Jan. 13, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:55
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pray for our enemies. | |
| Because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The people have had a belly full of it. | |
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
MAGA Media. | |
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey everyone, I want to talk about something important today. | |
| Because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. | ||
| I started building social media to give people a voice. | ||
| I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today. | ||
| But a lot has happened over the last several years. | ||
| But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. | ||
| Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that's millions of people. | ||
| And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. | ||
| More specifically, here's what we're going to do. | ||
| First, we're going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the US. The reality is that this is a trade-off. | ||
| It means we're going to catch less bad stuff, but we'll also reduce the number of innocent people's posts and accounts that we accidentally take down. | ||
| China has censored our apps from even working in the country. | ||
| The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the U.S. government. | ||
| And that's why it's been so difficult over the past four years when even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship. | ||
| By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further. | ||
| Call up our team and like scream at them and curse and it's like these documents are it's all kind of out there Did you record any of those phone calls? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know I don't think I don't think we were but but I think I want to listen I mean their emails the emails are published it's all it's all kind of out there and um and they're like and basically I can only handle so much of that. | |
| It's 13 January, Monday in the year of our Lord, 2025. And Mark Zuckerberg, for all the money that you have, you need to get a better acting coach. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| The Biden regime officials, Mark, they cussed at you and your engineers. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And you folded like I've never seen anyone fold. | ||
| The entire MAGA movement had what? | ||
| Every arrow in the quiver, the entire full force of this state, of this regime, prison sentences, assassination attempts, Stephen K. Bannon, Peter Navarro, Donald J. Trump. | ||
| And they stood in the breach and took it like real men and fought for this country. | ||
| And some weird, woke-looking bureaucrat cussed at one of your engineers, probably an H-1B. And you folded and you sold this country down the river, so much so that you gave, what, nearly a billion dollars to make sure that Joe Biden, on very illegitimate grounds, could become this country's next president. | ||
| Maybe in all the new hobbies that you're picking up in your free time, whether it's, what, the jujitsu or the wakeboarding, whatever you're posting to try to pretend and dupe this country into thinking that you're a human. | ||
| Maybe you should start reading history books and learn about the trials and tribulations that people have been put through and the courage that they have mustered to stand in the breach, which you, Sir Mark Zuckerberg, have none of. | ||
| Speaking of history, I'm so glad, what was it, five years ago, five years, wow, five years ago, you lectured at Georgetown on free speech. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for your contributions to humanity. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I am so embarrassed and appalled at so many people in the MAGA conservative right who have taken this conversion as something that is legitimate. | ||
| I have seen transgender surgeries and drag queens that are more convincing than this. | ||
| There are so many people who have fallen for what, oh, they took the tampons out of the bathrooms at Meta HQ. Oh, now they're apparently not using DEI. Well, I missed the point where anyone mandated that they do any of that stuff. | ||
| It was on them. | ||
| They chose to do that. | ||
| So you can accept the consequences of your actions. | ||
| And if you think that Mark Zuckerberg is MAGA or if he is our new friend and that he's going to help us, well then that's almost as dumb as thinking when a stripper tells you that they love you that they actually love you. | ||
| And I might seem super enthused or agitated right now, but it's because I'm hearing the conversations going on behind the scenes. | ||
| About how people are falling for this in the very intense and elaborate and well-funded lobbying campaign that the metas of the world and the TikToks, although they're already being successful on that front, are waging right now on the MAGA right to get people to sign up and become on board with what Zuckerberg is selling you. | ||
| To go a little more, shall we say, intellectual, right? | ||
| What you're witnessing right now... | ||
| It shows you, right? | ||
| In 2016, they infiltrated the White House. | ||
| They infiltrated the MAGA movement. | ||
| So they didn't even feel the need to co-opt our movement because it wasn't worth co-opting. | ||
| Now that we're actually legitimate opposition, they're pretending to be one of us, right? | ||
| Now suddenly, they see the light. | ||
| They get the MAGA. After what? | ||
| Trying to spend, what, four years of censoring us, deplatforming us, debanking us, throwing us in jail and celebrating it? | ||
| Right? | ||
| Fact-checking, I don't know if you picked up in that video, it's a limited hangout. | ||
| It's not about the fact-checking. | ||
| It's about the algorithms, the manipulation on both sides of the equation, suppressing and shadow-banning conservative content while promoting Joe Biden. | ||
