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Jan. 23, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
47:49
WarRoom Battleground EP 692: Keeping America Safe; Rules Of Unforced Error
Participants
Main voices
s
steve bannon
24:17
Appearances
m
mark warner
02:55
m
mike lindell
01:28
Clips
j
jake tapper
00:08
r
russ vought
00:25
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
steve bannon
This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
Pray for our enemies.
unidentified
Because we're going medieval on these people.
steve bannon
I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
The people have had a belly full of it.
I know you don't like hearing that.
I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.
It's going to happen.
jake tapper
And where do people like that go to share the big line?
unidentified
MAGA Media.
jake tapper
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?
steve bannon
If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
unidentified
War Room.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
steve bannon
It's Wednesday, 22 January, Year of the Lord, 2025.
Thank you for staying for the second hour of the late afternoon, early evening show today.
So I'm going to hit three news items.
I've got two of my favorite people who have joined me for this hour.
Item one, this is from CNN, up on Derek Evans' Twitter feed.
This is huge.
U.S. Transportation Command instructed to prepare the use of military assets and aircraft.
For deportation flights.
Boom.
Also, we can't confirm the second, but it's a tweet out there from BlondeLady2024.
U.S. Marshals have entered D.C. prison to extract the illegally held J-6ers.
We'll track that down.
Ben Berquam has left.
The D.C. jail has been down at the vigil.
He is actually out in the field and will be doing action reports tomorrow.
You'll see what we're talking about.
Hopefully, Ben will be in North Carolina on Friday.
With President Trump when he goes to the parts of Appalachia where Ben was last week.
But Ben's going to be in the field again tomorrow in an undisclosed location.
Third element is that it's been announced, this is the Associated Press, President Trump's national security advisor, that would be Colonel Mike Waltz Green Beret, is sidelining roughly 160 career government employees on temporary duty at the White is sidelining roughly 160 career government employees on temporary duty at the White House
Administration officials told the Associated Press, I want to bring in Ezra Cohen, Josh Steinman, two of the really the stalwarts in President Trump's first term, first administration.
And Ezra, I'll start with you.
I talked about this this morning.
That when General Flynn was there, I asked him, you know, in the first couple days, and I ran this by you guys, to give me an organization chart, and he came back, and there was 292 billets.
70% of these are 75% filled with what we call detaillees.
These people that come from the agencies, come from the Defense Department.
And I said, when I was in the Pentagon back in 1981, the NSC had 25 people and ran the world.
What is this about?
And Lieutenant General Flint moving to do what Waltz just did is what got him turfed out.
So talk to folks about—we're going to talk about transition, but just this news today that Waltz, with the president, was able to convince the president we've got to get rid of these detaillees.
What's a detaillee?
What's the structure?
160 people go, man, that's a lot of people.
I thought National Security Council was a little situation room below the West Wing, sir.
unidentified
Right.
Well, thanks again, Steve, for having us on.
You know, Josh and I were the ones that built out the org chart for the NSC in 2016 going into 2017. The detailees are people that are brought in from the different departments and agencies.
They're hand-selected by the politically appointed NSC staff.
So really what you have there is the people that were there that Mike Waltz very judiciously and prudently sent packing today are people that were handpicked by name requested in many cases by the Biden political appointees.
So President Trump has come in right off the bat on day one, and his aim is to break, shut down the autopilot so that you don't continue the policies, the failed policies of Joe Biden.
So the people that are handpicked by their staff need to go.
Otherwise, you will have a continuation of those policies until somebody actively steps in and shuts them down.
steve bannon
So how can you lose, Josh, how can you lose 160?
160 detailees.
Are these coming from the Pentagon, CIA? I mean, how can waltz the criticism on MSNBC tonight, and they're going to have David Ignatius, mark my words, David Ignatius will be on Morning Joe tomorrow, say the nation's unsecure.
You have these crazy people.
They're crazier now than they were in 17, right?
Because now they've effectuated the plan.
Flynn and Cohen and Steinman and Bannon just...
Trump crafted a plan that was never fully executed and led to the impeachment of Trump because the deep state fought it.
Here, you've let go 160. You imagine, let's say they still got the 292. You've let go two-thirds.
The nation's not safe.
How can you go to sleep tonight?
How can you rock that little baby of your assignment asleep knowing the nation's unsafe because Trump's a madman and is ripping apart the National Security Council, sir?
unidentified
Yeah, Steve, it's great.
It's a great question.
