Dec. 19, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
48:02
Participants
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*Music* | |
| It was every man for himself. | ||
| We were inadequately clothed. | ||
| We didn't have rubber-over shoes, we didn't have overcoats, we didn't have gloves, we didn't have scarves. | ||
| My boots were so bad, I would strip newspapers and drapery off of these bombed-out houses and wrap my feet in it. | ||
| You were having trouble breathing because the snow was suffocating you. | ||
| And consequently we lost a lot of men who froze to death. | ||
| This is what you're fighting for. | ||
| I mean, every day you're out there. | ||
| What they're doing is blowing people off. | ||
| If you continue to look the other way and shut up, then the oppressors, the authoritarians get total control and total power. | ||
| Because this is just like in Arizona. | ||
| This is just like in Georgia. | ||
| It's another element that backs them into a quarter and shows their lies and misrepresentations. | ||
| This is why this audience is going to have to get engaged. | ||
| As we've told you, this is the fight. | ||
|
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All this nonsense, all this spin, they can't handle the truth. | |
| War Room. | ||
| Battleground. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Thank you for hanging with us. | ||
| Obviously, a very eventful first hour for the second on the late afternoon, early evening show on Wednesday, 18 December, year of early 2024. A couple of things I've got to get to. | ||
| We're going to get back to Dave Bratzko and join me at the bottom of the hour for continuing coverage of all this fiasco on the finance side and with CR's all of it. | ||
| Patrick K. O'Donnell, normally we do this on Christmas Day when we talk about the combat history of Christmas. | ||
| One of the battles we talk about is the Battle of the Bulge. | ||
| But since it is the 80th commemoration of it, it started, I guess, on Monday. | ||
| I wanted to get everybody up to date. | ||
| I had Senator Tuberville on this morning. | ||
| He was one of the reasons I wanted to have him over. | ||
| His father fought At the Battle of the Bulge. | ||
| Talk to us about this because I think today more than ever we're seeing pure cowardice on Capitol Hill by many people supposed to be leaders. | ||
| What was the Battle of the Bulge and why is it so important for us to commemorate this, sir? | ||
| Steve, this is one of our greatest battles in American history. | ||
| It was a surprise attack that shouldn't have been a surprise attack. | ||
| It was a massive intelligence failure. | ||
| That occurred where it was kind of almost a second Pearl Harbor. | ||
| The United States, the OSS, for instance, had men that were in that army group, but they were taken out because of political reasons. | ||
| So they were basically blind. | ||
| And the Germans hit a sector of the line that was kind of, quote, a quiet front. | ||
| And there were a number of divisions, American divisions, that were resting and rehabilitating there. | ||
| And it's here that Hitler launches his last great counteroffensive of World War II. And they assemble at the beginning about over half a million men, thousands of tanks and, you know, armed personnel carriers and planes and artillery pieces. | ||
| And they hit the American line on December 16th in the morning hours. | ||
| There's a mist that occurs then and the tanks start to roll. | ||
| I've interviewed thousands of World War II veterans, and some of my favorite interviews were with the Men of the Battle of the Bulge. | ||
| It was the Airborne in particular that I focused on, as well as the Rangers. | ||
| And the 18th Airborne Corps was the only strategic reserve that the Allies had at the time. | ||
| And this consisted of the 82nd Airborne, 101st and 17th Airborne. | ||
| But within that group were a lot of independent units. | ||
| And many of the men that I interviewed were with those independent units. | ||
| This medallion that I'm wearing around my neck was worn by a member of the 509 Parachute Infantry Battalion. | ||
| They went in with about 850 men. | ||
| And they met head on the SS, an SS division. | ||
| Panzer Grenadier Division, and they stopped it at a place called SADSO. That unit went in with 850 men, and by the time it was done at the Battle of the Bulge, there were 55 men walking. | ||
| That's how severe the combat was. | ||
| They were going up against the best of the German army at the time, the Waffen-SS. They had some of the best weapons, best equipment, but they were also battling the winter. | ||
| Steve, this is the coldest winter. | ||
| On record at this time in Europe. | ||
| Let me... | ||
| The surprise, what Hitler... | ||
| Because the Russian army, people have the strategic context. | ||
| The Red Army is virtually unstoppable. | ||
| And the Germans are fighting rearguard actions. | ||
| But they get the fact that... | ||
| You know, this thing could be over that the Red Army is going to get to Berlin. | ||
| This was a roll of the dice by Hitler to try to break through the Allied lines because the Allies have been on kind of a roll since Patton took over the breakout in Normandy in the hedgerows back in basically July and August. | ||
| This was a roll of the dice. | ||
| For Hitler to try to get to Antwerp, but to give such a hammer blow to the Allies and create so many casualties prior to Christmas that they might do a negotiated deal. | ||
| And then he could turn and really focus on the Russians. | ||
| So this was a huge risk for him, was it not? | ||
| It was. | ||
| This was a roll of the dice. | ||
| They took some of the best units, the Waffen-SS, off the Russian front and moved them to the west. | ||
