Feb. 5, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
51:45
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies. | ||
|
unidentified
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Because we're going medieval on these people. | |
| 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 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
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Mega Media. | |
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
unidentified
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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
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War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| This is the first foreign visit in President Trump's second term. | ||
| It is Bibi Netanyahu. | ||
| Israel, President Trump working nonstop on days of thunder, securing our border, deporting illegal aliens. | ||
| Trying to work with Elon Musk and his team about what they're doing on cutting costs because that's becoming a necessity. | ||
| We've got to get to the trillion dollars. | ||
| And in his spare time, he's trying to end the war in Ukraine. | ||
| He doesn't want that to drag on, and he's trying to sort this mess out in the Middle East. | ||
| He and B.B. Netanyahu started at 4 o'clock, started late, I think about 4.30. | ||
| They spend a few minutes with each other, and then as the president likes to do, he brings people into the Oval Office to have a photographic availability, but he also brings the president. | ||
| They shout questions. | ||
| He answers back. | ||
| Then they've continued their meeting. | ||
| It's called a bilateral. | ||
| That's White House lingo. | ||
| And they're going to come out and have a press conference. | ||
| I imagine President Trump is going to have a lot to say. | ||
| When they come out, we're going to pick it up without commercial break until its conclusion. | ||
| We've got our own White House correspondent there, Brian Glenn, who will join us here momentarily. | ||
| And if it's still within the 7 o'clock hour, he will be here to help us wrap it up. | ||
| Like I said, very controversial today. | ||
| President Trump, I think, leaked. | ||
| I'm not sure he said that, that if he was assassinated or, I guess, anyway, harmed by agents of the Persian government. | ||
| They'd left instructions by anybody, I guess it was, to be obliterated. | ||
| He also today started this controversial, Gaza's not fit for occupation, not fit for humans, so Jordan and Egypt ought to get ready and start taking people because it's not fit for humans. | ||
| And now I can tell you when President Trump, I think the French call it an idea fixed, when he has a fixed idea, he doesn't get off it. | ||
| And there's going to be something here, just because you can tell he's going to force the issue. | ||
| So this whole issue of who actually goes back to Gaza, what's the future of Gaza, what's the future of the Muslim Brotherhood's military operation in Gaza, all of it. | ||
| I've got Frank Gaffney. | ||
| I want to make sure also, hey, turbulence coming out of today. | ||
| I don't think we're going to have peace. | ||
| I just don't. | ||
| There's an awful lot of people around the world. | ||
| You see the world media saying how, you know, they disagree with Rabbi Pesach. | ||
| And they say you're taking a people that have been basically confined to this hellhole. | ||
| You've destroyed the hellhole. | ||
| Now you want to go be basically refugees in the desert of Sinai or in the desert of Jordan. | ||
| And that doesn't work. | ||
| So very controversial. | ||
| The rabbi is with us. | ||
| He will return with us momentarily. | ||
| Frank. | ||
| The strategy of this, we've been making the case that there's a massive problem in the Middle East, and our problem in the Middle East, the American problem in the Middle East, is not Israel. | ||
| That these problems would exist even without Israel. | ||
| And people go, oh no, you can't. | ||
| No. | ||
| These would be just as bad without Israel because they hate the United States of America. | ||
| Now, for full disclosure, Frank, President Trump from the Oval, he didn't exactly back the Frank Gaffney and the Victory Coalition and the Bannon and the War Room line that Qatar is a problem. | ||
| He said Qatar is trying to get to a solution. | ||
| Qatar is working with everybody to try to come up with solutions. | ||
| We respect the president. | ||
| We love the president. | ||
| We beg to differ, but we are where we are. | ||
| Frank Gaffney, your thoughts? | ||
| Well, let me just make an overall observation, Steve. | ||
| As you know, I had the privilege of working for President Reagan when he was practicing peace through strength. | ||
| And it was an extraordinary moment in my life. | ||
| I'm happy to say that I think the most glorious moment, probably even surpassing that, is the one we're living in now. | ||
| You were talking with Julie earlier about the time to be alive. | ||
| What Donald Trump is doing every single day. | ||
| And I set the Middle East aside for a moment, but every single day in domestic policy and foreign policy is demonstrating that he is making America great again. | ||
| And he's doing it by the practice of leadership, first and foremost, and the policy of peace through strength. | ||
| And let me just say this to our friends who are relatively new to all of this. | ||
| America First, I think, joins... | ||
| Brilliantly with peace through strength because the idea behind the Reagan strategy was not to use our strength. | ||
| It was to have our strength deter enemies from doing bad things and to come to terms that were acceptable to us. | ||
| Donald Trump has the opportunity and I think this is what we're going to see in the press conference coming up momentarily, I pray it is, is that the kind of partnership that arguably we haven't seen since Oh, I don't know, FDR and Churchill, or maybe Reagan and Thatcher and John Paul, | ||
| is available now to enable us to have the decisive victory we need, and I mean we meaning both the United States of America and the Judeo-Christian civilized world, and also, of course, Israel, without having to use our strength. | ||
| By allowing the Israelis to use their strength, and in fact assuring that they've got the kit, the wherewithal to do that. | ||
| But they have understood, I think finally, in the aftermath of October 7th, and President Trump spoke powerfully about it a moment ago, that horrific event shred, I hope for all time, the idea that they can simply make peace with people determined to destroy them, whether it's Hamas, whether it's Hezbollah, whether it's Houthis, whether it's... | ||