I think, first of all, we should level set, which is that when Ezra and I came in with General Flynn in 2017, January 2017, we were there minute one, day one.
We brought in with us less than 25 people that the president had chosen, including the National Security Advisor or Deputy National Security Advisor.
So every other person on that NSC staff on day one last time.
Had been someone who, though a career civil servant, had been screened, interviewed, and then hired by the Obama team.
And that was exactly what was going to happen this time.
Obviously, it hasn't.
And I think National Security Advisor Waltz made a great move to have those folks go on a sort of limited duty and go home.
So I think the question is— But hold it.
steve bannon
But hang on.
But hang on.
I got it.
We had a plan.
We wanted to pull the trigger.
25. I don't think we ever got up.
I don't think President Trump ever had more than 35 political appointees.
I think he could have had 60. And he still wouldn't take down.
unidentified
Yeah.
So there are a lot of reasons why staff...
steve bannon
Pentagon.
They go back to CIA. They go back to their...
How can the nation be safe?
unidentified
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, what those staffers are doing from day to day is essentially coordinating the interagency.
So they're not actually now under Obama, they were.
But under us, you know, they are not actually picking targets.
They are not actually, you know, manipulating the agencies themselves.
They're just saying, hey, why don't we get on one sheet of music and do one thing?
And that one thing should be what the president wants.
And this is why it's so critical that NSC staffers and by the way, you know, I'm sure they're good patriots.
I hope they're good patriots, even the ones that were serving under the previous admin.
But this is why NSC staffers need to be totally in lockstep with the duly elected president of the United States, because an NSC staff is an extension of the first sentence of Article 2 of the Constitution.
Executive power will be vested in a president.
NSC staffers are there to make sure that that is what happens across the national security establishment.
steve bannon
Ezra I don't know if I'm feeling better after Steinman.
How is the nation going to be safer tonight?
Isn't it unsafe?
Isn't the plan that we came up with a In the scale of what the NSC does today, because Steinem and Barry from a good point, we made a conscious decision that we weren't going to run wars out of the National Security Council.
And people should understand, this is a fundamental, there's two ways a National Security Council can be a coordinator and an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief, or it actually can be we actually run the wars.
This is the big struggle when I was in the Navy as a junior officer of the Chief of Naval Operations.
Even though...
They didn't want a Kissinger.
They didn't want a Zigbee Brzezinski.
This is a guy, Richie V. Allen.
The White House still ran the wars.
They ran Contra.
They ran what they were doing in Central America.
They ran everything was run out of the White House with 25 guys, right?
Trump made a conscious decision to do that.
Biden, I think, took the opposite.
So tonight, like, who's in charge?
When you guys leave the watch, who's in charge, particularly when you see 160 of these guys going to the Pentagon, CIA, everything, who's on watch?
unidentified
Yeah, so look, we're coming in here to a crisis situation after four years with Biden.
So step one, we've got to stem the bleeding.
Part of stemming the bleeding...
Is getting people out that are not on the same page of music.
Now, ideally, what would have happened is we would have already selected new detailees to come in and we could have done this hot swap.
That's obviously not going to happen for many reasons.
But right now, the key thing is stop the existing policies.
I can just tell you as an example, Steve, in 2017. When Josh and I stepped into the situation room, actually five minutes before the president was sworn in, we were the first people into the White House compound, we immediately started getting phone calls to try to get us to authorize operations that were ongoing or that the Obama administration had put in place.
And General Flynn was great.
He basically just said, look, we're going to do a 24-hour stand-down.
The only thing that requires an immediate response.
And truthfully, is responding to a nuclear strike or an attempted nuclear strike.
Everything else can wait.
So that's what I think is going to happen now.
We're just going to have a quick pause here.
And then at the agencies, you know, this is another problem, and maybe you want to get to this, but we do not have control yet at the agencies.
We don't have political appointees anywhere except the State Department.
Hold it.
steve bannon
Hang on.
I'm going to play a clip from Russ Vo taking incoming from Warner.
We're going to get to that.
Before I do, though, hang on.
Steinman.
In the entire apparatus, how can you even staff with anybody?
The apparatus, the way your career progresses, like when I was in the Navy, it was before they had the joint, really the joint commands were very weak and you kind of, the deadbeats got dumped there.
It was only later when they went to the joint unified command structure that you got a career enhancement by going.
Before the biggest enemy we had was not the Russian Navy, it was the U.S. Army taking resources.