| And they wisely recognized that signal communication was essential. | ||
| So they kept all their wireless communication secret. | ||
| They used messengers and such. | ||
| They suspected that their codes were broken potentially. | ||
| So they really maintained a level of secrecy that was extraordinary. | ||
| And they built up a massive force in this quiet sector. | ||
| For me, the battle begins actually a few days before the 16th when the 2nd Ranger Battalion was in the Hurtgen Forest. | ||
| And their objective was a place called Hill 400. | ||
| And Hill 400 was important because it was the highest hill in the forest. | ||
| but it also overlooked the assembly areas. | ||
| And I wrote Dog Company, which is one of the last... | ||
| It's a book on the 2nd Ranger Battalion, specifically Dog Company. | ||
| Dog Company and several other companies actually launch a bayonet attack on the hill on the morning of the 6th and 7th, and it's an extraordinary story. | ||
| They seize the hill after this bayonet attack, and then the Germans throw everything that they can against it, 15 battalions of artillery and several assault guns. | ||
| Multiple companies, parachutists, anything that they can to dislodge the rangers on the top of the hill because they realize that the hill overlooks the assembly areas and it might blow the greatest secret of World War II at the time. | ||
| They don't dislodge the rangers. | ||
| They hold the ground for three days miraculously. | ||
| But like many things in war, there's an intelligence failure. | ||
| The proper intelligence doesn't get to the right place. | ||
| And the greatest secret of World War II at that time, the Battle of the Bulge, then kicks off on December 16th. | ||
| Well, this is talking about holding ground. | ||
| I mean, we'll get to it later because we're going to do kind of day by day coverage of this. | ||
| But at Bastogne, I mean, this is why the legend of Patton is just not North Africa or Sicily. | ||
| And it's just not blown across France. | ||
| But it's really the relief of Bastogne and the 101st Airborne that I think if you had to rate in rank order Patton's heroism and where he became a mythical figure to the American people. | ||
| Because, like I said, people were trained to hit the beach, but people are upfront about the training of troops and combined arms was not the best. | ||
| This is why we got so chewed up. | ||
| In the breakout across, out of Normandy and across France, if he hadn't come, we were getting chewed up because the troops were not particularly well trained. | ||
| In the Battle of the Bulge, if memory serves me correctly, I think there's two regiments, kind of infamous regiments that virtually surrendered. | ||
| Without almost not fighting. | ||
| And one of the reasons was the junior officers, the field commanders, junior officers, and the troops, they just weren't trained that well. | ||
| Right? | ||
| This late in the war, they just didn't have time because you're throwing them into the charnel house. | ||
| Because everything was, you got to get to Berlin. | ||
| And that's why you talk about holding the ground, Second Rangers, the 101st Airborne. | ||
| These people were surrounded by, you know, crack German troops and are holding out for dear life where Hitler's trying to draw as many casualties as possible to break the will of the American people. | ||
| Patrick? | ||
| One of the great, you know, I mean, one of the great stories is how the 82nd and the 101st On a moment's notice, literally, they're on leave in and around Paris and that area, and they round up their men, and then they put them on open trucks, any kind of truck that they can find, and then they race to the bulge. | ||
| And this is really an epic story. | ||
| Many of the men don't even have all their weapons or all their ammunition. | ||
| They load up on the back of these trucks, and they race to Bastogne first. | ||
| But the real critical area is up north, the northern shoulder, so to speak. | ||
| And it's here that the SS, Joachim Piper and his task force, are trying to break through. | ||
| They have some of the best weapons in the German army in the SS. And they're punching through, and it's the 82nd. | ||
| And specifically, even these independent units that I mentioned, like the 509, the 517, and the 551st, that race up there and are the critical men that stem the flow of the SS. And they're positioned in small villages and hamlets, in and around places like Sadzo, And Valsim and others, and they hold the line. | ||
| It's an epic story. | ||
| You know, these are light infantry guys that have bazookas, grenades, thermite grenades, you know, little things like that, but they're still holding out against, you know, superior arms of the Awaf and SS, and they're stopping them with their, you know, grit and valor. | ||
| And, you know, I also interviewed, some of my best interviews are with I'll never forget the one interview I had with a guy who was in the 9th SS. He just talked about how they had been sort of defeated for the last several weeks, | ||
| several months after Normandy, and he had fought on the Eastern Front as well. | ||
| But he talked about how they had the super weapons. | ||
| I mean, he was rolling by a Tiger II tank, and he remembers looking up into the sky and seeing an ME-262 German jet. | ||
| And he just looked at me, and the expression on this guy's face was, yeah, we were back. | ||
| And that's how they felt. | ||
| I mean, they had this Elan, this esprit de corps. | ||
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These are really tough guys on both sides. | |
| Tough, tough. | ||
| We're going to go through this in the days ahead. | ||
| Of course, we're going to do the Combat History at Christmas. | ||
| Patrick O'Donnell, how did they get to all your writings? | ||
