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June 5, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
47:54
WarRoom Battleground EP 547: Failure Of Congress; Lessons From The Battle Of Midway
Participants
Main voices
b
ben harnwell
06:03
j
jim fanell
07:31
m
mark paoletta
08:27
s
steve bannon
17:00
Appearances
b
bradley thayer
03:59
Clips
d
dave ramaswamy
00:13
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
This is what you're fighting for.
I mean, every day you're out there.
What they're doing is blowing people off.
If you continue to look the other way and shut up, then the oppressors, the authoritarians, get total control and total power.
Because this is just like in Arizona.
This is just like in Georgia.
It's another element that backs them into a corner and shows their lies and misrepresentations.
This is why this audience is going to have to get engaged.
As we've told you, this is the fight.
unidentified
All this nonsense, all this spin, they can't handle the truth.
War Room Battleground.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
It's Tuesday, 4 June, in the year of our Lord, 2024.
It is the 35th anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
It's the 4th anniversary of our foundation as a co-founder of the New Federal State of China.
It's the 82nd anniversary of the Battle of Midway, and we're just days before the 80th commemoration anniversary of the landings at Normandy.
So we've got a lot to go through today.
I want to start with some pretty big breaking news.
One, I want to go to India.
As you know, we cover President Modi there very closely.
I think one of the greatest nationalist leaders in the world today.
Dave Ramaswamy joins us.
He's been here riding shotgun with us for years to go through this.
Dave, unprecedented third term for President Modi, but correct me if I'm wrong.
And you know India a thousand times better than I do, but on the politics of it, as you've mentored me, he failed to get a majority, lost some seats, but the most important things, it would be the equivalent of Trump losing Oklahoma or Trump losing Missouri or, you know, South Dakota or Montana.
Some of these, and that's why I got to have you explain it to me, Modi won unprecedented third term.
But the party didn't get the seats they wanted, but the big shocker was where the losses came, sir?
unidentified
Yeah, Steve, thanks again for having me.
You know, Modi, as I've said many times before, Prime Minister Modi, he's a Michael Jordan of democracy.
And just to give you an idea how difficult a three-peat is, he's the only Prime Minister of India to win a third term since 1962.
1962. So it's been since 62 years since Nehru, who was a legendary first prime minister of
India. And the other commonality, like you mentioned, there's a lot of similarities between
India and America in terms of democracy and the heartland versus the urban area battle
that goes on. And you're right.
Modi's alliance did win a majority, so he's going to take office as the prime minister yet again.
But one thing which happened is, and you touched upon it, which is it would be in the core belt or core voting belt, like in the American heartland, Oklahoma, Kansas, instead of a clean sweep Modi, in his heartland of North India, lost a lot of seats across multiple states.
So that tells you something, that even though overall they like the party's message, the BJP, translating to the Indian People's Party, and their performance over the last 10 years, still a lot of voters, I guess, felt slighted.
And their issues weren't really addressed.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
But hang on, but how's that?
So nobody saw this coming.
I mean, that is, like you said, from Nehru, who was, you know, one of the founders of modern India and had worked with Gandhi for so long.
And is iconic.
This is the first three-peat you've had.
Modi is a charismatic figure.
I actually think, and I always point to lessons that Modi can teach President Trump even about a nationalist agenda.
That's how strong, I think Modi's the most nationalistic leader in the world, you know, as prime minister.
But how do you square that with, it would literally be like Trump No, Steve, that's a great analogy.
Let me zoom in on that.
And you nailed it.
It's not like losing the whole state, but you're absolutely right.
In 20, in this election, we lost House seats and Senate seats in basically the most Trump
strongholds. It just something doesn't make sense. What do you think happened?
unidentified
No, Steve, that's a great analogy. Let me zoom in on that.
And you nailed it. It's not like losing the whole state, but you're absolutely right. It
would be like Trump losing and the and the Republican Party losing congressional seats and
Senate seats.
And let me give you the reason why, which is, you know, Modi overall, like Trump, it's a secret sauce.
It's like the secret ingredient.
He's a secret ingredient in grandma's apple pie.
Nobody knows exactly what it is, but it sure works wonders.
dave ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼
But sometimes at the state level, and you see this with President Trump, The state party leaders had given Modi a list of candidates, and it was rejected.
unidentified
So, those were the grassroots candidates.
Who were overruled in favor of the party headquarters in Delhi.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
So that was their opinion.
There's a big lesson here.
There's a very big lesson here.
The grassroots are swept up in really Modi's nationalism.
We're rejected in the party apparatus.
The RINOs or Tories, let's say, put their own guys in.
