Sept. 12, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
47:59
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| This is what you're fighting for. | ||
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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. | ||
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This is why this audience is going to have to get engaged. | |
| As we've told you, this is the fight. | ||
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unidentified
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Welcome to War Room Battleground. | |
| I'm Brad Thayer in for Steve Bannon. | ||
| Steve's orders were next man up and that's what we're doing here and we do every day while Steve is away. | ||
| I'm very pleased to be hosting today 9-11-2024. | ||
| On a day that we have and pause and remember the horrific terrorist attacks on 9-11, 2001, when 2,977 Americans were killed in attacks in New York City, of course, and then Pennsylvania, sadly, and then lastly, of course, the attack on the Pentagon on that occasion. | ||
| So much, though, to cover today. | ||
| We want to obviously look at 9-11 and reflect on that. | ||
| And but also to look at China and to look at the Middle East. | ||
| Really have a great strategy session tonight to look at all of those issues. | ||
| And I'm very pleased to have, if you will, something akin to the 1927 New York Yankees murderers row where instead of having Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Mark Koenig And, of course, Earl Combs. | ||
| We've got Sam Faddis, long career in the CIA and is a regular on the program. | ||
| Jim Finnell. | ||
| who had a career in the Navy, also is a great friend of mine and regular on the program, and of course, Colonel Derek Harvey, to review some issues and to look at what's happening in the Middle East, where there's never, obviously, any let-up in terms of the intensity of the action which is happening there. | ||
| But I'd like to first start with 9-11. | ||
| We have on this day that Americans should pause Uh, to reflect on what happened, why it happened and the consequences of what was happening as a result of the attack and its aftermath. | ||
| We really have upon reflection of the attack. | ||
| We can identify that this is an attack. | ||
| The left wants to disappear. | ||
| 9-11, many of us will remember. | ||
| Years afterwards, there was a surfeit of American flags. | ||
| Everybody was flying it. | ||
| The surge of patriotism, of course, which echoed around the country and was warmly welcomed. | ||
| Year after year, there were fewer flags flying until there were just occasionally a few. | ||
| Still here in the D.C. | ||
| area, at least in Northern Virginia, there are still some American flags on the overpass put in place by the Fairfax Firefighter Department and Police Department. | ||
| But it really has attenuated. | ||
| It really has drawn down. | ||
| And that's not by accident. | ||
| It's an event that the left wants to memory hole and convert into something else. | ||
| A Patriots Day or something along those lines. | ||
| And in that, they're joined by Hollywood, right? | ||
| You can think In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, John Ford made December 7th. | ||
| In the immediate wake of that, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said every American should see. | ||
| He wanted every American mother to see December 7th by John Ford, his great film, to understand what had happened there. | ||
| It's curious that Hollywood hasn't made many films. | ||
| You can count on the fingers of one hand the films that Hollywood's made about 9-11. | ||
| And that's not an accident. | ||
| You'd think that this is an issue which is rife. | ||
| Dramatically, it's exactly what they want, right? | ||
| The horrific attacks, the dramas. | ||
| You'd think that the screenwriters, of course, and actors would want to explore those issues, but they don't. | ||
| And again, that's not by accident, right? | ||
| That's an issue of 9-11 because of the nature of the attack and who attacked us on that day. | ||
| Again, they want a memory hole in an Orwellian fashion. | ||
| 9-11 is salient though today because of A critical issue, that is, it showed how individuals, groups, states, the terrorist attacks, of course, Al-Qaeda, that instance, exploited the seams in our defenses, the seams in our society, to conduct such an unconventional attack against the United States. | ||
| And that's something about which we need to be aware today. | ||
| As we move into the election, November 5th, We need to be aware of course that other adversaries whether that's the People's Republic of China or other terrorist actors Or other groups are going to also want to exploit those seams in our societies to bring about an equally dramatic attack To impact the American voter American society, so I'm very pleased to be joined by Sam Faddis again Sam | ||
