Feb. 11, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
56:47
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
|
unidentified
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Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people. | |
| You're just not going to get 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. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
|
unidentified
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MAGA 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. | ||
| Back in the War Room with the great Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Dave Brat sitting in today with Ben Harnwell, our man in Rome. | ||
| Ben, you heard me going off on the Judeo-Christian West. | ||
| I think you're reporting on Europe today a little bit and misinformation in the press. | ||
| Misinformation, of course, depends on your point of view. | ||
| And so, Ben, what is your point of view? | ||
| Please share it with us. | ||
| Well, I'm not going to follow up on the point of misinformation, just to make that absolutely clear, but to respond to what you were saying just before the break, when you said about the $35 trillion debt and the $20 trillion GDP or whatever it was you were quoting, of course, the thing is, let's go with the debt of $35, $36 trillion. | ||
| That's not a static... | ||
| If you're talking about growth in the economy using that rule of 72 that you produced, the debt is going to grow as well in accordance with whatever the interest rate is. | ||
| So if you have interest rates at 2% for 35 years, then your debt is going to double as well, which I think should underline just how horrific this situation is. | ||
| Because, of course, in what 35-year period is your interest rates going to stay on an average? | ||
| Right. | ||
| That is just an indication of how badly, well not just Americans, basically every country winning central banking systems, how badly peoples in the West have been betrayed by their own governments who have sold them out to financial interests. | ||
| Look, I did have a few things to say on Ukraine. | ||
| Sadly, it's a shame. | ||
| It's depressing to come on the show every day and talk about Ukraine because it is a horrific situation. | ||
| But as we approach the Munich Security Conference Friday, Saturday, Sunday of this week, all the main players are starting to come out and make their certain press statements. | ||
| And there are two key players in this, Donald Trump. | ||
| And Vladimir Zelensky has come out in the last 24 hours. | ||
| And I just wanted to update the Warren Possek on what each of those have said. | ||
| And I'll be posting all the links, as I always do, that I bring on to the show. | ||
| I'll be posting these. | ||
| If you go to the video clip on Rumble or my Ghetto account the following day, just follow it there. | ||
| And I'll have all of this if people want to. | ||
| And I recommend that they should go out and just read these things fully. | ||
| For themselves. | ||
| So here's what Donald Trump has said. | ||
| This is a sort of really explosive intervention. | ||
| And he says that Ukraine may be Russian someday. | ||
| Precisely what he said is, and I have the full quote here. | ||
| If I can just find it. | ||
| They may make a deal. | ||
| They may not make a deal. | ||
| They may be Russian someday or they may not be Russian someday. | ||
| He also talks about the rare earths thing, and this is something I've posted on quite a bit on Get. | ||
| I'm 100% against the idea that the US should underwrite security guarantees for Ukraine's stability in the future based on some kind of exchange of rare earths and minerals. | ||
| It seems to be to be a retread of Kuwait. | ||
| I've been pretty solid on this. | ||
| Hey, Ben, let me ask you on the President Trump statement. | ||
| I mean, I read that and it seems to me he's getting into his leverage position like, you know, the Ukrainians have been waiting to make a deal since 15. Right? | ||
| There's Minsk agreements. | ||
| There's agreements in Turkey. | ||
| There's agreements where the Ukrainians could have come off much better, right? | ||
| Just giving up a couple territories. | ||
| Now it's four territories. | ||
| It might go all the way over to Kiev and the river. | ||
| Is that what he's doing by saying that? | ||
| Is he saying, hey, folks, you can negotiate right now or the Russians are going to keep moving west on you and it ain't going to be my fault? | ||
| That's the question, Dave. | ||
| Let me say, let me read out what President Trump has said about this in the last 24 hours, and then I'll come back and give my interpretation on that based around the question you just asked. | ||
| He said, we're going to have all this money in there, and I say I want it back. | ||
| And I told them that I want the equivalent, like 500 billion worth, of rare earth. | ||
| And they have essentially agreed to that. | ||
| So at least we don't feel stupid. | ||
| So that's what... | ||
| President Trump said. | ||
| Now, your question, I think, is perfectly reasonable. | ||
| The problem is we're not just simply dealing with President Trump trying to negotiate in America's best interests. | ||
| He is surrounded by people. | ||
| I don't mean his advisors. | ||
| I mean the whole system, the whole bureaucratic quagmire, the swamp, the military-industrial complex. | ||
| The whole of America today is designed to exploit. | ||
| It's taxpayers on given causes. | ||
| So it's not a case that Donald Trump might try and negotiate in the interest of business, American business, to get access, preferential treatment to all these rare earths. | ||
| The problem is that the moment he signs that thing, no one man can oversee, not even like a cabinet, can oversee all of the interactions of a huge federal bureaucracy the size of America's. | ||
| The moment he signs that and then moves on to the next urgent thing, you're going to have all the grifters, all the swamp coming in trying to exploit that so that the system is itself inherently unstable because people are always going to be trying to make money out of it. | ||
| Now, I mentioned the military-industrial complex. | ||
| Let me say, I wasn't planning on mentioning this on the show, but your question is so pertinent. | ||
| Here's what General... | ||
| Keith Kellogg, we're mentioning him every day now on the show. | ||
| He's been on the show. | ||
| He's a friend of the war room. | ||
| He's been on the show many times. | ||
| Steve talks very, very highly about him. | ||
| He's President Trump's envoy, special envoy to Ukraine. | ||
| This is something he said in the last 24 hours, that the US is going to be pushing your European allies to buy more arms for Ukraine. | ||
| That's what he says specifically, Dave. | ||
| The US always likes selling weapons made in America because it strengthens our economy. | ||
| And he's supportive of this. | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| I mean, it seems to me a pretty open admission here that what General Kellogg is saying, this is something that we said on the war for the last three years of this war, that it was basically engineered. | ||
