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Aug. 17, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
01:11:34
BANNON SATURDAYS: Steve Bannon | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union
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steve bannon
57:28
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Thank you.
And thank you for coming to this night, having to work your way through it.
I think you've seen the supporters of free speech out there.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
What I want you to do tonight is see or listen to why this is so dangerous.
Because it is against the established order.
It's against the established way things are.
unidentified
And I think that's what frightens people.
I think it's what scares people.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
And so here tonight, ask me questions.
I'll take any question you've got.
Let's go back to the beginning.
Because remember, this populist movement and Donald Trump is not the cause of this.
unidentified
They're the product of this.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
September 18th, 2008, the Oval Office.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson, a guy who used to work for Goldman Sachs, walking to the Oval Office a couple of days after Lehman Brothers was put into bankruptcy in London.
They tell him, by 5 o'clock tonight we need $1 trillion in cash.
$1 trillion in cash or the American financial system is going to implode in 48 hours.
The world financial system will implode in 72 hours, and in two weeks we'll have global anarchy and chaos.
Let me repeat that.
Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson are not, they're not giving their hyperbole.
Very low-key, very professional people in finance.
One trillion dollars by the close of business.
Or the American financial system, the British financial system, the EU, the Bank of Tokyo, all of it will come down in four or five days.
They accomplished what Kaiser Wilhelm, and the Japanese military junta, and Mussolini, and Hitler, and Mao Zedong, and the Soviets, and Stalin, all of them, Osama Bin Laden, they accomplished What the Judeo-Christian West's greatest enemies could not.
How'd that happen?
It was the elites.
And people like you and me.
People that bought into the system.
And who's been held accountable?
Name me one banker, one CEO, one law firm, one accounting firm.
No equities been taken, no bonuses were actually really deferred.
How did we get out of this?
The most progressive president in the history of our country, Barack Obama.
Agreed to.
The balance sheet of the Federal Reserve that day was $880 billion.
The balance sheet on the day that Donald Trump raised his hand was $4.5 trillion.
Here's what we did.
We basically just flooded the zone with liquidity.
We bailed out the party of Davos.
And let me say it differently.
The party of Davos, the scientific, engineering, managerial, financial, cultural elite, with their political employees, the permanent political class, bailed themselves out.
It's not a free bailout.
I think today it's $41 trillion of debt to central governments.
It has a corollary in your life.
Remember, and these are all in the minutes.
It's in the minutes of congressional hearings, in minutes of the Federal Reserve, in the minutes of the Bank of England.
They said at the time, hey, this is going to cause interest rates to go to zero.
So the 2,500 or 3,000 years of the Judeo-Christian West, we taught the good householder to save, you get zero.
You're a sucker.
You have a savings account, you're a sucker.
The pension plans have the biggest gap in history getting worse.
Why?
You can't get returns on the pensions.
You can't do a public bond offering in the United States to fix a school or to build a water system.
Why?
There's not enough juice in the offering.
We've basically socialized the risk for the wealthy.
If you've owned intellectual property, real assets or stocks in the last 10, 15 or 20 years, since the collapse in 2008, you've had the greatest run in human history.
And yet in the United States, 50% of our population can't put together $400 of cash in an emergency.
62% of the jobs that were created before President Trump got there were jobs that living wage or below living wage and living wage means no extras, no holidays, nothing for the kids.
It means essentially a sense of basically subsistence.
It is the cause.
The elite in this world are the cause of the problem.
Not the populace.
And certainly not Donald Trump.
When I stepped into the campaign in mid-August, he was down, I don't know, 12, 14, 16 points.
You know, double digits down every battleground state.
I said, none of those numbers matter.
There's only two numbers matter.
Right track, wrong track.
The country still thought it was on the wrong track.
They admired President Obama.
They admired President Obama and his wife.
But they did not feel that he had brought the change the country needed.
More importantly, Pat Caddell had been doing research for 20 or 30 years and said, the American working class, the American middle class, for the first time in our history, 70% Felt the country was in decline and the elites were comfortable with this.
The elites were comfortable with the managed decline, not just of the United States, but the West.
I said, it's very simple.
We're just going to do a compare and contrast.
She is a guardian of a corrupt and incompetent elite.
And you're the tribune of the people, the agent of change.
And we're just going to hammer that every day.
And that's what took us to victory.
Remember, in the United States, since 2000, the deplorables were created.
How was the deplorables?
How is this working class, this angry working class, how was it created?
We had three extinction-level events.
Number one, the rise of China, the de-industrialization of our country, all the shipping of the jobs to East Asia, the high value-added manufacturing jobs.
If you read Hillbilly Elegies, the great sociological study of the Trump Deplorables by J.D.
Vance from Yale.
He says there's a direct correlation between the factories that went to China, the jobs that went with them, and the opioid crisis.
Tariffs.
This trade war is not about tariffs.
It's not about taxes.
It's not about tariffs on goods.
It's about human dignity and self-worth.
It's about bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
It's the reason Brexit and 2016 are inextricably linked.
And we can see when Brexit happened that that gave the grassroots and the little guy some sense of hope that you could defeat the system.
The second extension, you know, and by the way, we were told the whole time by the elites, the rise of China, and this is not about the Chinese people, this is about the Chinese Communist Party, that the rise of China was a second law of thermodynamics.
It was physics.
That you couldn't change, nothing you could change.
And they were just dead wrong.
Everything they said about that was absolutely dead wrong.
The second extinction-level event is the $7 trillion we spent on these wars in the Middle East.
Now, I'm a former naval officer.
My daughter is a West Point grad, fought with the 101st Airborne in Iraq.
You know, I'm as much a militarist as any right-winger.
But $7 trillion, and this is not Breitbart, this is not Bannon, this is the Watson Center at Brown University.
$7 trillion on two wars that we didn't win and didn't accomplish our objectives and we're still spending $62 billion a year in Afghanistan.
And the third is the financial crisis brought about by a financial elite that's never been held accountable.
I think of the 250 criminal referrals from all the studies and all the commissions.
The Obama Justice Department never moved on any of them.
That is what caused the populist revolt.
And look at what our solutions were.
Economic nationalism, American First national security policy, and the deconstruction of the administrative state.
You have right-wing populism, you have left-wing populism.
And the difference, and I wish our dear friends out here understood fascism.
Fascism is the worship of the state.
Fascism is that combination of state crony capitalism and big government.
It's exactly what we're trying to fight.
It's where the United States is going as an economic system.
More and more concentration by media companies, by pharmaceutical companies, by industrial companies, by tech companies, along with their partners in big government.
So Trump ran on some three basic stuff.
We're going to stop mass illegal immigration and limit legal immigration to get our sovereignty back and more important to protect our workers, to protect the Hispanic and African-American working class at the low end of the scale and the Hispanic and African-American that aspire into the tech industry along with others at the high scale.
We're still going to have immigration, but we're going to limit it.
Because economic nationalism doesn't care about your color, your ethnicity, your religion, your gender, your sexual preference.
What it cares about is that you're a citizen.
A citizen gets a better deal.
Remember the mantra on Wall Street that I learned at Harvard Business School.
The mantra that got us into this situation is the maximization of shareholder value.
That became a fetish.
There are no other stakeholders.
It's the maximization of shareholder value.
Economic nationalism is about the maximization of citizenship value.
And look at what Trump does at the beginning.
What does he do?
He engages, remember it's immigration and trade.
Trade and immigration are two sides of the same coin.