| The fact that your website has been used to make it easier for human traffickers to carry out illegal immigration and human smuggling and drug smuggling. | ||
| The cartels love Facebook. | ||
| And then he has the nerve. | ||
| By the way, I don't know about you, I didn't hear the word sorry. | ||
| In any of those interviews, a sorry would go a long way, right? | ||
| But then he has the nerve to say that we mistakenly, mistakenly, operative were there, mistakenly censored Americans because, I don't know, our parameters were set too wide. | ||
| Well, hang on, Mark, because I thought you were importing, what, the best and brightest, all the H-1B techies, right? | ||
| But I guess they're not very good at their job. | ||
| Okay, I guess we'll... | ||
| Set that debate aside for a second. | ||
| But it was a mistake. | ||
| Do you think it was a mistake when, what, everyone that they censored was people who voted for Trump and basically the entirety of this audience? | ||
| I don't think that was a mistake. | ||
| I think it was wholly intentional. | ||
| Right? | ||
| The only reason that we even know about this stuff, that we know about the fact-checkers, is because this show and other investigative reporters dared to report on it. | ||
| They were not forthright. | ||
| I'm pretty sure they told us they didn't even have fact-checking programs. | ||
| It's a testament to the power of this audience and independent reporting. | ||
| You think Mark Zuckerberg wanted to make that video? | ||
| Hell no. | ||
| And I guess we'll do a little fact-checking of our own. | ||
| Because Mark Zuckerberg says, oh, China, we can't follow the path of China, the Chinese Communist Party, they're so evil. | ||
| Well, Mark Zuckerberg, just to really put a nice strong period on the sentence that you're fake and you're phony and that you're a fraud. | ||
| You have been spending, I don't even know how long, longer than probably I've been alive, trying to get in China, trying to get Facebook services, meta services into China. | ||
| And the only reason that you're not a total sellout supplicant to them right now is because they don't want you, because they understand the threat of having a new tech, oligarchic, monopolistic class of people like yourselves who become more powerful than the government. | ||
| Say, oh Natalie, you're being crazy. | ||
| Well, one of the stories that I broke many, many years ago, Was that Facebook actually funds their journalism project. | ||
| They funneled millions of dollars into partnerships with the International Center for Journalists to create the Tsinghua University's Global Business Journalism School, which is an explicitly self-declared Marxist journalism school in Beijing that trains individuals to work for Chinese Communist Party-run, state-run media outlets. | ||
| Facebook has even gone so far. | ||
| We can play the video. | ||
| I don't want the sound because we don't play Chinese Communist Party propaganda on the war room. | ||
| But that right there is the vice president of Facebook guest lecturing at this self-declared Marxist facility. | ||
| But I thought Marx said, oh, we're going to win the war. | ||
| We're going to win the war for freedom, right? | ||
| Well, how about this? | ||
| I'll read you the founding document from this journalism school that is funded by Facebook. | ||
| And catch this! | ||
| Mark Zuckerberg, as early as 2014, was actually going overseas to Beijing. | ||
| He's actually on the advisory board at Sinhua University. | ||
| And he lectures there. | ||
| Sinhua University, the same university that has repeatedly committed cyber attacks against the United States. | ||
| Facebook then went far enough to, quote, team up to offer a course on insights from Silicon Valley, which entailed Sinhua flying in seven Facebook executives over the semester to teach some of the classes. | ||
| You would be in China if you could. | ||
| They just didn't want you. | ||
| And frankly, MAGA doesn't want you. | ||
| And you sit there, shame on you for sitting there like a victim and doing these podcast rounds and putting out these weird videos. | ||
| Americans lost their lives because of your actions and your inactions. | ||
| Think about the patriotism and the courage and the convictions that every single January 6th prisoner, and I use that word intentionally, had when they had to decide to stand in the breach and face the full wrath, the full fire and fury of this American regime. | ||
| And you had some weird, wacko bureaucrats say, hey, we really think you should censor this meme. | ||
| They were hoping for plea deals. | ||
| That was the best that they could get. | ||
| You got what? | ||
| Million dollar PR agents. | ||
| You're not fooling absolutely anyone. | ||
| And I'm telling you, just like the H-1B stuff, the Elon stuff, this is the issue in and of itself. | ||
| And I'm very disheartened to see so many on our side thinking, That this man has had an actual conversion. | ||
| My suggestion? | ||
| All the money that these tech oligarchs have donated to the inauguration, the Bezoses, the Zuckerbergs of the world, those are the people that we should be investigating first and maybe we should use the money that they've donated to fund and bankroll those investigations. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It reeks of guilt. | |
| From companies that I'm told never even really had fact-checking entities to begin with. | ||
| Here in the war room, and it's not just because my last name is Winters, but we appreciate winter soldiers, not sunshine patriots. | ||
| And maybe in the metaverse, you can't distinguish the difference between that, but that matters to MAGA. So Mark Zuckerberg, thank you, but no thank you. | ||
| Maybe you should just go back to the metaverse. | ||
| I'd be okay with that. | ||