| We provoked Russia into this. | ||
| NATO provoked. | ||
| America provoked Russia into this war because it was good for the US arms manufacturing industry. | ||
| I don't think anyone expected it to roll on to the degree that it did do. | ||
| Yeah, let me ask you a question there, Ben, because in economics, that, of course, is not true, right now. | ||
| Milton Friedman has kind of the famous funny quip, if you want full employment... | ||
| Just have everyone in your country dig ditches with teaspoons just to heighten the absurdity. | ||
| That will get you full employment. | ||
| Everybody will be working digging ditches with teaspoons, right? | ||
| And so that clearly is not good for your economy, right? | ||
| You have full employment, but there's no productivity. | ||
| And so if you think investing in bombs that were blowing up regularly and shooting into Russia... | ||
| It's good for the economy. | ||
| That's the opposite of what I'm getting at. | ||
| When I bring up that solo model in capital equipment, we need to put capital in the hands of American workers, right? | ||
| And so you can make the argument of government spending also adds to economic growth. | ||
| You can do all green energy stuff. | ||
| You can do totally futile stuff by shoving it into G in macroeconomics, government spending. | ||
| And that does nothing for economic growth. | ||
| And so I know what he might be saying in the short run. | ||
| You're going to get a little spurt to growth the way we count it. | ||
| But it's terrible for your long-run economy. | ||
| Ben. | ||
| Let's be precise. | ||
| It's good for the U.S. arms... | ||
| Yes, right, yes, right. | ||
| It's very good for that. | ||
| They're forcing Europeans, bludgeoning and bullying Europeans or whoever to buy US-made arms equipment. | ||
| Well, it's going to be very good for the US manufacturing industry. | ||
| Obviously, from your perspective, from an American's perspective, at least American taxpayers aren't going to be having to put up the bill. | ||
| But of course, the problem is that the more you have this military-industrial complex subsuming itself within American society, civilian life, the political structure and the economy, the more dangerous that is, because all it's going to do is exactly what it did do now, which is go out looking for another war, because, you know, inventory needs to be replaced. | ||
|
unidentified
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There's no good having bombs on the shelves in the factories that were made 10 years ago. | |
| Let's get back to your thesis here. | ||
| And the reason I talked about misinformation up front is because I'd hate to see President Trump get trapped into this idea that more weapons are going to win the war, right? | ||
| That's been the life from Blinken and the State Department and the deep state and the administrate. | ||
| Administrative state for years, right? | ||
| Since we toppled the Ukrainian regime in 14. We've been hearing these lies about, you know, we're weakening Russia, supposedly, by killing a million young boys, right? | ||
| Dead and injured. | ||
| A million dead. | ||
| It's sickening. | ||
| And so the misinformation I'm getting at is, you know, why would we want... | ||
| To spend more money on weapons for this war that we've already lost and Russia's, by the day, moving west. | ||
| And so that's the misinformation machine coming out of our media, who it turns out has been paid for, especially 90% in Ukraine, by USAID, etc., in the deep state. | ||
| They've altered that message. | ||
| And hit that one for us, Ben. | ||
| How do we message and who's delivering the news to President Trump? | ||
| Well, I hope one of the sources of his information is this show. | ||
| Donald Trump does have some good people around him in other areas, in other sectors. | ||
| When it comes to Ukraine, I'm increasingly having a question mark. | ||
| And he's got some great, and I'm not going to name them, but he has some great guys that will all be household names to the warm posse, standing by his elbow, feeding advice. | ||
| The problem is that when I see... | ||
| The statements arising on the back of that advice, I can't help but disagree with it. | ||
| Look, the point about the military-industrial complex, it's basically the wolf, right, in Little Red Riding Hood. | ||
| And you're there at the end of the nursery rhyme saying, Grandma, what big teeth do you have? | ||
| And that is the fear that the American taxpaying public should have towards this huge industry. | ||
| And you asked me how you get to this situation where you can pretty much write off every single congressman and your old colleagues and every single senator, bar one or two exceptions. | ||
| Because these people are bought and paid for by all the various interests and lobbies. | ||
| The only voice in American politics today that is genuinely trying to represent the interests of the ordinary, non-politically aligned... | ||
| The ordinary, regular, working guy is MAGA. And the only person that I would suggest in elected office that this movement has pushed forward is the president himself. | ||
| So you have the president there. | ||
| I've got to get to the supporters of the show. | ||
| Give us your coordinates, Ben Harnwell. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, so I'm going to put these three articles up on the Rumble clip. | ||
| Getter at Harnwell, Dave. | ||
| Thanks very much. | ||
| God bless you. | ||
| You did a great job. | ||
| Great job, Ben. | ||
| Great job. | ||
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|
unidentified
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Right back after the break. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bann. | ||
| Back in the warm with the great Stephen K. Bann. | ||
| Dave Brat sitting in today. | ||
| We have a very special guest for you today. | ||
| Much anticipated. | ||
| The great Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Steve, great to have you on. | ||
| Thanks, Dave. | ||
| Thanks for stepping in. | ||
| We've got Sam Faddis, and we're going to have, I guess, the King of Jordan is going to arrive. | ||
| Can we get the shot? | ||
| Real America's Voice put up. | ||
| We've got that great camera that sits right there outside. | ||
| Let's go take a... | ||
| I don't need to see Brad. | ||
| I'd rather see the driveway. | ||
| There we are. | ||
| They're full screen. | ||
| Let me describe this once again to our audience. | ||
| That building in back, I want everybody to understand, that is the old, I think, State Department, War Department. | ||
| That is the executive office building. | ||
| That's where Peter Navarro, that's where probably 90% of the White House staff is there because the West Wing is very small as far as offices go. | ||
| There's probably under, I don't know, 30, maybe 40 people working the entire West Wing, maybe 50. Not including the press, which is jammed down, which I've always recommended getting the press out of there, but they're jammed down where the old pull used to be. | ||
