Feb. 24, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:46
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| The rise of the AFD. In fact, you spent time in Germany. | ||
| You even attended at least one of their rallies. | ||
| You did a deep dive that's on the Atlantic site now. | ||
| A must-read. | ||
| Tell us a little bit about what you learned there and the party's new and growing role in that country. | ||
|
unidentified
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The main thing I learned was that the AFD was aiming its fire at the CDU, at the center-right. | |
| I mean, the AFD was saying the center-right, which just won this election. | ||
| It has to be destroyed, totally dismantled. | ||
| They invoked Trump, they invoked Elon Musk, and they said they led the way. | ||
| They destroyed the GOP as it existed before, and we're going to do the same thing to the CDU. Now, the CDU having won, it looks like a victory for them, but the AFD also measures their victories in different ways, too. | ||
| So getting one in five German voters for them was a huge victory because it meant that they couldn't be ignored in the future. | ||
| So they might be shut out of government. | ||
| They're very likely to be shut out of government. | ||
| But what they were afraid of was that they would have a showing that would be poor enough that they could actually be banned as a party, be investigated by law enforcement. | ||
| And what they've got is a showing that makes it impossible for them to be completely ignored politically. | ||
| This Apple announcement this morning, which just popped 6:00 AM Eastern, all the details are up. | ||
| The weed story on Axios. | ||
| This is a landmark story for a couple of reasons. | ||
| One, the effort by the president to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., this is a massive commitment to that. | ||
| And as we say in our story, this gives Trump the leverage to say to other companies, Apple can do this. | ||
| Apple is bringing these jobs into the U.S. Apple is investing in the U.S. Why can't you? | ||
| Why won't you? | ||
| And the statement out this morning from Apple CEO Tim Cook talking about being bullish. | ||
| On the future of America, talking about writing an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation. | ||
| So that's one bucket. | ||
| Two, there's an incredible footprint for this. | ||
| This is all across the United States, and it's part of the big story that Axios has been telling, that it's no longer just the coast. | ||
| Look at where some of these big investments are, the swing states of Arizona, Michigan. | ||
| Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, red states, the massive investment that you were talking about in Texas, a big innovation lab in Michigan. | ||
| So a footprint all across the country. | ||
| And third, if you look at how the U.S. is going to have a sustained recovery, it's going to be about building things, making things, doing that more in the U.S. This is a big step toward that. | ||
| Can you walk us through the negotiations that you are having right now to tap into not just these rare earth minerals, but also oil in Ukraine? | ||
| What can you tell us? | ||
| Where does the deal stand? | ||
| So, Maria, as you said earlier, I traveled to Kyiv about 10 days ago and met with President Zelensky. | ||
| And this deal is part of President Trump's long arc negotiating strategy. | ||
| For peace between Ukraine and Russia and to let the Ukrainians get back to a peaceful existence. | ||
| So the first part of this is a partnership between Ukraine and the U.S. that involves strategic minerals, energy and state-owned enterprises where we set up a partnership and we are only looking forward. | ||
| It is a win-win, President Trump. | ||
| They have created this idea himself. | ||
| It is a win-win. | ||
| We make money if the Ukrainian people make money. | ||
| And I believe that with the United States of America, our know-how, our businesses willing to come in and provide capital, that we can accelerate the Ukrainian growth trajectory and take in substantial monies for the U.S. taxpayers and get the Ukrainian economy on a... | ||
| Great growth trajectory. | ||
| How do you foresee the role they'll play going forward now with this new government in place in Germany? | ||
|
unidentified
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So I think you can look at some of the states where they've been very popular. | |
| So I was in the state of Thuringia, one of the places where they've been most popular in the past. | ||
| And in fact, in state parliament, they won a plurality of votes there. | ||
| But they were not in government because all the other parties joined a coalition against them and made them just shut them out. | ||
| So what was the effect of that? | ||
| supporters of the AFD were angrier than ever. | ||
| Their view was, even when we win, we lose. | ||