| And speaking of people who, I guess, just don't stop, Gavin Newsom, who's what state is quite literally burning down, you know what he did today? | ||
| He secured $50 million to, quote, Trump-proof his state. | ||
| Now, $25 million is going to their State Department of Justice to, I don't know, sue Trump into oblivion. | ||
| And then the other half, $25 million, which, yes, students of history and government budgets will remember that, what, the LAFD budget was cut by, like, what, $17 million? | ||
| Well, there's another $25 million to, quote, defend immigrants against deportation and detention. | ||
| So they're going to get grants for legal nonprofits and immigration support centers. | ||
| So, when Gavin Newsom stands up there and says that he's already reimagining LA 2.0 and that he wants a Marshall Plan, bro, you're not giving money to another country. | ||
| You're not giving money to rebuild Europe. | ||
| You're not rebuilding Mexico. | ||
| You're not importing the third world like you guys so desperately want to do. | ||
| It's called putting America first. | ||
| And that is the sick, depraved nature of these people. | ||
| California is still actively working, burning down, sorry. | ||
| And Gavin Newsom is concerned about getting tens of millions of dollars so they can sue Trump and make sure that criminal, illegal aliens like the ones who killed Lake and Riley are not going to be deported. | ||
| But hey, at least I can't get fact-checked. | ||
| On any of this, right? | ||
| Because they dropped the fact-checking program. | ||
| I think they call that a Pyrrhic victory, Mark Zuckerberg. | ||
| And we're not going to fall for it here in the war room. | ||
| So a lot of breaking news on all things media. | ||
| You'll see why I went so hard on this. | ||
| With our next guest who joins us, we will be right back after this short break. | ||
| Darren Beattie and some new, really interesting reporting on the Think Tank influence scene in Washington, D.C. We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm Norm Eisen. | |
| I am here to announce I am leaving The Washington Post in order to co-found with Norm, an exciting new online platform, The Contrarian. | ||
| We are going to bring you written material, podcasts, interviews, social media, all in defense of democracy. | ||
| Our intent is to combat the authoritarian force that we all face. | ||
| To help us, we have an exciting array of contributors from all walks of life, all ages, all backgrounds, to help us in this venture. | ||
| We're going to do politics. | ||
| We're going to do law. | ||
| But we know that any successful pro-democracy movement also has to be very vocal about culture. | ||
| We'll have a humor column. | ||
| We'll even have a cooking column. | ||
| But we're going to sprinkle in a little bit of pro- That's not a deepfake. | ||
| That's real. | ||
| I will say I've tried the pro-democracy flavor. | ||
| Not a fan of it. | ||
| I don't know what the heck that was. | ||
| I'm sorry, it's like your weird, wacky librarian and your, like, thespian uncle? | ||
| Are these people serious? | ||
| They thought that that was going to be the video to entice people to come and watch their new outfit, the contrarian? | ||
| I would humbly suggest, especially to dear Norm Eisen, you guys know I love me some Norm Eisen, color revolution extraordinaire. | ||
| You should just be focusing on preserving your documents for everything that you've done from the law fair in Colorado to Arizona all the way to the impeachments, what you've done globally, what you've done with who knows where, with God knows, I don't even want to get into what you've done if you think that that video is publishable. | ||
| Something with your standards are very clearly off. | ||
| But you guessed it, Jen Rubin is leaving the Washington Post to start whatever the heck that is. | ||
| I'm sure George Soros is probably bankrolling it. | ||
| But I want to bring on Darren, I think, the man who really brought Norm Eisen to the forefront of a lot of our minds, certainly myself. | ||
| Darren Beattie joins us now. | ||
| Of course, Revolver News fame. | ||
| Darren, I don't think when you launched Revolver you ever had a sizzle reel like that. | ||
| But all jokes aside, I'm sure you'll give us a wonderful repartee on what the heck we just watched. | ||
| But your thoughts on sort of the evolving media landscape shift. | ||
| I'm still just digesting the video. | ||
| I saw it for the first time just about 30 minutes ago. | ||
| It really was transported to a parallel universe. | ||
| In a universe in which Saturday Night Live was actually funny, this would be a perfect skit. | ||
| It was even set up like it. | ||
| The cooking show with a sprinkle of democracy. | ||
| It's really amazing, and I'd love to know what rich idiot they conned into funding this. | ||
| I'd like to know what rich idiot is going to dump millions of dollars into this. | ||
| I really want to know, because there's so many of them, but I want to know in particular which rich moron is writing A $20 million check to get this off the ground. | ||
| That's what I'm interested in with this. | ||
| Because you know there's going to be some idiot to write millions of dollars checked for this. | ||
| That's how media works. | ||
| It's like Jennifer Rubin. | ||
| I never even heard her name in years. | ||
| You don't you don't hear about her for years. | ||
| I guess she was still at The Washington Post. | ||
| I didn't even know she was still there. | ||
| I guess she's leaving. | ||
| Norm Eisen is at least more relevant. | ||
| But even the idea that he thinks this is attractive. | ||
| That's how they spend money. | ||
| U.S. dollars in the State Department to try to convince remote villages in Africa to have a drag queen parade. | ||
| That's the level of propaganda that they put out there. | ||
| Say, hey, villagers, why don't we try a little sprinkle of democracy with Jen Rubin? | ||