My point is every institution has their own outlook.
Right?
On national security of how you progress this career.
To be at the top and they only take the best.
Are there any best having spent their careers 10, 15, 20 years at that level to be equivalent to get second deed or seconded over to the National Security Council that don't have the mindset Of America, the imperial state.
America first, it's like, that's like a bacillus.
The institutions reject it.
Not just the personnel, but the institution rejects it.
So where do you get and get any detailies that can actually come into the National Security Council, since we don't have control of those institutions, which we'll get to in a second, that could actually be supportive of an America first agenda and keep the country safe.
unidentified
I mean, Steve, this is the deep, dark secret of the swamp, which is that, you know, being a good NSC staffer is not actually a hard job.
It's just a demanding job.
And so, you know, I am—it's like that line about I'd rather be governed by the first hundred names in the Boston phone book than the, you know, faculty of Harvard College.
You know, smart, dedicated professionals who know how to write, know how to think, and know how to uphold the Constitution can be good NSC staffers.
What you're talking about is the way in which Washington has groomed, you know, this class of mandarins for the past 50 years.
And look, in my opinion, it's like, you know, what's that mimetic concept with the Swedish fish?
These people, they are multiple generations past the great statesmen that they claim to be the inheritors of their mantle.
And instead of actually being great thinkers or great warriors as those folks in the 1940s and 1950s were, instead, what's actually going on is they just participated in the forms.
These are the people that were like, oh, you know.
Zig Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger got PhDs at Harvard.
I'll go get a PhD at Harvard and I'll be Kissinger.
It's like, that's not how it works.
And so what you're talking about is when you ask this question of, oh, do we have the people that can do it?
Anyone can do it.
I mean, not anyone, but lots of people can do it.
But the point is, how does Washington, how does establishment Washington like to groom people for these positions of...
You know, named authority, and it's through these processes.
All that to say that there are plenty of folks in the US government that I think are well-qualified and could be effective NSC staffers, and many of us have been going out and finding them over the past few years.
And so I'm confident that we'll get a good crop, and I think many of them are already coming to the NSC staff right now, who absolutely will be able to do that job.
steve bannon
The interagency process, this is where everything gets leaked, everything President Trump wanted to do, the phone calls got leaked, everything got leaked.
Higgins, Sergeant Higgins wrote a memo, it was very controversial, led to his being removed by masters from the White House, but it walked through, he took the detaillees and walked through who the traitors were.
And it turned out, in the impeachment, you just go right through that list.
Let me play, I want to get to, let's play, I want you to listen to Russ's vote taking incoming.
From Warner today at his hearing on Office of Management and Budget.
Let's go ahead and play it, Denver.
mark warner
Sir, I do appreciate the fact one of the things you said, which was you think it's important for the federal government to keep our nation safe.
Probably the most important thing I've done in this job is my work with the intelligence community.
I'm chair and vice chair now.
We've got thousands of men and women who work in the intelligence community without a lot of fanfare.
You realize, of course, I hope, that to become a CIA agent, it takes about a year to get a secure clearance.
You aware of that?
russ vought
Yes, Senator.
mark warner
All right.
So in your Project 25, Magnus, you put forward the idea that somehow breaking up the CIA and moving it around the country would make our nation more safe?
Do you not understand, sir?
That if President Trump, by having the intelligence community close to him, to have ability from folks from NSA to CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI, in this region, your idea of let's somehow go on this ideological jihad to break up the intelligence community's effectiveness?
I would ask you, sir, can you show any evidence that somehow We would make our nation safer?
If you put your political litmus test and, you know, this idea of bringing trauma to the federal workforce by taking the intelligence community, which has been supported on a bipartisan basis, year in and year out, and somehow breaking it up and spreading it hither and yon, just for a political purpose?
How does that make our nation safer?
russ vought
Senator, I never proposed that, and the president has disassociated himself from Project 2025. It's a mischaracterization of my role.
mark warner
Okay, good.
We're here on the record.
You're going to commit to make sure, you know, I would argue you have to make a business case before you start breaking up the government.
I'm all for effectiveness.
But are you going to be willing here to commit not to undermine?
Our national intelligence community by arbitrarily trying to break them up and spread them around just because you want to blow up the federal workforce in this region?
russ vought
Yes, Senator.
There's no policy process that the Trump administration had done that's producing arbitrary results.
And let me speak to the question that you raised with regard to my comments about the bureaucracy.