| Right here, once again, that's the working entrance to the West Wing. | ||
| Now this is where the vast majority of dignitaries come. | ||
| There's a little room right there when you walk in, a little reception room, and it's right next to the Roosevelt Room and right across from the Oval Office. | ||
| So you can't be more than 50 feet away from the Oval Office. | ||
| That's where they bring folks up here. | ||
| The King of Jordan is coming. | ||
| And Dave Bratt and Sam Faddis, the King of Jordan, who's been a tremendous ally to the United States for many, many decades, is really in a bind right now. | ||
| I mean, Sam, you spent your career over there. | ||
| Sam was in the CIA back when the CIA actually got business taken care of. | ||
| Sam, you've spent a big part of your career in the region. | ||
| The King of Jordan's under a little pressure, right? | ||
| Because President Trump's Gaza plan is, of the two million folks in Gaza, Palestinians, I guess he wants a million to go to Jordan and a million to go to Egypt. | ||
| I think Egypt's just made an announcement about that. | ||
| They're not enthusiastic. | ||
| In fact, I think they're talking about something, a trip or something associated with President Trump. | ||
| That's not going to happen. | ||
| And Sam, President Trump threw down yesterday in the Oval during his press availability. | ||
| He said... | ||
| Hey, all hostages released by noon. | ||
| And President Trump said, I think they're all dead, but I want to know their bodies or whatever. | ||
| All hostages by noon. | ||
| If it doesn't happen, all hell's going to break loose. | ||
| Sam Faddis, you first, then I'll get Brad's thoughts on the Holy Lancer. | ||
| Well, look, as usual, I think what Donald Trump is brilliant at is getting to the heart of the matter, right? | ||
| So when you talk about Gaza... | ||
| If you want a different result, if you don't want a perpetual repetition of these cycles of violence, you've got to change the facts on the ground. | ||
| So Gaza is a non-viable state under the control of a terrorist organization on the border of Israel. | ||
| Going forward and leaving Hamas there and those people there, we're just going to repeat this over and over. | ||
| So what he's looking at is, okay, let's get these people who are effectively in a giant refugee camp elsewhere. | ||
| Jordan, which is theoretically, at least in part, a Palestinian state, is a natural candidate for that, and the Jords are very good allies of ours. | ||
| Here's the problem, though, Steve, as you well know. | ||
| The Jords don't like the Palestinians. | ||
| They'll talk all day about their rights and stand enough for them. | ||
| They just don't want to live with them, just like all the rest of the Arab states. | ||
| The Egyptians don't want them either. | ||
| I mean, so you whine and whinge all day, but then you say, okay, well, let's... | ||
| Bring these people to a better condition and have them on your soil. | ||
| And immediately they're like, whoa, wait a minute, buddy. | ||
| I didn't mean that. | ||
| Somebody else should take care of these guys. | ||
| So that's what we're up against. | ||
| Sam, hang on one second. | ||
| I just want to tell the audience, the color guard, let's go to that bigger shot. | ||
| The director, let's go to the bigger shot. | ||
| When the color guard comes out, now the color guard's in place. | ||
| And we love showing you this stuff because Real America's Voice now, we have three White House correspondents. | ||
| You've got Amanda Head, you've got our Natalie Winters, and you've got, of course, Brian Glenn. | ||
| So we've got a real apparatus over there and producers and cameramen. | ||
| This is the shot of Dave and Sam in position, the color guard, always render honors to those dignitaries that arrive in kind of an official capacity. | ||
| Sam, you know this area, and I don't, but aren't? | ||
| Most in the kingdom of Jordan aren't most of the residents there actually Palestinians already, sir? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| That's exactly true. | ||
| So there is a very strong argument to be made that, okay, well, this is the natural place where these guys ought to be living, not jammed together in this tiny little ghetto between Israel and the sea. | ||
| But again... | ||
| From the standpoint of the Jordans and, frankly, all the rest of the Arab states, they regard these folks as troublemakers and problems, and they're going to bring with them all of these terrorist groups, and so you're going to set fire to Jordan is the way they look at it. | ||
| So that's the conundrum. | ||
| It's going to be a tough nut to crack here, convincing the Jordans why they should take... | ||
| All of these folks. | ||
| Keep in mind that a significant number of them, one way or the other, cooperate with or participate in Hamas. | ||
| Nobody wants those guys in their neighborhood. | ||
| Dave Bratt, you're very close to the evangelical community. | ||
| You're down at one of the great universities, evangelical universities in the country, Liberty University. | ||
| What are your thoughts about this? | ||
| President Trump... | ||
| And he upended the apple cart. | ||
| I mean, to Sam's point, what we've been doing for decades and decades and decades has not been working. | ||
| Anything we've tried to do is very small, incremental. | ||
| President Trump, and you can tell, folks, you can tell in President Trump right now, he's not thinking incremental. | ||
| Everything he's doing, if you look at every one of these verticals in the action items, he's going big. | ||
| I mean, everywhere from rethinking, you know. | ||
| The Monroe Doctrine 2.0 from the Panama Canal to Greenland to the Arctic Circle, talking about Canada. | ||
| He's sent in the Ukraine with the deal he's thinking about there. | ||
| It's a whole new day. | ||
| So, Brett, being an evangelical and being so close to the evangelical Christians that support Israel so fervently, what are your thoughts on this Gaza situation? | ||
| Yeah, well, just first, I mean, Sam Fattis just teed it all up. | ||
| We're not dealing with some inequity between two viable nation states where all the rules of the game are at play. | ||
| And then secondarily, I was going to have Sam on to talk about, maybe he wants to comment on this, but after USAID and the exposure of the deep state and the exposure to the CIA and the State Department, What you just said, this has been going on for 30, 40 years, right? | ||
| And then Hamas is being used by Iran. | ||
| Iran's in with the evil axis with Russia and China. | ||
| And so right now, I think the new thing is, Steve, you were just saying Trump's going big on everything from the economy to geopolitics. | ||
| And so with respect to Israel, this one is kind of a different issue based on the ethics after World War II. This will not happen again. | ||
| So Israel is in a unique position. | ||
| They've been our good friend. | ||