| That's the quality. | ||
| No wonder we're failing abroad. | ||
| No wonder we've become a laughingstock. | ||
| It's this weird combination of genuine power, at least at the State Department. | ||
| Noren Eisen had power, and as you point out, and as we famously reported, he is a major and instrumental figure in color revolutions. | ||
| He's been the chief basically lawfare perpetrator against the Trump regime. | ||
| He's filed lawsuits going back to basic. | ||
| He started it the day before Trump was even inaugurated the first time. | ||
| This is not this guy's first rodeo, but he goes from lawfare to a cooking show for democracy and, And humor! | ||
| And humor! | ||
| I can't believe it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just, you know, what more is there to say is that? | |
| And humor! | ||
| There's going to be humor! | ||
| And a sprinkle of democracy! | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| But, you know, the best thing is, I guarantee you, there is a very wealthy idiot who gave this $10 million. | ||
| So I'd like to know who that is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think they should be deported, frankly. | |
| Where would media like that be without the wealthy idiots to subsidize it? | ||
| I'd love to see how it works. | ||
| The Bulwark managed to get subscribers. | ||
| I have no idea how they did that. | ||
| This is even, like, lower grade. | ||
| This is set up to be lower grade. | ||
| They did it by ripping off War Room. | ||
| All they ever do is just play our clips and react to them. | ||
| But on a, I guess, more substantive note, you know, look, I will say, I watch a lot of MSNBC. One of the most common refrains that I hear is, you know, the left needs to find their own Joe Rogan. | ||
| Humble suggestion, Norm Eisen, Jen Rubin, not your Joe Rogan. | ||
| Keep looking. | ||
| The Sprinkle of Democracy cooking show, not your Joe Rogan. | ||
| Keep looking. | ||
| It's going to be with Yuma. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can't argue with that. | |
| But to that point, I think it's sort of reflective. | ||
| Norm Eisen, though, right, is sort of an interesting, I think, note in all of this. | ||
| You know, he used to be very involved with the law affair. | ||
| Then he was very involved with the sort of election rigging, election integrity stuff. | ||
| Then it was, you know, the impeachments, right? | ||
| So he really is a jack of all trades. | ||
| I would say not... | ||
| Whatever we just watched. | ||
| But why do you think, two-part question, why do you think they're really doubling down, focusing so heavily right now on the media being the sort of warfare that they're trying to wage? | ||
| And to that point, a bit of breaking news that Rachel Maddow, who, you know, infamously, despite making, what, $25 million a year, was broadcasting once a week on Monday evenings, now released for the first hundred days. | ||
| That's the buried lead of the Trump administration. | ||
| She will be back on air every single night, the slot of Alex Wax. | ||
| You know, that's a great question. | ||
| I can't, for the life of me, understand or even have a theory of mind as to how someone could think the Norm Eisen, Jennifer Rubin thing was a good idea. | ||
| Really? | ||
| They're really at the bottom of the barrel here. | ||
| This is scraping even deeper into the bottom of the barrel than the bulwark. | ||
| At least Rachel Maddow, I think she has a genuine following. | ||
| There's something real there. | ||
| People watch it. | ||
| So the Ruben Eisen thing, I have no idea. | ||
| It could really be just a single rich idiot can make something like that happen and just keep... | ||
| As for the Maddo thing, it makes sense. | ||
| I think it could be popular. | ||
| I think she wants to test the waters a little bit, see how much outrage they can gin up. | ||
| And keep in mind, you know, there's still the Democrats are kind of recovering from this resounding and humiliating loss that really didn't give them any avenue of excuse. | ||
| You know, Trump won the popular vote. | ||
| They couldn't blame it on the Electoral College. | ||
| They, you know, Trump did very well with even minority groups. | ||
| So they didn't really even have that. | ||
| They dumped all the lawfare on. | ||
| It didn't work. | ||
| And so they're in a pretty desperate situation. | ||
| So I can imagine them saying, okay, well, we're going to test the waters, we're going to approach a media strategy and see if we can kind of build back some capital with the public through the media and through Norm Eisen's Democracy Cooking Channel. | ||
| I guess that's the best that they have to go for at the moment. | ||
| And so they're still kind of flailing about and licking their wounds from their resounding and embarrassing and decisive defeat on this last election cycle. | ||
| Darren, if people want to follow you, stay up to date with everything that you guys are working on over at Revolver, where can they go to do all that? | ||
| I hope you don't post any videos like that, or I will not have you back on the show. | ||
| No cooking content, please. | ||
| No democracy cooking shows, I promise. | ||
| Revolver.News, we have a big piece in the works on the Pipe Bomb Report. | ||
| We have an interesting piece on Amy Comey Barrett. | ||
| I think we called it a long time ago and few people did. | ||
| So some really big interesting pieces coming soon tonight, definitely by tomorrow. | ||
| So check it out, revolver.news. | ||
| I'm on Twitter at Darren J. Beattie. | ||
| Darren, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| We'll have you back soon. | ||
| Thank you, Natalie. | ||
| And just flagging, you guys know I very clinically watch Norm Eisen. | ||
| I think he, like I always say, is a locus in this sort of deep state lawfare apparatchik henchman type way. | ||
