That people do when they're adults, but I'm not going to tell them what to do. | ||
| I'm much more of a libertarian on that issue. | ||
| So what I know President Trump wants to do is always concentrate on job creation, the economy, and making people safe, whether through economics or through national security. | ||
| So having this like social issue agenda, to me, is Something that we shouldn't be pushing on other countries. | ||
| We can have the debate in our country and we can do that domestically, maybe through the states, have federal legislation if we need to. | ||
| But when it comes to telling another country what to do, On a social policy, I just don't think that that's right. | ||
| President Trump did launch a decriminalization of homosexuality campaign. | ||
| 69 countries around the world criminalize homosexuality. | ||
| Seven will put you to death for it. | ||
| And that was something that he stood for. | ||
| And I think we had incredible support from the religious community, left, right, and center for that law. | ||
| to push that idea. | ||
| I think when it comes to anything else, gay marriage or any of these issues, you should let the people of a country decide for themselves what works in Israel, doesn't work in the United States, doesn't work in Hungary, doesn't work in Poland, doesn't work in Japan. | ||
| So let people figure that out. | ||
| These are not absolute issues. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Please tell this as well, sorry, to David Pressman in Budapest. | |
| The Ambassador's job, Gordon, is to promote trade, fair trade, on a level playing field, not to tell them what to do socially. | ||
| We need to have our security cooperation and trade so that we have shared prosperity. | ||
| The rest of it is none of our business. | ||
| I certainly agree, and we heard Miklos talk about protecting children. | ||
| I mean, we should be, you know, we should not be forcing children in other countries to do things that we might think are right, but it's not our business, and I certainly agree with that. | ||
| While we're talking about social issues, let's go to CPAC Japan. | ||
| Andrew Cooper. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| I really like Japan, though. | ||
| Japan's a great country. | ||
| We should all be Japanese, right? | ||
| OK. | ||
| In October, the Australian people resoundingly rejected a constitutional amendment that had been pushed by the Albanese government. | ||
| This was called the Voice Referendum, because the idea was, in the name of promoting social equality, racial equality, The proponents of this wanted to create racial divisions that would be enshrined in the Constitution. | ||
| And the question is, you know, everyone thought that this was going to pass because it was not only the government, but the companies, the movie stars, all of the establishment lined up for it. | ||
| And yet it didn't pass. | ||
| And it didn't pass because of CPAC Australia. | ||
| So if you could tell us how you performed that miracle. | ||
| And how you could do it here. | ||
| Look, no it didn't pass and it was wonderful and when we first announced that we were going to oppose the voice, which was, the voice is essentially a change to the constitution that it gives special electoral benefits to people based on their race. | ||
| Which is our Indigenous Australians. | ||
| And I think one of the things that binds conservatives all over the world is the concept that we're all born equal under the law and we should be treated as such. | ||
| And so this was very much going against that, I guess that kind of principle. | ||
| And Australia over the decades has been a very conservative country. | ||
| We've elected conservative governments much more often than we've elected left-leaning governments, but over the last 10-12 years, the states have been dominated by left-leaning premiers, equivalent to your governors, and unfortunately our so-called right-leaning Prime Ministers should have been in the other party. | ||
| So it was essentially wall-to-wall Andrew, you have to help the Americans understand. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have our rhinos, you have your... Well, liberal means classical liberal. | |
| So what do you call them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We call them linos. | |
| As you well know, Matt. | ||
| So when we pushed in, there was 70% in favour. | ||
| It was very much a... There's not a person I don't know in Australia that doesn't want better outcomes for some of our Indigenous Australians. | ||
| About 20% of our Indigenous Australians live in outback communities and they have a tough time of it. | ||
| Now I look at that and I apply my value set to that problem and I think it's a welfare problem. | ||
| There's decades of welfare poured on these communities and they... | ||
| You know, to me, welfare is like a drug. | ||
| Once you're on it, it's very hard to get off it. | ||
| And these communities suffer because of that. | ||
| But the left see this as a very dividing issue. | ||
| They saw an electoral opportunity to wedge conservatives because the polls were saying that had strong support of 70% in favor. Every state premier, every council, pretty well every politician, every major corporate, they all pushed in on it and they were advertising and Qantas had these ads trying to convince | ||
| people that this is the best thing to do. | ||
| And what gives me hope, Gordon, for Australia, and I don't know if anyone ever noticed what happened to Australia when COVID came. | ||
| That was a very dark time, and not in keeping with the Australia that I know, but what gives me hope in recent, this past year, is that the Australian people had an opportunity to think about this issue, which fundamentally goes to what does equality mean, and they decided to vote it down. | ||
| And they voted it down 60% to 40%. | ||
| And it was fantastic. | ||
| It gives me so much great positivity for the future of the country, whereas two years ago, I was very, very negative. | ||
| Nigel Farage, he announced two years ago on the CPAC stage that Australia was the wokest country on earth. | ||
| Now, ordinarily, ordinarily, you know, if you know the relationship with Australia and England, if we're better at England at anything, we're pretty happy about that. | ||
| But that hurt. | ||
| That hurt, right? | ||
| So, I hope you take your words back one day, Nigel. | ||
| But Andrew, I heard that many Aboriginals voted against the referendum. | ||
| Basically, they were voting saying, I'm a person, I should be treated equally. | ||
| That seems to me to be a very powerful statement. |
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