| So now that they haven't got enough of a share of the federal parliament to actually be in government, to be most likely in government in any coalition, they're still going to feel like they've been shut out. | ||
| So I feel like this is sort of a reckoning postponed with the AFD and the rise of the far right in Germany, because their supporters are going to look at their fairly strong showing, a stronger showing than ever before, and see that they're still being shut out. | ||
| And that's going to make them mad. | ||
| And whenever the next reckoning comes, the real reckoning, it's going to be pretty severe. | ||
| So 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. | |
| The reason I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| 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. | ||
| War Room. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann. | |
| It's Monday, 24 February, year of early 2025. | ||
| Once again, there are decades in which nothing happens, and there are weeks and months in which decades happen, and President Trump continuing on in the days of thunder. | ||
| years of lightning. | ||
| Pretty extraordinary. | ||
| Something, I think, it's not that we missed, we didn't have time to cover it on Saturday morning show at CPAC. We had somebody, the... | ||
| The posse there. | ||
| And I want to thank everybody that assisted us in putting on, obviously, Real America Voice. | ||
| The blow-away success of the Force Multiplier Academy on Wednesday. | ||
| We had a massive turnout. | ||
| I don't know, 500, 600 people. | ||
| Pretty extraordinary. | ||
| And the team, Grace, Moe, Jane, everybody. | ||
| Natalie did such an amazing job. | ||
| And Jack Pasova, everybody pitching in. | ||
| And of course, Harry and the team at Real America Voice, it was so successful. | ||
| We're going to be making some announcements. | ||
| We're going to be rolling that out and taking it on the road throughout the country because there's a huge demand for it. | ||
| And I think now we are kind of clicking on how it's actually presented. | ||
| And every time we give new and better information and people want to be on the ramparts and they want to be... | ||
| Completely weaponized in this fight. | ||
| And so we're here to do it at the War Room. | ||
| So much big news. | ||
| The one eclipse in there. | ||
| Dan Bongino, friend and colleague. | ||
| Dan met Dan years ago with Andrew Breitbart over a decade ago. | ||
| Dan ran for Congress out in Western Maryland. | ||
| Then he ran for the Senate in Maryland. | ||
| Then he ran for Congress down in Florida. | ||
| He got into broadcasting. | ||
| Enormously successful. | ||
| A great guy. | ||
| And a law enforcement guy. | ||
| Dan Bongino is the deputy to Kash Patel at the FBI. Let me repeat that. | ||
| Running the FBI is Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. | ||
| There are going to be some significant changes to the FBI. And I think Dan is the perfect guy to help initiate some of these investigations we talked about on J6 and other things. | ||
| He would be fantastic. | ||
| So much news there and so much news internally. | ||
| Also, Elon sent out this email on Saturday night about people having to respond. | ||
| And of course, Cash, Pete Hegsworth at Defense, Tulsi at D&I, I think Ratcliffe over at the CIA, and Senator Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, came back and said, hey, we'll take care of this ourselves. | ||
| Appreciate the effort. | ||
| Our people are not going to be sending you or your junior guys five things they did last week. | ||
| We'll handle this. | ||
| So I think you're seeing the Doge thing. | ||
| And the House is putting up this kind of reconciliation budget. | ||
| It's got a lot of issues, a ton of issues like where's the beef? | ||
| Where are the cuts? | ||
| And the Doge right now, there's a bunch of articles about are the cuts really there? | ||
| Here's what we need. | ||
| We need Elon to be more and more and more focused on the waste, fraud, and abuse, and we need somebody to start talking about it programmatically. | ||
| And here's where this gets back to this. | ||
| You saw Scott Besson, our own Scott Besson there, talking about the Ukraine deal. | ||
| If you add all this to what's happened in the last 72 hours about investments, President Trump signs this America First investment policy executive order on Friday. | ||
| It is the most, it is the clearest, I think example, and there's some interpretation there, we've got to firm up, but it's the clearest example of the decoupling of the U.S. from the CCP. Remember, Unrestricted Warfare, one of my favorite books written by the two Chinese then-colonels, became generals later. | ||
| Part of the unrestricted warfare is economic warfare, and they've been in economic war with us for many, many decades. | ||
| That economic war underwritten by Wall Street, It's exacerbated by Silicon Valley and the tech transfer that's gone on willingly. | ||