It was specifically in reference to the weaponized bureaucracy that we've seen.
mark warner
And so you are the arbiter?
Of who's weaponized and who's not?
Again, I hope my colleagues will raise, I think, your completely irresponsible actions on so-called Schedule F. We put a civil service in place, but I urge you, sir, if you become in this position, think long and hard about the men and women of the national security.
And the intelligence community before you go on some political jihad of trying to score points by simply trying to break up an operation that actually functions better because of their close collaboration.
And your comments about the federal workforce I find disqualifying on this basis.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
steve bannon
Disqualifying.
That's the great Russ vote right there.
You remember, Russ, one of our major contributors over the last four years.
Let me start with Ezra.
Right there, it gets to the heart of what you guys have been talking about and, quite frankly, have been working on.
You are experts in the ICE community.
We don't have control of it.
It has control of us.
This is when people talk about the deep state.
And I see, and I understand, the CIA is root and branching everywhere.
It's in DOD, it's in DHS, it's in FBI. It is a cancer that has metastasized.
And they have their own way of doing things.
As they said in my father's house, there are many mansions in the CIA. They have all kind of independent fiefdoms and tribes and clans in there.
Oftentimes across purposes, but always focus on they run the deal.
Ezra Diova played that, and you just see right there, Russ's vote.
We're going through a very logical, there's been years in the making from the first administration in the bridge, which we call either 2025 or America First Priorities, Brooks Rollins, and you got Russ's CRA. You've had many different think tanks look at this, and the best thinking is that we've got to get our hands on this apparatus.
You've got to deconstruct the administrative state, but you've got to take...
The hammer to the CIA and kind of disaggregate it.
And right there, you see Warner, who's one of the worst.
One of the worst.
That's the defense of it.
And he actually said what Russ Vogt had said about this was disqualifying.
So that's a no vote in your grill at your hearing today.
Start with it, Ezra.
Your thoughts.
unidentified
Yeah, so I'm not sure of the exact proposal that Senator Warner was referencing.
I don't think Russ Vogt knew either.
But the key thing is I just want to push back on a few things that were said there that are not accurate.
One is this idea that somehow you have to be physically located in the same place to be productive.
First of all, one, over the past four years.
Even the intelligence community has been in large part remote.
People are not having in-person meetings.
President Trump's going to fix that.
And things have just been working just fine, according to Senator Warner.
Second of all, you know, we also have a problem.
And I think Tom Cotton pointed to this very well in John Radcliffe's hearing, which is the intelligence community is incredibly distracted and it has lost.
We do not need people in the IC focused on influencing the policy process or getting involved in making policy.
Their job is to inform the policymaker, not influence.
And that's very important.
And unfortunately, the overemphasis within these agencies on what's happening on the politics inside of the Beltway.
It has reduced their mission effectiveness.
We need them focused on the politics of our adversary, not on the politics at home.
And one way to do that is to get people physically out of the beltway.
And by the way, the CIA is one of the most geographically dispersed agencies in the world.
And again, according to Senator Warner, they are functioning fine.
So that's, I just think some of the core assumptions there are just not accurate.
steve bannon
Steinman, how do you actually get to the beast?
We talk about the deep state.
The CIA is the head of the snake.
How do you get your arms around it?
If you see right there, Warner, you're going to have Senate intel is going to be against you.
They just fired the President of the United States.
Let's be blunt.
It wasn't Mike Johnson.
I know Waltz might have upset him in a meeting or something like that, but as even Johnson told Waltz, this is coming from Mar-a-Lago.
They're not happy.
The president wants a clean sweep of this.
I mean, you guys were the tip of the tip of the spear for him, the first administration.
Now, with more experience and, quite frankly, a bigger win, as they said in Davos today, the greatest come-from-behind win ever, so he's kind of unbeatable now.
How do you go about...
unidentified
Well, Steve, it sort of goes back to Aristotle.
We are what we do, right?
And so I think the first task is, what is the U.S. government doing?
What are these institutions actually doing?
What are they doing day in, day out?
And that's why some of the biggest, in my mind, initiatives that have come out over the past 36 hours, 48 hours since the president took the oath of office have been The stand-downs, the let's hold off on a 90-day freeze on foreign aid, the similar activities happening across the Department of Defense, etc.
So I think the whole point here is that good leadership and good leadership comes from the top.
It can come only from the politicals.
Good leadership here is about stopping the things that the U.S. government is doing that are against the interests of the American people.