| But believe it or not, it's not a conspiracy theory. | ||
| Even Meta cannot fact check me on this. | ||
| In 2024, he actually lectured, believe it or not, I'm just reporting the facts, lectured in Los Angeles at the request of Mayor Karen Bass. | ||
| The Water Department on Ethics. | ||
| People may recall that he was Obama's ethics czar, so that's why he has so much ethics street cred. | ||
| That and what? | ||
| Toppling and deposing a bunch of foreign regimes in the name of a sprinkle of democracy, like the video suggests. | ||
| But you know we're all about pattern recognition here in the war room. | ||
| Just an interesting piece of data. | ||
| The next segment we're getting into... | ||
| Something I'm very interested in, how think tanks are all bought and paid for by basically everyone you hate, including this current regime. | ||
| In the meantime, birchgold.com slash Bannon. | ||
| Text Bannon to 989898. Make sure you're getting the latest installment of the End of the Dollar Empire. | ||
| And while you're at it, warpath.coffee. | ||
| You know, it's the place to be. | ||
| We'll be right back after this short break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here's your host, Stephen K. Band. | |
| Welcome back to The War Room. | ||
| We are joined now by Ben Freeman of the Quincy Institute, who broke news not too long ago. | ||
| I think the first time ever put up a really comprehensive sort of think tank tracker showing how money flows, whether it's from United States government, foreign governments, the military industrial complex, basically all the entities that want the policies that come out. | ||
| Of this great country, this capital that is just a stone's throw away from me, don't benefit you, the American worker, the American citizen, the American parent, the American family, whatever you may be, but benefit them, and it seems like the interests that they have are always at odds with what you want. | ||
| No conspiracies, no coincidences, but I'm just saying. | ||
| Ben joins us now. | ||
| Ben, I was reading through this report. | ||
| The numbers are just staggering. | ||
| In the last, what is it, few years, more than $110 million to the top 50 think tanks in the United States from foreign governments. | ||
| Defense companies have contributed over $34.7 million and over $1.49 billion from the United States government. | ||
| Sort of walk us through why you guys created this tracker, basically presupposing the idea. | ||
| That they are getting some form of ROI, whether it's influencing government policy, propaganda narratives. | ||
| Why did you guys set out to do this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, great question, Natalie. | |
| First, thanks for having me on. | ||
| We started this project because we were looking at a lot of the work that think tanks were doing, and a lot of it seemed to indicate that maybe it was serving the interests of some of their funders. | ||
| So we did, I think, what a lot of your viewers and you regularly do. | ||
| We decided to follow the money. | ||
| We decided to follow all of the money, and we didn't realize how much money we were getting into. | ||
| And ultimately, as you mentioned, we dug up over $1.5 billion in total funding going to the top 50 think tanks in the U.S. | ||
| And that's just over the past five years. | ||
| And to be clear, Natalie, that that's just the tip of the iceberg, because one really disturbing fact about think tank funding is that think tanks aren't actually required to disclose information. | ||
| Any of their funding, whether it's from foreign government, U.S. government, Pentagon contractors, doesn't matter. | ||
| They're not required to disclose that information. | ||
| In fact, over a third of the think tanks that we looked at, 18 of the 50, disclose absolutely nothing about their funding. | ||
| And so all of these figures, as enormous as they might be, we really think this is just the tip of the iceberg for the conflict of interest going on at think tanks in the U.S. They're such a, you know, fixture of D.C., right? | ||
| I think for those of us who've lived here and worked here, they really are these sort of, I think, originators of so many of these, whether it's talking points, I'd call it state-sanctioned propaganda in some cases. | ||
| But I'm just curious because they do have the ability to, you know, astroturf these narratives. | ||
| Frankly, I think in some ways the Atlantic Councils of the World and the Brookings institutions, they're in some ways responsible for escalating, you know, everything that's going on in Ukraine. | ||
| They sort of created this whole, you know, democracy is dying and President Trump is dying. | ||
| They really provided the sort of academic muscle to back up these bogus theories. | ||
| So I'm just curious from your sort of meta bird's eye view analysis of what you think they're looking for their ROI to be. | ||
| Is this something that's country specific? | ||
| Is it issue specific in the case of the defense contractors? | ||
| Is it just... | ||
| You know, what are they looking for and how are they trying to achieve their stated goals? | ||
| Is it by shaping political discourse, the media? | ||
| How are they disseminating it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say, unfortunately, it's all of the above. | |
| Everything you mentioned there is absolutely spot on. | ||
| At the end of the day, when a donor gives a contribution to a think tank, these aren't really charitable entities. | ||
| Anybody who's been around D.C. knows that folks at think tanks, they're leading the media narratives. | ||
| They're being interviewed on Fox, CNN, MSNBC, too. | ||
| They're lobbying Congress. | ||
| They're testifying before Congress. | ||
| In some cases, think tankers are even helping to write laws. | ||
| So when these foreign governments, the U.S. government and Pentagon contractors make a donation to a think tank, they're hoping to get in on that. | ||