| War Room regular, War Room Battleground regular, and a great fan of, obviously, of all of his writings where he writes at A&E Magazine. | ||
| Sam, you've had a piece up on 9-11. | ||
| Would you tell the audience what you're arguing and offer any reflections that you have today on the 9-11 terrorist attack? | ||
| Yeah, well, I think the first thing when I When I think about 9-11 now, today, the first thing that comes to mind, I mean, in addition to the horror of the event, is as I look at the world around us, I feel like I've seen this movie before. | ||
| And what do I mean by that? | ||
| I was, at the time of 9-11, I was an undercover CIA operations officer, and I was working a lot of counterterrorism, and I had been working Against al Qaeda for some time and Myself I don't want to claim I had some sort of unique insight but for those of us who were working that target and there were a number of very Brave guys and gals doing so it was crystal clear to us where we were headed I don't mean in the sense of knowing the exact details of | ||
| Of the plot, obviously. | ||
| But about every five minutes, bin Laden told us his intentions. | ||
| And he had already blown up two of our embassies. | ||
| And he had already almost sunk the USS Cole. | ||
| And there'd been a previous attack on the World Trade Center. | ||
| And so you could see this looming in the future. | ||
| This sense of dread. | ||
| While we refused, we as a government refused To do what was necessary. | ||
| So, I mean, I recruited sources with access inside Al Qaeda that I was forced to terminate because they were technically citizens of friendly countries and that was more important to us than acquiring intelligence. | ||
| Other officers proposed ops going back as far as when bin Laden was in Sudan to go in on the ground and destroy his operations. | ||
| Permission denied. | ||
| A guy who ultimately became my deputy in Iraq put together a very detailed, specific plan to go in to Tarnak Farms when bin Laden was there and end the threat then. | ||
| Permission denied. | ||
| And so now, once again, we're looking at Afghanistan as a safe haven. | ||
| Al-Qaeda completely reconstituted, completely embedded with the Taliban. | ||
| Growing in strength with all the same intentions they had then. | ||
| And not only are we not doing anything about it, we're actually probably... We're in a worse posture because now we have dismantled our borders and made it impossible to control at all who's coming in. | ||
| And the other thing I would just throw out at this juncture is 9-11 was never conceived by Al-Qaeda. | ||
| To be the end of anything, nor was it conceived to be the worst attack they would launch. | ||
| They had very advanced weapons of mass destruction programs, and some of the details of that still can't be discussed because it's classified, but I mean nuclear, chemical, and biological. | ||
| And their intention was to kill a lot more people than 3,000 in an attack. | ||
| And it's not that they just didn't get around to it. | ||
| They were stopped over and over and over. | ||
| So we're not just looking at a repetition of 9-11. | ||
| We're looking at something even more horrifying than 9-11. | ||
| And right now, we're not doing anything to stop it. | ||
| Sam, I think that's a very important point, and you obviously have spent a career in the intelligence community. | ||
| The 9-11 Commission report, right, reformed the U.S. | ||
| intelligence community so that this could never happen. | ||
| I mean, would you offer your reflections, really, on what those reforms did, and whether they left us in a better place or a much, much worse place? | ||
| Yeah, they left us in a worse place. | ||
| I mean, first of all, The central conclusion of the 9-11 Commission, with all due respect to the men who worked on it, was that the problem was a lack of communication amongst agencies. | ||
| I'm not suggesting that communication was perfect. | ||
| That was not the central problem. | ||
| The central problem was we were not collecting the intelligence we needed, we weren't running the sources we needed, and we weren't being nearly aggressive enough in going after some guys who fully intended to kill us In large numbers. | ||
| So what did we do post 9-11? | ||
| We created the Department, the Director of National Intelligence, an entire additional layer of bureaucracy to sit on top of the existing agency. | ||
| You know, more people in office buildings in DC, in front of flat screen computer monitors, moving message traffic. | ||
| Doesn't do anything in terms of collection or going after the enemy so and and now we of course have layered on top of that politicization and you know, we're obsessed with diversity equity and inclusion and running I mean I tell you right now if anytime you look at an assessment on Afghanistan and al-qaeda from the intelligence community You know the first question would be What's the source of your information? | ||