All bad trade deals is unfair competition of labor in lower cost countries against your labor.
And what does Trump do?
Immediately starts the NAFTA deal.
Why?
Because NAFTA is a centerpiece in this economic war with China.
You've got to bring back the supply chain to the industrial West.
That's why Korea is doing a deal.
That's why Japan is doing a deal.
And that's why the EU is doing a deal.
Because we're shifting the supply chain, high value added manufacturing jobs back to the West.
We're re-industrializing what was de-industrialized.
Remember, because of what the elites have done in the financial system,
with this over-leverage, and the increase in asset value, it's made the millennials, it's made Generation Z,
it's made you essentially Russian serfs.
You know, you're better fed, you're better clothed, you're in better shape, you have more access to information, but you don't own anything, and you're not going to own anything.
Why do you think it's so expensive in Silicon Valley, in New York, and in London?
That is the flooding of the zone of liquidity.
That is what's going to make your generation paupers.
Right now, the statistics are brutal.
You are 20% behind, people in their mid-20s, 20% behind their parents' generation of where they are, and the gap's only going to get increased as far as wages go.
And you don't own any assets.
You're not going to own any assets.
Only what's passed down.
Nothing that you earn yourself.
You can't save because it's zero.
You can't own any assets.
You can't buy a house.
The number one, every study shows the number one problem with family formation in the United States and the West in 20s and 30s is economic anxiety.
People don't feel that they can have a job they depend on.
I talk to audiences all over the world of middle class people and they all understand something.
They're two paychecks away from oblivion.
Right?
They don't really have a stake in the system.
They're two paychecks away.
And when you turn 50, it gets even worse.
So Economic National is working.
The compound annual growth rate of the United States economy from the end of World War II, 1946 or 47, to 1999, when China signed Most Favored Nation, came into the WTO, I think was 3.25 or 3.5%.
Through ups and downs, recessions, but average about three and a half percent.
From that day forward until Trump raised his hand, the annual compound growth rate was 1.8 percent.
Now there were other things to do with that too, but centrally is that investment in the West, in the industrialization process, went to China as we de-industrialized.
It's one of the reasons the Brexit vote was a labor vote in the Midlands of England.
That pushed it over the top.
That's what nobody polled.
That's what nobody thought, is that the labor vote would push that over the top.
The de-industrialized center of this country.
That's what the entire Trump program is about, bringing back high value-added manufacturing jobs to combine with our technology companies.
The second aspect is America First foreign policy.
Remember, let's talk about this.
You studied here all day long.
It's a fetish.
The post-war international rules-based order.
Okay, what that is, is from NATO in Europe, to the Persian Gulf, to the South China Sea, to the Northwest Pacific.
It's a series of commercial relationships, capital markets, trade deals, and an American security guarantee.
It's the reason our defense budget is a trillion dollars.
I know it says 780 billion, but that's not the real cost.
The real cost is a trillion dollars.
It's one of the reasons we have a structural deficit going forward now of a trillion dollars.
And maybe these financial models work out and maybe we start paying it down.
And what Donald Trump is saying is that we're not trying to disengage from the world.
We're not trying to be an isolationist.
But what we've become with this primitive political class, in this party of Davos, turned us into an expeditionary humanitarian force.
That's not the United States.
Our founders warned us that we're not an imperial power.
We broke off from an imperial power.
We're a revolutionary power.
We are not looking for protectorates.
All Trump is saying is that the economics and the security are inextricably linked.
The trade deals and commercial relationships have to work for everybody.
We're looking for allies.
We don't want to protect it in Western Europe.
That's why he keeps harping on the 2%.
You've got to throw something to the till.
In the Persian Gulf, that's why he went to Riyadh.
No, everybody says, you know, Trump's such an Islamophobe.
No, Ben is an Islamophobe.
We went to Riyadh before Jerusalem and before Rome to send a message to the Islamic community.
We are there for you and we're your allies.
And we understand that there is a problem.
The problem is with radical Islamic jihad.
And it's as big a problem for you in your own countries as it is for us in the West.
And we have to partner together to stop that.
Stop the financing of it.
Stop the spread of it, because it's killing you worse than it's killing us.
Number two was Persian-Iranian expansion.
That's what the discussions were.
The third was about Islam in the modern world.
And that's what they're working on.
Okay?
We said we're there to help if you need any assistance.
But we'll partner.
We're looking for allies.
And there we had commitments of people that want to be allies.
The same in the South China Sea.
If war breaks out, war's gonna break out in the South China Sea or the Persian Gulf.
In the South China Sea, we're not looking for protectorates.
As a young naval officer, that's where I was in the South China Sea.
In the Persian Gulf.
In the Arabian Sea.
And yes, we were hunting Soviet submarines.
That was the mission of our ship.
So I don't need to be lectured about what bad guys the Russians are.
I know what bad guys the Russians are.
I spent my 20s either on a ship or at the Pentagon implementing, at a very junior level, the war plan to defeat them.
The same in the Northwest Pacific, with Korea and Japan.
What Trump is saying, very simply, is we're looking for allies.
We're not an isolationist.
We're looking for allies, not protection, not imperial power.
And it's working.
You're seeing countries engaged.
Look at this week, at the ACN conference, engaged in the South China Sea, the littoral nations.
Look at what we've done with Korea.
Look what we've done with South Korea.
Japan's fully on board.
And one of the reasons he's engaged in the great hegemonic war of the 21st century against China, against a totalitarian, mercantilist regime.
No, when I did the 175th year anniversary of The Economist, and we got into it on the stage, they said it's illiberal.
No, I said it's not illiberal.
It's a totalitarian regime.
With a geopolitical expansionist attitude of Mackinder and Mahan and Speakman and all of it.
It's the British East India Company in the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Right?
Rapacious, predatory capitalism.
That is America's first foreign policy, is to work with people and to try to work with people to say, hey, in NATO, we've been saying for a long time, is it really the Russians?
Look, we understand the Russians are bad guys, but when the Germans and people weren't putting in 2%, is it really the Russians are the threat?
Or is the threat what's happening in Sub-Saharan Africa?
Because we have not been engaged down there.
And the implosion of those societies, people make a logical decision.
I got to get out of here.
And where I'm going to go is north.
That has to be solved.
Nobody argues about this biblical tragedy of this migrant, the migrant crisis.
I was the one, go back and read the books, read the reports.
I sat there in the National Security Council and said, we got to get, we got to draw down in Afghanistan, right?
We can't force our culture.
America is not an idea.
America is a country with borders and citizens and a history, and we can't impose that on people.
And this neocon idea of spreading this throughout the world, people either want to accept it, and they go through their own struggles, and they accept it in their own way.
But I said at the time, the lies are told.
It's not going to be $30 billion, it's going to be $60 billion.
And we should spend that money in Central America, in the Northern Triangle countries, and in Mexico, because we don't need to go to Central Asia to see failed states.
We've got them on our borders.
And just like the migrant issue drove Salvini and others to power, the reason is the working class in Italy, in its social welfare system, can't take the burden of the mistakes that have been made in Sub-Saharan Africa, or China's rapacious East India policy.
Just like the working class in Texas, in New Mexico, in Arizona, principally Hispanic working class can't bear the burden of economic migration.
I'm not saying it doesn't have to be solved.
It can't be solved on their backs.
It has to be solved in those countries.
It has to be solved by engagement.
But the United States can't spread itself all over the world.