| There's a special relationship which goes back to Abraham. | ||
| On the religious front. | ||
| But this is more of a hardcore, you know, John Mearsheimer, realpolitik equation. | ||
| And it's just clear what Sam was just saying. | ||
| Hamas and that little piece of turf is not going to work out. | ||
| And so Trump's going to get it right. | ||
| He's been going hardcore messaging on everyone right now. | ||
| And so if Sam wants to go off a little bit more on the loss of trust in our geopolitics, I think that's going to frame the way forward. | ||
| Well, I think even Egypt's signaling today, and Egypt's been our ally. | ||
| President Trump cut off, I think, weapons to the Middle East or all foreign aid, and he didn't cut off Israel or Egypt. | ||
| I understand there's some rumblings in Egypt right now with this Gaza situation. | ||
| I mean, Sam, is it practical what the president's talking about? | ||
| Because he was adamant yesterday, he says, hey, they're not coming back. | ||
| I want Egypt to take a million. | ||
| I want Jordan to take a million. | ||
| Is that practical in your mind, or just Trump's changing the paradigm here so people are just going to have to figure it out? | ||
| Well, I think the key is what you just said last, Steve. | ||
| What Trump is saying is, wherever we're going next, we ain't going back. | ||
| We are not going to go back and just keep repeating this cycle of having this non-viable state, millions of people jammed into a refugee camp under the control of a known terrorist organization, pretending like we will live in peace. | ||
| So wherever we're going, it's going to be radically different. | ||
| And I think that, again, as part of his genius, right, is we're going to shake the situation up and we're going to use our leverage. | ||
| Will it come down precisely the way he first proposed? | ||
| I doubt it, but in the process, by breaking the mold, I think we go to something fundamentally different. | ||
| I mean, I know I've said this already twice, that the central problem is here that all of these Arab states, while they will talk all day about their love for the Palestinian cause and how abusive the Israelis are, when you start talking about putting those guys in their neighborhood, They look at you with a look of horror. | ||
| And quite frankly, what comes out of their mouths is what sounds like a lot of really racist verbiage. | ||
| And essentially refer to these people as animals and terrorists. | ||
| And no, they are not coming on our soil. | ||
| So it's going to take some big inducements to get them over that. | ||
| The U.S. is really going to have to make it worth their while. | ||
| Sam, I've got you here in Dave, brilliant booking Sam today, Before the King Arrives, although it is going to be closed to press. | ||
| It's a real America's voice. | ||
| We're going to eat the footage as we do every day. | ||
| And, you know, President Trump has a press avail every time. | ||
| These are called bilats, bilateral meetings, where a dignitary head of state arrives. | ||
| President Trump goes in, takes him into the Oval, spends a few minutes privately, then brings the media in for photos. | ||
| There's always questions. | ||
| President Trump normally engages with the dignitary. | ||
| He saw in Japan last week. | ||
| By the way, Modi's coming, I think, on Thursday. | ||
| That'll be a big deal, too. | ||
| Sam, you wrote a book. | ||
| Was it 12, 14 years ago? | ||
| What was the title of that book? | ||
| Beyond Repair, The Decline and Fall of the CIA. Beyond Repair. | ||
| And how long were you? | ||
| You were a professional at the CIA for how long? | ||
| I was undercover at CIA for 20 years and another 10 after that with other parts of the intelligence community. | ||
| So, Sam, when you wrote, what, 12, 14 years ago as Beyond Repair, given that as a baseline, where is the CIA today on the baseline that was Beyond Repair a dozen years ago, sir? | ||
| So, you know, leaving aside for the moment issues about politicization and DEI and so forth, CIA basically hardly has a pulse these days. | ||
| I mean, if you talk to guys inside, as I do all the time, the level of operational activity, maybe they're moving at 10% of the speed they did. | ||
| When I was there in terms of numbers of assets and collection of intelligence. | ||
| So this is one of the great challenges, Steve, is that, you know, after we break the place and fire a bunch of people, I hope, and regain control and get them away from American politics, etc., building a viable organization that actually keeps Americans safe in their beds at night is going to be... | ||
| It's going to be a challenge. | ||
| They're almost out of business overseas. | ||
| Now, they're really good at still meddling in politics in Washington, D.C., but you want to ask them, what's the exact status of the Iranian nuclear weapons program right now? | ||
| Don't think you're going to get much in the way of grit or detail. | ||
| Were they caught unaware on October 7th with the CAA on top of things? | ||
| They have partners in the Middle East. | ||
| They have Mossad. | ||
| They have, was it Shen, whatever, the Israeli military intelligence, which I think the insiders will say is Shen Ben is better than Mossad. | ||
| You've got Egyptian intelligence. | ||
| You've got Saudi intelligence. | ||
| You have MBZs, UAE. You've got some pretty good intelligence services, or at least they purport to be the elite of the elite. | ||
| How are all those elites, including CIA and DNI? What's the probability? | ||
| It almost seems beyond comprehension that they were all caught totally unawares of a ragtag Muslim Brotherhood Hamas that did an air-sea land battle over 40 miles, sir, that at least took them two years to train for? | ||
| Yeah, it is almost beyond comprehension because, again, this was a massive assault. | ||
| So it's not like six guys in a basement cooked up an idea overnight. | ||
| Two problems there. | ||
| I mean, one is... | ||
| It's great to rely on the Israelis or the Jordanians or whoever, but at best, assuming they're telling you the truth, that means the only thing you know is what the Israelis and the Jordanians know. | ||
| So you need to collect your own intelligence in addition to that. | ||
| And I've seen this multiple times in my career where we actually had a better sense from our sources than the guys on the ground. | ||
| What's the problem with the Israelis? | ||
| I think the problem with the Israelis is... | ||
| This is how we get in these intelligence failures. | ||
| People at the top had arrived at a conclusion that Hamas had walked away from the idea of this kind of attack. | ||
| And then since the people at the top arrived at that conclusion, then every piece of evidence that is provided to them by intel, they cherry-pick it. | ||
| We've seen this over and over, right? | ||
| You reach your conclusion first and then you look at the evidence, ignore what doesn't fit with your preconceived notion. | ||
| And the next thing you know, you're well, you've got it and you're getting a surprise attack. | ||