I might want to add.
The greatest event that President Trump had before Wildwood, New Jersey, drew 100,000 was Howdy Modi.
I think it was in Houston.
It was unbelievable.
Houston or New Orleans.
It was unbelievable.
Houston.
I mean, the affection of the two leaders for each other, the commonality and purpose.
And then President Trump obviously went to India, I think even during the pandemic, just the incredible outpouring of love and affection Uh, from, uh, from the Indian people and particularly the nationalist in India who put their country.
One thing I love about Modi, you never doubt where he's coming from.
India is always first in the Indian citizens are always first on any deal he cuts.
And that's, I think is a, is a beacon and he's not an isolationist.
We're not isolationist.
And you can see in Modi.
So it was the grassroots slates that got rejected for the party apparatchiks and the voters sent a signal to Prime Minister Modi.
Hey, we love you, but we don't like some of the deal baggage that you have.
unidentified
Absolutely, Steve.
And you see this all the time and you nailed it.
It's kind of like the RNC headquarters versus the MAGA base.
And sometimes You see it online on Truth Social when President Trump endorses a candidate and the MAGA base is just shaking their head.
Like, who whispered in his ear?
That's analogous to something which went down here.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Unbelievable.
Dave, social media, where do people get to you for more commentary and analysis?
Your understanding of Indian politics is second to none, so where do people go?
unidentified
No, Steve, I'm not on social media.
I'm usually on your show.
I haven't done your show in a while, but hopefully later this year.
For both geopolitics and Indian affairs.
Yeah.
So for both geopolitics and Indian affairs, I appreciate your support.
And I always love being on your show and talking to your very enlightened and intelligent audience.
Geopolitics.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Indian politics, national security, and also you know Bent Maggard pretty well.
You're not too shabby here about domestic politics.
Dave Ramaswamy, anyway, congratulations.
President Modi, Prime Minister Modi gets the three-peat, and we're off to the races.
unidentified
There's a lesson there, President Trump.
Don't take your base for granted.
That's a message.
They're going to send a message, a strong message.
And Steve, the other message is...
Absolutely.
And Steve, the other message is, you know, your base, it's very easy to please them with policy issues.
You don't have to pander to enemies who will never vote for you.
That's the other message.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Big time.
Lessons learned from India.
The world's largest democracy.
And hey, the way they pull off that election takes a month, but at the end, you know, nobody's complaining.
It's all hand-counted.
It's amazing.
A big lesson there for the United States of America.
Thank you, sir.
unidentified
Appreciate it.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate you.
We've got some victories we're going to talk about, but we're going on offense at the same time.
Mark Payaletta, when I pull up my morning punch bowl, Jake Sherman and the team, and they've got the lead story is how the Democrats' assault on the Supreme Court was a flop.
How it failed to connect, and how they're rethinking their strategy right now because they're licking their wounds about this.
I gotta say, thank you Mark Paoletta, thank you War Room Posse, thank you everybody associated with this.
It ain't gonna stop, I understand that, and that's why we're going offense.
But man oh man, I did not think I'd see that headline off of Jake Sherman's inside baseball punchbowl that follows everything on Capitol Hill about what happened to Durbin and Schumer in this crowd.
Your thoughts, sir?
mark paoletta ▲ ● ▼
You know, Steve, it's been this unprecedented attack on the Supreme Court.
And I want to thank you and the posse, you having me on to talk about this and let people know how outrageous these attacks have been.
They're completely baseless.
All right.
There's no basis at all for recusals.
unidentified
Right.
mark paoletta ▲ ● ▼
They're trying to they don't control.
unidentified
Right.
mark paoletta ▲ ● ▼
The left doesn't control the Supreme Court anymore.
It used to for many, many years.
And they're enraged, so they want to take out justices.
They want to make them recuse.
They want to dirty them up with bogus ethics charges.
And it's not working.
Part of it is, the Supreme Court approval rating has gone down because of these attacks.
And so I'm glad it's not really, you know, they're licking their wounds.
And their view is this is not working.
But we need to defend the Supreme Court even more.
And, in my view, I think the American people also see that Sheldon Whitehouse, OK, Sheldon Whitehouse is the one leading this attack.
He's unethical.
I posted up today the fact that Tom Fitton, several months ago, had filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee to look at what Sheldon Whitehouse does on behalf of his wife and his wife's organization.
She makes millions of dollars in the environmental space And he has repeatedly introduced legislation, done things, you know, in his official capacity to help her group.
She's made millions.
And he—one group that she joined back in 22, 23, called Running Tides, it has to do with capturing carbon from the sea, right?