The reason the deplorables are angry, and they're angry, is they're rational human beings.
unidentified
Okay?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
They understand it's upon their shoulders that all rest.
unidentified
Right?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Why do we have such vibrant, robust capital markets?
People say, well, it's the liquidity.
I say, well, what's the liquidity?
They say, well, everybody wants to invest.
They want to put their money in real estate.
They want to put their money in stocks because they understand the United States is safe.
They don't even care if they get a return.
They just want the United States.
unidentified
I said, why is that?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
And when you go down to the bottom, it's because it's a civic society of the cop, the fireman, the teacher, the nurse, the little guy.
It's upon their shoulders.
It all rests.
And it's their kids in the Hindu Kush, it's their kids in the Persian Gulf, it's their kids in the South China Sea, it's their kids in the 38th parallel.
Of the 10,000 are dead, it's their children.
Of the 40,000 wounded, it's their children.
They get dissed and dismissed and haven't had a wage increase in 35 years.
Average net worth, I think, in the United States, if you take out a house, which the ephemeral equity in your house, I think it's like $10,000 of cash in the bank.
That's not what our founders had in mind.
It's not sustainable.
I tell the donors, I said, look, right-wing populism, there's some right-wing populism.
We believe in the deconstruction of the administrative state.
I'm not a libertarian.
I'm not an anarchist.
Okay?
I believe in government.
I served in the military.
But we have to deconstruct this leviathan that the progressives have built that is immutable to elections.
And that's what the Trump administration is doing.
It's not deregulation, it's much deeper than that.
The left-wing, their solution is more intervention in the state.
Whether it's Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders or Ms.
Cortez or all of them, it's more intervention.
That's the difference in populism on the spectrum.
And yet our friends out here and here say, oh, Bannon's a fascist.
You know, it's interesting.
I'm the only person, the only person, that went to Salvini after he won and said, make a deal with the Maio.
Make a deal with the Five Star Movement.
The Five Star Movement's on the left, but they believe in stopping crony capitalism.
They're anti-corruption.
And you saw the merger.
That's why Italy's so important.
That's why Italy's so, the focus in the Petri dish, can this work?
Look at, first off, the ECB tried to stop a government from taking place.
In 10 years, they didn't want the people to speak.
The people in Italy stood up and said, no, we are going to have, we're going to select a leader.
And the courage of Salvini and Di Maio to say, it doesn't have to be us.
We'll take responsibility for what we said we would do.
Shows you the power when populism and nationalism comes together.
And look at this budget.
What is the budget?
Budget is a compromise.
People say we're so divided.
They compromise.
Don't really take on the pension plan, have some of the guaranteed income of the five-star movement, because the five-star movement is left.
And yet you have in the right, they want a flat tax.
They're more Rand Paul than Rand Paul.
It's a perfect combination.
Will it work?
I have no idea.
Is it a noble experiment?
Yes, it is.
And look who's against them every day.
unidentified
It's the ECB, it's the EU.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
The last thing they want is that experiment.
They're going to try to bleed them out now.
You watch what happens the next couple of years.
When they put that budget up, they said, although the Italian people have been very austere, the Italian people living today didn't really create that debt.
That was all created 20 years ago by the geniuses that ran the country at the time with the European Union and the European Central Bank.
But as Salvini and Di Maio, And yes, I was in BBC in Scotland the other day, and they sit there for an hour, and they drill me on every quote of Orban and Salvini, and these guys are racist, these guys are this, these guys are this.
These guys are patriots.
They are trying to save their countries.
It's tough work.
And sometimes they get a little hot.
I'm not there to defend every statement that somebody makes.
I can't defend every statement Donald Trump makes.
I can't even defend every statement Steve Bannon makes.
But it's a process.
Let's talk about this process.
Everybody out here, they're doing the thing and in the streets.
Everybody in the United States, oh, the country's so divided, this country's so divided.
unidentified
Our country is not divided.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
We just had an election that's bigger than most presidential elections.
I think 114 million people voted.
You know why that happened?
The progressive left, I've said this for eight months, nine months at the beginning, the progressive left understands, and that's the Time's Up movement, the resistance, The Tom Steyer, the Netroots Nation, they understand something the Republican establishment doesn't.
They understand Donald Trump's a transformative president and they understand he's a historic figure.
unidentified
Mr. Bannon, why don't I ask you to just wrap up your opening remarks so we can move to questions in a minute.
Thank you.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Two more minutes.
The signal, not the noise.
They understand that he's going to be in their life 10 and 20 and 30 years from now.
And it's just not federal judges.
It's deconstruction of the administration.
It's more of his policies.
That's why they did the hard work.
And I gave him a hat tip all the time.
I said, they have the urgency and the energy of the Tea Party movement.
In a digital age, Obama and Trump showed us the most important thing in politics is not a 30 second spot.
We just announced yesterday, the United States spent $5.2 billion.
On the midterm elections.
And still the most important thing is somebody ringing a doorbell, registering you to vote, giving you additional information later, and coming back and getting you to vote.
The left did that.
The reason they took over the House of Representatives, and now they have a weapon to stop Trump, and they know that, is that they outworked us.
It was like the Tea Party in 2010.
I disagree with them ideologically on everything.
I admire their grit.
Because they won the old-fashioned way.
And that's healthy for our country.
Right?
What you saw in Brexit, and you saw in Trump, the establishment's just not going to sit there and you win one election.
It's going to pat you on the head and say, here are the keys.
What a great idea.
You got these great ideas.
Look at Brexit today.
When Prime Minister May came to the Oval Office, I think it was in March, or to the cabin room for the lunch, Trump told her three things.
Overshoot your target on your deal, because it'll back off.
Get on with it.
Get a deal in six months, because time's not your friend.
And then what she laughed about in the summer, she says, oh yeah, and he said to sue him.
He didn't say to sue him.
He was saying, use every arrow in the quiver because the EU is not going to sit there and go, what a great idea.
A bunch of working class people and people in the Midlands want to get out of the EU.
Here you go.
Just take off.
And you see what's happened.
They have no intention of letting you guys go.
None.
Zero.
Zero.
They've made it as hard as possible.
They will continue to make it hard as possible because your experiment can't work.
I get criticized, this movement, the thing I'm involved in now, because people have come to me, about the European parliamentary elections, because that's how I made my chops, here in 14, watching a guy named Nigel Farage wander around England.
I said, man, these are really important elections, why is nobody out here?
And why is it on page 5 of the Times?
They said, oh, it's European Parliament, nobody cares.
They're going to care next May.
Because next May, in Donald Tusk, So politely says it, that the brown shirts of the populist nationalist movement are going to be against the EU good guys like Macron.
By the way, before I wrap up, Macron is a nationalist.
He's a nationalist.
But the capital of his nation is not in Paris, it's in Brussels.
Right?
Read his speech in 2017.
He wants a United States of Europe, more commercial integration, more capital markets integration, more political integration, more military integration.
It's Brussels that's his capital, and that's not me saying it.
The day after he insults President Trump to his face for the second time, because he did in Congress the first, his finance minister comes up and says, hey, The EU should be an empire, his words, not mine, like China and the United States.
That's what the EU wants.
And last thing, for opening questions, as I've gone around on the movement now and met all the leaders in Europe, not one has ever mentioned destroying the EU.
What they want is a reformed EU.
They want a confederation of individual nation states that are governed by the citizens of those nation states.
and not be a United States of Europe.
They don't want Italy to be Georgia, to France is South Carolina.
unidentified
I have a lot more to go through, but maybe we'll get to it in questions.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Thank you so much.
unidentified
I want to begin by asking about the Unite the Right rally which took place in Charlottesville
about last August.