| You're seeing that pull back now. | ||
| You've got to look at this signing of this document. | ||
| Gaffney will be here to break it down for us. | ||
| That really restricts investments into China, into the Chinese, and particularly anything associated with the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| It's kind of the reverse of what they did to Pompeo, Pottinger, Navarre, and myself. | ||
| When they fully sanctioned us and said, you know, you can't be associated with any CCP company or any Chinese company. | ||
| You can't go to China and be associated. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| If that's what it takes to help free the La Beijing. | ||
| But President Trump dropped the hammer on this investment. | ||
| And this is the clearest indication. | ||
| And there's a lot of back chat about what's going on. | ||
| The deals are being cut and who's doing what with President Trump on China. | ||
| But this was at least a very clear kind of directional. | ||
| We're going to decouple. | ||
| On top of that, Apple, with this $500 billion investment, 20,000 jobs, and as Mike Allen and Axios just said, walked you through, it's not on the coast. | ||
| This is not centered on California or any of the tech centers, like in Boston, Route 128. This is very much in the heartland of the country. | ||
| What Apple's doing to bring manufacturing back, to bring innovation back. | ||
| This is the issue I've got with Ukraine. | ||
| Ukraine, you see, Scott, and President... | ||
| Strategically, you see what President Trump's trying to do. | ||
| I just think it's getting us more and more and more into this Ukraine situation. | ||
| Ukraine situation is something that is, to me, should be totally Europe. | ||
| And we're going to be pretty adamant about that. | ||
| We have Brian Glenn at the White House. | ||
| Ben Harnwell is with us in Rome. | ||
| Frank Gaffney is going to join us in a moment. | ||
| A lot to go through. | ||
| Let's go to Brian Glenn. | ||
| Brian, pretty extraordinary. | ||
| Macron actually showed up early so he could go to the Situation Room and do a call with G7 Country. | ||
| So Macron, the President of France, actually came early to the White House. | ||
| No ceremony. | ||
| No official greeting. | ||
| No actually greeting at all. | ||
| just showed up and went to the situation room, did a call, or I guess the schedule said the Oval Office, did a call on the G7. | ||
| Now, correct me if I'm wrong, he's left and he's coming back to the White House later for, it's not a state visit, but a working visit to be greeted shortly after noon and to actually sit with President Trump the rest of the bulk of the day, correct? | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
| That is absolutely correct. | ||
| And also, let me step aside real quick, and I'll show you kind of what's going on right now. | ||
| He is still in the West Wing. | ||
| He has not left yet. | ||
| You see the motorcade is pulled up front. | ||
| That first car, that's the vehicle he will get in. | ||
| And, of course, there's a press vehicle next to it, that longer van. | ||
| But you're right. | ||
| He got here shortly before 8 o'clock, had the phone call, the G7 phone call. | ||
| He is now... | ||
| Waiting to go back to their residence here just outside the White House. | ||
| And as you said, Steve is coming back at around just 12.35, I think, is tentatively when they have it scheduled where he's going to have this kind of a bilateral meeting, if you will, in the Oval Office. | ||
| We'll be on the ground there as well, Steve. | ||
| And of course, at 2 o'clock, there's a press conference with Trump and Macron and all of us. | ||
|
unidentified
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We'll bring it to you live as it happens. | |
| Brian, hang over a second. | ||
| Pretty unusual. | ||
| So the President of France came early with the President to do a call, G7 call, obviously very secured, very secure call. | ||
| He's still there. | ||
| He's scheduled to leave and then come back at about 12.15, I think it is, then be greeted by the President over as the one we've been showing the West Wing access, that less formal entry point. | ||
| He'll be with the president. | ||
| They'll probably, Brian, get you guys in the Oval Office for some sort of press avail. | ||
| Then at 2 o'clock, I think it's in the East Room, they're going to have one of the formal, those press conferences that President Trump does so well. | ||
| Very active day at the White House. | ||
| Talking about Ukraine, war and peace and prosperity. | ||
| All of it. | ||
| And President Trump's on a roll. | ||
| Making deals. | ||
| The master dealmaker making deals. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| Brian Glenn at the White House. | ||
| Ben Harnwell in Rome. | ||
| Frank Gaffney is going to join us. | ||
| We'll return with Dan Bongino, the Deputy FBI Director. | ||