| You're our best combat historian. | ||
| Particularly, you take it down to the small unit level. | ||
| And I want people to get access to Dog Company. | ||
| So where do they go? | ||
| Dog Company and another book, Beyond Valor. | ||
| Steve, thank you for that compliment. | ||
| And it's always an honor to be on. | ||
| The War Room. | ||
| Best place to go is at CombatHistorian on Getter or on X or my website, PatrickKO'Donnell.com. | ||
| And the book is a bestseller. | ||
| The latest book, The Unvanquished, is at the front of the store at Barnes& Noble nationwide. | ||
| In fact, I've signed many of the books in many of the stores around the country. | ||
| You're able to get a signed book for Christmas presents. | ||
| Always a good thing. | ||
| The Unvanquished. | ||
| And where do they go? | ||
| What's your site? | ||
| Where do they go again? | ||
| Just amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com for the Unvanquished and Beyond Valor or Dog Company are the books that revolve around the ball. | ||
| I think you're three or four mega hits in a row. | ||
| The Posse can't get enough of you. | ||
| The Posse has been just tremendously amazing. | ||
| And I'm very grateful to them and to you as well, Steve. | ||
| They love history. | ||
| They love history. | ||
| They're patriots, so it's a natural fit. | ||
| Patrick, love you, brother. | ||
| See you Christmas, Doug. | ||
| Love you, too. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| The Combat History of Christmas. | ||
| We do it every year. | ||
| I think Patrick and I have done it now. | ||
| I don't know, 12 years or longer did it at Breitbart Radio. | ||
| Taze Gill joins us. | ||
| Taze, you've been in some cold, tough places before, some hot, tough places too. | ||
| But coming out of the military, coming out of your service as a Navy SEAL, you said, hey, I want to make a coffee as good as the equipment that we fight with. | ||
| That's Warpath. | ||
| And brother, I got to tell you, I don't have a lot of time to catch up with you all the time, but man, I go around the country and People say, Steve, that Warpath Coffee is the best coffee I've ever had. | ||
| And I said, hey, just go to the site's 6,000 five-star reviews. | ||
| Tasia Gill, what do you got for us, brother? | ||
| Yeah, we're doing a Christmas sale. | ||
| We got 20% off for the War Room Posse. | ||
|
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As usual, use promo code WARROOM. That's for the posse. | |
| And the website's warpath.coffee. | ||
| Just recently, we dropped these Mrs. Claus Christmas mugs. | ||
| And then A Mr. Claus Christmas mug. | ||
| And then also we have Teppermint Mocha up on the site. | ||
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That's a new blend. | |
| We've never done that before. | ||
| We just dropped that. | ||
| I think last week it was up on the site. | ||
| And then we've got the Christmas mugs out. | ||
| So 20% off for the War Room Posse. | ||
| And if you haven't tried Warpath Coffee yet, you've got to try it. | ||
| It's the best coffee. | ||
| I'm not just saying that because we run a company. | ||
|
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It's actually an amazing coffee. | |
| People love it. | ||
|
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Just check out the reviews on the site and try it. | |
| We roast it on a perforated drum. | ||
| That's how we get it so smooth because we don't burn the beans at all. | ||
| It's perfectly roasted. | ||
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And most coffee roasters, they actually burn their beans. | |
| We don't. | ||
| So that's what sets us apart. | ||
| And it's incredible coffee. | ||
| Please try it. | ||
| Merry Christmas. | ||
| Get a Christmas buggy. | ||
| Brother, we're going to have you on the next couple of days. | ||
| I want everybody to order this so they can get it by Christmas. | ||
| We're getting up on Christmas morning with these different gifts you can give from Warpath. | ||
| One more time, where do they go today to order? | ||
| I want to make sure everybody can get it and get the big discount. | ||
| Where do they go, Tej? | ||
| The website is warpath.coffee and use promo code WARROOM.com And you'll get 20% off. | ||
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We're running that sale through Christmas. | |
| And like I said, try the mugs, the Christmas mugs. | ||
| We have a Mr. and Mrs. Claus Christmas mug. | ||
| And then we have a brand new blend. | ||
|
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It's peppermint mocha, and that's for Christmas. | |
| Thank you, brother. | ||
| Thank you, Tej. | ||
|
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Appreciate it. | |
| Warpath Coffee, check it out today. | ||
| I'm a coffee aficionado and worked a long time with these guys. | ||
| This stuff is amazing. | ||
| You will love it. | ||
| Ben Harnwell, I've got to get you up. | ||
| We've got about nine minutes, maybe about eight. | ||
| I've got to jump into another sponsor. | ||
| Very disturbing. | ||
| You've been on this, and I think we're the only guys to be emphasizing this, but I'm warning people, they're boxing in President Trump right now. | ||
| This thing in Ukraine, I got into it yesterday with one of the top financial reporters in the world who is a European and just agreed with me on the financial issues facing us in these countries, the governments being turfed out for finance, totally disagreed on Ukraine and had all these just ridiculous And I said, quite frankly, your arguments, all the ones we heard before the war, and look how many dead they are. | ||
| And they couldn't answer that. | ||
| When you get up in their face about the casualties and what's happened to the country and where we are negotiating-wise, they shut up. | ||