You commented that the criticisms of the Confederate statues and of American historical figures played into Trump's political narrative by dividing people on racial lines and playing identity politics.
Who said that?
Well, this is something you said in response to Donald Trump saying there were very fine people on both sides.
I never said that.
You said that you thought that as long as the Democrats talked about Jefferson, as long as they talked about the Confederacy, it was a win for Republicans and you would crush them.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
No, here's the point.
I think this has been misinterpreted what President Trump said.
I come from the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The debate over the Confederate monuments and the generals in Southern history Right?
It's being worked out in the polls, it's being worked out in the process of Virginians voting on that, debating that.
This current Senate campaign, Corey Stewart took a very hard line on and lost, he got blown out.
The point is, there are very good people on both sides of that.
What Trump said, and I've said, the people that come to those rallies, I am on record, from day one, the Neo-Confederates, the Neo-Nazis, the KKK, have no place in our society, I don't think, and they shouldn't be allowed to come to Charlottesville and demonstrate.
It should be shut down, so you don't have to put up with these poor police officers had to do tonight.
But Antifa, and elements of the Black Lives Matter should be shut down also.
The problem we've got is that the left only puts the camera on the right.
And these people are marginalized.
Ethno-nationalism stuff is ridiculous.
It's stupid on the face of it.
unidentified
It's ridiculous.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I've said it from day one.
Ethno-nationalism is a dead end.
It's for losers.
Economic nationalism and civic nationalism bind you together as citizens, regardless of your race, regardless of your ethnicity, regardless of your religion.
That's what we stand for.
They're so afraid of it, that's why I said, once they run, they will not debate you on the economic arguments.
They gotta call you a racist, a homophobe, anti-Semite, a nativist, a xenophobe, all of it.
And when they start calling you that, wear the accusations as a badge of honor.
By the way, I'm gonna say one thing.
I've got thousands of hours of radio interviews.
I ran radio shows forever, had my own radio show.
Thousands of hours of speeches like this.
You don't think those guys went through every line of speech, every radio show, everything?
They've never come up with an anti-semitic or racist comment ever?
This shows you the opposition party media, how dumb and lazy they are.
And here's why.
We're winning.
We're winning on the economics.
Why do I come to groups like this?
I only speak to mainstream media.
I don't go on Fox.
I don't go on right-wing media.
Why?
Because for our movement to be successful, we must take 25% of the Bernie guys, the economic nationalists, a third to 40% of African-American working class and middle class, and a third to 40% of Hispanic, Working class and middle class, and Asian middle class and working class.
When we unite that, and we will unite it in the United States, because it's my life's work.
We will have a political realignment like 1932, and we will govern the country for working men and women in our country, not for the elites in Wall Street, not for the elites in corporate America, and not for the party of Davos.
unidentified
I appreciate that you've drawn a distinction there very clearly between ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism and the binding power.
But do you worry that it's difficult for someone like President Trump to say they're merely a civic nationalist, with rhetoric about immigrants being rapists and terrorists, particularly in light of the demonization of the migrants and refugees in what he calls the George Soros-funded caravan?
And I worry that these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in fact taint the economic or civic message that you purport.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Look, the Party of Davos, the economic, managerial, scientific, engineering, cultural elite, right, the World Economic Forum, and it spawns, you know, the mindset.
It's not the Jesuits, Freemasons, it's not the Illuminati, it's not the Vatican, it's not the... There's no conspiracy.
It's the way the system works.
Have you ever heard Obama criticized once for just flooding the zone and bailing out all the Wall Street guys?
Read all the books, read Geithner's book, read it all.
Have you ever heard one time the most progressive president in history ever question about that?
No.
It's in your face.
Yes, it's Trump.
Sometimes, you know, this is what I'm saying.
It's the signal versus the noise.
And sometimes the noise is a flashbang grenade.
Okay, I understand that.
He wouldn't be president if it wasn't for that.
He wouldn't be president, not for that language, but for going over the media's head with Twitter and talking in a plain spoken vernacular to a working class audience.
He's the first guy to give the working class in our country the idea that they had somebody in the room, not in the room, not in the deal.
With Trump, why do you think it just didn't happen magically?
And don't buy this as Obama's thing.
Obama told us the new normal is 1.8% growth.
Okay?
Just 3.5% growth.
And I'm not totally in love with the tax cut.
I'm the progressive.
Read the Wall Street Journal.
I'm in the Oval Office arguing for 44% tax rate on everybody over $5 million.
And I got shot down by two progressive Democrats from Goldman Sachs.
Trump's the first guy to be in the room for the working class.
That's why we have historic low black unemployment.
That's why we have 25-year low Hispanic unemployment.
That's why wages in agriculture and construction, oilfield services at the lowest levels are starting to rise for the first time.
And we're a long way from success.
It's a process.
But it's a start, and we're bringing manufacturing jobs back.
And around high-value-added manufacturing jobs, you can build a family around that.
You can have family formation.
You can have some stability.
That's what the purpose of this is.
That's what the populist movement is.
unidentified
The populist movement is subsidiarity.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's to get more power down to the little guy.
Because you know why?
If I had a choice between being governed by the first hundred people that showed up at a Trump rally, Or UKIP, or the Brexit rallies, or the Trump rally at the Red Hats, or the Top 100 Partners at Goldman Sachs, where I was honored to work.
I take the deplorables every day.
They have more humanity, more grit, they know more about life, more decency, more common goodness.
Okay?
The world would be fine if they ran it.
unidentified
And do you not worry that it patronizes the decency of those common people to make comments about Mexicans being rapists?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
We're gonna do this now for a third, or you BBC, let's do this all night.
Okay, this is what we do every night.
Yes, his language sometimes, sometimes he speaks, it's a little hot.
unidentified
But it's not just his language, it's your own language.
You said we should unchain the dogs at Megyn Kelly, someone who is herself a Republican.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Unchain the dogs?
unidentified
Yes.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Yes, I did say that, I'm proud of that.
unidentified
And how can you justify using that sort of violent language in a peaceful democratic political process?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Oh no, I think in that regard, I think you can get very heated.
And that's why I said the left this time.
If you look at the anger on the left and what they did and what they didn't get.
Perfectly acceptable.
I don't think violence is acceptable.
What Megyn Kelly did is try to take out Donald Trump in the very first debate.
She tried to kneecap him.
And the people at Fox came and tried to shut us down.
I get calls from the head of Fox.
A guy I admire, Roger Ailes, said, you got to stop this.
I said, we're not going to stop this.
She went through his Twitter feed and his Facebook pages for 14 years and came up with a couple of examples and tried to take them out in the very first debate.
I said, this populist movement is not going to die right here.
Right?
And we will unchain the dogs.
And we unchained the dogs.
Right?
We had article after... What were the dogs?
Articles, articles, articles about how she had gone to Twitter, how she'd gone to Facebook.
And Trump wrote it out.
Right?
So no, I'm not... I'm proud of that.
unidentified
I want to look at the expansion of that.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Is war by other methods, right?
It shouldn't get violent.
The stuff out here tonight, the people that are most at risk are the police officers, right?
Are coming through here, like it was in Toronto, that debate.
It was the audience that they were jumping on.
The violence is never that, but heated, heated debate.
And I think news sites, I think, are fine.
I think we're big boys and girls.
The left just did it.
Look at the urgency.
Look at the hatred of Donald Trump they had to win that election.