What did Sheldon Whitehouse introduce shortly after that?
Legislation to fund programs and projects to capture carbon from the sea.
So, you know, the Senate Ethics Committee, you know, Sheldon Whitehouse wants to talk about accountability and having entities being able to question the justices.
They should take a look in the mirror.
He should take a look in the mirror.
The Senate Ethics Committee should investigate Sheldon Whitehouse.
There's a complaint that was filed.
I think it was a 21-page letter from Tom Fitton in Judicial Watch, good friend, bringing the receipts.
I have been writing on White House and his work with helping his wife over the years.
This is what we need to do. We need to bring accountability to those senators, right, who
are throwing stones and attacking great Americans, like Justice Clarence Thomas, like Sam Alito.
That's what's going on here.
There needs to be more sunshine and more focus on the Senate and in what they're doing, their
lack of accountability.
I think the Senate Ethics Committee hasn't held anyone accountable for something since 2004, right?
It's a joke.
They talk about having an ethics committee.
They don't do anything.
They protect each other.
If you remember, what do we call him?
Senator Goldbars, right?
Menendez is walking around the Senate.
He's indicted by the Justice Department, right, as a foreign agent.
For a foreign government, you know, and they allow him to have classified briefings.
They allow him to vote on things.
And it's just outrageous, the hypocrisy and lack of accountability in the Senate.
You see the same thing in the House, right, with Democrat Henry Cuellar, another guy who's accepting, you know, allegedly accepting bribes and indicted by the Biden Justice Department and I think as a foreign agent.
C.R.A., where I'm a senior fellow, Center for Renewing America, headed by Russ Vo, we filed a complaint against Representative Jamie Raskin, who somehow forgot to disclose that his wife had a $1.5 million asset And he only disclosed it after she sold it.
So they want to look at the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is our most independent institution right now.
The Supreme Court is fine ethically, right?
They're actually subject to recusal laws, unlike the Congress.
The Congress is the only entity of our three branches that does not have a conflict of
interest law that applies to them.
They conveniently accepted themselves, exempted themselves from it.
They do have an ethics code that's pretty broad in terms of allowing him to do things on behalf of their own financial interests.
But I think that as Tom Fitton's letter lays out, Senator Whitehouse crosses that line in terms of helping his wife out.
So, yeah, you know, there are attacks on the Supreme Court.
You saw some of the polling today, Steve, that shows that The United States Congress's approval rating is at, I think, 18%.
Their disapproval rating is something like 68%.
rating. Their disapproval rating is something like 68 percent. Sixty-eight percent of the
American people think not well of the United States Congress. And yet here is Senator Whitehouse
and others, right, attacking the Supreme Court.
They have helped lower the Supreme Court's approval rating.
I think it's down in the 30s right now, maybe 35 or so. And their disapproval is up.
But it's nothing like the Congress.
The posse, the American people, need to get out there, defend the Supreme Court, defend Justice Thomas, defend Justice Alito.
These are good people, you know, great justices and great Americans.
And of course, the left is attacking their wives for what?
For flying flags, right?
The appeal to heaven flag in the Alito's case, right?
Attacking Ginny Thomas, right?
For being a political activist.
Just outrageous stuff.
But again, good news, but we need to keep the heat on.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, I want to just go back through that before I lose you, because this is so important.
And remember, The theory of the case, they're trying to contract the court now about the Trump decisions to expand the court later if they win.
They want to pack the court.
But let me go back through this.
So it's pretty official up on Capitol Hill.
The first wave of this attack, which they went all in, we've kind of beaten off.
Um, and that is, you know, uh, Jake Sherman and other insiders are saying, hey, it was a, and they're using harsh terms.
It was a flop.
It was a failure.
Uh, they're gonna, they're gonna shut down this Avenue attack.
They're going to think of something else.
Your point is that, hey, we beat off that attack because of Warren Posse and others.
CRA, you were out there.
We were force-multiplied, got that information out to people, right?
And people didn't back off.
And particularly what I think was great is Roberts and Alito didn't back off.
And particularly Alito's wife, who is, as you know, the top of my shortlist for VP right now, because I think she's amazing.
Yeah.
She's a great American.
She tough.
She tough as boot leather.
I want her.
I love her.
You're saying now, though, the time is to hold those.
If they're going to play that kind of thing, is that let's go back and have full transparency and let's start looking at conflicts of interest.
If they're talking about Ginny Thomas and they're talking about what Martha Ann Alito, you know, with the flags, let's go ahead and talk about real conflicts of interest and let's get on with it.
And that we gotta push it.