| But Ben, you've nailed this. | ||
| You're getting down to the receipts and these discussions are going on. | ||
| It's about an American security guarantee. | ||
| Tell me what you're reading, how you're seeing that, and what does that mean to the people that are talking about it? | ||
| Good evening, Steve. | ||
| Let me start off with an article today from Reuters, one of the three great press agencies whose articles you'll read carried in any major newspaper around the world. | ||
| This is a point here repeating something that Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, had said a few days ago. | ||
| But here's the repetition of this point. | ||
| Very, very interesting and important. | ||
| I quote directly, Steve. | ||
| Tusk reiterated that Poland was not considering sending troops into Ukraine in the event of a negotiated peace, but said his country, one of Ukraine's staunchest supporters, would do everything in its power to make Kiev's NATO membership would do everything in its power to make Kiev's NATO membership a real Obviously, they're punting. | ||
| If we're talking NATO, folks, if you hear the words NATO, they're talking about the US, basically ponying up either the funds or the troops. | ||
| But contrast that, Steve, that was Poland's Prime Minister. | ||
| Contrast that with what his finance minister, a guy called Andrzej Domanski, said last week. | ||
| Poland will make joint defence financing a priority during its presidency of the EU. Give an alarm over matters from the Ukraine war to the return of NATO skeptic Poland, NATO skeptic Donald Trump to the White House. | ||
| Now what he's saying there, the Polish finance minister, is that he wants to pull the responsibility here of defending Ukraine. | ||
| In addition to NATO, but also to the EU. So on the one hand, you have Poland saying, look, because Poland's going to take over the presidency, the rotating presidency of the European Council on January the 1st. | ||
| Poland's saying that one of their strategic objectives is joint EU defence funding, And then, what does Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister, admit? | ||
| We're not actually ruling it out. | ||
| We're not going to send Polish troops ourselves. | ||
| That is the joke, Steve, that the Eastern European countries are doing. | ||
| And it is amazing to me, as a person living here in Europe, but obviously a great Friend and admirer of America. | ||
| It's amazing to me that America's leadership over not just the last four years but over decades has encouraged and indulged the Eastern European countries to see America as their defence meal ticket. | ||
| European leaders, including Zelensky, are only doing exactly what America has trained them to do over many decades. | ||
| And here when they say, oh look, this is really a job for NATO, we don't want to send in our own troops, they're saying quite explicitly, let the Americans pay. | ||
| They're rich, they're dumb, they'll come in, they'll pick it up. | ||
| They'll pick up the tab. | ||
| We don't have to. | ||
| We, for our part, We'll conduct an ever more escalatory and ever more incendiary policy towards their number one threat, which is Russia, knowing that America will come in and stand as the ultimate security guarantee via NATO. It's absolutely appalling. | ||
| I have more to say on that, but I know time... | ||
| It's short. | ||
| So I just want to come back here to this point here, which I'm going to mention is every day now that I come on the show. | ||
| So important. | ||
| This is the article from Foreign Policy magazine yesterday. | ||
| Again, it's not Gateway Pundit. | ||
| It's not National Pulse. | ||
| It's not human events. | ||
| This is the most, along with Foreign Affairs magazine, these are the two most sedate news organizations within the international rules-based order community. | ||
| Reading these magazines, Steve, you're listening in to how these international policy wants are talking amongst themselves. | ||
| This is their article yesterday. | ||
| European countries would agree to send their troops only if they had, and I quote, an ironclad guarantee from Washington that the United States would intervene if they were attacked. | ||
| So whilst the debate is shifting in terms of security guarantees to Europe, what's actually happening behind the scenes is that it's America who's going to underwrite Europe's underwriting of Ukraine. | ||
| Always America there. | ||
| Always America in the background. | ||
| American troops, American money are expected to come up and save the day. | ||
| And there's no disengagement here. | ||
| There's no decoupling. | ||
| You're ever more being bound in. | ||
| What I would like to see from the House of Representatives on this occasion, with this article in my sleeve, are questions in the House, right? | ||
| First act for President Trump on January the 20th, let me suggest, is to order the State Department To reveal to him exactly what these ironclad guarantees have been. | ||
| Because I think President Trump should start saying now that from January the 20th, European countries should take note, from January the 20th, any ironclad guarantees that have been offered Are null and void. | ||
| America will not be committing a single dollar or a single troop to underwrite Ukraine's security and territorial integrity. | ||
| Plus, when it comes to the reconstruction of Ukraine, America will not commit a single dollar. | ||
| These things cannot be repeated more too often, Steve. | ||
| They cannot be repeated too often. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| 1000%. | ||
| Ben, social media, where do people get you? | ||
| Thanks, Steve. | ||
| Get up at Harnwell. | ||