You know how tough it is to get somebody to walk a precinct in Iowa in July in 90 degree heat and humidity?
Well, they did it.
And they beat the sitting congressman by, I think, 10 points.
You know why?
They rang every doorbell.
I admire that.
And that takes anger.
You're not doing that for sunlit upwards.
unidentified
I want to then ask about the expansion of that populist movement to Europe with your sort of flagship efforts under the movement.
Obviously you've spoken alongside Marine Le Pen, but recently Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini have both said that as an American it's not your place to shape the European right in response to these parliamentary elections.
How would you respond to that sort of increasing distance between It's not increasing distance.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's absolutely correct.
Remember, the whole reason the movement started is I started getting invited over here to talk to the Swiss People's Party and Front National and, you know, all throughout Europe.
The first thing I asked them, I said, tell me what you want me to talk about.
You know, I'm some schmendrick from the United States.
And they said, the first thing, what we want in the speech is make sure you tell us we're not alone.
I said, what do you mean you're not alone?
I said, the populist movement and nationalist movement in Europe is 18 months to two years ahead.
It's the way Brexit happened, you know, Brexit happened before 2016.
And they said, no, but we really don't get together.
We don't really talk, etc.
And so some people came to me, the movement already existed.
It was a Jewish individual and his colleagues in Belgium that came to me and said, hey, we want an interconnective tissue.
The politicians, the populist nationalists in Europe don't need Steve Bannon.
I'm not some big guru.
I never made opinion politics in my life.
I'm a volunteer.
I've got an NGO.
I've got a not-for-profit now, right?
To put forward populist ideas and nationalist ideas.
unidentified
They don't need me.
They absolutely don't need me.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
They run their parties fine, right?
unidentified
Unfortunately, I've got to catch a plane, but just give me 10 more minutes.
We have to take a few more questions from the audience.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Let me take a couple from the audience.
So no, all we're doing is we're going to do conferences.
We're going to, you know, do white papers, things like that.
But Salvini and Le Pen, who are both in, they don't need me to tell them what to do.
They're going to select their own candidates, run their own campaigns.
Right, hopefully.
And by the way, if it turns out it's legal, and I'm still trying to find out, we are doing the most systematic polling that's ever been done for the European Parliamentary elections.
Next May, the intensity in these elections, which used to be on page five in 2014 in the New Times, is going to be on page one.
By March and April, it will have the intensity.
of an American presidential election.
I'm very proud of being one of the people helping to raise the awareness and then let everybody come out and vote.
I have no problem with losing.
unidentified
I hate to lose.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I don't have a problem with losing on November 6th.
unidentified
You know why?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Because we got beaten by people that went out and did the hard work of how you win in politics, okay?
And I keep telling my colleagues on the right, if we're going to win in 2020, we have to replicate their urgency.
We have to replicate their intensity, right?
To do that.
unidentified
Let's take some audience questions now.
Let's first go to the woman on the front row in the coat.
Thank you.
I'm very interested in the role that war plays in your nationalism, because you said very rightly that you want to rally people around your Judeo-Christian values and not ethnicity.
If you do that, you need another other, and that for you would be Islam.
So will there be a war with other Islamic countries because they're not embracing Judeo-Christian values?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
No, I do.
In Europe, in the United States, it's to unite the Judeo-Christian West.
But it's not against Islamic countries.
Remember, we went to Riyadh first, before Jerusalem, before Rome, for a reason.
And we had all the Sunni countries.
Some of the Shiites didn't come, which I hope gets taken care of.
But that was to say, what do we need to do to help you guys unite?
What do we need to do to help U.S.
society?
What do we need to do to stop the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism?
Go back and read Trump's Riyadh speech and look at the actions that we've taken since then to try to unite people.
Now, does it all work out?
Is it a perfect world?
The answer is not a perfect world.
You know, MBS at the time was looked at as a reformer.
MBS at the time was looked at as someone that understood in Saudi Arabia, you know, Vision 2030, he understands that Saudi Arabia's got a massive financial problem going forward, and he was a reformer in both regards.
Will that work out or not?
I don't know.
But President Trump in the United States has gotten more engaged In the Gulf and with Egypt, okay?
Look, remember in 2014, one of the things in Trump's inaugural address, remember the quote, we will unite old allies and form new ones, new alliances, and unite the civilized world to wipe radical Islamic Jihad from the face of the earth.
And I told him at the time when he wrote those lines, I said, that's a big check you're going to have to cash.
ISIS, in 2014, ISIS had 8 million people under slavery.
ISIS had tax revenues in oil fields.
ISIS, he physically destroyed the physical caliphate of ISIS in one year, in alliance with Islamic countries.
So no, it's not, it has nothing to do with populism.
When you go see people, it's not about having an other.
It's about being a citizen.
It's about being a citizen.
That is the basic unit, and it is not about demonizing others.
unidentified
Great.
Let's take a next question.
Let's go to the member from New College in the gray jumper.
Thank you for speaking to us today.
I tried to write my question down so that I'd be a little bit more synced, but I still haven't.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Just ask it from the heart.
Don't read your notes.
Just ask it from the heart.
unidentified
I'm trying to understand some more about your values and about why you believe the things you do, Because what you say and what you do doesn't seem to align.
You support these ideas of an elite that's out to get you and the bankers that need to be held accountable, which is very similar to the kind of things that Bernie Sanders believes.
But you chose instead to support a man, Mr. Trump, who instead retracted the Dodd-Frank Act and completely deregulated the banks yet again, which contributes to the ideas that you're saying that he was going against.
As well as that, you have this newspaper, Breitbart, which you're, you know, selling.
It's a website.
You're promoting these lies and making a lot of money from it.
What lies?
I can go through them again if you want, but you told me not to read my notes.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Give me two.
unidentified
All right, so for example, you claimed that Loretta Lycett was going to be considered for the Attorney General and that she was a member of Bill Clinton's defense team.
And you then issued a correction where you said, sorry, actually, we got the wrong Loretta Lycett.
That's a bit of a disaster, but you didn't choose to take away the story.
So clearly you don't care about the truth as much as you care about money.
So, the world's not perfect, right?
Is that a revelation?
I don't have time, please don't.
So...
Would you like to respond to the question about Dodd-Frank?
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Yeah, let's go for Dodd-Frank first.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Hang on, hang on.
unidentified
So...
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
The world's not perfect, right?
unidentified
Is that a revelation?
I know in Oxford it seems like it.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
No, listen, how do we win?
When I stepped in, look, I'm a populist.
I've been fighting Breitbart.
Remember, Breitbart, 90% of our time was fighting the Republican establishment.
After we won with Trump, I've had so many progressives, big donors of Bernie Sanders, come to me and say, hey, could you switch sides?
Because we need fighters.
And number two, could you start a Breitbart on the left?
Because we need a Breitbart on the left to take on the Democratic establishment, the Clintons.
That's what primary Breitbart's job was.
90% of our stuff is going after the Republican establishment.
When I stepped into the campaign so far behind, you have to fill them an alliance.
I had to reach out to the Republican establishment in the White House every day.
The tax bill is not perfect.
What we did in financial deregulation is not perfect.
I disagree with it.
I'm one voice and have other people with me fighting for these nationalist movements, and you have to prioritize some time.
To me, it's more important To get the trade stuff right, and you read in the paper every day we're still fighting that, right?
And the immigration stuff correct, so that we're taking care of our workers.
And yes, I'm not happy with where we were in bank deregulation, although I do believe in deregulating the state.