And I think that's one of the most powerful things that a National Security Council staff can do, which is deeply get into the weeds with these departments and agencies.
And so for me, like, yes, we can— Okay, hang on, hang on.
steve bannon
But hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
unidentified
They thrive—we're talking about the CIA here, bro.
steve bannon
They're experts at the Wilderness of Mirrors.
You're going to walk over there.
I could take my two best guys.
I could take, I don't know, Steinman and Ezra Cohen.
I would send you over to the CIA. They would have your head turning so much and chasing false rabbits.
If you had to go over, and your mission was quite simple, from the President of the United States, guys, number one, I want to get CIA involvement out of the Pentagon.
I want to get it out of FBI. I want to get it out of DOJ. I want to get it out of the National Security Council.
I want to get it out of DHS. I want to get it out of the State Department and Treasury.
I want to take my power organizations.
The first step is I just want to get their reach that's everywhere.
Just get it out.
You two went over there.
They would have you guys bagged and tagged.
They'd have you guys bagged and tagged in a week.
Would they not, sir?
unidentified
No, I don't think so.
And in fact, last time, I mean...
We had a handful of people that deeply understood the intelligence community and the Department of Defense as political leaders, and we absolutely were able to get our hands around it.
If you understand how those mechanisms in the IC actually work, which Ezra does, which I do, there's a critical bureaucratic process that you can take control of on day one that absolutely pulls things to a standstill.
And so this is where I think it's so critical.
That we have people that understand the intelligence community that have been intelligence community operatives and then have gone on to be political supporters of the president.
This is why it's so critical that we have those people in the most senior roles in the government.
That includes the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Principal Deputy DNI, Deputy Director of CIA. You need people who are politically on the same page as the president and then deeply understand the intelligence community in those roles.
Because if you know how the mechanism operates, you can absolutely put your hands on the steering wheel and get control of it.
steve bannon
Hang on for one second, guys.
I'm going to ask you to just stay through a short commercial break.
I want to talk to Senator Rubio.
Secretary of State laid out a new vision of America first at the end of the post-war international rules-based order.
That's the one big fetish that runs the hegemon.
But the internal fetish is the interagency process.
Oh, man, that sounds like a sleeper.
It is not.
This is how the deep state coordinates the way they're going to roll, no matter who the locals are.
Short commercial break.
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unidentified
back in a moment.
Here's your host Stephen K. Babb.
steve bannon
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Ezra, interagency process.
My theory of the case is this is how it is.
If you're in the National Security Council, I would get the calendars of the National Security Council guys, the senior guys, Flynn, Kellogg, and then McMasters.
You could be in meetings down there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and only get about half the work done of meetings.
They got deputy meetings, assistant meetings, everything.
And they got the agencies.
They're getting all the different departments.
They're throwing in their true sense.
They got papers going around to get a consensus.
It is a massive amount of work.
When I saw this interagency process, and it's sacred, the interagency process, the reason they hated Trump right out of the box is that it's Trump.
He didn't care about interagency process.
He wants to get facts, things, make decisions, move on.
The interagency process, I believe, is the mechanism that the CIA uses to control the entire process.
All they're different, and they have major nodes of power in every one of the principal, what I call the power departments.
Treasury, DHS, Justice, and FBI underneath it.
Obviously the Department of Defense.
And DNI, which is the oversight, not the operational control, but the oversight of 17, labor in these things.
State Department also.
Why am I wrong?
Tell me, argue that the interagency process is not the way the CIA keeps control.
Until you get in and break that up, the CIA is basically going to have control of the United States government.
Full stop.
And I've seen it from the inside where I don't, it's not a deep state.
It's up in your grill every day, sir.
unidentified
Yeah, Steve.
I mean, I think you do point at one problem we have, which is that the intelligence agencies are, again, they're supposed to be informing the policymaker, not influencing.
But then you have about 50 percent of the detaillees at the NSC are all CIA bodies.
So it's not just that they're filibustering with a plethora of meetings and policy proposals, which aren't going to go anywhere, but they're also then backchanneling things to people on the NSC staff to manipulate the process, which is supposed to be isolated.
So they're really coming at it from both ways.
Now, I will say this.
I do think that there is a need to have a centralized control cell element that basically I think if you look at what we did with China, we needed to find a way to pull together the American power from the Treasury Department, from the State Department, from the Department of Defense.
We needed to find a way to synthesize them all together to create a focused action against the enemy.
And I think that really the NSC is the place to do that.