| And in the aftermath, you look at it and you say, look, there are stacks of intel here, man. | ||
| I mean, we can go back to Pearl Harbor this way, right? | ||
| The fact that the Japanese were going to stage a surprise attack and start the war had been contemplated for decades, and yet somehow we allowed them to do it. | ||
| And had been actually gamed out. | ||
| Okay, a couple things on this. | ||
| Number one, the CIA, the issue I have with it, having been inside for a while, is that inside the government, they're everywhere. | ||
| In fact, I would respectfully submit, by the way, I think the press may be part of it being wrangled right now, so we should be getting closer to the King of Jordan arriving for an official visit with President Trump. | ||
| As President Trump has put a 12 noon, high noon, Jerusalem time on Saturday for the return of all the hostages. | ||
| Hostages, Sam, he says, and Dave, he believes they're all dead, but he wants a full accounting by noon or, quote, all hell is going to break loose, unquote. | ||
| He's ratcheting up a little bit there. | ||
| So the interagency process, right, which is the way that everybody signs off on everything, and people should know that the National Security Council They're seconded. | ||
| These detaillees are called are seconded probably two-thirds to 75 percent of the National Security Council, which, by the way, folks, a lot of those are housed in that building. | ||
| You're looking right there. | ||
| That's the executive office building. | ||
| That building, the Eisenhower building is called now, it's really called the EOB, is inside the White House compound. | ||
| That's inside the gates. | ||
| In fact, Pennsylvania Avenue is now blocked off because of terrorism potential. | ||
| And you've got EOB. That's where the vast majority of the White House staff, including the National Security Council, some of the top officials are next to the president. | ||
| There are some down in the actual military command center. | ||
| Most are over there. | ||
| The interagency process, Sam, is where I believe the CIA controls the deal because the CIA has people everywhere. | ||
| DHS, DOJ, FBI, Defense Department. | ||
| Has that always been the case? | ||
| Well, I think it has been the case for a long time, and it's just getting worse all the time. | ||
| And they do exert a tremendous amount of influence. | ||
| They're pervasive, but also they constantly retreat behind this curtain of that's classified. | ||
| So they say things in meetings like, it's our assessment that such and such, and that sounds as if it's based in something significant and carries this weight and this aura. | ||
| In most of those meetings, nobody then says, stop talking to me about your assessment. | ||
| Who's the source that you're relying on? | ||
| Exactly what is his access and how the hell does he actually know any of that? | ||
| Because in a shocking number of cases, what you're going to find is you're relying almost on what we would call rummant. | ||
| You've got a source who heard it third-hand from a guy that may or may not be telling the truth in the first place. | ||
| But because it's... | ||
| Classified in air quotes. | ||
| Nobody asks those questions ever. | ||
| And it gives them a tremendous amount of leverage. | ||
| I mean, everything that goes on with CIA and this administration needs to get down to brass tacks. | ||
| Ratcliffe and company over there need to be saying, stop talking to me about the status of the Iranian nuclear program. | ||
| Put your cards on the table. | ||
| Who are your sources? | ||
| How do they know anything? | ||
| Why am I paying any attention to these guys? | ||
| What's the point of origin of this? | ||
| Stop speaking in generalities to me. | ||
| We are awaiting the King of Jordan, who's going to arrive momentarily. | ||
| That is the West Wing. | ||
| That's the official kind of meeting place for dignitaries to come to the West Wing. | ||
| That's the honor guard that always comes out in advance. | ||
| Looks like the press has been wrangled. | ||
| So we're probably on the short notice. | ||
| It's supposed to be 11.30, running a few minutes late. | ||
| Every now and again, the president will actually meet them at the residence, which is the circular driveway. | ||
| It would be behind your right shoulder if you were at the camera right now. | ||
| It's over the residence in back of us on this shot. | ||
| And every now and again, he will meet a dignitary, normally when it's some sort of state function. | ||
| Beat him at the actual residence, which is a couple hundred yards away, but this is where mainly the business takes place. | ||
| Sam, if you were to talk to Ratcliffe, I mean, look, it's a wilderness of mirrors. | ||
| You taught me that. | ||
| The CIA guys professionally are taught to be professional liars. | ||
| That's their craft. | ||
| How's a guy like Ratcliffe? | ||
| He's a very savvy guy. | ||
| I think he's been DNI, very highly regarded by President Trump and very involved in this area for years. | ||
| How is a guy like that to survive? | ||
| Because you go over to CIA, I think you take your own self and maybe a couple, three body men, but you don't get to really take out. | ||
| You should or have the option, but you literally land with a landing team that's a handful of people. | ||
| So how is a guy like Ratcliffe supposed to do the deconstruction of the CIA, sir? | ||
| Look, I think he needs to start by, and as you suggested, this is a really difficult process. | ||
| You've got to start by removing a number of folks at the top positions in the organization and replacing them with his own people. | ||
| And if they're going to help you through the maze and mirrors, they're going to have to be folks that know the ground and know the terrain and know how the place works. | ||
| You and I have had this conversation a zillion times, cataloged all the issues with CIA over the course of years, going back at least as far as Obama. | ||
| The top ranks of that organization are filled with people who were part of those scandals. | ||
| And even if they didn't actively participate, they sat and watched and didn't do anything. | ||
| Nobody resigned in protest. | ||
| Nobody spoke out. | ||
| So if you think you're going to trust those same people... | ||
| To guide you through reform, you're sadly mistaken, and I would be very surprised that Radcliffe feels that way. | ||
| He's no dummy. | ||
| He's a sharp fellow. | ||
| So that is the challenge. | ||
| You can't rely on those same people and say, okay, you've been here for 20 years and created all these issues. | ||
| Now tell me how to fix them. | ||
| That'll never work. | ||
| Elon Musk is a blunt force instrument. | ||
| He's in control of a blunter force instrument. | ||
| That would be DOGE. What would your recommendation be? | ||
| Because they are looking to get into DNI, which is the 17 agencies. | ||
| CIA nominally reports them, but they don't control it. | ||
| The CIA runs the deal. | ||