| And I can guarantee you that there are virtually no sources for that information. | ||
| So you're effectively looking at speculation as to what is happening. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wonderful. | ||
| Sam, if you'll stay with us, next up is my friend and frequent writing partner, Jim Fennell, and I do a weekly column at American Greatness, and we've published a book together uh... embracing communist china america's greatest strategic failure uh... so u.s. | ||
| navy captain james finnell is uh... served as a career navy intelligence officer uh... he's had uh... severe senior positions with the seventh fleet with us uh... with uh... jtf seventy It's a great honor to have you today, Jim. | ||
| in 2015 and is currently a government fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, | ||
| appropriately enough in Geneva, Switzerland, where he's forced to eat chocolate | ||
| and a lot of fondue, right Jim? | ||
| It's a great honor to have you today Jim. | ||
| I'd like to ask you to reflect and to evaluate, offer your keen assessment on what | ||
| the People's Republic of China is doing now against the Philippines. | ||
| This hyper-aggressive state has been ramming vessels at Sabina Shoal, and Sabina Shoal is about | ||
| 75 nautical miles from Palawan. | ||
| It's in the Philippines exclusive economic zone. | ||
| But it's within what the People's Republic of China calls, illegally, as has been noted, of course, by the International, essentially, Permanent Court of Arbitration, within what the PRC calls, essentially, its 9-dash line, or now 10-dash line. | ||
| I'm waiting for the 11-dash line. | ||
| I'm fearful about what that's going to entail. | ||
| Jim, what's happening in the South China Sea? | ||
| Well, Brad, good evening. | ||
| It's obviously a somber day to remember what happened on 9-11, and I just want to echo the assessments that Sam made regarding the assessment we took from 9-11 and this idea that We weren't working together in the IC, which is partially true, but the real issue is we created bureaucracies and we didn't get down to basics. | ||
| And so we are missing key intelligence indications and warning signals, obviously in the arena that Sam talked about, but also in the Pacific, as you just mentioned. | ||
| So over the last four or five months, China has been really ramping up its campaign of intimidation against the Republic of the Philippines, which is our Mutual defense treaty ally. | ||
| And going back to June, 17th of June, the Chinese started harassing or ramping up their harassing tactics into actual violence. | ||
| And so there were collisions and violent acts initiated by the Chinese Coast Guard and their other forces there against the Filipinos who were trying to resupply a grounded ship, a World War II ship that they grounded over 25 years ago at Second Thomas Shoal and Filipino sailor lost a thumb. | ||
| And now for the third time in two weeks at Sabina Shoal, as you referenced, which is about 30 kilometers, 18 miles away from Second Thomas Shoal, the Chinese Coast Guard has now rammed a Filipino Coast Guard ship that's been an anchor there. | ||
| And they've done it three times now. | ||
| And these are direct provocations or acts of war, if you will, against our treaty ally. | ||
| And they're intensifying. | ||
| This is, as I said, the third time in two weeks. | ||
| And again, the Filipino vessel is sitting at anchor, yet the Chinese and their press says that the Filipino ship rammed the Chinese ship. | ||
| This is really an obvious lie, but this is the kind of propaganda that the Chinese Communist Party puts out. | ||
| We're seeing an intensification of China's campaign to take total control of the South China Sea. | ||
| And they have essentially done that over the last decade, building seven islands in the South China Sea in the Spratlys that they've turned into military bases, three of which are the size of Pearl Harbor. | ||
| Three have 10,000 foot runways and are large enough to put their aircraft carriers and other warships that are constantly working there along with their Coast Guard and maritime militia. | ||
| So the Chinese now have not only Defacto claimed they've ignored the rule of law and the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling in 2016 that said they had no claim to this, but now they are physically taking possession and they're ramping it up against the Republic of the Philippines. | ||
| Because they don't like President Marcos, who has come back into the orbit of the United States for security issues. | ||
| And so China is trying to essentially break the Philippines. | ||
| And they know that if they break the Philippines, it will send a shockwave through the Pacific, that America is no longer somebody that has to be dealt with in the Pacific. | ||