| That's my social media platform of choice. | ||
| Folks, I've got some brilliant posts at the top of my feed waiting for your consideration as we speak. | ||
| Thank you, brother. | ||
| Appreciate you. | ||
| Go check out Birch Gold right now. | ||
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| Birchgold.com. | ||
| Also, Bannon at 989898. Text that and you get all the free information on 401ks, IRAs, all of it. | ||
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| They save people billions of dollars and they can help you. | ||
| Government Gangsters, the great film that we made on Cash Patel. | ||
| You heard Senator Tuberville today. | ||
| Cash walks you through exactly what a government gangster is and what he's going to do about it. | ||
| Liz Cheney. | ||
| Although Liz, I don't think, makes a film or just is a marginal character. | ||
| Government Gangsters, warroom.film. | ||
| Warroom.film. | ||
| Warroom, all one word. | ||
| Check it out today. | ||
| And of course, AmFest. | ||
| We're going to be there starting tomorrow live. | ||
| Amfest.com, promo code WARROOM, get a 25% discount if you're a War Room Posse member. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| Dave Bratt is going to take it in from here as I head to a plane. | ||
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Go on, raise the flag. | |
| Cause I got stars in my eyes. | ||
| Oh, I'm in love with her, and I won't apologize. | ||
| Dress her up so you don't recognize. | ||
| This nonsense, all this spin, they can't handle the truth. | ||
| War Room Battleground with Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| All right, everyone. | ||
| Welcome to the War Room. | ||
| Dave Brat sitting in for the great Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| An honor to sit in. | ||
| What a day. | ||
| I'm going to try to bring you up to speed on all the breaking news with respect to the CR, the continuing resolution. | ||
| Usually the War Room is against all of these things, but as Stephen K. Bannon has said over the course of the past few days we were willing to take that on the condition that it was sane and that it would bring us kind of just a clean bill to bring President Trump and his agenda into play in 90 days or about, you know, 60 days after President Trump takes office. | ||
| But to bring you up to speed, President Trump just weighed in with the Vice President after Elon Musk also weighed in earlier today and sent Trumpers I think when Elon and Vivek both sent the memo, that was probably close to ending it. | ||
| But then the president, the vice president, weighed in and just said, it's time for the Republicans to lead and to grow a spine. | ||
| And so we've been going over this forever, right? | ||
| I had a win over Eric Cantor. | ||
| Then we had Speaker Boehner. | ||
| Then we had Speaker Paul Ryan. | ||
| And then we had McCarthy as Speaker. | ||
| And all of them, it all had to do with a failure to listen to the American citizens, right? | ||
| Make America great and America first and American citizens first is what we always try to emphasize. | ||
| These leaders did not pay attention to the voice of the American people. | ||
| And so right now, the American people are crying out pretty loudly after the Trump win. | ||
| Across the board, this country wanted to see some good news, spending going down. | ||
| Instead, it went way up. | ||
| I'm going to have Richard Stern in a minute to cover some of this. | ||
| I'm going to go over some charts, but I first wanted to read you a few notes that capture the news of the day pretty well from a few friends of mine, Thomas Massey and Dan Horowitz. | ||
| This one from Dan Horowitz, who's been great on the budget for 10 years going way back. | ||
| And just so you know, right, this is a continuation of the Nancy Pelosi budget bill, right? | ||
| It basically continues the $7 trillion woke and weaponized budget that we all had heartburn over, and then extends it with even more Democrat giveaways, 10 to 1, right? | ||
| 10 Democrat giveaways to one Republican ask, and our asks are minor. | ||
| So here's Daniel Horowitz. | ||
| Just keep in mind that every single budget bill proposed under GOP House control since 2017 has been passed with a greater percentage of Democrat votes, often with unanimous or near unanimous Democrat votes. | ||
| So what happens is that many bad Republicans can quietly hope yes and vote no because the Democrats take care of the business. | ||
| That, in a nutshell, is what's going on, right? | ||
| That's a lot to take in. | ||
| Let me just read you the first sentence. | ||
| Just every single budget bill proposed under GOP Republican House control since 2017. I was in back then. | ||
| I was 2014 to 18. I was not happy with the budget. | ||
| And I ran on this, and a lot of this, you know, you can blame the politicians to a point, but after a decade, the American people, some of the fault lies the American people need to start voting straight, right? | ||
| When you have endless wars and a border invasion and inflation, and then this horrendous debt that threatens our very existence economically going forward, it's on us. | ||
| So we need to spread the war room, spread the word. | ||
| Next, any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years. | ||
| Elon Musk, a close Trump ally who is leading an advisory commission to cut government spending posted on X. The social media platform he owns. | ||
| Have you ever seen a bigger piece of pork? | ||
| Vivek Ramaswamy weighed in equally strongly. | ||
| Donald Trump Jr. seized on a provision highlighted by Trump cheerleader Benny Johnson, and this is written by the lamestream medium, would purportedly allow congressional offices to block the disclosure of House data That means House congressional data, something Johnson tied to potential probes of the panel that investigated the January 6th attack on the Capitol. | ||