I think a lot of what Dodd-Frank did was correct, and I think there should be more.
I'm the one that's advocated criminal prosecutions to go back, and they say, oh, the statute of limits, and I said, well, we'll charge them with something.
Hold people accountable.
So is it perfect?
unidentified
No.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
But the populist movement is building momentum every day.
One of the reasons I left and started this C4 is to generate ideas and policy.
So my actions have been absolutely 100% on top of the world.
Some of the words you're not going to like.
Some of the words you're not going to like.
I believe I'm the one that went through and did the original travel ban.
With Stephen Miller, upheld by the Supreme Court, made our country safer, made Islamic citizens in our country safer, started to get to the issue of the student visas to make us safer, okay?
Even talked to the UN High Refugee through General Kelly, who don't do a vetting system, said your vetting system now is getting better.
unidentified
Actually, we think it may be the best in the world, outside of Israel.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Okay?
So, and by the way, I know you don't like the border, the zero tolerance at the border.
It's a humanitarian program.
unidentified
Okay, I think, I think, I just say, I got a phone call.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
If you haven't taken that journey, if you haven't...
unidentified
And.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Economic migration into the United States is called immigration.
You have to get in line and go through the immigration process.
There's just not a thing called economic migration.
You have political asylum and you have immigration.
But to entice people, look at the caravan, read the New York Times, Washington Post of the interviews and the people in the caravan.
They're up front, they go, we understand we're not eligible for political asylum.
We're going to get to the border, make a dash for it.
The burden of that goes on the Hispanic and Black working class in those cities, and it's in the southern states, and it's also destroying the social welfare.
Network net we have.
unidentified
I'm just trying to make the point.
Yes.
You say that you believe these things, but the people that you ally yourself with yourself with, and you, you give me an example.
These are all just dog whistles for like the people who, sorry, who did you ask?
Who?
I'm not supposed to, what was his name?
Italian leader.
I can't remember.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Salvini.
unidentified
These people, and you, do this thing where you say, okay, well, um, you know, the racists and the anti-Semites, they agree with me, but I didn't specifically say that word, and I don't think... You can't quote me as saying I'm racist, and therefore I'm not a racist.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Please listen and write this down.
I support Orban, and I support Salvini.
One hundred percent.
All this thing, oh he's deflecting, he's deflecting.
unidentified
100%.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Do I agree with everything everybody says all the time?
No.
Including myself.
I just don't.
Okay, but I agree with what they're trying to accomplish.
And there's no dog whistles to those individuals.
The left and the right both have fringes.
You saw it out there tonight.
The left and the right both have fringes that are radical and they're violent.
Okay?
I have been at the forefront of saying that has to be shut down.
What do you think I've come through this thing tonight?
Do you think I do that for my health?
I do it to set an example that we can't let that win.
Once you let that win, it'll all fall apart.
Okay?
So my words and my deeds are one of the same, and I'm sorry if you don't like the deeds, but I can live with it.
I can look myself in the mirror and understand the logic and back of it and why we're doing it.
And I see our country today under Trump, and I see the changes have been made, and I see the opposition and how triggered they are by those actions, and I understand that's why they're working so hard.
And I admire that.
My goal is to defeat them at the ballot box.
unidentified
Let's take one more question from the audience.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
No, no.
Can we take a couple?
unidentified
I can stay.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
We're going to miss our flight.
unidentified
Let's go to the gentleman in the front row here.
Hi, so you might have seen on your way in, there's a rather large protest outside about... I think I heard, yes, yes, yes.
There's a bunch of people out there who are calling you a fascist and white supremacist and quite appalled that you're here appearing in Oxford.
But these guys aren't the opposition party media.
I mean, they're students, right?
And so, I mean, what's your... They're not the elite that you're talking about, are they?
So what's your response to students who are... Well, that's why I come to locations like this and speak.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
That's why I go on MSNBC and speak.
That's why I say, hey, you're just going to have to come to your own decision.
You know, for a guy that's such a fascist, isn't it interesting?
I'm the guy that talked to Salvini right after they won and said, I know you're gonna get a lot of pressure to do this on your own with Berlusconi's other guys, but one thing I think you should consider is this left-wing party of anti-crony capitalists.
unidentified
Okay?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Maybe somebody you want to think about doing a deal with.
And eventually, and it wasn't me, not unless I'm genius, they eventually worked it out and three months later they had a deal.
unidentified
Right?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
How fascist is that?
The other thing is, remember, fascism is worshipping the state.
State capitalism combined with big government is fascism.
It's what Mussolini had, it's what Hitler had, it is what China has today.
It is the scariest system in the world because you take all the worst elements of capitalism and you combine it with the worst elements of authoritarian government and you've got problems.
That is why the third leg, I said it at CPAC, the third leg of the Trump stool is the deconstruction of the administrative state.
I'm a nationalist, but I don't worship the nation.
I'm a nationalist because I think that that is the unit, since the Treaty of Westphalia, that served us best, and that citizens have the most control and the most ability to control.
So yes, I'm a populist because I believe in the little guy and I'm anti-elite.
I'm a nationalist because I believe in the nation-state.
But fascism is the worship of the state and you want more consolidation of power.
I want deconstruction.
I'm the guy who keeps saying Facebook should be broken up.
Google should be broken up.
We should take the data and drop it down to a public trust.
I've said that for over a year.
So, my point is, the mainstream media wants a position the same way, and the reason is that the elite and the corporatist elite do not want change, and they have to defeat populism and nationalism by smearing it with racism, nativism, and xenophobia.
But it won't work, because the more that the programs are successful, we march forward, right?
And we're attracting people.
They're 25% of Bernie's people that we're going to get.
I know this.
These people come to me.
The economic nationalist.
There's a third of 40% of the African-American.
1.6 million African-Americans have voted for Barack Obama, did not vote for Hillary Clinton.
They're not prepared to vote for Donald Trump yet, but they're prepared to sit back and say, hey, let me see what this guy's saying.
Let me see his actions and how it affects my life and my family's life.
unidentified
Right.
OK.
And one quick follow up on that.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Did that answer it?
unidentified
Well, the people in charge of that.
Okay, what was that?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Be fair here.
What did not get answered?
unidentified
I was hoping you could, because you went back to sort of say this is the mainstream media, right, who are sort of giving you smears about you being a racist or a fascist.
But the people outside, they're not the mainstream media.
They're 20-year-old students, you know?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Well, I think where they get their information, I think is they get more information.
The reason I come here is hopefully this permeates out of what the program is.
And it's not going to happen overnight.
I understand that.
That's why I go speak.
That's why I go on MSNBC.
That's why I go to BBC.
I do this because I'm dedicated to this movement and I've dedicated my life to this movement.
But it's not something I would sit there and go, you know what I'd love to do?
I'd love to go to Oxford in the middle of November and hang out with a bunch of students.
unidentified
I know your movement then.
You're here in Europe at the moment.
You've been speaking about Salvini and the like.
You said that there's this growing populist movement.
But, I mean, as Stephen said, recently, you know, the Salvini and And Le Pen have given a joint press conference where they said, you're not a, you're not a European, you're an American, you know, pretty, and distance themselves from you.
And, you know, politicians have distanced themselves.
Like Michael Gove said, he had one chat with you, maybe at a dinner party or something.
And I mean, you've recently given a talk to, I think it was a room full of about 38 people in New York.
So you're irrelevant these days, aren't you?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's a good question.