| Iran, whether it's other Sharia supremacists, Turkey, they will have to prevail over them. | ||
| And the very important insight for our America First team is that restraint won't get us there. | ||
| Let alone retreat. | ||
| What will get us there is enabling Israel to finish the job, as President Trump has put it, to assure that victory is actually achieved over these enemies. | ||
| Whether gutter can play a role or not, I don't know. | ||
| I don't believe they are on our side. | ||
| But here's an interesting opportunity for a test. | ||
| I was talking with our colleague David Wormser on our show, Securing America, earlier today, and he pointed out gutter has a... | ||
| A village, or a series of villages, I guess, that they built for the World Cup. | ||
| They're sitting idle. | ||
| They're sitting empty, ready to go. | ||
| How about we put 100,000, I don't know, women and children from Gaza in there right away to start this process? | ||
| The other thing I just wanted to mention, Steve, is I don't know what they're talking about right now, but I've got to believe that with Donald Trump moving the Overton window, as my friend Pesek likes to say, On this whole idea that Gaza is someplace that can be occupied, that can be inhabited for any time for the foreseeable future, not by Israelis, as was mentioned by somebody in the press, not by the Palestinians, for sure. | ||
| We have to change this ceasefire that the president basically inherited from Joe Biden, this hudna, if you want to be... | ||
| Technical about it. | ||
| A pause. | ||
| Not real peace, not even temporary peace, but just a time for regrouping, for rearming, and then for resuming the fight. | ||
| This is a tradition that goes back to Muhammad. | ||
| But the point is, you cannot be allowing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Gazans to go back into the north. | ||
| Under these circumstances, that's provided for in Phase 2 of this ceasefire deal. | ||
| That can't happen. | ||
| And here's a really important reason why it can't happen, Steve. | ||
| If those Gazans go back, you can bet there will be more hostages. | ||
| In fact, those hostages will be held by Hamas to keep them from being removed altogether. | ||
| Keep it simple. | ||
| And Rabbi, I'll bring you a minute. | ||
| We're going to cut. | ||
| As soon as they walk in, we're going to cut to it live. | ||
| President Trump, Steve Witkoff went to Qatar and got the Qataris to have his back and he kind of forced himself into, remember this was the whole thing about, was it Shabbat? | ||
| He called up and they said, look, it's Shabbat, it's Friday night, we'll see you Saturday night. | ||
| And Witkoff goes, no, he's in Qatar. | ||
| It's a couple hours away, what, 90 minute flight or something? | ||
| He says, no, I'm coming, be ready. | ||
| He came from Qatar and they knew he came from Qatar with the deal. | ||
| Correct me if I'm wrong. | ||
| Was it the whole thing about the return part of the ceasefire? | ||
| It was going to be an exchange of, it was going to be turning over the hostages, a thousand terrorists, or freedom fighters, whatever you want to call them, for the Palestinians, going to be released. | ||
| The hostages are going to be released back to the Israelis. | ||
| But that the mechanism for the return was there on the deal that President Trump basically had Wyckoff negotiate. | ||
| Am I correct on that? | ||
| Frank Gaffney? | ||
| Oh, yeah, that's exactly what was in the cards. | ||
| Okay, but how can we now act like, because we've known that the IDF had to do what they did, but it's like Dresden in 45. In fact, it's worse than Ukraine. | ||
| How's this come as a surprise, and how do we pivot now? | ||
| Rabbi, let me do it with you. | ||
| Isn't it a bait-and-switch? | ||
| You're getting the hostages back. | ||
| Everybody's known about what it looks like, what it is, the lack of water, the lack of living space. | ||
| They've known about it. | ||
| How do you put that in the document they sign off on? | ||
| Won't they sit there and go, this is another Jerusalem, Washington, D.C., bait-and-switch, sir? | ||
| Look, Steve, the reason that Gaza is so uninhabitable, the reason it's so destroyed is only because Hamas attacked Israel. | ||
| They built a terrorist infrastructure that ran like a snake underneath the entire Gaza Strip with hundreds of miles of tunnels. | ||
|
unidentified
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OK, Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi, I got that. | |
| I agree with that. | ||
| But I'm talking about that was all known when this deal was cut. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Now to say, oh, by the way, upon further review, it's not inhabitable, and you guys ought to go to Egypt. | ||
| Oh, Egypt doesn't want you. | ||
| Let's go to Jordan. | ||
| Oh, Jordan doesn't want you. | ||
| Nobody wants these folks. | ||
| We counseled against this deal. | ||
| You're talking to people who said, don't do this. | ||
| Donald Trump has the option to do what he's doing now, which is to say, change circumstances. | ||
| Yes, I think that it is something people can say, well, you should have known. | ||
| But I think the reality is nobody until Donald Trump had the guts to say, this won't work. | ||
| It cannot stand. | ||
| We have to revise it. | ||
| And God bless him for doing so. | ||
| Okay, I got that, Rabbi. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| That's a Chinese saying. | ||
| Circumstances. | ||
| When the Chinese retrade you, which they're constantly retrading, Frank knows this, they start off the conversation, circumstances change. | ||
| In other words, the contract we have is no longer good because they've had to change their mind. | ||
| So, Rabbi, your thoughts? | ||
| Yeah, Steve, it's not a bait and switch. | ||
| Israel made no, did not, they weren't trying to convince anyone that northern Gaza was inhabitable. | ||
| They said they wanted to come back. | ||
| You want to come back? | ||
| That's one of your... | ||
| You can come back. | ||
| Here's what it looks like. | ||
| That's why I said before that every building that was destroyed was destroyed because it was a legitimate target. | ||
| The soldiers that I spoke to, my children included, who were in combat there, said that literally every single home had weapons caches in it, had tunnel entry points. | ||