| But what would your recommendation be, both to the DOGE leaders and to Elon Musk himself, about what you would recommend he would do with the intelligence community, especially the CIA? Well, look, more broadly, when it comes to the intelligence community, my opinion has always been, you could start by getting rid of the DNI and that entire layer of bureaucracy. | ||
| We added that after 9-11. | ||
| It didn't fix anything. | ||
| It made everything worse. | ||
| So what, you want to look for saving a lot of money and speeding it up, get rid of those guys. | ||
| In terms of CIA, 100%, they should go in there and be just as direct as they've been everywhere else. | ||
| They can get people cleared. | ||
| To handle that stuff. | ||
| And you're absolutely right, by the way. | ||
| I mean, CIA doesn't really answer to the DNI. I mean, it is... | ||
| At CIA, DNI is regarded as largely irrelevant. | ||
| You pay lip service. | ||
| Somebody's got to go to a meeting with the DNI. You send the person you can spare from headquarters. | ||
| The person who... | ||
| Who you don't care about. | ||
| They go down there so somebody can sit in the chair. | ||
| None of those meetings are taken seriously. | ||
| So you're going to have to go right into CIA and wade in. | ||
| And I think you take a brass tax approach. | ||
| You guys aren't here to be a self-licking ice cream cone. | ||
| Every dollar we spend is supposed to make Americans safer. | ||
| So how are you doing that exactly? | ||
| Let's just start in a country. | ||
| Anywhere. | ||
| Start with a problem. | ||
| Start with a target. | ||
| How the heck is it that four or five years, whatever it is, after COVID, you still can't tell me where the frigging disease came from with any certainty? | ||
| How is it that you were incapable of warning us about that? | ||
| That's your real job, not to do postmortems five years later, but to tell us that they're developing a biological weapon. | ||
| That's what you were built for. | ||
| How many people did you fire after COVID and you didn't have any penetrations of the Wuhan lab, apparently, because you provided no warning? | ||
| You know, that kind of approach, same kind of approach he's taken everywhere else. | ||
| Well, just think, Sam, just think in the last couple of weeks, what about the shock load? | ||
| Look, even if it's a Chinese PSYOP, it is still a Sputnik moment. | ||
| I mean, this whole controversy of AI, now you've got... | ||
| Elon putting $100 billion offering to get open AI, he thinks they're incompetent. | ||
| My point is, hundreds of billions of dollars of the U.S. government have gone in that this is the modern weapon. | ||
| As much as biological warfare and chemical warfare, this artificial intelligence warfare is changing the face of warfare. | ||
| How could the CIA, my understanding is that our entire intelligence community once again was caught by surprise by some advance of Chinese technology, which was predicated upon stuff they stole out of American universities and companies. | ||
| This is what drives me nuts. | ||
| How do they answer that, sir? | ||
| Well, I think the short version is they're not being made to answer these questions, but they 100 percent should be, right? | ||
| Let's go back to when CIA—I mean, in the aftermath of World War II, when the OSS morphed into being CIA, That's a little simplistic, but let's just go with that. | ||
| Okay, what was the central reason so that we would never experience another Pearl Harbor? | ||
| That was the reason for the existence. | ||
| OSS was set up. | ||
| That was a gentleman's. | ||
| That was Wild Bill Donovan, who was a famous lawyer close to FDR. He put together basically a group of action-oriented lawyers, investment bankers, principally Ivy League. | ||
| That would be some kind of league of involved gentlemen. | ||
| In World War II, to be commandos, spies, all of that, and they had this kind of daring-do and legendary run in World War II, and then at the end of World War II, understanding we had had many intelligence failures, folks, the intelligence failures in World War II were legendary, and we had broken a bunch of codes. | ||
| The cryptology was state-of-the-art. | ||
| The intel was not. | ||
| We decided to do, the Wiseman decided to put together the CIA. Is that basically the story, Sam? | ||
| Right, and it boils down to we will never experience another Pearl Harbor. | ||
| Okay, well, in other words, we'll never be blindsided by a surprise attack on that scale. | ||
| Okay, well, fast forward to 9-11. | ||
| What happened on 9-11? | ||
| We failed catastrophically. | ||
| Now, in the aftermath of that, how many people at the Central Intelligence Agency got fired? | ||
| How many senior-level guys were handed pink slips and told go away? | ||
| No, nobody lost their job. | ||
| And we added, in classic Washington fashion, we added another layer of bureaucracy on top of this, created the DNI, built a bunch of new buildings and put a bunch of people in front of flat screen computer screens, you know, computer screens, and said, that's how we'll fix it. | ||
| No, that's not what fixes it. | ||
| What fixes it, what would have fixed it would be sources inside al-Qaeda in advance of that attack who would have told you what was coming. | ||
| And you could have stopped it. | ||
| And by the way, I have seen that happen on the ground. | ||
| I have been in places where I was running shops where officers did precisely that, penetrated a terrorist group. | ||
| And you never heard about the terrorist attack because it never happened, because CIA did its job. | ||
| But clearly, on a strategic level, they are failing. | ||
| And that, again, you can't say to the same crowd of guys that have gotten us there, okay, let's change things. | ||
| I mean, you have to start by... | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's hit reset for a second. | ||
| That beautiful picture you see right there from our camera of Real America's Voice, that's the executive office building on the White House campus. | ||
| Right to your left is the portico in the driveway, circular driveway that comes up to the West Wing. | ||
| This is kind of the formal entrance for dignitaries and heads of state and important people to come to see the president. | ||
| They go through. | ||
| There's a small reception area of the Roosevelt Room. | ||
| The famous Roosevelt Room is right next to that. | ||
| They're led right over to the Oval Office. | ||
| These are called bilats and short-term bilateral meetings. | ||
| The president does a number of these. | ||
| Normally, if he's in town, maybe one a week. | ||
| And what traditionally happens is that the dignitary arrives. | ||
| The president meets him there in the anteroom. | ||
| They go into the Oval Office. | ||
| They spend a few minutes together catching up, talking about certain issues. | ||
| Then the president normally invites in the media. | ||
| It'll be selective. | ||
| There'll be a pool of media. | ||
| They have, I think, a couple hundred people now at the White House as far as correspondents and cameramen, you know, more. | ||