First off, after Salvini and Le Pen said that, go back and look at their other public statements, right?
They don't need, and I've never offered up, to be some great American strategist who's going to come in and change Europe.
I'm not.
The movement is just a place to have conferences, to pull people together and exchange ideas.
If it turns out it's legal by European election law, by country, Polling that we're doing and the other things that we're doing right now at the movement will be available to everybody.
If it's not, then it won't be.
These people can run their own countries.
But it's interesting, I had three people from Front Nationale came and spent the weekend and were actually on the TV live stream that we did for the campaign.
Right now, which I'll be flying back to the United States, I have people from Salvini's government there that I'm meeting with.
They actually came over to see me.
Okay?
I spent yesterday in Paris, all day, in meetings with different political parties.
I am not the savior here.
I am not some big guru.
Okay?
I'm one guy.
That's a populist.
And people, you know, I think they feel that there is some need to have conferences and to pull together.
Okay?
Let's talk about the irrelevancy.
The Tea Party won a massive victory in 2010.
One of the ways we did that is I made these films that would go around.
I'd show them in a room with 500 people, but I'd also go to leaders.
In Staten Island, and we had huge crowds everywhere, but I would do multiple events, some with crowds and some with Tea Party leaders.
In Kansas, where I did a holiday in Express, and they said there was only 30 people there.
Those were Tea Party leaders in a district we had to win.
I was there to tell these people, you've got to get out.
The left is all over this district.
They're ringing every doorbell.
You must support the Trump program.
We won that district.
The reason I was in Staten Island with those 40 people, they're Tea Party leaders.
We had a very bitter primary.
And I said, if the Trump people do not get in back of this rhino, and he's a rhino, we're going to lose Staten Island for the first time.
They lost Staten Island by six points.
So look, my relevancy or not relevancy will be judged by, you know, my actions and my results.
I should let you know, for nine years, I labored in the vineyard.
Until I was tapped to take over Trump's campaign.
But all that hard work, and everything that was done, and going around the grassroots, and building up relationships within working-class communities, it paid off in the Trump campaign.
That hasn't gone away.
It's still there.
It's one of the reasons I left the Trump White House.
I'm just not up to be a staffer.
I appreciate the... Let's take a question.
I appreciate the Tory question.
unidentified
Let's take a question here from the man on the second row in the waistcoat.
On the second row, right there.
Yes, you.
You.
Yes, you.
Hi, thank you for coming.
I've actually been campaigning and supporting your right to speak here because I believe in your right to freedom of speech, even though I disagree with many of your ideas.
My friend here asked the question that I was going to ask, but I have another question.
Considering the progressive strides that the Democrats have made in the midterm elections just recently, do you think Trump has a chance of winning again in 2020?
And do you think the country will be even more divided by then?
Or do you think that Democrats will finally find a candidate that represents?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Here's I think it's a great question.
Here's I think it's going to play out.
I advocated early on that if you lose the House, it's a different deal.
Because the House has the appropriations process, it has the ways and means, but more importantly can investigate.
And it will try to forget the Mueller report and what they'll do for impeachment.
Jerry Nadler has already said they're going to have 52 investigations.
They're going to try to field strip Donald Trump, not just his administration, his entire business, his tax returns, all of it.
Okay?
And you've seen how the initial response has been by President Trump.
I know President Trump pretty well.
And I kept arguing, focus on the House, focus on the House.
A couple of the seats in the Senate are nice, but they're marginal.
Focus on the House.
That didn't happen.
And we lost because we got beat.
And it's going to be bad.
But, I think in 2020, my perception, I've said this, because I think Hillary Clinton's going to be in, I think a lot of people are going to be in on the left.
Oh yeah, she's running already.
Don't say that.
Watch the Rachel Maddow and watch the Atlantic Idea.
She's already laid out her theory of the case against Trump.
Remember, in her perspective, she should.
She did win over three million netting out the illegal immigrant votes.
unidentified
That's a joke.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
No, but she's going to say, hey, Kristen Gillibrand, Cory Booker, you know, Elizabeth Warren, bring it.
You know, I'm the champ.
You've got to knock out the champ to be the champ.
But here's what I think is going to happen.
They're going to force Trump to the right with the investigations and the consolidation of his base and the back off of the Republican Party.
They're going to say, hey, I saw the married Republican women run for the exits, right, in these midterms.
The left is going to be pulled to the left because the left is going to demand one of the things the resistance is going to say, hey, we delivered that vote.
We're the ones getting Trump's head on a pike.
We are the driving force.
The Time's Up movement, the resistance, Tom Steyer, they're going to say, this is ours.
In the primaries, you're going to see, I don't know if it's O'Rourke or somebody, and the value of O'Rourke is like Lincoln.
He lost the Senate race, but then won the presidency because he stuck to his principles.
O'Rourke, who I admire, ran as a fire-breathing progressive in the state of Texas.
And I told the Cruz guys, if you don't beat him by six points or more, he'll run for president.
But here's what I think is going to happen.
Bloomberg is going to put $100 million, at least, in back of a third party, a unity party, to say just what you say.
The country's divided.
It's all this hot talking.
Bannon's saying unchain the dogs.
Trump's saying Stormy Daniels is a horse face.
The left is crazy.
They want, you know, a Medicare for All for $30 trillion.
We have to have reasonable people like Mitt Romney and Joe Biden or Pickett, right?
They'll form some sort of unity party.
I think we'll have a three-way race.
Succinctly.
unidentified
Thank you.
Thank you.
I had a follow-up.
Let's go next to the woman on the front row, just in front of you.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Can I just tell my guys, hey, we're going to miss that flight.
unidentified
We'll just, we'll have to figure it out.
Thank you for taking more questions.
We appreciate that.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
For what you people did to put this on and to come here, I can't scoot up.
unidentified
I was wondering if you think that democracy is the best way for governments to run, and if so, how you feel about your role in the dissolution of Western democracy.
If you'd like me to elaborate how I got there, I can do that.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, give me an example.
unidentified
Dissolution.
So when political trust is low, social trust is low, and democratic institutions get dissolved because people don't believe that their politicians or their judiciary or Congress can be trusted to represent them.
And I think, and a lot of other people would think maybe that your work with Breitbart and your work with the Trump campaign has contributed to a serious crisis of political trust.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Okay, perfect.
We just had 114 million people vote.
We had the biggest, we had a midterm that was like a presidential race.
Democracy's never been better, never been more robust and vibrant in the United States.
People are more engaged.
The people on the left and the right were walking, they were canvassing in July, in June and July, knocking on doors.
It just so happens that the left did it better and smarter with more urgency.
Our democracy, do we disagree on stuff?
Yes, I disagree totally with their ideology.
I admire their work, and I keep saying, hey, you want to win victory begets victory.
Beat us at the ballot box.
And hey, guess what?
unidentified
They did.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I'm good with that.
Our democracy is very robust.
These are intense debates.
Democracy, nobody covered the Italian election.
Why did I tell Salvini?
Why was the first thing I told Salvini?
I think you ought to think about putting somebody with five star, because I went down and followed the two campaigns.
I wandered around.
They were done on basically Facebook and Facebook Live.
I watched the Five Star, I watched Think, and here's what you saw.
Young people engaged in a campaign talking about the most important issues in politics.
What's the value of citizenship?
What does it mean about a central government?
unidentified
What is a nation state?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
These huge issues, nobody was covering it.
Democracy is robust in Italy.
The Italians said you can't put another guy from the ECB to run our country.