| That's in this bill. | ||
| So Donald Trump Jr., spot on. | ||
| Blocking the disclosure of House congressional data tied to probes of the panel that investigated the—I'm sure you've all followed the Cheney news breaking yesterday and today. | ||
| They want to block and hold themselves up to non-transparency after running on a pro-democracy panel. | ||
| I won't touch Ukraine right now. | ||
| That'll take us too long. | ||
| House Republican leaders also weighed in on several other issues defending the bill, and especially the farmers. | ||
| And the small farmers, we all got a heart for that, but they linked the farmer piece to national security. | ||
| And if it really is, if there really is a link between the farm aid and national security, well, then that deserves a government shutdown. | ||
| Let's have that debate. | ||
| If you're really going to invoke that argument, that national security is linked to the farm aid, Hey, if that's true, let's shut her down and have that debate. | ||
| The American people will certainly side with us. | ||
| Border security. | ||
| Johnson could easily have tied HR2 in with the other foreign aid bills. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Dan Horowitz, another quote. | ||
| Yeah, $4.7 trillion in debt over 18 months without a major war or official recession. | ||
| No way that could lead to inflation! | ||
| Sarcasm, Dan Horowitz. | ||
| I completely agree. | ||
| Denver, why don't you haul up the chart? | ||
| This is the chart. | ||
| Steve Bannon has been drawing all of his... | ||
| Calculations on, right? | ||
| If this spending level continues, right, what this is showing, you know, the receipts by sorts on the left side and the money we take in, the individual income taxes up at the top, then social insurance, corporate income tax, excise taxes, etc. | ||
| And then the outlays by function are on the right-hand side. | ||
| Of course, the outlays are much bigger than the taxes coming in. | ||
| Social Security, Medicare, National Defense, Steve's been covering the NDAA a trillion bucks in order to Trumpify the budget, to keep Trump from making any inroads, keep Doge, Elon, and Vivek from making any inroads on efficiency with the Department of Defense. | ||
| Steve always says, we're for a strong national defense. | ||
| China has declared war against us today. | ||
| We're currently launching missiles into Russia. | ||
| We're all in favor of strong national defense, but the inefficiencies when we're throwing gazillion dollar bombs after drones, everybody knows. | ||
| So we got a national strategic defense system. | ||
| So, net, if you take the left side, the total receipts, and then compare it with the right side, the total spending, we come up $624 billion short in only the last two months, the beginning of the fiscal year for the federal government. | ||
| So if you extrapolate from $624 billion over two months, that leads to a $4 trillion deficit in one year. | ||
| So that's why Steve Bannon's been saying in over a year, a year and a half, instead of being at $36 trillion in debt, we'll be at $40 trillion. | ||
| Debt's growing exponentially. | ||
| The bond market vigilantes will kick in. | ||
| Interest rates will go up. | ||
| Inflation will go up. | ||
| Because the Federal Reserve will accommodate. | ||
| They started lowering the interest rate again. | ||
| They're preparing Wall Street and the rich For a safety net, once again, when things collapse, there's clearly a bubble, right? | ||
| Warren Buffett has gone from $100 billion cash to $300 billion in cash over the past month or so. | ||
| And when Warren Buffett goes into cash, he did that before the 07-08 financial crisis, and he bought the whole lot, as they say, after the collapse. | ||
| So he knows what he's doing. | ||
| And so a cautionary tale right there. | ||
| I want to bring in our good friend Richard Stern from the Heritage Foundation to cover some of the incidentals, the details that will infuriate you when you hear them. | ||
| Richard was head of the Budget Committee staff in the House, so he knows his stuff. | ||
| He's served his country for many years. | ||
| Thanks for being with us, Richard. | ||
| Take it over. | ||
| Always a pleasure. | ||
| Thank you for having me on. | ||
| Look, I think the first thing I would tell everybody is, it is 1,547 pages long. | ||
| And if that sounds like you couldn't read that if you had a month of Sundays, trust me, that's part of the design. | ||
| They want to make sure they can cram as much through this as possible so that there's as little transparency, as little real debate about it. | ||
| You know, we keep hearing about this as a CR, as you were bringing up, you know, continuation of government spending. | ||
| Only 8 pages out of 1,547. | ||
| Right around 2% of the entire bill is the actual CR. The table of contents on this bill is 14 pages long. | ||
| So the table of contents walking through all of the swampy stuff that the D.C. cartel has packed into this bill, that table of contents of their goodies for themselves and their friends is longer than the part of the bill that is actually what the title of it is. | ||
| You can't make this stuff up. | ||
| Yeah, no, thanks. | ||
| Give us a little bit of the political background. | ||
| You were on the House. | ||
| You know the politics as well. | ||
| I think that's probably the most important piece here, right? | ||
| Trump just won a huge Electoral College victory and the popular vote. | ||
| For the American people, we have black, brown, Hispanic, blue-collar workers coming our way. | ||
| Everybody wants to right the ship and get us going in the right direction. | ||