| Many of the hostages were held by civilian families and abused by them. | ||
| And this goes to a larger problem, Steve, that you were raising, which is, what if a lot of them don't want to leave? | ||
| What if they don't want to go anywhere? | ||
| The more moderate ones will want to leave. | ||
| The ones who are more committed to the jihadist Hamas genocidal ideology need to be defeated. | ||
| The only reason that—the only way to really defeat a genocidal ideology is to actually defeat it, to fight it to victory, which is something that the Western world has forgotten about ever since World War II. That you have to defeat evil ideologies. | ||
| Otherwise, they're just going to persist. | ||
| That's the way we defeated Imperial Japan. | ||
| That's the way we defeated Nazi Germany. | ||
| You have to bring them to their knees. | ||
| The only way to eradicate this evil is victory. | ||
| And Israel had to destroy the Gaza Strip in the process of doing it. | ||
| So where these people go is a problem that needs to be solved. | ||
| But enough is enough. | ||
| Since 1948, the Arabs have been... | ||
| Starting wars and never paying the price, and everyone points the finger at Israel. | ||
| The whole reason this disaster existed in the first place is the Egyptians and the other Arab leadership. | ||
| The whole reason it's destroyed today is because of the jihadists who tried to destroy Israel. | ||
| Let's start pointing the finger of responsibility. | ||
| Let's point the finger of responsibility where it belongs. | ||
| The Qataris funded this. | ||
| The Egyptians facilitated it. | ||
| The Iranians funded it. | ||
| Let them pay the price for the results. | ||
| And Steve, the other point, though, is that Hamas will hold anybody who is in the north hostage. | ||
| To prevent them from being removed. | ||
| I can guarantee you that's how this will play out. | ||
| For the same reasons that Pesek just talked about, that everything's destroyed there. | ||
| Because they have nothing but contempt for their own people. | ||
| They're only used as hostages or slaves. | ||
| And when they're not useful, they're killed. | ||
| And if they're killed by Israelis... | ||
| Better yet. | ||
| But they'll kill them themselves or they'll hold them hostage. | ||
| This is the ultimate change circumstance. | ||
| And Donald Trump is absolutely right, and you said it. | ||
| It's common sense to say they can't go back there. | ||
| It's not safe. | ||
| It's not habitable. | ||
| And that's not Israel's fault. | ||
| It's the time for relocating these people permanently. | ||
| It has to happen. | ||
| Okay, Rabbi, hang on. | ||
| About this point, you've got a whole wide swath of them. | ||
| Just don't want to go. | ||
| Some do. | ||
| Don't get me wrong. | ||
| I'm sure some do. | ||
| A lot don't. | ||
| But even the ones that want to go, riddle me this. | ||
| There's nobody in the region wants to take them. | ||
| The Egyptians couldn't be more adamant that, no thanks. | ||
| The Jordanians couldn't be more adamant, no thanks. | ||
| What are you going to put tent cities up in the Sinai and force the Egyptians? | ||
| I mean, what is the solution? | ||
| If President Trump and people are saying, hey, the Gaza's uninhabitable, And something's got to be done here. | ||
| A bunch of people don't want to leave. | ||
| Some do want to leave. | ||
| Even the ones that want to leave, where are you going to send them? | ||
| Because right now, it doesn't look like any of the neighbors. | ||
| And then you get down to the Gulf, it's even worse. | ||
| But none of their neighbors want to take these folks. | ||
| Your thoughts, sir? | ||
| Well, you know... | ||
| The old expression, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. | ||
| If you have a population here that has willingly embraced an evil genocidal ideology, all they have is jihad. | ||
| Even the other Arab countries don't want them. | ||
| Wherever large populations of Palestinians have gone, whether it's Jordan or Egypt or Lebanon or Kuwait, wherever they go, they cause problems, and that's why nobody wants them. | ||
| And I don't know what to—I mean, I— I guess I feel bad for them that they don't have anywhere to go. | ||
| But again, the finger of responsibility should be pointed at where it belongs. | ||
| On those, their leadership and their population that has chosen this, they embrace Hamas. | ||
| Now, practically speaking, where are they going to go? | ||
| I believe that the only real practical solution is to deliver the Sharia supremacists, the jihadists. | ||
| It's such a resounding defeat that they do what the Imperial Japanese and what the Nazi Germans did, and that is rethink their genocidal ideology because it is unequivocally defeated. | ||
| It's really the only way to change these people. | ||
| Otherwise you're just moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic. | ||
| Shifting jihadists from one place to another. | ||
| No one's going to want to take them, as you said. | ||
| They're in a bind. | ||
| But again, this is a society that embraced Hamas. | ||
| It's not like Hamas was ruling over an unwilling population. | ||
| This is a population that has been indoctrinated from the youngest age, that the highest calling is to murder Jews and to destroy the state of Israel. | ||
| This is also, in the bigger picture, Steve, this is the unwillingness of the Sharia supremacists to accept Because if they accept Israel, that means that they're putting down their arms and giving up on jihad and Sharia supremacy for the whole world, because the front line of that, the bone in their craw of the Sharia supremacist goal for the world is the state of Israel, and they can't come to peace with it. | ||
| So something's going to have to give, and this goes back to the question of, are we going to have victory over this, or are we kicking the can down the road to keep fighting against the jihadists in perpetuity? | ||
| Israel's on the front line. | ||
| But make no mistake about it. | ||
| Everyone in the war room posse, and I've been a member of the war room posse from the beginning, everyone who knows that the Middle East is far away and that we're America first should recognize that the Iranian money that they're getting from the CCP that they're using to fund Hamas, they're also using to fund Hezbollah in Venezuela and Paraguay. | ||
| Who are in business with the cartels and are central to the drugs and the illegal traffic across your southern border. | ||
| Iran is your enemy. | ||