|
unidentified
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Announcement this morning, which just popped 6 a.m. | |
| Eastern. | ||
| All the details are up. | ||
| The weed story on Axios. | ||
| This is a landmark story for a couple of reasons. | ||
| One, the... | ||
| Effort by the president to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., this is a massive commitment to that. | ||
| And as we say in our story, this gives Trump the leverage to say to other companies, Apple can do this. | ||
| Apple is bringing these jobs into the U.S. Apple is investing in the U.S. Why can't you? | ||
| Why won't you? | ||
| And the statement out this morning from Apple CEO Tim Cook talking about being bullish. | ||
| On the future of America, talking about writing an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation. | ||
| So that's one bucket. | ||
| Two, there's an incredible footprint for this. | ||
| This is all across the United States, and it's part of the big story that Axios has been telling, that it's no longer just the coast. | ||
| Look at where some of these big investments are, the swing states of Arizona, Michigan. | ||
| Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, red states, the massive investment that you were talking about in Texas, a big innovation lab in Michigan. | ||
| So a footprint all across the country. | ||
| And third, if you look at how the U.S. is going to have a sustained recovery, it's going to be about building things, making things, doing that more in the U.S. This is a big step toward that. | ||
| Okay, Mike Allen over at Axios. | ||
| Kind of blockbuster news this morning. | ||
| Also, there's been some... | ||
| So Apple, $500 billion, 20,000 jobs in the heartland of the country from Arizona to, you know, all over. | ||
| Not just putting it into Silicon Valley or the West Coast or Seattle. | ||
| Profound big news. | ||
| Now, obviously, it's in the details, but this is... | ||
| And Apple... | ||
| Tim Cook or Tim Apple, as he's known to the president, couldn't be more effusive in his support of a new day in America and a new energy, the unleashing of animal spirits. | ||
| I think you'd couple that with the America First Investment Initiative executive order that really went after, hey, we're decoupling from China. | ||
| I mean, I read this as the beginning of really President Trump coming down on the side of Those of us that have been hardcore about decoupling. | ||
| And you add that to even his strategy. | ||
| And look, I think that Ukraine sunk costs and we just want to move on. | ||
| But you see the dealmaker, right? | ||
| He's on a roll. | ||
| He's also the White House putting out today of all these investments. | ||
| Look, I'm not a fan of foreign capital coming into the country. | ||
| I'm just not. | ||
| But President Trump's looking at his barometer of people that want to invest in the United States of America on his watch. | ||
| And on that, I think it's very positive. | ||
| Brian Glenn and Brian, we've had some, you know, a little choppy on some of the polling issues. | ||
| Ipsos had a poll out last week that we didn't get a chance to get to it because we were at CPAC, but it showed President Trump's Approval rating, disapprove 51, approval 44. That's the first one I've seen like that. | ||
| James Carville, Brian, as you know, came out yesterday. | ||
| Not that he's done a very good job of being a forecaster, but he said in 30 days, President Trump's entire bottom of his polling is going to fall out because of what Elon Musk is doing over Doge. | ||
| But this morning, Harvard-Harris, so the Harvard poll came out, and... | ||
| They're pretty blow-away numbers, Brian Glenn. | ||
| Can you walk us through it? | ||
| Because it shows, I think we can say, Brian, Harvard is showing us that they're pulling overwhelming support for the direction of President Trump's actions and the direction of the days of thunder, sir. | ||
| Yeah, you're absolutely right. | ||
| If you take a look at what the numbers even reflect with, let's start with deport. | ||
| The deportation of illegal criminals or illegals that have come in this country and even committed crime. | ||
| You've got, what, 81% are for that. | ||
| You go down the line of undertaking ultimate fraud and wasting government. | ||
| Exactly what Elon Musk is doing. | ||
| 70% of that. | ||
| Now, even if you turn to some of the more public policy type of deal. | ||
| Keeping men out of women's sports, that's even, what, 65% of that. | ||
| So, overwhelmingly. | ||
| The people support this. | ||
| So for Carville to just kind of spit off this nonsense that the bottom is going to fall out in 30 days, I don't see it. | ||
| According to this polling, and we're looking at it right now on your screen, even going down to banning, or I should say ending bans on offshore drilling in Alaska and elsewhere, that might be something. | ||