| The speaker is in a hard spot to an extent. | ||
| But what's going on here, right? | ||
| The House leadership, they've got to know. | ||
| They have to respond to that overwhelming electoral victory. | ||
| People want to see success. | ||
| They want to see the beginning initiatives going in the right direction. | ||
| They cut in spending. | ||
| They could have offset a lot of this spending for disaster relief or farm relief, et cetera, with something else. | ||
| And so what gives on the politics here? | ||
| So absolutely. | ||
| You know, in the last generation, we have seen this massive explosion of the debt. | ||
| You've always been an amazing ally of those of us who are fighting to let you keep the money that you've earned, not have the government spend it away and squandered the debt. | ||
| And, you know, the statue showed earlier that half of the spending of the government in the last two months has been from deficit spending. | ||
| All of that turns into inflation. | ||
| It's the government crowding at everything you would like to do. | ||
| Now, how did we get here? | ||
| We got here because Congress and the White House for a generation have sought to give favors to their friends. | ||
| They've used the national credit card to do it because they know that it sets off an inflation time bomb that takes years to really show itself. | ||
| You know, the lack of affordability of housing, the spike in interest rates, interest rates right now on mortgages are about three times what they were when Trump left office the first time. | ||
| And that's because of this ticking time bomb, because of the pressure that the federal debt and deficit put on money markets. | ||
| So it's a, it looks like free money because the hangover comes well after the buzz on this one. | ||
| And so the politics, of course, is for more than a decade or so, Congress is used to this. | ||
| And in fact, they tried doing the same thing this year. | ||
| The fiscal year actually runs out the end of September. | ||
| What did they do? | ||
| They passed a CR to conveniently put the next vote in the middle of the lame duck. | ||
| They knew what they were doing. | ||
| They wanted to get through the election, promising whatever you wanted them to hear, wait before Trump could take office and then pass this an eight page CR with another 1530 pages of their giveaways. | ||
| And, you know, part of this is 70 pages for pandemic response preparedness. | ||
| Who knows what's in that? | ||
| They're giving themselves a 40% pay raise in this bill and $110 billion strewn across every account you can imagine. | ||
| Yeah, and I just want to highlight a point we haven't made enough on the war room. | ||
| Milton Friedman said inflation is always and ever a monetary phenomenon. | ||
| And then the American people get confused because people say, well, this government spending causes inflation or oil shocks cause inflation. | ||
| Or if Trump does tariffs, that'll cause inflation. | ||
| That is not true. | ||
| None of that's true. | ||
| The reason it appears true is because whenever government does the spending, the Federal Reserve accommodates that spending by printing more money. | ||
| Now, if they didn't print more money after the government spends $2 trillion, you would have interest rates going through the roof, right? | ||
| And so that's why they do it. | ||
| But the Federal Reserve They're big adult people with big brains, and they know what they're doing. | ||
| They are accommodating this disaster. | ||
| And so I just want to make that point clear to people. | ||
| When you get confused about inflation, Uncle Miltie was not wrong. | ||
| Now, I want your response to this. | ||
| We've got about six minutes to go, Richard. | ||
| So when I was in Congress, I always called the budget. | ||
| And the speaker, by the way, has ultimate power. | ||
| That's why we've had problems over the past five speakers. | ||
| They really get to set every spending. | ||
| When I was on the budget committee, they would set the number and say, you guys have fun twiddling your thumbs. | ||
| Here's the number. | ||
| And so the reason that is there's what's called the giant Excel spreadsheet in the sky. | ||
| That is like the Holy of Holies or the unholy of Holies up in Congress. | ||
| And so what that means is they have to pay attention. | ||
| That Excel spreadsheet in the sky and leadership has to pay attention to their donors and the donor class and the money. | ||
| The money's coming in. | ||
| And so it's the exact opposite of what America First means when you hear what the speakership has done in our budget process. | ||
| Let's just go over the top three numbers, right? | ||
| Economics, take care of the middle class, take care of the poor, etc., What do we do after 07-08? | ||
| You always protect, according to the giant Excel spreadsheet in this guy, you protect Wall Street and you protect the bankers at all costs. | ||
| If the middle class has to pay taxes and suffer, sorry, too bad. | ||
| Immigration, border invasion, the rich class wants cheap labor. | ||
| So when you walk into the holy of holies up there in the Congress, again, the American people get short, shorthanded. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Instead of supporting the American people and increasing wages, the cheap labor crowd gets their way. | ||
| Finally, endless wars. | ||
| The American people are sadly against this Ukraine funding. | ||
| We love the Ukrainian people, great Christian folks there. | ||
| But the U.S. and our CIA and State Department have been poking the bear, the red line, and the American people want no part – And now Germany's falling apart. | ||
| France is falling apart. | ||
| England's falling apart. | ||