They try to do that.
So how could you possibly say when I understand the left is losing elections that Orban wins what 66 or some of these guys win and you're losing all sudden democracy doesn't look so good.
Democracy is the best alternative we got, right?
I want I want more people voting, you know, all this voter suppression.
I want to go away because working class African Americans are going to be one of the core planks of our of our movement.
unidentified
high participation in elections is not the minimum requirement for democracy.
A high participation election is not the only qualification for democracy, and I would argue that in the American system... I didn't go to graduate school in political science.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I'm just a simple guy.
You've already lost me.
I'm a simple guy.
If people are participating in democracy, if voting, if they're getting out and canvassing, if they're... American political culture, Trump has permeated everything.
And he's triggered the left, because they understand he's going to be in their lives 20 years from now, unless they get rid of him.
And they're going to get rid of him.
They want to get rid of him in the House of Representatives.
I dig that.
I don't like it.
I tried to fight it, but I get it.
And guess what?
They pulled it off.
More power to them.
How is that not democracy?
Some of your theoretical... I just don't get it.
People are more engaged in everything.
unidentified
I'm sorry for mansplaining, but you got me worked up.
outsiders that are going to further dissolve democratic institutions by
draining the swamp and cleaning up politics. Also there are cases of
authoritarian governments where you have to vote so that has huge voter turnout
but it's not a democracy. I don't think we have that problem in the West I don't
think it was forced. That was just an example I was giving you. In the West the issue I think is the same.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
By the way I'm sorry for mansplaining but you you got me worked up. I'm sorry for
mansplaining but you got me worked up. No I just can I say something?
I just think that I think even for your generation, I think you're seeing now more engagement.
Look, look at O'Rourke's campaign.
I think you're seeing more engagement by people.
Maybe it took Trump to engage both the working class and this young generation of social justice warriors in the political process.
I think that's great.
unidentified
Thank you.
Thank you.
Great.
Let's go to the gentleman here in the navy blue jumper with the yellow lanyard on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
In the spirit of free speech, I think you're delusional if you think that the high growth and unemployment is Trump's doing.
And I don't think that Donald Trump is... This is Obama's economy?
Without a doubt, Donald Trump came in and he didn't do anything magical.
There's a high unemployment rate.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Reasonable men can disagree on this.
unidentified
Sorry?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Reasonable men can disagree on this.
unidentified
I just think you're dead wrong and you think I'm dead wrong.
You're absolutely wrong.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Okay, even his enemies on Wall Street don't agree with you.
unidentified
Yeah.
But anyways, on another note, I want to say a lot of things, so I'm going to try to keep it as brief as possible.
I'm going to go with one question, I promise.
You made a lot of very good points in terms of what the problems are.
You elicited a lot of the problems in the United States and in the world today, but you really failed to explain what did Donald Trump do in the last two years to alleviate any of these problems or to fix any of these problems.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
So I think the beginning was the NAFTA renegotiation on trade deals and the tax deal, which by the way is far from perfect, but the centerpiece of the tax deal was the corporate deal that got our tax rates in competition with Germany and China.
Everything about Trump's economic program in its initial stages are to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
The repatriation of the $3 trillion in cash, the entire centerpiece of the tax bill, of which I disagree with much of it, Right?
And I fought to have more progressive rates to higher incomes.
But I think that's what Trump's done.
It's Obama and Obama's secretary treasurer saying the new normal was going to be under 2% growth.
This 3.5% growth, that does not appear.
It's both the tax cut and the spending.
Now, I disagree.
I would love to have the spending cut because we have a trillion dollar deficits going forward.
But we are on a sugar high of kind of Keynesian Economics.
And so, I just don't see how you say his actions.
You may not agree he should have huge deficits at the same time that he's given a massive tax cut.
I mean, not huge, but huge spending at the same time he's given a massive tax cut, and a lot of guys argue against it, but that's what's... But everything is tied to bringing the supply chain back from China, back to the industrial democracies.
Thank you.
I can see I didn't convert you, but...
Maybe we'll chat later.
unidentified
We're going to take one final audience question.
I'll go to the woman in the red coat or jumper over here.
Hi, OK.
So in a country that from its origins has relied on, like culturally and economically, immigration and diversity, going forward, what would be your ideal America in reference to immigration and asylum-seeking?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
What I think is that is, look, I come from immigrants, you know, I'm Irish, but it's a nation of citizens.
So going forward, even the restrictions on legal immigration is to make sure we have a massive problem in the United States, and that's underutilization.
of African-American, Hispanic, and working-class communities in the tech jobs.
The whole reason for limits in immigration is to open up those opportunities.
We've turned our entire education system, called STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math, yet Hispanics and African-Americans don't need to go to engineering schools.
Before I went to Georgetown and Harvard, I went to a land-grant university engineering school.
Today, that engineering school is 75% non-Americans.
And the reason is that their governments pay $45,000 or $47,000 a year to go, and in-state students pay $15,000.
That arbitrage is what drives the profitability or the cash flow in the engineering school.
So no, America is going to be diverse.
There's no doubt about that.
But what unites us is economic nationalism.
unidentified
What unites us is citizenship.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
What I'm trying to focus on is the maximization of citizenship value, not shareholder value, okay, in this populist movement.
America is going to be diverse.
It's one of the great powers of America is to assimilate people and get them to buy into the system.
So, stopping illegal immigration is going to take pressure off working class people.
The reason working class people, wages can't rise, why is it the Chamber, it's the Chamber of Commerce and the Republican establishment I fight on the illegal immigration.
unidentified
Why?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Because they want more labor.
Because they understand it suppresses wages and increased margins in construction and oil field services, right?
In agriculture.
The exact thing you're seeing now, wages rise.
Remember, Wall Street, when they see wages rise, the first thing they want is the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.
The big bad headline on any Wall Street Journal is wages rise.
I think wages rising is a great thing.
And that's the dichotomy between ourselves and traditional Republicans.
So no, America is going to be diverse.
And President Trump, even Tom Cotton's program of limiting immigration to 500,000 a year is a change into a meritocracy.
So no, America is going to be diverse.
You have to stop mass illegal immigration.
We have to.
It's destroying the working class in our country.
I think Trump's doing a very good job of that.
unidentified
And what about making legal immigration more difficult for non-Americans?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's not making it more difficult.
It's what it's doing is making it, it's turning it into a meritocracy.
It's getting rid of the chain migration.
It's getting rid of other elements.
It's turning into a meritocracy.
And I think that that is, I think it's the consensus of the American people.
And I think the country has to go to that.
I think you have to go to some sort of meritocracy.
So you're taking people in the country that the country has a direct need for.
So I think, and here's the great thing about it.
We're so far from getting that passed.
That's going to be the next big debate.
And I'm, I'm open to that debate.
I'm not sitting in a magic wand saying, Hey, this is the way it's got to be.
We're going to have to win elections.
We're going to have to take more control of the Senate.
We're going to have to get the house back before that ever becomes real.
That's going to, if our people don't have, if the people in the working class parties don't have in the Trump movement, don't have energy and urgency to do that, then we're not going to win.
unidentified
I disagree, but thank you.
Mr. Bannon, before I thank you for coming, I want to thank every audience member.
You've been here for an hour and 15 minutes more than you expected.
I want to thank you, Mr. Bannon, for missing your flight so that you could answer our questions.
That's exactly the spirit of what we're trying to do here, so I want to thank you for that.
And thank you for coming here to take those questions honestly.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming.
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