| And Iran is Israel's enemy. | ||
| And we're just on the front lines. | ||
| You know, they're after America and Israel's in the way. | ||
|
unidentified
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And those Hezbollah folks are here too. | |
| Can I give you a thought experiment, Steve? | ||
| Yes, the question. | ||
| So who's going to take them? | ||
| Well, how about we start with the list of all of the countries that have been professing their undying commitment to Palestine? | ||
| Let's go through that list. | ||
| I mentioned Qatar. | ||
| Qatar's got an Olympic-sized village that's ready to go. | ||
| Start there. | ||
| How about Turkey? | ||
| Turkey loves the Palestinians. | ||
| How about them? | ||
| I'm sure some will wind up in Syria, no matter what we do. | ||
| But maybe Afghanistan. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There's places around the world that have... | ||
| And the president has said some are saying they'd like to take these guys. | ||
| So that's possibly the case that there's others on the list besides Sharia supremacist nation. | ||
| You've seen the geostrategic reorientation of President Trump around a more... | ||
| What I call a Mahanian strategy or Mahanian strategy, more naval strategy looking to take. | ||
| He sent Marco Rubio, Secretary Rubio, down to Panama. | ||
| They come out, as you and I have talked about. | ||
| The CCP signs come down. | ||
| The president of Panama walks in and says, we're out of one, belt one road. | ||
| Now, today, I think the contract for Hutchinson to Wampoa to run the stevedore system there has been torn up. | ||
| Panama Canal is coming back to the United States. | ||
| On the other hand, we had Tom Dance today at the commemoration of the Four Chaplains commemoration in Greenland. | ||
| The people in Greenland seem like they're very open to some sort of independence and maybe partnership with the United States as part of the naval strategy to block the Russians. | ||
| Arctic is up for grabs now as a great power, a great game between the CCP, the KGB, and the United States of America. | ||
| With all this going on and reorientation, he's talking to Bibi today about building an iron dome for the United States. | ||
| Who knows if it's technically feasible? | ||
| Who knows if it's financially feasible? | ||
| We've got Bolsonaro on deck in Brazil. | ||
| Malay's already down in Argentina. | ||
| You've been focused on this forever. | ||
| Drive the CCP out of Latin America. | ||
| I think the APEC conference in... | ||
| The Pacific Conference in Chile woke people up to the fact that CCP is everywhere and they've got to go. | ||
| With all that said, and now you've got Ukraine. | ||
| President Trump's going to do Ukraine. | ||
| Are we getting too wrapped up? | ||
| Is President Trump actually stepping forward and said the Gazans have got to go? | ||
| Are we getting too involved here? | ||
| I mean, the American First people say, yo, we've got enough to worry about. | ||
| Next thing you know, we're talking about a war with Persia. | ||
| More involvement, and we're saying Gazans have got to go. | ||
| That means if they've got to go, you've got to find a home for them. | ||
| It's just going to happen. | ||
| And that means you're going to have to negotiate, because none of these folks are going to be welcomed with open arms, even to the desert and Sinai. | ||
| You know what the rabbi knows. | ||
| Is President Trump getting sucked into too much in the Ukraine and in the Middle East? | ||
| To take his eye off the ball, his energy against the CCP, who came back today and said, hey, we heard about your 10% tariffs. | ||
| We got a couple of three things that we're going to throw back at you. | ||
| You got the CCP in one hand. | ||
| You've got the hemispheric defense on another. | ||
| He's got a main and one problems here. | ||
| Is Ukraine in the Middle East worth it? | ||
| Is it worth him getting sucked in to finding a home for the Gazans, sir? | ||
| Steve, as you and I have talked about on many occasions, the reason there is a Ukraine. | ||
| The reason there is a Middle East war is because of what I call not World War III, but World War Xi. | ||
| These were orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| Make no mistake about it. | ||
| Their strategy, including the Belt and Road Initiative, is to be everywhere. | ||
| So this idea that if we just focus on China or just East Asia, then we can let everything else slide, is wrong. | ||
| As Pesach has said, they're in our hemisphere. | ||
| They're in our country, for heaven's sakes. | ||
| There are tens of thousands of People's Liberation Army soldiers in our country at the moment. | ||
| So you said it better than anybody, Steve. | ||
| This president has inherited from Joe Biden a catastrophic situation around the world. | ||
| It's World War III. So I'm simply suggesting that... | ||
| And I know that Pesek Willicki agrees with me on this, as does our Victory Coalition, which you've been a founding member. | ||
| We need victory. | ||
| And the victory that we can get most immediately in the Middle East is entirely one that the Israelis can deliver, I believe, against all comers, provided they have our material support, as we've done in the past, as Biden tried to... | ||
| But as I believe Donald Trump understands, has to be renewed. | ||
| That means we don't have our boots on the ground in that particular fight. | ||
| The president is not interested in getting into a fight in Ukraine. | ||
| He wants to resolve it with a negotiation. | ||
| Godspeed. | ||
| We do have to keep our eye on the Chinese, but it's not just in East Asia. | ||
| My point is, victory in the Middle East will conduce to not having to fight the Chinese elsewhere. | ||
| I'm convinced of it. | ||
| Retreating. | ||
| Creating vacuums of power that they were already filling. | ||
| This war through Iran with oil sales or oil purchases. | ||
| That's the kind of thing that we have to be confronting, but not with our boots on the ground. | ||
| Let Israel do it. | ||
| Just be clear. | ||
| And I hope this is going to be the leitmotif of what the press conference is talking about, is this strategic partnership, special relationship, is going to be rooted in the principle that there is no substitute for victory, if you genuinely want America first. | ||
| Rabbi Pesek is with us. | ||
| The rabbi's got a great piece up on RealClearPolitics. | ||
| I think President Trump might have read that. | ||