The key thing, though, is you've got to keep the intel agencies out from making policy.
And actually, this is where I've got to give it up to Mike Waltz.
If you look at NSPM 1, which is really that core document, the rules of the road for the NSC, they popped that on day one.
It took us the first term several weeks because McMaster's wanted to relitigate it three or four times.
But they popped that on day one.
And Mike Waltz did a very smart thing in there, which is he said...
The intelligence agencies have a non-voting role.
Basically, they can't make decisions.
Their job is to show up with facts so that the other agencies can make the calls.
And I thought that was a very good move to kind of fight back against what you're talking about.
steve bannon
Josh Steinman right there with Walls.
And you've been there.
You had a front row seat.
You were a player in this.
In President Trump's—we came from out of nowhere.
Even though they tried to stop us with all the crossfire hurricane, they tried to stop us, they couldn't.
The American people voted, and you could argue she lost as much as we won.
But then, so they failed, they tried to act and failed, and that's pretty definitive.
Then they tried to make up a whole thing, the Russia hoax, all that.
But in Trump's first term, to stop him, have a nullification process, then...
The stealing, the pandemic, and the stealing of the 2020 election, and then the insertion of Biden, and we know now Biden's not even making decisions.
It's an open secret on that.
Has the CIA, no matter what, had they become a modern Praetorian guard, like in ancient Rome?
Would they actually select?
Who your leaders are, and they select then the field of actual action and effort that the leader, if they disagree with the leader of actually what they can actually do, and even if they agree with the leader, they funnel it in a way that is self-supporting of them, sir?
unidentified
Yeah, Steve, you know, it's an interesting point that you raise, and I think, you know, what we're really seeing here is the fact that the modern American state is incredibly complicated.
It's not as simple as things used to be.
We used to be able to handle statecraft and international relations with letters and communiques and singular individuals dispatched with small staff over to Paris or down to Rio de Janeiro with very simple ambassadorships.
And so I think what we're really seeing here is the fact that that complication affords Bureaucratic topological advantage to people that deeply understand the mechanisms, right?
And so they know that if they change this memo over here, that they can then control these outcomes here.
They can control what outcomes get offered up to senior leadership.
And I just think that that advantages people that have been in that system for a very long time.
And this is why I think it's so critical that we have people that understand those systems but are also loyal.
To the Constitution and to the first sentence of Article 2, which is, you know, the executive power shall be vested in a president.
And so the whole point here is that you need people that understand those mechanisms as much as the people that have been in those mechanisms for 30 years.
So you can label it.
You can say, oh, it's the CIA. You can say, oh, it's DHS. It's this.
It's that.
No, no, no.
It's practice, right?
And so we need people, and we have people, whether it's Ezra, myself.
I mean, you know, National Security Advisor Walls, the team that he's assembled, many of the people on that team have this type of expertise.
I'm quite pleased with the folks that he's assembled there.
But the whole point is you need folks that understand the mechanisms, understand the bureaucracy, and then are able to utilize those tools in order to affect the president's priorities when you don't have that, when you have people that don't have experience.
In these areas, or maybe they've had some, you know, a year or two of experience on the Hill, then those folks can get snowed by the true professionals that have been living in that environment for 20, 30 years.
So, you know, do I think that there is some, you know, man behind the curtain?
No, but I just think that there's a lot of people that understand this complicated system that we've created.
I think we should absolutely simplify that system.
I think that these things are unnecessarily complicated.
And they can be boiled down very simply.
But the whole point here is you need people that can cut through the BS, cut through the bureaucracy, and continue to drive the process towards the outcomes that the president has directed, which is completely constitutional.
steve bannon
Josh, your Twitter feed, you did a thread, I think about a week or so ago, about the National Security Council that was very— Illuminating to many people.
Where do people go and get you on social media, sir?
unidentified
Yeah, it's just, I'm on Twitter, Joshua Steinman.
That's my at.
Yeah, feel free to hit me up there for folks that want to follow along.
steve bannon
Brilliant analysis, as usual.
Last, Ezra, you just put out a tweet that said that the media is really pulling their hair out.
About the 160—are they friends with these guys?
Why would the media have any comment besides the fact that we're less safe tonight?
What other reason would the media have for gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair about 160 national security bureaucrats' apparatchiks going back to their departments, sir?
unidentified
Well, Steve, it's simple.
They want to get the call transcript for the president's foreign calls, which are going to happen this week, passed through the White House fence.