| And they're hoping they can effectively use think tanks, at least in some level, as an influence broker for them. | ||
| That might mean helping to shape a narrative in their favor in the media. | ||
| The UAE, over and over again, wants us to turn a blind eye to their latest blunder in the world, whether it's in Sudan, Yemen, wherever. | ||
| Other governments like Saudi Arabia, they're really eager to use think tanks to help the U.S. to get into a security pact that would be just disastrous for the U.S. and could start the next endless war. | ||
| Well, I think in the same way, too, with, you know, institutions of higher education, academia, this loophole where they don't have to report it. | ||
| It's such a flagrant national security threat. | ||
| It's so obvious, but I guess it's sort of part of the insider trade, the insider deal, right? | ||
| They're not going to regulate because it's their same donors and lobbyists who are funding them. | ||
| But you bring up the UAE. | ||
| Obviously, we focus very extensively and intensely on the Chinese Communist Party and their kind of influence peddling going on in this town. | ||
| That was something that sort of shocked me from the report that their numbers were considerably less, but is that more a symptom of the fact that they're just not reporting it at the same time? | ||
| It's sort of stealthy, sneakier? | ||
| Or who are some of the biggest, shall we say, offenders in terms of the foreign countries? | ||
| And to that point, I know this is two questions, but can you talk about the United States government funding of some of these think tanks as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| Those are wonderful questions. | ||
| I'll start with the question of China, because, frankly, Natalie, that really shocked me, too. | ||
| We found very, very little funding coming from the CCP. And I think there's a very clear reason for that. | ||
| It's that think tanks don't have to report funding from the CCP, or, as I mentioned, any foreign government for that matter, or any donor for that matter. | ||
| And because of that, when you have a country that has a stigma on it like the CCP does, if you are a think tank accepting funding from them, you're just not going to report it. | ||
| You're just going to hide that. | ||
| You're going to keep that as dark money. | ||
| So, again, I said this was the tip of the iceberg. | ||
| And I think if we look at that iceberg of money that's below what we found here, I think you would find a lot more money flowing in from the CCP. To U.S. think tanks, but because of all these loopholes in U.S. laws right now, they just simply don't have to report that. | ||
| To your question about the U.S. government funding think tanks, this was an important issue for us because, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I'm a taxpayer, you're a taxpayer. | ||
| I think one of the last things that we want to see is that U.S. taxpayer dollars going towards Influencing and, you know, spreading propaganda to U.S. taxpayers. | ||
| And yet, what we documented was over a billion dollars in U.S. government funding going to the top 50 think tanks in the U.S. You know, in some cases, that goes to research that's only used within the government. | ||
| You know, folks might not have a problem with that. | ||
| But in other cases, you know, this is going to very prominent think tanks that are some of those think tanks you mentioned. | ||
| The Brookings of the world, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Atlantic Councils of the world that are promoting what we would consider a hawkish agenda. | ||
| You know, at the end of the day at the Quincy Institute, we're already trying to end the next endless war. | ||
| So when we see our taxpayer dollars going to think tanks that are seemingly clamoring for endless war, yeah, we're going to have a problem with that. | ||
| And I'm curious your thoughts as we, you know, barrel towards the second Trump administration issue. | ||
| If you think the sort of jogging around for think tanks to prop up these, you know, astroturfed narratives, whatever the issue may be, I think maybe you're going to start seeing the, you know, open borders advocates and big labor. | ||
| They want all their H-1Bs sort of come out of the woodwork, although I guess maybe they never really went away to begin with. | ||
| But how you think that this is a force in terms of, again, it's not explicitly opposing Trump, but just whoever the elected president is, in some ways they sort of act as an unelected bureaucrat or an unelected, I think, input into the policy debate. | ||
| But the American people, I think, are left, like you were alluding to, in the dark about who's really funding them, right? | ||
| All these experts that they have testifying up on Capitol Hill, they're not experts. | ||
| They're pay-for-play crisis actors for whatever the issue may be. | ||
| But I'm curious your thoughts, particularly come January 20th, someone who has been, I would say, an outspoken advocate of not continuing these endless forever wars, if you're not. | ||
| You think there's only going to be more money plowed into these think tanks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I really think with a new Trump administration, some of these funders might be on notice. | |
| I think towards the tail end of the previous Trump administration, we saw the Trump State Department issue one of the only meaningful objectives to bring more transparency to think tank funding. | ||
| And, you know, Mike Pompeo State Department, you know, issued this decree that any think tank that wanted to do business with them had to fully disclose all their foreign funders. | ||
| And the Biden administration promptly abandoned that and, you know, did nothing with it. | ||
| So we don't have that level of disclosure anymore. | ||