| And that puts at risk America's trade in the Pacific and five to seven trillion dollars a year of goods and services transit through these waters of the South China Sea. | ||
| And those are things that affect the lives of Americans, whether it's things that you buy and need, or whether it's the price of the things that you need, or the companies that we have that make things in America. | ||
| It'll have a devastating impact on America if they shut that down, and that's what they're threatening to do. | ||
| And they're picking on the Republic of the Philippines to make it an example. | ||
| And it also gives them a strategic advantage to the underbelly of Taiwan, the southern approaches to Taiwan. | ||
| So there's a lot of reasons why China is doing this. | ||
| And I'm not sure how much time we have, but there's some other things that China's doing right now that we can talk about maybe in the next segment. | ||
| But China right now is on a campaign to break the Philippines, to split them off from the United States, to demonstrate America's weakness. | ||
| And that does have a direct impact on America. | ||
| And they're trying to also spread and put more pressure on the already critically | ||
| underfunded and under-resourced United States Navy and the U.S. Pacific Fleet. | ||
| And this is really a dangerous time. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And it's, again, there's never a dull moment with this hyper-aggressive state led by Xi Jinping. | ||
| Very dangerous situation. | ||
| Next up in our murderers' row batting order is U.S. | ||
| Army retired Colonel Derek Harvey. | ||
| Again, a great friend of the program of War Room and of the Admiral Steve Bannon, and who's had a long career, of course, in intelligence and worked on the Hill, of course, and the National Security Council. | ||
| Colonel Harvey, welcome. | ||
| I'd ask you to first offer any reflections you have on this somber day, 9-11. | ||
| And then I'd like to ask you about what's going on, of course, with Israel and the Defense Minister Gallant saying they're wrapping things up in Gaza before moving north to deal with Hezbollah. | ||
| So, Colonel Harvey, please, any reflections you have on 9-11? | ||
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Yes. | |
| Well, thank you so much for having me. | ||
| And I'd like to pivot off of what Sam talked about. | ||
| And one of the challenges we had You know, before 9-11 and since then, and we continue to have it with the Biden-Harris administration, is leadership both in the military and the civilian side of the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. | ||
| And for the most part, multiple administrations, you know, before and after President Trump's administration. | ||
| And that is, you know, a lack of an ability to fully grasp and understand the nature of war. | ||
| And when you engage in war or you're in a conflict with a group like Osama bin Laden, or Hamas for that matter, a great many of those individuals that you're dealing with are not ones that you can negotiate with. | ||
| They're ones that you have to kill or capture. | ||
| They're not amenable. | ||
| They're not, you know, reconcilable. | ||
| They have, you know, ideological goals that, you know, are beyond the ability of us and others to give into because they will just come back with more demands. | ||
| An inability to understand the nature, scope, goals, motivations of these threat groups, but also, you know, Not just these threat groups like Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, but Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or even the theocracy in Iran today. | ||
| There's too much mirror imaging, a desire to not really believe your eyes about what you're actually seeing. | ||
| The actions speak very loud. | ||
| Sinwar in Gaza is You know, just playing this out. | ||
| The Iranians are playing out this struggle that's been going on almost a year now, coming up on October 7th. | ||
| They want to extend this and they believe that if they just continue to fight and not give in, the Biden-Harris administration will continue to do what they have done, which is put more pressure on Prime Minister Biden, excuse me, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the unity government. | ||
| And also, You know, just, you know, give more aid and support, you know, by doing so to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Iranians. | ||
| The theocracy is counting, you know, in Iran. | ||
| The theocracy there is counting on the Biden-Harris administration restraining The IDF and Prime Minister Netanyahu. | ||
| So, you know, an inability to understand the human nature, what war is really about, what radical Islamic terrorism is about and what their goals are and how the enemy sees victory. | ||
| You know, we just don't want to accept that or recognize it. | ||
| So coming out of 9-11, we entered into two very long-term wars, Brad, Afghanistan and Iraq. | ||