| So a select group comes in, the pool will come in, the pool photographers, the pool videographers, the cameramen, plus what will be pool reporters, and that kind of rotates every day. | ||
| You'll have some of the mainstream media. | ||
| You'll always have basically the paper of record, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. | ||
| In some of the big international papers, Financial Times of London, and of course, in a rotation, you'll have our own Brian Glenn and others from Real America's Voice, and quite frankly, the broader group of these new online services and podcasts, which are getting very prominent. | ||
| The president will say a few words, the dignitary will say a few words, so talk about some of the issues publicly and how the president's working things out and they're working together on certain things. | ||
| Then the press normally, and President Trump does this, he allows the press to answer questions, and that gets a little, that's like a scrum, that's like a rugby scrum, because they're fighting to get their questions in. | ||
| Biden was always overwhelmed by that. | ||
| President Trump is a man in full right now. | ||
| He's in total command. | ||
| I mean, yesterday, if you were with us for the evening show, Brian Glenn and the folks were in, the Real America's Voice team were in for the signing of the executive order, so it took about 45 minutes. | ||
| President Trump had brilliant commentary on every executive order, plus sidebar. | ||
| And he dropped a few bombs, including what the meaning is today about Gaza and the situation with the hostages. | ||
| President Trump is laying down the law in the Ukraine and in the Middle East. | ||
| He wants the shooting to stop. | ||
| He wants the wars to stop. | ||
| He's there. | ||
| He's a president of peace and prosperity. | ||
| And if he's got to enforce that a little bit, he's going to enforce it. | ||
| So he's got his negotiators over in the Ukraine right now. | ||
| They're at the Munich Security Conference. | ||
| I think Zelensky's going to meet with J.D. Vance. | ||
| Pete Hegsis over there. | ||
| I think there are going to be a couple other cabinet officials maybe haven't been announced yet. | ||
| President Trump's putting a big deal as General Kellogg. | ||
| You heard Ben Harnwell, who's watching this wall-to-wall a few minutes ago. | ||
| Jordan, Sam, and Dave, as you know, is a whole different deal. | ||
| I mean, if you've seen the movie Lawrence of Arabia, that magnificent desert. | ||
| That first place is all—that's the Jordanian desert that's right on the border of Israel. | ||
| It's absolutely a magnificent country. | ||
| In fact, this royal family, I think, has been there since World War I, Sam. | ||
| I believe the British installed them over basically a population that was, you know, Palestinians or the people from this area of the world. | ||
| That's why I think two-thirds of their population already. | ||
| Or what we refer to as Palestinians. | ||
| President Trump says, hey, look, we're just not going to – this is not internal recurrence. | ||
| We're not just going to do this over and over and over again. | ||
| I'm Donald Trump. | ||
| I'm here for my second term, and we're going to do things differently, right? | ||
| And he's saying, hey, what I want to do is have basically Egypt take a million, the Jordanians take a million, and we're going to take what is basically Dresden in 1945. Or Tokyo in 1945 kind of bombed out, and we're going to rehabilitate it, and we're going to do a world city with this great beachfront property. | ||
| And look, some people go, it's crazy. | ||
| You've had tons of local people, Sam and Dave, local officials. | ||
| I think that Jordanians said, hey, we don't know if we're that excited about this. | ||
| Unfortunately, I believe 75% of Jordan's budget comes from the United States government or United States government affiliates. | ||
| So it's going to be a tough discussion, although the president thinks very highly of the king of Jordan. | ||
| You know, Jordan's had a great relationship with the United States for many, many, many decades. | ||
| The president thinks very highly of him. | ||
| But this will be a tough conversation, will it not, Sam Faddis? | ||
| It is going to be a very tough conversation because, as I said, I mean, it's not just that the Jordanians on some level don't like the Palestinians, which is true, unfortunately. | ||
| But they've had their problems with Palestinians causing violence on their soil. | ||
| It's not a theoretical thing for them. | ||
| I will say the Jordans have been incredible friends of the United States, for real, in the field. | ||
| Sam, hang on a second. | ||
| The gates are opening right now. | ||
| That normally means that the Jordanian officials will be coming in a moment. | ||
| And Sam, you're correct. | ||
| They have been as close as you can get an ally in that region. | ||
| They've been a pretty close ally, have they not? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, without going down roads that we can't go down on air, I mean, when I was in the field, our cooperation with the Jordanians was superb, probably on a par with the Israelis, quite frankly, and way out in front of other Arab states, so we should remember that. | ||
| Sam, given you spent your career a lot over there, is it, In worse shape today than when you started? | ||
| Is it the same? | ||
| Is it better? | ||
| I mean, were things ever this bad? | ||
| I remember when you had the United Arab Emirates. | ||
| You had, what, Egypt and Syria were under Nasser. | ||
| They were kind of split, but you had Arab nationalism. | ||
| Back when I was a kid delivering papers, you didn't really have this radical Islamic jihad. | ||
| And Arab nationalism, I didn't think, as a kid, didn't look that bad. | ||
| It was looking at the Arab people trying to become, take their countries back, throw out the colonial powers and kind of stand on their two legs, right? | ||
| You saw in North Africa, you saw the Algerians turfed out the French. | ||
| The Egyptians eventually turfed out the British and the Suez crisis. | ||
| Is it worse today? | ||
| Arab nationalism is a thing of the past and really has been replaced by radical Islamic jihad? | ||
| Well, I think radical Islamic jihad is the number one threat. | ||
| But, you know, what really strikes me, Steve, is that when... | ||
| Trump left at the end of his first term. | ||
| We had the Abraham Accords, and we were right on the precipice of ending these decades of violence in the Middle East and really completely transforming it. | ||
| We were right there. | ||
| It wasn't a theoretical thing. | ||
| It was happening. | ||
| And in four years, Biden's policies managed to take that place to the situation it is now. | ||
| I mean, let's keep in mind that You know, looming behind all these other things we're talking about is the fact that, quite frankly, right now, either the Iranians already have nuclear weapons or they stand on the verge of that. | ||