| But I think, you know, in Trump 2.0 here, I'm at least hopeful that, you know, you have an administration that is concerned about this issue, cares about it, and that we're going to see at least some efforts to bring more transparency about foreign government funding of think tanks. | ||
| So at the end of the day, you know, Somebody like President Trump, he gets the game. | ||
| He knows what's going on here. | ||
| So we're very hopeful that he'll help to rein this in. | ||
| And Ben, we have a very action-oriented audience. | ||
| They love to be informed. | ||
| If they want to use this database, sort of look at the info that you've pulled. | ||
| So the next time they're watching, hate watching MSNBC or whatever, and they see some expert, that's the probably most cheapened word in Washington, D.C., that and maybe American citizenship. | ||
| But if they want to really look at where these people are coming from, who's propping them up, where can they go to do that? | ||
| How is it operable? | ||
| How can people sort of get all this information? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you so much for asking. | |
| You can find all of this information at thinktankfundingtracker.org. | ||
| Everything I've mentioned, we're giving it all away. | ||
| You can look up whatever think tank you're interested in, whatever foreign government defense contractor. | ||
| You want to see where the U.S. government's money's going. | ||
| We've got it all freely available to you at thinktankfundingtracker.org. | ||
| If you want a nerd like me to break it down for you, you can check out our report on this at quincyinst.org. | ||
| And if you want to follow... | ||
| Ben, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| We'll have you back on. | ||
| I can only imagine the hours that it took to go through all of that. | ||
| So thank you for doing the hardcore work to get that out. | ||
| It's important work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| Of course, thank you. | ||
| There's a new study out today. | ||
| I saw, I think, maybe the other side of the coin on all this that I think over half of Federal government workers, they were itemized as like federal government managers, are planning on resisting President Trump, whatever that may mean. | ||
| And I told you about the new group Civil Service Strong, which of course has links to, I guess, newly found stand-up comedian Norm Eisen, a group called Civil Service Strong that is actively coaching federal bureaucrats on how to whistleblow, how to file complaints, how to, shall we say, throw sand in the gears of... | ||
| The America First agenda, like I said, the real tell with that Rachel Maddow going to broadcasting every single day of the week now, I'm sorry, America, is that it's for the first hundred days of the Trump administration and that they took Alex Wagner off the beat to go and do on-the-ground field reporting. | ||
| In other words, they're going to want to have the sob stories of the multi-generational family that got deported. | ||
| Okay, spare me. | ||
| We're about America first here, and we're not going to fall for your, what, appeal to, uh, not logos, probably just more pathos and ethos over at MSNBC. We're not falling for it, and we're not falling for your transition, Mark Zuckerberg. | ||
| Like I said, I've seen transgender surgeries that are more convincing than your newfound MAGA love. | ||
| And I'm a tough critic. | ||
| Got to be checking out birchgold.com slash Bannon or texting Bannon to 989898. We'll be right back after this short break with a very triggering cold open. | ||
| Kind of cringe. | ||
| Get ready. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I put in the application for a presidential pardon because I believe that Joe Biden has the same responsibility to me that he had to his own son. | |
| And I would expect that the same exact pardon that he gave his son has to go to me and to anybody else that's on that enemy's list, whether they want it or not. | ||
| Because I assure you, solitary confinement where I did 51 days sucks. | ||
| Michael Cohen, I believe wholeheartedly that the solitary confinement was... | ||
| Just a terrible experience for you. | ||
| And I think your point about the enemies, the proverbial enemies list, right, is a good one. | ||
| I wonder, have you heard anything back from the administration? | ||
| It is my understanding that two things. | ||
| The administration, one, is not going to give a pardon to anybody that doesn't want one. | ||
| So folks who have prominently gone out and said, I do not want a pardon. | ||
| The president is now going to issue a pardon to people that don't want one. | ||
| But two... | ||
|
unidentified
|
They'll change their mind when they're sitting behind closed doors. | |
| That I can assure you. | ||
| They're going to kick themselves in the backside for that one. | ||
| I think hindsight will always be 20-20. | ||
| I guess my question is, have you heard from the Biden administration? | ||
| And I am struck by your comparing yourself and Hunter Biden. | ||
| And I wonder if, well, I'm going to just tell you, Michael, because we have a conversation. | ||
| I don't necessarily think that's your best way to go get a pardon. | ||
| I mean, Hunter Biden is the president's last surviving son. | ||
| But your point, your other point, why I do think is a strong one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm somebody's son also, by the way. | |
| Agreed. | ||
| You are somebody's son. | ||
| But, I mean, to be very clear, you're not the president's son. | ||
| Michael Cohen, do you remember when he would run around doing the laps in media? | ||
| Mr. Tough Guy, right? | ||
| How times have changed. | ||
| Bro, I don't think you need a pardon. | ||
| I think you need some testosterone or some TRT. That has to be, I think, thus far in 2025, the most embarrassing media clip that I have seen yet. | ||