| Where we never had any intention of winning. | ||
| No intention at all. | ||
| So I'll pause there and maybe you have a question on it. | ||
| I do, Derek, and thanks. | ||
| We have about two minutes left. | ||
| I wonder, those are very important reflections in terms of the consequences of 9-11 for us and really our misguided statesmanship during that period. | ||
| But Derek, if we just pivot briefly, and we'll have you of course after the break, what's going on in Israel with Gallant's argument for pivoting now, that Israel is going to be or is wrapping up the Gaza operation and is now moving against Hezbollah? | ||
| What do you make of his remarks yesterday? | ||
| Well, I think it's an important signal. | ||
| Surely the conflict in Gaza is not done. | ||
| They've had to conduct a couple of strikes, surgical strikes, one in a refugee camp that took out three commanders and another one, I think overnight, that took out some commanders in Gaza in a separate strike at a school. | ||
| This is going to go on because that's the nature of insurgency, and you're going to need to have a continued presence there, along with intelligence-driven operations that are going to try and keep Hamas and the others off guard and unable to strike Israel with long-range missiles and drones and things. | ||
| That said, they've been trying to reposition and posture themselves in order to be able to be fully capable of taking on the threat from Hezbollah and Iran in the north. | ||
| And they're just about there. | ||
| It has not been an easy task for the IDF, and that's going to be quite a challenge. | ||
| It is indeed, and I think you're right that it's really elements of wars of attrition here and a long struggle. | ||
| Well, thank you very much, Colonel Harvey, and we'll have you back after the break. | ||
| I'd just like to take a moment to announce that on Saturday, September 14th, Karen Sigelman's American Freedom Alliance is going to have the World War III conference, and that's going to have Natalie Winters and Frank Gaffney and Brian Kennedy and many others. | ||
| I'll be making a presentation there as well. | ||
| So if you have the opportunity, the American Freedom Alliance But with a Karen Sigmund sponsoring it and it's called World War three It's going to be a wonderful occasion in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and of course streamed. | ||
| Thanks very much. We'll be back after the break. | ||
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All this nonsense, all this spin, they can't handle the truth. | |
| War Room Battleground with Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Well, welcome back to War Room Battleground. | ||
| I'm Brad Thayer, sitting in as the next man up for Steve Bannon. | ||
| And I'm very pleased to have, as I've said, our 1927 New York Yankees Murderers' Row in terms of the batting order with Sam Faddisk and James Fennell and Colonel Derek Harvey, all three heavy hitters. | ||
| Uh, that are guaranteed to knock it back out of the park in terms of their strategic insights on the critical issues that we're talking about today. | ||
| 9-11-2024. | ||
| But of course, we remember the horrific events of 9-11-2001, and it gives us pause to think about what we did correctly, as well as the mistakes that we made in terms of our statesmanship and in other policies. | ||
| Colonel Harvey, before the break we were touching on the Middle East and I wanted to ask you to offer your comments, your reflections on a very interesting development. | ||
| As you know, there have been reports of Iran sending ballistic missiles to Russia that | ||
| the Iranian foreign minister has vociferously denied. | ||
| Tehran and Moscow, of course, have a very close relationship, work hand in glove on | ||
| so many issues. | ||
| Colonel Harvey, can you tell us or offer your reflections on what's happening there? | ||
| Well, the relationship between Moscow and Tehran has grown immeasurably since the Ukraine | ||
| War began. | ||
| Russia was always in a supportive role diplomatically and economically related to Iran. | ||
| So it's an interesting development. | ||
| The intelligence that might be showing that is really not out here in the media for us to make any solid judgment about the degree or scope of military support as far as new ballistic missiles, quantity or quality that may have been shipped there. | ||
| Yeah, I think it's an open question. | ||
| I think Tehran has some near-term fighting issues that it's going to have with Israel. | ||
| I would be surprised if they're going to ship a lot there because they have competing demands. | ||
| Indeed they do. | ||
| And the tension with Israel is only worsening. | ||
| And as Israel pivots to the north, Hezbollah, Tehran's ally, obviously, proxy in so many respects, that's likely to worsen. | ||
| Captain Fennell, I'd like to return to you on the issue of what's happening in the South China Sea and elsewhere. | ||