| A lot of things President Trump was saying seems like he came from that, or at least directionally. | ||
| Rabbi Frank Gaffney's with us. | ||
| Rabbi, correct me if I'm wrong. | ||
| You saw it. | ||
| And did the president seem a little reserved to Bibi? | ||
| I mean, in the press reveal they had, he kind of fielded the questions. | ||
| Bibi jumped in there. | ||
| But it wasn't normally President Trump's, you know, over. | ||
| Is this because of, you think it's an issue with Bibi embracing Biden? | ||
| Do you think it's Bibi supposedly backed out of the situation where we took out the Iranian, the Persian military commander? | ||
| Soleimani. | ||
| Soleimani. | ||
| Or is it because... | ||
| You know, there's still a lot of hurt and questions. | ||
| President Trump thinks the October 7th situation is horrible, and, you know, it happened on BB's watch. | ||
| Did you notice it seemed like any of the lack of traditional chemistry between these two? | ||
| Or am I reading too much into it? | ||
| I'm not sure if you're reading too much into it, but certainly there is some residue of those past issues in their relationship. | ||
| But at the same time, one of the reporters asked President Trump directly, you had ups and downs in your relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu. | ||
| And President Trump said, more ups than downs, mostly up. | ||
| That was what he said. | ||
| In other words, he was dismissing that. | ||
| But at the same time, you're right. | ||
| He wasn't all smiley and gracious in the way that he often is. | ||
| And I think that part of that is just being non-credit. | ||
| This was an impromptu press conference during the photo op in the chairs. | ||
| The main press conference is coming now, and I think that before he had the conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, he didn't want to be too... | ||
| You know, be too generous in what he's going to be saying. | ||
| You know, he doesn't want to be committal. | ||
| But I think it's also clear that President Trump wants to make it known that whatever policies are going to come out of this are his. | ||
| They're not him accepting Prime Minister Netanyahu's policies. | ||
| He's driving the action. | ||
| And that could have also been part of it, as I see it. | ||
| You first, and then we'll go to Frank. | ||
| Make us smart here. | ||
| Through the eyes of America's, not Israel's, through the eyes of America's enemies in the region, what are they going to be looking for? | ||
| What's the thing that we could say to put our enemies on the back foot? | ||
| And what are they going to be looking for in this about any kind of gap between the American historical relationship with Israel? | ||
| And particularly President Trump, as you know, greatly admires the Israeli military, right, as being a force that has had some tremendous victories in the past, sir. | ||
| Well, they're going to be looking for two things. | ||
| They're going to be looking on the Iran front. | ||
| For what comes out of President Trump's mouth in terms of being open to Israeli strikes against Iran. | ||
| He already announced earlier today that he's renewing the sanctions and pointing the finger at Iran. | ||
| And as you mentioned earlier, threatening them if they try to come after him. | ||
| Let's remember that Iran was broke when President Trump left office. | ||
| They had no money to fund Hamas and Hezbollah. | ||
| So they're going to be watching for what he says about Iran. | ||
| Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it his life's work to take them down. | ||
| And on the Gaza front, they're going to be looking for what President Trump says about phase two. | ||
| Phase two, which we're now on day 17 of this 42-day ceasefire, and they've started. | ||
| We're negotiating phase two, which is supposed to lead to a permanent ceasefire. | ||
| The right wing in Israel is threatening to bring down the government if we don't go back to war at the end of phase one. | ||
| And they're going to be looking for President Trump to be pressuring Prime Minister Netanyahu or an announcement that they are going to be going into phase two for a permanent ceasefire. | ||
| They're going to be looking for something in that direction, although I don't think you're going to get any commitment out of them one way or another on that. | ||
| Yeah, I would just say, as Bibi put it, they're looking for daylight between these two allies. | ||
| They've always looked for that. | ||
| And whenever they see it, they think they can build wedges that will exploit it. | ||
| They believe that they can help undermine Israel. | ||
| But as you said yourself a moment ago, Israel is a speed bump on the road to the United States of America. | ||
| We've talked about the threat that is present here, and not just in our hemisphere, but inside the country. | ||
| That will be magnified enormously if these guys actually think they can finish off Israel, which has been their set purpose for generations. | ||
| If they don't see that daylight, if they see that special relationship, if they see, as Rabbi Peck was saying, if they see the President of the United States saying, hey, obviously we can't continue into Phase 2. Under the present deal, because that means having all these people moving north into the northern part of Gaza. | ||
| I mean, that can't happen. | ||
| So we're talking about a do-over of some kind, and that will be a very powerful signal if it's rooted in the principle that Hamas has to be defeated, not allowed to survive or even actually prevail over Israel, en route to what they all hope will be the next step, which is defeating Israel itself. | ||
| Rabbi, you have a powerful and rising part of the MAGA movement, and particularly on the America First national security policy. | ||
| And that is, I would call the Tucker Carlson, Darren Beattie, Kurt Mills. | ||
| And these are some of the smartest people we have in this movement, and huge followers of President Trump. | ||
| And I would actually add Grace Chung, who runs our social media. | ||
| That there's not an insignificant amount, probably 50-50 of you in the war room posse, that is in the social media, in the chat rooms, and talk about it all the time, that a tripwire for them, and if you mention war with Persia, if you mention even airstrikes on Iran or Persia, they literally say, okay, we can't do that. | ||
| What do you say to those folks to say, hey, maybe you're not thinking of this. | ||
| What would be your... | ||
| Outreach to them to try to get them on board. | ||