It'll be quite hard.
Is the Ethics Committee in the Senate, like the House, it doesn't matter who controls it, you can actually put forward, Senators can go through or people can go through and put forward what Tom Fitton's talking about, not just one side controls it and therefore there's never any investigations?
mark paoletta ▲ ● ▼
You know, it's still an inside club, right?
I think the Senate Ethics Committee is worse than the House Ethics Committee, but they're both pretty bad.
They don't take action against members.
I think I put up something, I think it's been, there were like 1,500 complaints that were filed and nothing's come of any of them.
Tom Jones from American Accountability Foundation, another good friend, he filed an ethics complaint against Jamie Raskin, Representative Raskin, over these same allegations about not disclosing his wife's assets, a million dollars.
You know, until after he sold it, and they never acted on it.
CRA came in and followed up with another complaint this year, a couple months ago.
I think what the American people need to do, what the PASA need to do, is make this more public, right?
These are, you know, this is inside swamp stuff in terms of the Ethics Committee.
Think about it.
I don't think the Ethics Committee has done anything on Senator Menendez.
Is that insane?
I mean, here's a guy who is a foreign, alleged to be a foreign agent.
walking around with gold bars.
And the Senate Ethics Committee is like, oh, you know, we'll just sit on our hands
and let that go on.
Same thing with Raskin.
So I think having more, right, I think what's happened, right,
the media, the left-wing media has gone after the Supreme Court something fierce, right?
Every day you're reading about these justices, all these smears.
And yet, all of these things that are going on in the Senate and the Congress, nobody's really paying attention to them because there's no media attention to them, right?
They go in, they're going to protect themselves.
They're not going to really do a heavy duty.
You know, Senator Whitehouse is talking about having to give statements, right?
Justices having to give statements.
Let's see Senator Whitehouse give a statement about whether he coordinated with his wife, whether he was helping his wife, whether he talked to her about her business concerns.
One other thing, I love Chief Justice Roberts slamming the door on Durbin and White House, trying to insert themselves into an ongoing case.
Make no mistake, when you seek to go talk to the Supreme Court, the justices, and the Chief Justice about an ongoing case and who should be recused, you are trying to mess with an ongoing case.
That is unethical, in my opinion.
Separate branch.
They have oversight.
They are not allowed, in my opinion, to do anything like that.
You know, a recusal matter, right, is an entirely judicial opinion, a decision.
And the Supreme Court, all nine justices issued the Code of Ethics, right, all of them, all nine of them, saying that recusals are left up to individual justices, not the court.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Mark, where did they get your book, where did they get your writings, where did they get you at CRA, and particularly your social media, because we're in this fight and now we're pivoting and going on offense.
mark paoletta ▲ ● ▼
Sure.
At Mark Paoletta on X. MarkPaoletta.com is my website.
My book that you have right there, Created Equal, Clarence Thomas' own words, is just published today in paperback.
It's a fantastic read on Justice Thomas.
I urge you to buy it.
You won't regret it.
Our greatest living American, our greatest justice.
And again, at CRA, Center for Renewing America is doing great work with Russ Vogt.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
No, Russell, amazing.
Across the board, and you particularly are the tip of the spear on this, the Supreme Court, the federal judiciary, vitally important.
Mark Paoletta is my mentor.
If we hadn't had Mike Davis, Mark Paoletta, and Don McGahn, you would not have this great court.
Trust me.
These guys thought it through, and it was just magnificent work, Mark.
You never get enough credit.
Thank you, sir.
mark paoletta ▲ ● ▼
Thanks, Steve.
Thanks for having me on.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It is the 35th commemoration of Tiananmen Square.
Dr. Thayer did an amazing job last night, which was really dawn in Beijing.
It is the 82nd commemoration or anniversary of Midway, which as a naval officer is one of the greatest victories in the history of the United States Navy or any Navy.
But I want to start, I got Dr. Thayer and Captain Fennell.
I got to start with this, and I got it late to Denver if you can't put it up.
It's an article, I think it's from the Telegraph, but it's about this, I believe the Singapore Defense Conference.
Captain Finnell, you've brought up many times that there's an admiral now really in charge of the PLA, which is pretty extraordinary, given it is still a land-based military.
But they did this as a signal that, hey, it'll be the Navy that will take Taiwan.
This brother threw... I mean, you've teed it up to this audience, but this brother threw down hard about, hey, anybody that gets any notions of that it's not a province of the Chinese Communist Party in mainland China, you will essentially be destroyed.
Can you give me your thoughts first about this kind of new throwdown in regards to the People's Liberation Army slash Navy in Taiwan, sir?
jim fanell ▲ ● ▼
Well, good evening, Stephen.