| Admiral Paparo, who's the commander of Indo-Pacific Command, so obviously a very senior figure, had a video tele, essentially a VTC, with the head of PLA General, People's Liberation Army General, in terms of their southern command, right, so a major | ||
| figure, to address the issue of conflict or tensions in the South | ||
| China Sea. | ||
| Jim, can you give us your reflections on the value of that call and what it entailed? | ||
| Yes, Brad. | ||
| In the last 48 hours, Admiral Paprow, the commander of the U.S. | ||
| Indo-Pacific Command, has conducted the first commander's call with his counterpart in the Southern Theater Command. | ||
| So it's not really a counterpart to my mind, but that's how they're classifying it. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| with General Wu. And in that conversation, Admiral Paprow did advise the Chinese that | ||
| he wished they would back off their provocative actions in the South China Sea. But the Chinese | ||
| have characterized the call, and most of the press has characterized the call as Admiral Paprow | ||
| calling for the necessity of having these talks to reduce the risk of miscalculation | ||
| between the United States and China. Unfortunately, the risks continue to rise. | ||
| And one area that's rising is with China and Russia. | ||
| And over the last 48 hours, both the Russian and Chinese Ministries of Defense have announced that there would be a major naval exercise, the largest in 30 years, since I was a young officer almost, called Ocean 2024. | ||
| And this one will have Some 400 warships, submarines, and auxiliary craft and 120 warplanes that will be operating from the Arctic out in the, you know, up in the north of Norway, in the Baltic, in the Mediterranean, in the Caspian Sea, and in the Pacific. | ||
| And the Chinese concurrently announced that they were going to be conducting exercises in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk. | ||
| The Sea of Okhotsk is that major water space between Vladivostok and the Kamchatka Peninsula that basically fronts Alaska. | ||
| And in that water space during the Cold War with the Soviet Union is where the Soviets would send their ballistic missile submarines. | ||
| So we don't know what units the Chinese will send in terms of submarines. | ||
| There's already five ships that have headed in through the Tsushima Strait into the Sea of Japan, intelligence collection ship, cruiser, destroyer, frigate, and resupply ship. | ||
| But it's very possible that the Chinese will be sending submarines and even ballistic missile submarines to operate in the bastion of the Sea of Okhotsk. | ||
| Which would allow Chinese SSBNs or ballistic missile submarines to fire intercontinental ballistic missiles at the continental United States with advanced warning of less than 35 minutes, like we had during the Soviet period and like we have today with the Russians. | ||
| So this is a major exercise And it reconfirms the alliance between China and Russia. | ||
| So while we are asking China to have calls with us, China continues to threaten war in the South China Sea with the Republic of the Philippines, and they're ramping up their physical kinetic ramming activities, which I wouldn't have thought it, but after this week, I am very concerned that China may start some kind of military conflict in the South China Sea before 5 November. | ||
| have major exercise with the Russians. And there's reports today that Indian PLA, not Indian, but | ||
| Chinese army troops are 60 kilometers or 40 miles into Arushanal Pradesh, which is northeastern | ||
| India, southern Tibet, as the Chinese call it. | ||
| And we don't know all the details of that yet. | ||
| But every year since 2020, where the Chinese killed 20 Indian soldiers along the line of control in the Galwan Valley, we now see China acting again. | ||
| So China and Russia are working to spread and crush America's Defense Department. | ||
| And we just had an aircraft carrier leave the Middle East after a long, long deployment, well over | ||
| the typical six-month deployment period, more closer to 12. And what did they do? They did not stop | ||
| the Houthi rebels from shutting down global traffic through the Red Sea and the | ||
| Suez Canal. | ||
| And so we are being stressed, since World War II, America had guaranteed global shipping around the world. | ||
| We were the beat cop for the world to allow the global economy to work. | ||
| And now it's being threatened. | ||
| And if this is shut down and China is able to take this over, they will control who gets to buy and sell. | ||
| They will control how you're threatened from their ballistic missiles. | ||
| And so it's a very, very dangerous time, and it reminds me of 9-11. | ||
| I remember 9-11 when I was in Hawaii at the time, and I remember seeing reports like Sam, even though I was nothing to do with that, but there were reports about this guy, Osama bin Laden, and we were told, hey, this guy's something to be concerned about, and nobody did anything. | ||