| These are the folks that are saying, hey, too much of this is the tail wagging the dog in the Middle East. | ||
| We don't really have a fight over there. | ||
| We hear Bannon, we hear Gaffney, we hear the anti-Jihad crowd, but we're not buying it. | ||
| We still think the tail wags the dog, and we're adamantly opposed to this. | ||
| Now, if B.B., and you said it right there, and I agree with you, it's his life's work. | ||
| He believes in his heart of hearts it's an existential threat, and I believe he feels that on his watch he has to take care of it, and we don't know how long his watch is going to last. | ||
| So what do you say to that element of the America First that's pretty adamantly opposed to this, sir? | ||
| Well... | ||
| First, what I said earlier, and that is that Iran's nefarious behavior is not limited to the Middle East. | ||
| They're also funding a lot of what's going on on your southern border, and they're working very closely with the cartels. | ||
| They are actively an enemy of America, not only in theory. | ||
| I would also point to the Iranian people who are suffering under this regime. | ||
| Iran is actually not a very religious population. | ||
| They have the lowest mosque attendance per capita of any Muslim nation. | ||
| You have a suffering population that's actually quite pro-Western and even pro-Israel that is suffering under the mullahs and, you know, much akin to the Lao Ba Jing out in China. | ||
| But mainly I would also argue that you're just kicking the can down the road if you don't deal with Iran. | ||
| And we have an opportunity. | ||
| The regime is teetering. | ||
| The regime is on the verge of collapse. | ||
| And the time to change things. | ||
| Why should we live in perpetuity? | ||
| With this Sharia supremacist jihadist regime that started in 1979, it's not a law of nature that they have to be governing. | ||
| One of the largest nations in the Middle East. | ||
| And if the Iranian Mullah's regime were to fall, this isn't like Syria. | ||
| It wouldn't be replaced by some other radical group. | ||
| Iran is quite an advanced, fairly Western nation. | ||
| If you think about what it was under the Shah, you would have a very powerful partner with the West. | ||
| And the ripple effect of peace throughout the world would be incredible. | ||
| And this is very much a national security issue for the United States as well. | ||
| The Iranian regime... | ||
| If it's not dealt with, if it remains in power, especially if it continues to sell its oil, which Donald Trump is putting a stop to, but if the Iranian regime remains in power, there will be jihad. | ||
| Jihad is not just a hobby of theirs. | ||
| Jihad is what they put their money into, not into their own people. | ||
| There will be jihad continuing throughout the Middle East, throughout Europe, throughout South America, and into the United States in perpetuity so long as that regime is in power. | ||
| That's what I would say to them. | ||
| And I would add to it. | ||
| Frank, hang on a second. | ||
| I'm going to come right to you for a second. | ||
| I want to ask this in a different way. | ||
| We're watching the East Room. | ||
| The East Room is on the residence side. | ||
| That's actually in the residence of the White House itself. | ||
| Proper, historic. | ||
| So many important press conferences, meetings have taken place there. | ||
| You've got to leave the Oval Office, walk through the Colony, pass the Rose Garden into the... | ||
| And to the back of the residence, then up, of course, down that carpet, that beautiful centerpiece, to the East Room. | ||
| It's been historic. | ||
| President Trump is due there momentarily with Bibi Netanyahu. | ||
| So right now, in that Oval Office, Frank Gaffney, they're talking about war and peace. | ||
| Bibi Netanyahu is making his case that Rabbi just made, that... | ||
| The Persians are a threat, not just the reason, the Persians are a direct threat to the United States of America. | ||
| And he's making a case for war against the Persians. | ||
| And his case is that, hey, we were able to take, Hezbollah was supposedly the best light infantry in the world, and we've basically destroyed them in much of the Syria-Lebanon corridor. | ||
| The regime is on its back foot. | ||
| It's got all these elements that the rabbi just talked about. | ||
| And if you just give me some, if you just give us some support, if you just give us, you don't have to be in combat, but you give us some air support, and if you look the other way in any type of infantry, at least initially you won't have to be involved, we can take this down. | ||
| Am I wrong in that, or is that the pitch that B.B. came here to make? | ||
| I suspect he's looking for help in a couple of different places, including the ones we've just been talking about. | ||
| Gaza, for one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Relief from the deal. | |
| Finishing the job in Lebanon, clearly. | ||
| A perpetual ceasefire that allows Hezbollah to have the hudna and get back in business. | ||
| But Iran is clearly part of this agenda, Steve. | ||
| And I just want to add to everything that Pesek Walicki was talking about, the other piece of it. | ||
| And with all due respect to the people who just don't think this is a problem, the Iranians could have a nuclear weapon at any time. | ||
| If they don't already, I'm kind of astonished, frankly, but it could be any time. | ||
| And if they don't think that's a threat to us. | ||
| Think again. | ||
| One of the reasons that Donald Trump is absolutely right about pursuing a so-called Iron Dome for America, it won't be exactly an Iron Dome because Iron Dome in Israel is for short-range things. | ||
| We need long-range missiles to be protected against. | ||
| And the way to do that is from space. | ||
| And President Trump understands that. | ||
| And not only, Steve, do we have the technology to do it, thanks, among other things, to what Elon Musk has been doing, but back in the George H.W. Bush administration, we had a program that was ready to go to put space-based sensors and weapons in place that would have neutralized not just, you know, the Iranian threat or the North Korean threat, but the Chinese and even the Russian threats. | ||
| Unfortunately, Bill Clinton, when he came to office, he brought in Les Aspen, one radical leftist, as his secretary of defense. | ||
| And one of the first things he did in office was say, we're taking the stars out of Star Wars. | ||