Thanks for having us on.
Yeah, Admiral Dong Joon is the new commander, the Minister of Defense for the PRC.
First time in the history of the PRC that they've had an admiral.
And he was down at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a three-day event, big defense discussions that happened.
Every year in Singapore, and this was his year, he's just taken the job, and he was down there, and as the title of the article you guys highlighted, he talked about that he would crush anyone, he talked specifically to Taiwan, we'll crush the separatists in Taiwan, but he also said, or anybody else who gets involved, which is a direct threat to the United States.
And this Admiral's not somebody that's just talking out of the side of his, you know, just, you know, blowing smoke.
I mean, this guy's got background in this.
Ten years ago, he was the East China Sea Fleet Commander, but he was then appointed to be the first commander of the Joint Operations Command Center
that is still in existence, still stood up today.
But it was the first command center that the PRC and the PLA stood up
to take Taiwan from a joint perspective, like we fight wars.
So for a decade, he had, he founded that, he was the first commander of it,
and he has been working on how to defeat and destroy the United States Navy, the U.S., to be able to take Taiwan.
And before he was the commander or the minister of defense, he was the commander of the PLA Navy.
And in 2022, in December, he held a big convocation with all of the senior admirals and senior officers And the focus of the meeting was to how to defeat the United States Navy in a great power war at sea.
And that was a conference that he had two years ago.
So he's been focused on joint warfare.
He's commanded their Navy, which is going to be the prime, one of the prime elements of their joint force, obviously the strategic rocket force and the air forces.
But he's been kind of that leader.
And so Xi Jinping picking him out of You know, all the army officers, all the rocket force officers, all the air force officers, and taking this admiral is a clear signal.
And then the fact that Dong Joon goes down to Singapore and says, hey, we're going to crush anybody that gets in the way, because Taiwan belongs to us.
Now, that Taiwan belongs to us isn't new, but the fact that they're talking about crushing us matches similar language that Xi Jinping gave this last year, where he said he would crush people.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
So, Dr. Thayer, correct me if I'm wrong at the Shanghai Strategic Dialogue.
Did not General Austin, the Secretary of Defense, get up there and say, we're not close to a war with China, we're not close to hostilities, we need to talk this out?
Has General Austin gotten the memo yet from the Chinese admiral who just threw down at the same conference, sir?
bradley thayer ▲ ● ▼
Steve, it's great to join you.
Thanks for having us on this evening.
In general, Austin is not—the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has not gotten the memo from Admiral Dong, and of course is still favoring engagement policies, which Dong was wise enough to throw that out, too.
Jim did an excellent job identifying those elements.
Admiral Dong also threatened the Philippines, a U.S.
ally.
critically and thereby threatened the United States directly.
And you have the American Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, at the same meeting, essentially
advocating engagement with the Chinese Communist Party.
So it's the realization, of course, and just another example of how the Biden administration
unidentified
is pushing.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
How does that play to our allies in the Indo-Pacific?
India, Australia, maybe Vietnam, South Korea?
I've got about 45 seconds.
How would that play to them, the kowtowing to the CCP?
bradley thayer ▲ ● ▼
It's the wrong message to send to our allies, absolutely.
It weakens our deterrence, it weakens our posture in the Indo-Pacific.
Our allies are looking to us for strength.
And you have the Biden administration conveying weakness, which emboldens Xi Jinping and encourages him to act expeditiously to conquer Taiwan.
So Admiral Dong's message is very important for the threats that he made, for the fact now that he also called out incrementalism, right?
He targeted William Lai's message uh... inaugural address and said uh... yeah i will not have
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
to have a mental hangout hang on second we'll get we're gonna get all that
were to get your commercial break
back in the war room in just a moment
unidentified
all this nonsense all this spin they can't handle the truth
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
war room battleground with stephen k bannon on on on on the thirty-fifth anniversary of uh... tenement
square the bloodshed in tenement square what do you mean he also took a punch at
incrementalism Thank you.
bradley thayer ▲ ● ▼
What he said, what Admiral Deng said, was that traditionally the red line had been if Taiwan declares independence, but what Deng is signaling in his address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore was that if Taiwan crosses essentially smaller measures, if the Taiwanese take smaller measures, not declaring their independence, but smaller measures towards de facto independence, China may move against them, the PRC may move against them.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what Taiwan does or these steps, the PRC is going to evade Taiwan, they're going to attack Taiwan.
And so Americans need to recognize that.
And Steve, also, as you noted, 35th anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
35 years ago, we could have ejected these guys from power, right?