And, you know, the people that did that are the people that were held over last time around.
And what Mike Waltz has done is just taken all their sources off the playing field.
You know, I mean, it's that simple.
steve bannon
Very powerful.
So that's why people have to follow you on social media.
Where do they go, Ezra?
unidentified
Ezra Cohen.
steve bannon
On Twitter?
unidentified
On Twitter, yeah.
Ezra Cohen on Twitter.
steve bannon
I used to refer to Ezra Cohen and Steinman as the Special Projects Division of the White House.
They were over in EOB and always causing trouble.
Guys, thank you very much.
Fantastic.
Very insightful for the Warren Posse.
I can tell that your people are very appreciative.
So thank you, guys.
unidentified
It's great to be here.
Thanks a lot, Steve.
Thank you.
steve bannon
So I'm not a conspiracy theory guy.
I never have been.
I know what I know.
And when you get in there, you talk about the deep state.
Not that the deep state might have been overselling it.
It was not overselling it.
In fact, it undersells it.
There is a permanent government here, a fourth branch that was never, ever envisioned by the founders and framers at all.
And you've got the administrative state, which is that massive fourth branch that kind of runs the bureaucratic nature of it.
And that's why DOGE is so important and why what...
Elon has been working on it so important because we're 58 days away from having to get a budget, no more CRs, and Doge's got to be doing that.
Incredibly important.
The only way you're going to deconstruct is you've got to cut off their oxygen first.
But on this interagency process, which is the way they kind of come to consensus of what you're going to do in the National Security Council, the advice you're going to give the president.
The CIA is everywhere.
And I'm not a guy that runs around, oh, the CIA, this, this, ask anybody.
And you watch this show.
Have I ever done that?
How many times have I done that?
They're everywhere.
And the way they control the system is through process.
They're experts at process and the way the bureaucracies work.
They've put a ton of time in thinking that through.
Very smart people formed this thing.
Some of the original founders of it were some of the senior partners at Sullivan and Cromwell.
At that time, the Dulles brothers.
Remember them?
Say what you want.
Tough, smart hombres that knew what they were doing in setting up a permanent Praetorian Guard, and this is why supposedly in the next 72 hours we're going to release all the documentation on Jack Kennedy.
Can we play, add a few comments on the other side of the Stargate situation.
Can we play my comments about Elon Musk?
Can we go ahead and play that?
I think you're ready.
unidentified
Let's go ahead and hear those, and I'll talk about the other side of Stardust or Stargate.
steve bannon
Okay, guys, we're going to play this.
unidentified
Steve, you made peace you made peace with Elon yet?
You made peace with Elon?
steve bannon
Elon's got to make peace with the president.
What's he dumping on the joint venture for?
He's criticizing the president?
I'm criticizing the DA yesterday.
He says the guy's only got $10 billion.
The president says he has $500 billion.
He can't have that in the White House.
unidentified
I did not reverse what the president's already talked about.
steve bannon
It's unacceptable and unsatisfactory.
unidentified
Mr. Bannon, why weren't you at the inauguration?
Steve, I'm out of control here.
Steve, I'll talk to you a little bit, alright?
I'm off to you, man.
It's going.
Well, right here.
Hello.
How can you do?
steve bannon
Good job.
I didn't even hear that.
I didn't even hear the other question.
Lady, we're doing nine hours in the freezing cold of doing the best coverage of the inauguration and prepping for...
Bang!
Days of Thunder.
Which was actually as important as the ceremony.
President Trump firing off the football.
So, Elon, you heard Stargate, and Stargate's got all kind of complexity to it about artificial intelligence, gene splicing, vaccines, a whole dog's breakfast there.
And, of course, the war room posse's all over it and a lot of concern about that.
But in addition, there's another way to handle this.
Elon came out.
President Trump presented it as $500 billion.
Understanding all the money wasn't put in yet.
These are major corporations or hedge funds or OpenAI is a major operation now with tons of money coming through it.
And then Elon later said, hey, and this is what his fight is with Altman.
He says, hey, there's only $10 billion that's been raised.
It implied the rest of the money was not going to be there.
This is all a hoax.
And my point is you've got to get together.
Elon...
Your mandate is very specific for Doge.
We are burning daylight.
We're 58 days away from the end of the CR. We're not going to have another one.
We have to have a full budget, and that is you and Russ Vogt working together.
You've committed to a trillion dollars of cuts on a six and a half trillion dollar budget.