| And ever since then, we basically have not pursued the logical, the effective, the efficient, the cost-effective, especially way of doing a comprehensive defense of the United States against missile attack of all kinds. | ||
| Hypersonic, by the way, cruise missiles, the whole works. | ||
| And that is from space. | ||
| So Donald Trump is right about that. | ||
| And in part, it is a matter of the utmost urgency because Iran is at the cusp of joining that league of people who, with a short-ranged missile off the coast of the United States, could launch an EMP attack against us, electromagnetic pulse, take out our grid, and we would be done. | ||
| So this is a problem. | ||
| If you don't think it's a problem, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| I entreat you to study it more closely, because if you do study it, even a little bit, I think you're going to realize that retreat gets us killed. | ||
| It enables them to defeat us, not just the Israelis. | ||
| And pretending that these aren't problems or that it's somebody else's problem is a terrible mistake. | ||
| The best thing about it, though, just to wrap this all up, Steve, is, and I'm sure this is a point Phoebe is making to the president, we can do this, Mr. President. | ||
| Just help us. | ||
| I don't think the stakes can be higher. | ||
| I actually don't think, Rabbi, this is to you. | ||
| By the way, we're standing by. | ||
| As soon as the president and Bibi walk out, we will cut right to the live coverage. | ||
| Gaza and Hamas and all that, that's a symptom of the problem, according to Bibi. | ||
| It's not the problem itself. | ||
| His problem, he thinks, is the Muslim Brotherhood, the financing, but the great Satan he's seen historically in his life is the Persians and Iran. | ||
| And he's got one shot with an audience of President Trump to convince him to support him on a military plane. | ||
| Am I wrong in that? | ||
| Am I just dreaming this? | ||
| Or is that the purpose? | ||
| This purpose of the meeting is not about the replacement. | ||
| Are they going to go back to Gaza? | ||
| Are they going to go to the Sinai Desert? | ||
| Whether you're going to have any more, whether in Judea, Samaria, you're going to take care of Hamas. | ||
| Yes, those are all elements of it. | ||
| But the central thing. | ||
| And what Beebe's wanted to accomplish, and he needs an American president to have his back, and he thinks President Trump is the one that's the most logical and open to his, since the Democrats allowed him essentially to get a nuclear weapon, that President Trump, who thinks outside the box is his best shot, even though he's got leading intellectuals like Tucker Carlson, like Kurt Mills, like Darren Beattie, and dozens and dozens and dozens of others to say, this is a sucker's play. | ||
| Is that not the pitch in the Oval Office right now that he's making, sir? | ||
| Oh, it absolutely is, because on those other issues you mentioned, like Hamas ruling Gaza and what to do with some of these other issues, there's already agreement between the Trump administration and Bibi's administration. | ||
| We know that already the statements have already been made. | ||
| It's on the Iran issue that I guess you could say we're not sure that President Trump has been convinced by Netanyahu. | ||
| But everything you're raising, Steve, speaks to the fact that there's a much larger issue here, which is are we serious about the threat to Western civilization? | ||
| Because the Sharia supremacists, the Qataris, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Shiites in Tehran, they're very serious about their desire to defeat our civilization. | ||
| And I don't see that resolve coming on our side the same way. | ||
| Are we serious about winning? | ||
| Are we serious about our civilization? | ||
| Defeating the enemy that is seeking to take it over. | ||
| Look what's happening in Europe. | ||
| Look what's happening with Sharia supremacy there. | ||
| And I think a question to Tucker and Darren Beattie and all that side of things is, are you actually serious about this battle, this clash of civilizations? | ||
| Are you willing to surrender in this clash? | ||
| Are you accommodationist in this? | ||
| Why are we so afraid of victory? | ||
| Frank, let me go. | ||
| We only got a few. | ||
| I think we have eight minutes. | ||
| We're waiting for the press conference. | ||
| The reason I say it's the purpose of the meeting, they're an hour late for the press conference. | ||
| And I realize B.B. showed up a few minutes late to the White House. | ||
| But I believe, folks, they're having a pretty intense conversation. | ||
| And I think President Trump is being quite blunt. | ||
| With Bibi. | ||
| And I think Bibi is being as blunt as he can possibly be back to the President of the United States. | ||
| I think this is quite intense. | ||
| And I'm glad you agree with me, Rabbi. | ||
| Are they coming out? | ||
| Okay, they're going to come out. | ||
| I'm going to hold my question for Frank Gaffney. | ||
| We're going to go through our coverage, but let's go now live to the East Room of the White House for the press conference with President Trump and Bibi Netanyahu. | ||
| Press, congratulations. | ||
| You bring them out. | ||
| You really bring them out. | ||
| Today I'm delighted to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back to the White House. | ||
| It's a wonderful feeling and a wonderful event. | ||
| We had fantastic talks. | ||
| And thank you very much with your staff. | ||
| He's the first foreign head of state to visit during our administration. | ||
| And, Bibi, I want to say it's an honor to have you with us. | ||
| Over the past four years, the U.S. and... | ||
| The Israeli alliance has been tested more than any time in history. | ||
| But the bonds of friendship and affection between the American and Israeli people have endured for generations, and they are absolutely unbreakable. | ||
| They are unbreakable. | ||
| I'm confident that under our leadership, the cherished alliance between our two countries will soon be stronger than ever. | ||
| We had a great relationship. | ||
| We had great victories together four years ago. | ||
| Not so many victories over the past four years, however. | ||
| In my first term, Prime Minister and I forged a tremendously successful partnership that brought peace and stability to the Middle East like it hadn't seen in decades. | ||
| Together, we defeated ISIS. We ended the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, one of the worst deals ever made, by the way, and imposed the toughest ever sanctions on the Iranian regime. | ||