We could have thrown the Chinese Communist Party out.
Now, 35 years later, what are we dealing with, right?
They're a militarily potent force who can credibly threaten not just Taiwan and U.S.
allies, but the U.S.
itself.
A lot has changed in 35 years and not in our favor.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
You're absolutely correct.
We had every opportunity to throw him out.
Let me turn to Captain Fennell.
It's also the 82nd commemoration anniversary of Midway, and so I want to connect these two.
Captain Fennell, you know I was a naval officer when you were still in short pants, but that's okay.
A surface warfare officer many years before you went to the Academy.
A lot of my colleagues, many of whom became, or some became admirals and a lot of captains and real war fighters, a lot of these folks say, hey look, the PLA situation's bad, we gotta stay on top of it.
But if you look to Midway, you see that These guys will never, they can't fight the ship, and they particularly can't fight in today's complex combined arms naval warfare, that they've just never been in this type of hostile action, and that changes everything.
And you need a Navy that has that lineage.
And that showed in the Imperial Navy, although with their victory over the Russians in 1905, they really didn't have, they really weren't terrific in the tactics, and particularly in the moment, those decisions you have to make, in that unforgiving minute that affect battles, and Midway's the example.
Talk to me about Midway, the implications, what it shows about the Imperial Japanese Navy, and is it analogous to today's People's Liberation Navy that may be overwhelming, may be huge like the Imperial Japanese Navy, but you have people that have never had what we call in the Navy, fight the ship.
jim fanell ▲ ● ▼
Right, Steve.
Well, first of all, I'm not a ring knocker, so we've got to clear that up.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Oh my gosh, now I really love you.
Now I really love you, brother.
We love the academy.
We love the Naval Academy.
jim fanell ▲ ● ▼
We do too.
But anyway, the lesson from Midway, there's a couple of lessons.
The one that immediately for me is, and in my background of intelligences, You know, the Battle of Midway, we almost lost it.
It wasn't because the Japanese were inferior warfighters or inferior in their Navy, as you're kind of suggesting.
I mean, they have some substantial differences between us that eventually caused them to lose, but they almost defeated us.
And it was only because of strategic intelligence and by a guy named Commander Joe Rochefort, Who's stationed out there in Oahu at Station Hypo, the radio intelligence unit that was basically broke from the leadership in Washington, D.C.
after 7 December when we were, you know, a surprise attack that killed thousands of people.
And he said, I'm not going to follow the guidance from Washington and listen and try to decode The Imperial Admiral's Code from the Imperial Japanese Navy.
I'm going to go listen to the operational codes.
And so from December 8th until the Battle of Midway, his team down in the basement on Pearl Harbor there, they worked night and day, 24-7, to break that code so they could understand where the Japanese Navy's striking force, the Kido Butai, was going.
And there was great disagreement inside the military, inside the Navy and the War Department.
And they all, you know, some people thought they were going to the Philippines.
Some people thought they were going to Alaska.
Some thought they may come back to Hawaii.
Some thought maybe the West Coast.
But it was the guys in Oahu that actually had the receipts, as they say today.
They had the data that showed that it was going to be a midway.
And it was because of their hard work and not following people in Washington who were more concerned about careerism, which is hard to believe in a war, but there was that.
And so that was the reason that we were able to make sure that we had our forces in position at Midway, our carriers.
And at the end of the battle, the three-day battle, you know, the Japanese lost four carriers and we lost just one, but it was so close.
And if we had not been pre-positioned, if we had not had the search patterns and we had some luck in what we were able to find from the Japanese fleet, we could have lost.
And so I think that's the first lesson.
The other lesson is that the Japanese, they went in with training of their aviators.
They were kind of knights, if you will.
They were Bushido.
They didn't have as many aviators as we did.
We had enlisted pilots that would fly.
We had Everybody on our team that was trained to a minimum standard to be able to fight and win, whereas the Japanese focused their aviation on just a handful, relatively, compared to the mass that the U.S.
was able to bring.
And so, in a way, the Japanese were very fortunate, or not fortunate, that they lost at Midway, because if they had won, there would have been nothing to stop them from coming to the West Coast.
And then even then, you know, They still had to fight a military on the U.S.
side that just had the masks.
And I think that's something that we don't think about today.
So, in terms of your specific question, what do the Japanese not have because they haven't had the experience?
How does that apply to the Chinese today?
I think the Chinese have masks today.
They're massing against us.
And so they're going to make up for what they don't have an experience with masks.
And I would submit they are practicing in joint warfare.
And so while they haven't had combat experience, neither has the U.S.