| Well, now we're in a similar situation. | ||
| We have lots of reporting about China, and people are not doing anything except saying, let's have talks because that'll reduce the risk of miscalculation. | ||
| Very naive, very dangerous. | ||
| Absolutely it is. | ||
| It's a hyper-aggressive state, as we've stressed, and it certainly can be on the cusp of a conflict between the Philippines and China, which would involve the United States, because the Philippines is a treaty ally of the United States. | ||
| Or partner like Taiwan or directly with the United States. | ||
| So the audience needs to understand that China is a very dangerous state. | ||
| Like cops investigating a car crash, right? | ||
| They look at the driver. | ||
| If the driver is okay, they look at the car. | ||
| And if the car is okay, they look at the road conditions. | ||
| When we look at the People's Republic of China, we look at the driver. | ||
| We see that Xi Jinping is a driver and he's horrific. | ||
| He's like a 14-year-old behind the wheel who's hyper-aggressive, incredibly risk-accepting, and doesn't understand the consequences of his actions. | ||
| Secondly, the car. | ||
| The car is a Soviet knockoff, the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| It's a threat to every other vehicle on the road, as well as every other pedestrian on the road. | ||
| It's a very dangerous ideology that they possess, and it feeds the aggression that Xi Jinping is driving. | ||
| And then lastly, the road conditions, right? | ||
| That this is a country which has grown in power very quickly. | ||
| That power has clearly gone to its head, and they have Many issues that they want to resolve through the coercion, applications or threats of force, and perhaps even conflict. | ||
| Taiwan is there, but it's also the South China Sea. | ||
| But fundamentally, it's the United States, because the United States is the only power that can check them and keep them from their global ambitions, achieving their global ambitions. | ||
| Very dangerous situation. | ||
| We got a crazy driver, very dangerous car, and horrible road conditions. | ||
| It's a recipe for great trouble, and that trouble can come now, can come today, certainly before November 5th. | ||
| And as Jim Fennell has stressed, it's looking like things are getting much worse very quickly. | ||
| Sam Faddis, next up in the batting order. | ||
| You're gonna knock it out of the park, of course, because you are on murderer's row, sir. | ||
| I'd ask you to offer your reflections really on what we've seen, what the events that have been happening with 9-11, the reflections that we've had with 9-11 today, the ceremony that we had in New York. | ||
| But Sam, most importantly, if you could give us your assessment of trouble that we're likely to have between now and November 5th and its aftermath. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I feel like maybe the central issue here for people to absorb is when we talk about all of the threats we've been talking about today and more, we end up a lot of times saying something to the effect of, if we're not careful one of these days, something really bad is going to happen. | ||
| Eventually, one day, something really bad is going to happen, right? | ||
| And even in intelligence work, you can fall into this trap of assessing that there's a threat out there, and it's not getting better, it's growing. | ||
| But still, it seems that the horizon is continuously receding. | ||
| So we're worried. | ||
| But what we've failed to accept is the immediacy, that it's no longer one day or someday. | ||
| And I think when you look at everything we've talked about here today and other things, that's the essence for me. | ||
| The Iranian nuclear program, which we haven't touched on, is one of those. | ||
| Every assessment that we see is always announcing that they're almost there. | ||
| We, I mean, let's just be blunt. | ||
| We don't know that they weren't there some time ago. | ||
| You don't know that you're not going to just turn around tomorrow and discover that in this confrontation, they have a dozen functional nuclear weapons mated to delivery systems. | ||
| So it is the immediacy of this that, as Jim's been talking about, we could be looking at a shooting war in the Philippines today. | ||
| That the Chinese could blockade Taiwan tomorrow. | ||
| That we could have terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda on U.S. | ||
| soil any day. | ||
| There's nothing to stop them. | ||
| That, to me, is the central issue we need to grab a hold of. | ||
| This administration has been the most disastrous from a national security perspective in American history, and the scope of the damage they've done, I think, is breathtaking. | ||
| Certainly. | ||