| So you're about to be witnessing a region with radical Islamic Jihad and a whole bunch of nuclear weapons poured into the middle of it, if we're not careful. | ||
| And again, as I said earlier, if you're thinking that American intelligence has such a good handle on that, that they can tell you the exact state of play in that regard. | ||
| You know, that's a fantasy. | ||
| I mean, they may pretend that they do. | ||
| The bottom line is they don't know that they don't already have the weapons. | ||
| You see, as much as Israel is fixated on Persia, and I realize the Persians are bad hombres, I think the threat in the region, I just don't think people are getting it, is Turkey, Erdogan. | ||
| He wants to reestablish the Ottoman Empire. | ||
| He wants to reestablish the Caliphate. | ||
| He wants to go back to basically World War I and the thousand years before that. | ||
| With Qatar, Who I think are the sleaziest guys there. | ||
| They finance Muslim Brotherhood. | ||
| They do everything. | ||
| They're the nest of vipers. | ||
| And I don't care how many people take money from them. | ||
| They're bad guys that are the financiers of radical Islamic Jihad. | ||
| And they hate UAE and they hate Saudi Arabia and their partners. | ||
| They're the financing partner, Erdogan. | ||
| And Erdogan's mission... | ||
| It's to take control of the two holy sites. | ||
| You can't be a caliphate, a true caliphate, until you control the two holy sites. | ||
| And I think this whole region is going to be in for decades and decades and decades of instability. | ||
| As I tell people, it doesn't matter if Israel was there or not there. | ||
| Israel is just another country that's going to get rolled up in this. | ||
| These people, not Islam, but radical Islam, literally hates the West, hates the Judeo-Christian West. | ||
| And a lot of that, I think, precedes this. | ||
| Like I said, when we took over in 16 and 17, Sam, we were doing kind of the changeover and looking in the head. | ||
| It was near Palmyra, which is in Syria. | ||
| And on 1,000 yards, you know, you had the Persian militias on one side with Hezbollah. | ||
| You had the American Special Forces and CIA paramilitary with, like, the Syrian Free Army. | ||
| And I thought, you know, 2,500 years before, 3,000 years before Xenophon, the Greeks, the Romans, you got those beautiful Roman ruins right there. | ||
| And I said, it hasn't changed in 3,000 years. | ||
| It's either the Greeks or the Romans or the West, and the Persians on the other side. | ||
| And it's just, it's deeper than current politics. | ||
| I don't think people understand how deep this is embedded into the region. | ||
| That ancient history there is as relevant as something that happened on CNN last night to these folks, sir. | ||
| Yeah, well, when I wrote my book about the CIA war in Kurdistan, about our experiences there in 2002 and 2003, the front page has a quote from Xenophon because it struck me when we were on the ground there, precisely what you just said, which is, man, people have been doing this for millennia. | ||
| I think your point on Turkey is dead on. | ||
| My wife, who was a retired career CIA officer and obviously much smarter than I, was pointing this out decades ago and nobody wanted to hear from her that this guy Erdogan is serious and what he represents is a radical undoing of secular Turkey and the implications for this region are catastrophic. | ||
| And she was dead on. | ||
| And that's exactly where we are. | ||
| Your wife is dead on, and nobody wants to talk. | ||
| Your wife is dead on because he's a member of NATO and wants to be part of the EU. That's right. | ||
| Nobody wants to talk about it, and it's a ticking time bomb. | ||
| And Qatar, they're in everybody's business. | ||
| Nobody wants to talk about it, and so we can all look the other way. | ||
| But I'm telling you, you look to, you know, the Israelis want to get it on with Persia. | ||
| I got that. | ||
| You know, we should not be involved in that. | ||
| We got to, you know, that's a threat. | ||
| But this region is going to explode. | ||
| It just is. | ||
| We're going to bounce. | ||
| We're going to turn it over to the Charlie Kirk show here in a minute. | ||
| Real commercial voice. | ||
| We are awaiting the arrival of the King of Jordan. | ||
| This is a very... | ||
| Big deal. | ||
| Years, you know, past, I'm not saying it would be totally ceremonial, but the feeling of the President, the King of Jordan, was so strong just to come by. | ||
| Let's meet. | ||
| This is important. | ||
| The President of the United States, Donald John Trump, has issued basically a proclamation that at high noon on Saturday, Jerusalem time, if all the hostages, either alive or dead, are not turned back over, quote, all hell will break loose. | ||
| Knowing President Trump, If I was Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood or their paymasters in Qatar, I'd be paying attention because he does not, Sam, as you know, he's not put out threats idly. | ||
| Sam, where do people go to get AND Magazine, all your social media, sir? | ||
| Best place to go is go to Substack AND Magazine at substack.com, and that'll take you to every place I am on social media. | ||
| Sam, you're an officer and a gentleman, and your wife is quite brilliant. | ||
| I want to get her on here to talk about Turkey. | ||
| So thank you, sir. | ||
| Appreciate you. | ||
| Take care. | ||
| Dave Brat, what's your social media? | ||
| Thanks for subbing for me today. | ||
| I had an appointment I couldn't miss. | ||
| What's your social media, Dave? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you very much, Steve. | |
| Brat Economics on Getter, and now on X. Dave, do you... | ||
| Are you hopeful for the Holy Land, given what you're seeing, given this high noon, basically, promise, I guess, President Trump has put? | ||
| Yeah, I agree with everything Sam said. | ||
| It's morning in America. | ||
| The CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, has missed China for 30 years, blanking in the State Department. | ||
| It's hard enough running the world when your own team's telling you the truth. | ||
| And so I think Trump's surrounded himself with truth-tellers, and so I'm optimistic. | ||
| Amen. | ||
| Okay, we're going to turn it over. | ||
| Charlie Kirk here at Real America's Voice. | ||
| Jack Posobiec. | ||
| Jack is traveling, actually, with Pete Hegseth. | ||
| It's a big one for Real America's Voice again in the Human Events Daily is with the Secretary of Defense going over to the Munich Security Conference. | ||
| I think Jack will be doing it from Germany today. | ||
| We'll figure it out. | ||
| We're back at 5. The show is going to be packed wall-to-wall. | ||
| We leave you now awaiting the King of Jordan in the West Wing. | ||
| President Trump's ready to roll. | ||
| Going to be a pretty important talk today with one of our principal allies in the Middle East. | ||
| Charlie Kirk will take you from here. |
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