Navy in naval warfare since the Battle of Midway in some ways, when we've done some things.
But in relative terms, the U.S.
Pacific Fleet, the U.S.
Navy hasn't engaged in naval warfare with a peer competitor for a long, long time.
And so I think we make too much out of this comparison.
And we have to look at mass, we have to look at the numbers of people and numbers of ships, the numbers of missiles, and then we have to throw in, they have a deep, deep drive to take Taiwan.
This is a national obsession.
It's a nationalistic thing that they want to do.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Dr. Thayer, I want to tell everybody where to get the book.
You guys are also working on some other stuff that we'll be able to announce hopefully pretty shortly.
Real quick, on the 35th, anniversary of Tiananmen, where you have three quarters of the business establishment, the financial establishment, wants to have a hard re-engagement with the CCP.
What message would you have to Lao Baijing?
You know we've got a massive audience that gets through the VPN to the mainland and to Taiwan and other places.
What message would you have to those folks on the 35th anniversary of the bloodshed of Tiananmen Square?
bradley thayer ▲ ● ▼
The message is that we saw what the charity of the Chinese Communist Party, and that was identified, of course, 35 years ago, and it hasn't changed since that time.
So the message for the Chinese people is that people of goodwill who support you around the world, who are working assiduously in conjunction with friends and allies and people within, of course, the people of China themselves, to overthrow this illegitimate and, in essence, colonial
regime.
The Soviets put them in power. There's nothing Chinese about them. And that needs to be recognized.
They're absolutely illegitimate. And they are a tyrannical communist regime, as all
communist regimes are.
It's time to essentially close this chapter, this horrible chapter in Chinese history and open a new one, where China follows its own path, informed by Taiwan, but also the greatness of its civilization, the greatness of its history, to have a new form of government, which is freed from communist tyranny.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Amen, brother.
That's one of our most important things I think we do here at The Word of Us, support Lao Bai Jing in their overthrow of these murderous dictators.
Dr. Thayer, where do you go to get the book that you and Captain Fennell wrote?
All your writings, your joint, these great essays you do, op-eds over American Greatness, where do people go to get all of it?
bradley thayer ▲ ● ▼
And you wrote the foreword, Steve, and we're very grateful to you for that.
Amazon or wherever you buy books.
And then I met Bradley Thayer on Getter, Bradley Thayer at Truth and Brad Thayer at X. Thanks, Steve.
Thank you very much.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
Captain Finnell, just for our lead for 60 seconds, because I took it in your voice.
Are you concerned now that we may not be on top of the intel, the true intel, but the capabilities, capacities, and intentions of the CCP and PLA slash PLN in Taiwan?
Are you concerned at all about that in the intelligence thing?
Or you think we're as on top of it as folks were at Midway?
jim fanell ▲ ● ▼
I think our folks out in Hawaii and farther west in Japan and in the region are on it.
I always have questions and concerns about the folks in Washington because that's where things get politicized.
And as General Mattis said this week here up in Monterey, you know, our victory, our sustain as a nation, our sustainment as a nation isn't guaranteed.
We have to fight for it.
We have to work for it.
And China is coming for us, and they have built the mass, they have built the capability, and I still don't see people in Washington waking up and saying that this is seriously important.
And when they don't say that, that has ripple-on effects to our readiness and our capabilities.
And we're seeing it reflected in our ships and our submarines and whatnot.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Amen, brother.
I want everybody to get this book.
We'll push it out.
Thank you, guys.
35th commemoration of Tiananmen Square.
What have we learned?
Ben Harnwell this weekend.
Of course, I had Peter McElvenny on today about Nigel's amazing rally.
It was almost, particularly for UK politics, it was as Trumpian as you could get on the size and scale of enthusiasm.
But this weekend starts the European parliamentary elections.
We saw that Modi Came up short on his, not him, himself, but his people.
And it turns out from Dave Ramaswamy, he tells us because they had grassroots people that wanted to run and the establishmentist party said, no, no, no, no, no.
We want establishment people.
What lessons are we taking?
Walk us through, give us a tour of the horizon on what we're going to see this weekend with the European parliamentary elections, particularly the rise of the populist sovereignty nationalist right.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Well, with regards to Modi's victory, I couldn't help but note having won a third victory.
And obviously, as a populist nationalist himself, one of the original ones, I think, along with
Viktor Orban in Hungary, the world's mainstream media opinion reported this victory.
That's not bad going, is it, no?
Three consecutive victories.
Say, well, this time he hasn't got the landslide victory that he was hoping for, which I think
is somewhat missing the point.