| We starved Hamas and Iran's other terrorist proxies, and we starved them like they had never seen before, resources and support disappeared for them. | ||
| I recognized Israel's capital, opened the American embassy in Jerusalem, and got it built, by the way. | ||
| Built it, too. | ||
| Just not only designated it, but got it built at a price that nobody's seen. | ||
| For 40 years, we got it built. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| All Jerusalem stone, right from nearby, and it's something that's very special. | ||
| And recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, something that they talked about for 70 years, and they weren't able to get it, and I got it. | ||
| And with the historic Abraham Accord, something that was really an achievement that was, I think, in a... | ||
| Become more and more important because we achieved the most significant Middle East peace agreements in half a century, but the Abraham Accords in particular, and I really believe that many countries will soon be joining this amazing peace and economic development transaction. | ||
| It really is a big economic development transaction. | ||
| I think we're going to have a lot of people signing up very quickly. | ||
| Unfortunately, for four years, nobody signed up. | ||
| Nobody did anything for four years except in the negative. | ||
| Unfortunately, the weakness and incompetence of those years, those past four years, the grave damage around the globe that was done, including in the Middle East, grave damage all over the globe. | ||
| The horrors of October 7th would never have happened if I were president. | ||
| The Ukraine and Russia disaster. | ||
| Would never have happened if I were president. | ||
| Over the past 16 months, Israel has endured a sustained, aggressive, and murderous assault on every front. | ||
| But they fought back bravely. | ||
| You see that and you know that. | ||
| What we have witnessed is an all-out attack on the very existence of a Jewish state in the Jewish homeland. | ||
| The Israelis have stood strong and united in the face of an enemy that has kidnapped, tortured. | ||
| Raped and slaughtered innocent men, women, children, and even little babies. | ||
| I want to salute the Israeli people for meeting this trial with courage and determination and unflinching resolve. | ||
| They have been strong. | ||
| In our meetings today, the Prime Minister and I focused on the future, discussing how we can work together to ensure Hamas is eliminated and ultimately restore peace to a very troubled region. | ||
| It's been troubled, but what's happened in the last four years has not been good. | ||
| I want to thank Prime Minister Netanyahu for working closely with my transition team, the special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who's here somewhere. | ||
| Steve? | ||
| Stand up, Steve, please. | ||
| What a job you've done. | ||
| What a good job you've done. | ||
| Proud of you. | ||
| You've done a fantastic job. | ||
| National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. | ||
| Thank you, Mike, for working so well with us. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We have, in addition, Marco Rubio, who is on the phone right now, listening to every single word that we say, and he's going to be great. | ||
| And Pete, congratulations. | ||
| And Scott, congratulations. | ||
| I see you're here. | ||
| And Caroline's been doing a great job. | ||
| She's really probably talked about more than anybody here. | ||
| She's done a fantastic job, and thank you very much, Caroline. | ||
| We're proud of you. | ||
| But we'll only be satisfied when all of these problems are solved, and we have the team to solve them, and that's going to happen. | ||
| And it's going to happen, I think, very quickly. | ||
| I also strongly believe that the Gaza Strip, which has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades, and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there, and frankly, who's been really very unlucky. | ||
| It's been very unlucky. | ||
| It's been an unlucky place for a long time. | ||
| Being in its presence just has not been good, and it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there. | ||
| Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this. | ||
| And build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and, frankly, bad luck. | ||
| This can be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth. | ||
| It could be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12. It could be numerous sites or it could be one large site. | ||
| But the people will be able to live in comfort and peace. | ||
| And we'll make sure something really spectacular is done. | ||
| They're going to have peace. | ||
| They're not going to be shot at and killed and destroyed like this civilization of wonderful people has had to endure. | ||
| The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. | ||
| It's right now a demolition site. | ||
| This is just a demolition site. | ||
| Virtually every building is down. | ||
| They're living under fallen concrete that's very dangerous and very precarious. | ||
| They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again. | ||
| The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. | ||
| We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. | ||
| Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. | ||
| Do a real job. | ||
| Do something different. | ||
| Just can't go back. | ||
| If you go back, it's going to end up the same way it has for 100 years. | ||
| I'm hopeful that this ceasefire could be the beginning of a larger and more enduring peace that will end the bloodshed and killing once and for all. | ||
| With the same goal in mind, my administration has been moving quickly to restore trust in the alliance and rebuild American strength throughout the region. | ||
| And we've really done that. | ||
| We're a respected nation again. | ||
| A lot's happened in the last couple of weeks. | ||
| We are actually a very respected nation again. | ||
| I ended the last administration's de facto arms embargo on over $1 billion in military assistance for Israel. | ||
| And I'm also pleased to announce that this afternoon the United States withdrew from the anti-Semitic UN Human Rights Council and ended all of the support for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which funneled money to Hamas and which was very disloyal to humanity. |
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