| Groveling on MSNBC to the point where they're mocking you. | ||
| Where Simone frickin' Sanders is giving you, like, life advice, like an akumbaya trying to help you on live TV. But it goes back to the Zuckerberg conversion stuff. | ||
| All of these men who were so tough, who celebrated the Jan Sixers going to prison, celebrated Steve Bannon going to prison, celebrated and mocked Peter Navarro, mocked the assassination attempt, censored the assassination attempt against President Trump on Facebook. | ||
| They were so tough. | ||
| Such real men. | ||
| And now, it's a little tough. | ||
| Because they know that the investigations are coming, and they fold like I've never seen. | ||
| Compare and contrast that with what Stephen K. Bannon did when I sat here for four months because he was in a federal prison when Peter Navarro every day was sitting down for a misdemeanor in a felony correction center. | ||
| Every single thing that they have thrown against President Donald J. Trump, including not one but two assassination attempts. | ||
| And they'll probably be more because they're that deranged. | ||
| And these real strong men have continued showing up and fighting for this country, just like you guys, this audience. | ||
| You've been tested 1,000 times over than Michael Cohen or Mark Zuckerberg, any of these people. | ||
| And you've emerged victorious. | ||
| And now these people are doing sob story Crimea river laps on MSNBC groveling for preemptive blanket pardons. | ||
| I mean, let that sink in. | ||
| I mean, pat yourself on the back first. | ||
| Think about how embarrassing and cringe these people are. | ||
| It's truly remarkable. | ||
| I stand by what I said. | ||
| Maybe Mark Zuckerberg, too. | ||
| You get a two-for-one deal. | ||
| On some TRT and just some common sense. | ||
| And I don't know. | ||
| Stop committing crimes so you don't need blanket preemptive pardon. | ||
| Stop hating this country more than you love yourselves and your globalist agendas that you're using to destroy this country and displace American workers and start more endless forever wars and then cry and victim blame the American people for spreading misinformation and then euphemizing it that you're censoring us because you care so much about democracy. | ||
| Just stop. | ||
| And then you won't have to emasculate yourself publicly on TV for the sake of everything. | ||
| Norm Eisen, I'll throw that cringe video in too. | ||
| Just stop. | ||
| Absolutely absurd. | ||
| Someone who is going to join us now who I know is definitely not the mastermind behind bankrolling Norm Eisen's new contrarian outlet is the one and only Mike Lindell who joins us now. | ||
| I'm sure you're getting excited, getting ready for all the inaugural stuff. | ||
| But in the meantime, hit us with the latest in all things MyPillow. | ||
| Well, you guys, you know we all have... | ||
| We launched just for the war room, the crosses that we're going to do with the network. | ||
| These are the men and women's crosses. | ||
| The women's are reversible. | ||
| We have that. | ||
| You save 30% on the war room. | ||
| But I wanted to quick tell you all this. | ||
| The flannel sheets, this is the last day. | ||
| This is the last 24 hours for the flannel sheets. | ||
| And all the colors are still there. | ||
| I just checked. | ||
| The queen size, remember, is 139.98 normally. | ||
| $59.98 for the queen size. | ||
| This is a War Room exclusive. | ||
| King size, regular $160. | ||
| These are the best flannel sheets in history. | ||
| $69.98 for the king size. | ||
| The lowest price in history. | ||
| This all goes away. | ||
| I wanted to get on here and tell you all that. | ||
| Go to the website and scroll down and click on Steve when you see him. | ||
| There's the MyCrosses. | ||
| You say 30% on the MyCrosses and then the flannel sheets right there. | ||
| Get those flannel sheets right now. | ||
| Next to that is that big event there, the clearance event. | ||
| Click on that. | ||
| Items are up to 80% off. | ||
| Sleepwear and everything. | ||
| Get it right now. | ||
| The lowest price you're ever going to get it. | ||
| The exclusive for the War Room Posse. | ||
| And then you look at those 2.0 pillows there. | ||
| $749. | ||
| Those Go Anywhere MyPillows and the case is $749. | ||
| They're still there. | ||
| We got the Classic still there. | ||
| And then the beds and the toppers. | ||
| But right now, we got to get those flannel sheets. | ||
| I've got a set right here. | ||
| This is it, everybody. | ||
| If you get those flannel sheets, it's still cold. | ||
| It's still the best time to get them. | ||
| Or call the call center. | ||
| I'm in Minnesota right now. | ||
| I'm actually going to be going downstairs, Natalie, and taking a couple calls myself. | ||
| I'm here. | ||
| I get involved with my call center. | ||
| I love to take an old call. | ||
| So I might get one of you guys from the war room. | ||
| Might take you personally and answer the phone. | ||
| So that'll be kind of fun, going back in time. | ||
| Whatever you do, don't give Mark Zuckerberg a MyPillow promo code as he tries to complete his MAGA conversion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's how you know you're full MAGA. That didn't happen. | |
| What's going on there? | ||
| I can't believe it. | ||
| I mean, he wouldn't let me use my image before the 2020 election in a MyPillow ad. | ||
| I had to take my face out of the ad because I was so branded with the president. | ||
| And what a shameful thing, the stuff he did back then. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Disgusting. | |
| Absolute disgrace. | ||
| War Room is conversion therapy for rhinos. | ||
| I stand by it. | ||
| Mark Zuckerberg, thanks, but no thanks. | ||
| Thank you guys for hanging with me. | ||
| I'll see y'all soon. |
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