The point is, is that if you run a government successfully and competently along populist
nationalist lines you will be returned to office.
Victor Orbán himself, as a comparison, has now clocked up four landslide victories on exactly the same thing.
That, I think, really ought to be the message.
And of course, that pivots, Steve, right away into the European elections, which you're talking about, which I think start on the 6th of June and run on to the 9th, because, of course, different member states will have elections on different days.
Look, I'm looking at this.
You can see right now here in Italy, for example, in the UK, it's they're panicking.
And you know that they're panicking, the mainstream centre-right governments, because with days to go, they're now talking like an opposition, right?
They're not standing on their records.
They're saying, if we win, we're going to do something about immigration, like as if they haven't been in power for years, right?
Will it be successful?
I don't think so.
I'm going to have great fun breaking down the results when they come through and analysing them.
Really, however, I have to say to some extent, even though we're just now under the shadow of this election, Steve, I have to say that What the press call the far-right, the alt-right, the non-establishment right.
It does need to get its act together to some degree.
They've made a few mistakes, their own goals, a few mistakes that they should not have done.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Tell us about the unforced errors.
What unforced errors do you see?
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Well, look, you know, I've got to come back and hit this thing about Maximilian Krah in the AFD.
We did cover this very, very briefly.
I think we wanted to come back to it as well.
This is the guy who said that basically the SS in the Second World War was basically comprised of farmers,
like I think he said like 90,000 farmers that had been dragged in across the country.
And you can't treat every single SS officer as a criminal.
He said, I want to know what each and every individual SS officer did before saying that they were a criminal.
Now, of course, to say that, now I'm not going to get even into the merits
of his argument, but to say this a couple of weeks before the European elections is foolish, Steve.
It's foolish because you know the consequences that the mainstream media are going to do.
And they're going to smoke out.
Some politicians who've been pitching themselves as non-establishment right and who are then going to desperately pivot to the center, which I think to some degree is what Marine Le Pen has done.
Having said all of this, Steve, there were some local elections in Germany just the weekend
before last, where in Thuringia, where the AFD, which everyone was expecting it to collapse,
actually pulled something like 27 percent out of the hat.
And the CDU, I think, was like a percent ahead of them.
The CDU vote had fallen.
unidentified
The AFDs had risen.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
So it's votes, it's still one in four, right?
Its vote has still held up, even though Marine Le Pen agitating and successfully agitating to have the AFD kicked out of the independence and democracy grouping in the European Parliament has been a sort of, it has discredited them, let's put it like that.
The wider result we're going to see after the elections, most independent commentators seem to be suggesting that The Kingmaker, in terms of the power groupings and the horse tradings that will emerge after the elections, because of course, until then, no one really knows what the arithmetic is going to be.
And it is all over again.
The horse trading is all a game of arithmetic.
The Kingmaker is going to be Georgia Maloney.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
That's presumed, given the various ideological The press this morning is saying it's going to be a partnership between Le Pen and Meloni is going to set the far right and the right in a power position to actually rule in Brussels.
Do you buy that?
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Steve, I have to come back to what I said.
Georgia Maloney's decision, it's not Marine Le Pen's decision.
I would definitely throw Viktor Orban into this mix, whose current delegation in the European Parliament isn't even aligned with any political grouping since he was kicked out of the Centre for Christian Democratic Grouping, the European People's Party, which is the largest group.
It's none of their decisions.
I'll tell you whose decision it is.
It's going to be the European peoples of the 27 member states.
It's going to be their decision as to who's going to be power breaker, who's a kingmaker, who's going to go up, who's going to go down.
It's individual voters.
What's going to happen after that is, Steve, they are all vying.
They are all sort of Putting out feelers, rubbing up against one another, trying to strengthen their alliances so that when the horse trading does take place afterwards.
I have to say this, which I wouldn't have necessarily said a month ago.
I think Ursula von der Leyen could be in difficulty now as she seeks a second mandate as president of the European Commission.
But again, let's see how the votes.
It will be huge, Steve.
It will be huge, but it will be very much deserved.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, we'll drill down on these individual causes.
It's all about the muscle people bring.
Ben, where do they get to your social media and the tremendous engagement you get on Getter?
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Thanks, Steve.
My social media platform of choice is Getter, as you just correctly said.
And folks, if you want to tap in my surname, Hanwell, into the search box, either in the app or on getter.com, you'll find my posts waiting for your perusal.
Thanks, Steve.
Thanks so much.
God bless.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
I'm always honored to repost those because it's so great.
And you get such... I'm jealous of your engagement, but hey, what can I do?
I can only support you.
Thanks, Steve.
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