| That's almost the tightest one. | ||
| That's still 57%, Steve, approve of that. | ||
| So this polling, I think, is the most accurate. | ||
| We've seen so far on what the American people feel about this. | ||
| And I shared this on the morning show this morning. | ||
| I'll share a quick story for you. | ||
| I met two guys in the elevator going to work this morning that were on their way to the office, and they couldn't wait to check that email because they were like, well, do I have a job today? | ||
| Am I going to have to send in my top five things that I... Attempting to do this week or today, but that's what the American people voted on on November 5th. | ||
| We want accountability in our government, and of course, according to this Harvard poll, Steve, people want the same thing. | ||
| The only people who don't want it are the left, the government people that have been riding, I guess, the gravy train for way too long, but the polls reflect how the people feel, and it's pretty good right now, Steve. | ||
| I think you see direction. | ||
| Let me just go a couple of things through this. | ||
| So the Ipsos poll had President Trump upside down. | ||
| 51% disapproved, 44% approved. | ||
| And like I said, we couldn't get to it. | ||
| I was going to talk about it today because of CPAC. However, this came out as a counter. | ||
| And the Harvard-Harris poll is a poll that's very highly thought of. | ||
| Trump approval, 52%. | ||
| Disapproval, 43%. | ||
| Plus 9%. | ||
| Brian. | ||
| Just hits the high points. | ||
| 58% say he's doing better than Biden. | ||
| 81% support deporting criminal aliens. | ||
| 76% support eliminating waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| 76% support closing the U.S. border. | ||
| 70% support merit-based hiring. | ||
| 61% support reciprocal tariffs. | ||
| And 60% think Doge is helping. | ||
| Now, particularly when you get to the 76s and the 70s and 80s, that's essentially... | ||
| Hardcore Democrats who are never going to agree with anything with Trump, at least 25%. | ||
| That means unanimity, virtually unanimity among Republicans and independents. | ||
| That's the key to these numbers. | ||
| Because it's very hard, as you know, people, hey, if you get 52-48 in an election, it's a landslide. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Because the country's so divided. | ||
| So if you get all the, essentially all the independents right now, like what they see. | ||
| And I think people that are low information, they voted this time, but they're not people that are going to watch the War Room or come to Real America's Voice. | ||
| There's just some people just not into politics or the types of things we cover, even don't watch CNN. | ||
| You see, when they are polled, they said, hey, I'm not following it day to day, but I like what I see. | ||
| And what I like what I see is the energy of President Trump and somebody that's in charge, Brian. | ||
| This is essentially what Tim Cook is telling us, that it looks like leadership has now stepped back into the White House. | ||
| Leadership is in this. | ||
| In this government, and for Apple to make a half a trillion dollar, $500 billion investment here, and not in lower cost areas, at least for labor, is a major, massive step. | ||
| Brian Glenn, your thoughts? | ||
| You're absolutely right, Steve, and I'll expand it to one more. | ||
| The small business optimism. | ||
| The index that really tracks how small business owners view the next 12 months, that's even at an all-time high right now. | ||
| So the optimism from the consumer level to the business level is good. | ||
| And I'll continue this as far as the polling goes, Steve. | ||
| Take a look at what MSNBC did with getting rid of Joy Reid. | ||
| They even know that they're on the wrong side. | ||
| Of what the American people right now are voting for and what they're standing for. | ||
| So they're even, when you look at the mainstream media, they're even having to reshuffle a little bit of what's important to them as far as what they want to, obviously they're pushing an agenda. | ||
| But the American people aren't watching that. | ||
| They're not voting for that. | ||
| And of course, I love those poll numbers and it's nice to see. | ||
| I was really kind of surprised, Steve, how many people still feel like it's okay for men to play in women's sports. | ||
| I think it was, what, 33, 35% there? | ||
| That I will never understand. | ||
| But when it comes to business and locking down the border and fighting crime, those numbers are overwhelming for Trump. | ||
| Brian Glenn, your social media, where do people get you? | ||
| Real America's Voice will be coming back during the Charlie Kirk show probably when Macron officially arrives. | ||
| And then Brian will be in the, as Brian always is, he'll be in the press avail. | ||
| And we'll have a camera in there. | ||
| And then later at the press conference. | ||