| An open border for years, Sam, as you well know and have stressed many times. | ||
| Not knowing who's coming over that border. | ||
| Certainly folks who don't wish the United States well, or the American people well, but wish to do us great harm. | ||
| And then the disaster of the Biden administration, which has got the Midas touch in reverse. | ||
| Everything that they touch just turns to a nightmare for them, whether that's Afghanistan or whether that was going back into the WHO or Essentially Paris Climate Accords or their actions that they've taken, for example, pledging at Bali in 2022 that they were going not they were they pledged to Xi Jinping himself that they weren't going to work to overthrow him, which they've stressed time and time again. | ||
| So this administration is well past its sell by date. | ||
| And we'll be, I think, perhaps little remembered and certainly well forgotten. | ||
| But the damage that they've done and the damage that they're going to continue to do remains with us. | ||
| And we're going to have to deal with those consequences between now, November 5th, and then after November 5th into a new administration. | ||
| And if Trump is returned to office, then there's prodigious work. | ||
| The Augean stables have got to be cleared. | ||
| Uh, in every respect. | ||
| What Biden gave Trump, if Trump does come back into office, is so much on his plate, uh, and a mess in almost every area. | ||
| As Colonel Harvey has stressed in the Middle East, and Jim Finnell has stressed in, obviously, in the Indo-Pacific area, and Sam Faddis has stressed every other area. | ||
| Including the homeland, dealing with terrorists and the threats that we face. | ||
| It's a very dire situation that we face. | ||
| We're going to have to address. | ||
| But there's so much to address. | ||
| I'm very pleased we had such an illustrious audience. | ||
| Again, our murderers row today. | ||
| One final announcement I'd like to make is that Paul Berkowitz, who's a colleague of ours, of many of ours on the Committee on Present Danger, China, has been pressing the idea of releasing, pressuring Congress to pressure the intelligence community, which is charged, which is tasked with generating a report on the wealth of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, their senior leadership from Xi Jinping on down. | ||
| They're family members and others and these folks have money squirreled away everywhere from Switzerland to London to Hong Kong New York and who knows where else But Congress ordered the intelligence community to produce an open-source report Essentially, so available to the public, the intelligence community has not done it. | ||
| So it's important to call your representatives, call your senators and pressure them to get that report released, because that's a very important issue. | ||
| We've been talking a lot about being on the back foot, what this Chinese Communist Party is doing to us, in terms of its support for Iran, support for Russia, its actions in the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| But it's time to take the fight to them and to show this group of thugs to be that odious and contemptible and illegitimate group that they are. | ||
| These are communists who are billionaires, and that's a little bit, Cameron, like being a married bachelor, right? | ||
| You can't be one. | ||
| It just doesn't work together. | ||
| If you're a communist, you can't be a billionaire. | ||
| It's time to find their wealth, to show to the Chinese people what they've stolen from the Chinese people. | ||
| Uh, so that they can understand in just one more and very poignant and cutting way that they're ruled by an illegitimate group of thugs that need to be shown the door and sent into the dustbin of history. | ||
| And that report is going to reveal a lot of issues as well about folks who've worked with them in terms of our businesses, as well as Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and others who've worked with the Chinese Communist Party to help them squirrel away their untold billions of dollars around the world. | ||
| Well, it was my great pleasure to have the opportunity to host War Room Battleground today. | ||
| I was very pleased to be joined by Sam Faddis, former CIA operative and U.S. | ||
| Navy Captain Jim Finnell, who's just an outstanding individual. | ||
| And of course, U.S. | ||
| Army Colonel Retired Derek Harvey, who's an expert on the Middle East, so many other aspects of the behavior of the U.S. | ||
| intelligence community. | ||
| And steps that need to be taken to right the ship, if you will. | ||
| So, look forward to seeing you next time on War Room Battleground. | ||
| I'm Brad Thayer, sitting in for Steve Bannon. | ||
| Temporarily, of course, because Steve will be back. | ||
| And when he comes back, there's going to be so much to accomplish and to do. | ||
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