We've got to see it.
It's essential.
For President Trump's plan going forward, remember, it's significant spending cuts coupled with tariffs that are now part of an external revenue service that looked at as a cash flow that comes in, not just punitive tariffs on Mexican avocados.
So people got to get to work.
We're burning daylight, and your remit does not include investments the president makes.
If you've got a problem with it, instead of implying that the president has not performed appropriate due diligence before he takes time away in these crazy first three or four days to go to the Roosevelt Room for the first time, which is right outside the door of the Oval Office, and put up Larry Ellison in SoftBank and OpenAI as...
You know, paragons of the future, understanding you have all these problems.
You tell him that privately.
And tell him even beforehand.
Not publicly getting to your feud with OpenAI.
And I understand you guys are fighting at a whole different level about this.
But the place not to do it is outside.
And this is why I think, and I've advocated this...
They've got to be guardrails.
Number one, your focus is probably the most important focus we can have now on getting the financial plan together, which is deconstruct the administrative state in massive cuts in spending.
That should be occupying yourself 24-7.
It just is.
It's that complicated.
So here we have today another kind of unforced error when people just don't have time for it.
A couple things to look at.
Jim Rickards has become one of the most prominent of our contributors.
One reason is that the other contributors are the OMB, Secretary of Treasury, Special Assistant, Special Counsel Peter Navarro to trade and manufacturing.
Rickards is here.
He brings capital markets and geopolitical expertise, people loving.
Go to RickardsWarRoom.com.
You get access to all his books.
You also get Paradigm Press's newsletters, these famous newsletters.
If you like what you hear on the show...
You're going to love what you see in these newsletters.
It's got all different types.
It's got a starter newsletter to get kind of your sea legs in this.
It's got all types of specialties.
Paradigm Press with Jim Rickards.
RickardsWarGroom, all one word,.com.
Go check it out today.
And, of course, Birch Gold.
Make sure you go talk to Philip Patrick.
We give you access to these folks.
It's all free.
Just go check it out.
Talk about the instrumentality they got.
But more importantly...
Start to get comfortable or understand precious metals and how they work in an advanced industrial economy, particularly when you have all types of asset classes and different investment opportunities, particularly for your retirement.
Last but not least, the guys at Jace Medical.
I love people to take action.
They took it off this show back in 2020. They saw that the Chinese Communist Party controlled the...
The high ground of the supply chains.
And they did something about it.
JaceMedical.com slash Bannon.
Go get your medicine today and get it at Jace.
Jace Medical.
Dr. Sean Rollins and him taking actions.
Mike Lindell couldn't join us earlier.
You're traveling.
You're back in one piece.
Talk to me about your crosses.
Talk to me about your final sheets.
Talk to me about your pillows, brother.
mike lindell
That's what we got going on.
It's the mega sale.
And we've got everything on sale.
The crosses that I've worn for 20 years.
We got reversible for women and then the men's.
And I don't know if we have that graphic, but we're adding the flannel.
There it is, everybody.
The mega sale.
You can't beat it.
Free shipping on your entire order.
The towels that all just came in, $29.98.
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We had to give them back to the War Room Posse on sale.
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One size 6998. These are all three War Room exclusive, and the free shipping is a War Room exclusive.
So call 800-873-1062.
All my operators standing by, go to the website.
Remember, you guys, when you get to the website, mypillow.com, scroll down to see our great leader Steve, click on them there, and there's all these other specials that unfold.
We've got that clearance event still going on.
That's all of our sleepwear.
And all the MyPillow clothing, up to 80% off, you guys.
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And then now, I said it before, get your mattresses and your mattress toppers during this free shipping time for the War Room Posse.
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steve bannon
Mike Lindell, we'll see you tomorrow morning.
Promo code WARROOM. Thank you, bro.
See you tomorrow morning.
Glad you're back.
It is so intense and so crazy.
I'll be up on Get Her All Night.
Grace Chung, I'll be up.
I think she's over at Twitter.
Other social media should be putting stuff up.
We'll be back at 10 a.m.
tomorrow morning.
The show's already booked, overflowing.
May have to redo it.
Things happening overnight.
It is crazy.
Good crazy.
President Trump, days of thunder.
It's kind of like Rolling Thunder.
What does that smell like?
Napalm.
Napalm in the morning.
It smells like victory.
Okay.
The right stuff will take you out.
We'll be back here at 10 a.m.
Eastern Standard Time tomorrow morning.
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