| So wall-to-wall coverage of the White House today. | ||
| Brian, how do people get you? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think you can follow me at BrianGlennTV across the board. | ||
| You're at Brian on True Social. | ||
| And BrianGlennTV on Getter as well. | ||
| Thanks, Steve. | ||
| It's always a pleasure to come on there. | ||
| And by the way, we're still waiting for Macron. | ||
| He must have a good time in there with President Trump. | ||
| If they're meeting right now. | ||
| Or that phone call went a little bit long. | ||
| But they're still inside waiting to leave. | ||
| So that's only a good sign, I would think. | ||
| Well, there's a lot to talk about. | ||
| We're going to get Ben Harnwell and Roman in a second to drill down. | ||
| There's a lot to talk about. | ||
| A whole lot to talk about right now with what's going on in Europe, what's going on with Russia, what's going on with Ukraine. | ||
| And particularly Macron's the one that's talking about Europe stepping up and defending themselves. | ||
| This time they did it. | ||
| So, Brian Glenn, thank you very much, sir. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's quite unusual. | ||
| I don't think I've ever seen a head of state showing up early to do a call, essentially. | ||
| From probably a more secure location. | ||
| And to make sure that he was there with President Trump when this call went down. | ||
| Details on that later. | ||
| Brian right there talking about Joy Ann Reid, our favorite let go by MSNBC last night. | ||
| Our entire staff, I think, they were told they were let go also. | ||
| But the buried lead is the show that's kind of the counter to War Room on Saturday mornings. | ||
| And you know, we play a lot of clips on it. | ||
| It's called The Weekend. | ||
| With Simone, who's Bernie Sanders' comm director. | ||
| Michael Steele, the former head of the RNC. A guy I know pretty well. | ||
| And Menendez's daughter does a good job. | ||
| She's one of the sit-in anchors. | ||
| They have a show called The Weeknd. | ||
| That's replacing Joy Ann Reid. | ||
| And the way I read it, it was kind of confusing. | ||
| The way I read it, that might actually be a two-hour show. | ||
| Starting, I think, at 7 o'clock on MSNBC. MSNBC trying to do the counter to the war room. | ||
| Good luck with that. | ||
| Joy Ann Reid and her wigs. | ||
| Gone. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| Rome next. | ||
| Frank Gaffney with us. | ||
| Hot Monday in the War Room. | ||
| I'm going to bring Ben Harnwell in. | ||
| While we're on the subject of France, The other day when I gave that wave to the audience after the, quite frankly, the epic speech I gave at CPAC, because the speech was about you, because the media is there, the whole world's there to see you. | ||
| They get enough of President Trump, trust me. | ||
| President Trump's going to have him in the Oval today for a presser. | ||
| He'll be blowing him up, as he did all weekend. | ||
| He'll then have a press conference in the East Wing, in the East Room, excuse me, in the East Room. | ||
| The beautiful East Room with Macron. | ||
| And he'll blow them up again. | ||
| And he'll send out, I don't know, half a dozen true socials that makes their heads blow up. | ||
| The one he put out last night was on Dan Bongino. | ||
| World went to meltdown. | ||
| Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI. He runs the building. | ||
| Cash runs the bureau. | ||
| Pretty amazing. | ||
| So the guy, the number two guy at National Rally, Front National, Bardella, actually canceled. | ||
| His coming to CPAC to give a speech. | ||
| Now, a lot of people had said he didn't want to give it. | ||
| You know, Le Pen's trying to promote him because they're... | ||
| Oh, let's go right now. | ||
| Let's cut there. | ||
| Get the whole screen. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| That's Macron right now. | ||
| Yeah, okay, fine. | ||
| So he came. | ||
| This is unusual. | ||
| He came early this morning. | ||
| There was no official greeting. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| I love that camera coverage right there. | ||
| And what you had, there's he walking out. | ||
| He came to have a call, a G7 call. | ||
| This G7 call is about the peace negotiations, peace process for Ukraine. | ||
| Right? | ||
| For Ukraine. | ||
| And I'm sure Macron wanted to be in the room. | ||
| Macron's kind of taken the leadership of this, of saying, hey, Europe's got to be at the table and Ukraine's got to be at the table. | ||
| I don't buy that. | ||
| I think the framework's got to be set up between Russia and the United States, and it's a bigger framework. | ||
| This is something many of us have worked on for years. | ||