| Who do you think is going to end up paying all the bills for this if we don't get this right? | ||
| And so when you go up to the giant exile spreadsheet in the sky and the speaker walks back into that secret panel, they go in with good intentions. | ||
| Paul Ryan, he was a heritage guy. | ||
| Mike goes in, but then they're told or sold a bill of goods and they are told to turn around. | ||
| So you got about four minutes, Richard. | ||
| Give me your commentary on why in the world is this happening to every speaker over the past 30 years, as you just said. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And I think you hit the nail on the head. | ||
| You know, so what I always tell people is that if you think of the founding of the United States, we were put together by people who were visionary leaders who cared about the people, who cared about all Americans, who wanted to see the middle class that you're talking about grow. | ||
| And part of this comes back to the understanding of, frankly, back to how did the Roman Empire and Republic get formed? | ||
| It was formed around landholders, farmers who were really small business owners. | ||
| They were the middle class. | ||
| When did Rome collapse? | ||
| It's when the land was stolen out from under them by elites in the Senate in the city of Rome. | ||
| And we have seen that time and time again through history. | ||
| Where nations rise on the back of their entrepreneurial, innovative, middle class, effectively their small business owners, and then you see these elites come in who get their profit not through merit, not through producing goods and services that help everybody and improve quality of life. | ||
| but they derive their power from the government. | ||
| They steal the resources produced by that small business, entrepreneurial, innovative class, and they use that to wield ever-increasing power. | ||
| And that is exactly why I like calling this the DC cartel. | ||
| It's a cartel of elites who wield power in the fashion that you were talking about, that we're talking about right here. | ||
| And so, yes, they hold Congress, they hold the Speaker over the coals, and they force them to vote to steal more and more for the working class from those Americans who produce, who innovate. | ||
| You know, I appreciate everything you were talking about, getting into the details of how inflation works. | ||
| One of the things I always say is that the federal deficit is the bank robber. | ||
| The Fed is merely the getaway car driver, and you are the bank being robbed. | ||
| And that's exactly what's happening here. | ||
| When the Fed creates more money, it's not just an inflation steals value out of your paycheck and out of your life savings, but it artificially inflates the value of hard assets. | ||
| So it becomes this tide that drowns the people who are working to get ahead and repurposes, redistributes that wealth to those who already have wealth. | ||
| It moves away from a merit-based economy that produces prosperity and moves it to something that resembles the kind of feudalistic powers we used to see in Europe. | ||
| And it is that kind of imperialism that we have to work hard to stop. | ||
| But those are the forces you're seeing today on show. | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| Let's dig. | ||
| You got two minutes. | ||
| Let's dig a little bit deeper in inflation. | ||
| I don't think the American people understand because the war room and a few other places, you, Heritage, might have explained this, but we've had 25% inflation since Biden took over, right? | ||
| So, you know, 22 plus, you know, three lately. | ||
| So just say 25%. | ||
| What people don't understand, it's not only your food prices and gas prices and everything else under the sun, but you've lost 25% of the purchasing power in your retirement plan. | ||
| Your pension, your 401k, etc. | ||
| And so 30 seconds, you know, I don't think the American people understand the pain, this hidden tax. | ||
| When you go to spend your million dollar retirement, it's only going to buy $750,000 if you're lucky enough to have one. | ||
| Half the country doesn't even have one. | ||
| Richard Stern, close us out. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And that erodes everything else you rely on, erodes the value in your home, everything else you've saved. | ||
| And, you know, 97% of the value of the dollar has had a match lit to it by the Federal Reserve since it was formed. | ||
| And really, as you were pointing out, as Milton Friedman pointed out, inflation is purely a tax on hardworking Americans. | ||
| It is a quiet tax you never voted for, but it drains everything you have and gives it to the D.C. cartel. | ||
| Yep, you never voted for any of this, folks. | ||
| And so call up your Congress, call up the senators, both sides, right? | ||
| The Democrats get away with being Santa Claus. | ||
| They give away everything, right? | ||
| Our press doesn't do any due diligence there. | ||
| Republicans take it on the chops because they mess up too. | ||
| They're increasing spending, but they're fighting against Santa Claus. | ||
| It's just accept it. | ||
| That the Democrats, of course, jack up spending. | ||
| The press never holds them accountable to anything for the endless wars, for the Ukraine funding, for the gigantic deficits, for the inflation. | ||
| They did the border invasion intentionally. | ||
| They'll tell you that. | ||
| And so don't just call the Republicans. | ||
| We want to call the folks that are not making America great and not making you, the American citizen, first place in the list of those who need to be supported by this great country. | ||
| So keep up the fight, and we'll see you soon over Christmas. | ||
| I'll be back on. |
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