| I met actually with Dugan in Rome after I left the White House, the year after I left the White House, to talk about this very topic about the Chinese Communist Party and how important it was to have Russia in America and some sort of understanding, particularly on the Eurasian landmass, of the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| The moves by the Chinese Communist Party for dominance, not just in East Asia, but in all the Eurasian landmass, was going to mean for the detriment of mankind. | ||
| So President Trump, I think, is setting that framework. | ||
| Now, in that framework of the relationship comes this, you know, Scott Besson and President Trump working on this minerals deal as part of it. | ||
| Today, what you're seeing is that Macron wants Europe to have a... | ||
| See at the table. | ||
| And President Trump's being very magnanimous. | ||
| I'm sure he's going to include him in some way. | ||
| But patience ran out with Zelensky. | ||
| And President Trump echoed, I think, what we've been saying on this show for a long time. | ||
| Zelensky has no cards without the United States writing a massive check, right, which we cannot do, and without us sending tons of arms and eventually a security guarantee, which means U.S. troops. | ||
| They don't really have a bargaining position. | ||
| I hate to be so brutally frank about it. | ||
| And people got to come to that realization. | ||
| Pete Hegseth, I think, brilliantly summed it up when he was in Brussels and they got all over Pete. | ||
| It's an amateur. | ||
| He doesn't know what he's doing. | ||
| Well, we saw what you guys did and we got a million dead or wounded Ukrainians in a destroyed country. | ||
| And President Trump's kind of obsessed with the destruction and the bloodshed and just wants it to stop. | ||
| And he's going to make it stop. | ||
| And this is what leadership's about. | ||
| What I'm not particularly excited about is any kind of ongoing commitment into Ukraine. | ||
| And quite frankly, the minerals, I'm sure the minerals are great, but there's minerals all over the world. | ||
| It's an opportunity cost. | ||
| I just think you let Macron and these guys, the big talkers in Europe, let them do it. | ||
| And we move on. | ||
| Because following the Apple announcement, there's so much more we have to do here in the United States. | ||
| And I don't think it's quite dawned on people. | ||
| How tough a situation we're going to have on doing these cuts to the federal budget. | ||
| Remember, that's still what's driving inflation. | ||
| And we're having a Keynesian stimulus massively every day from the federal government. | ||
| And running still historical deficits in this year. | ||
| Given everything we know. | ||
| And Doge, and Scott Besson said it's $55 billion the first month. | ||
| Hey, I'm all for that. | ||
| If that's waste, foreign abuse. | ||
| On this one, I'm from Missouri and I've got to see it. | ||
| Because the analysis in Politico, in the Wall Street Journal, I think has been pretty solid. | ||
| It may not be perfect, but they're saying, hey, the number could be a third of that. | ||
| Or only 25% of that. | ||
| We need real cash savings. | ||
| I think there is ways for an abuse, obviously. | ||
| We've got to get to the bottom of that. | ||
| But I still say, and I will continue to harp on this, we're kidding ourselves until you start thinking of programs. | ||
| It's programmatic in billets. | ||
| Not individual, just bodies. | ||
| It's billets and programs. | ||
| Programs and billets. | ||
| You have to do less. | ||
| You can't do this. | ||
| The government should be shrunk and do the following. | ||
| And right now, in a time of economic distress, particularly among the working class, because guess what? | ||
| You invited 10 million to 12 million illegal aliens here to compete with them at the lower skilled levels or unskilled levels to drive their wages down and drive their opportunities down. | ||
| And of course, you've got every one of these phony, bogus visa programs like H-1B visas to crush the tech workers and others. | ||
| So programs like Medicaid are much more spread out than they were before. | ||
| You want to know a warning shot? | ||
| You want to know a warning flare? | ||
| Look at when they put the memo out. | ||
| Russ Vogt and the team pay a letter, put the memo out from OMB. And maybe it wasn't a perfect memo, but directionally, you can tell what they're trying to do. | ||
| Hey, we just got here. | ||
| We want to have a short moratorium on all payments until we know we're cashed in the system. | ||
| And the system melted down. | ||
| And what really melted down was the Republican congressmen who started with Doral having their meeting and started getting blown up on the phone by people back in their districts. | ||
| Hey! | ||
| I supply the sandwiches for Meals on Wheels, right? | ||
| I need to be paid. | ||
| My point is these cuts, because of what we've done, are going to be significant and they're going to be painful. | ||
| And who can take political pain? | ||
| We're going to find out. | ||
| But that pain has to be a shared pain. | ||
| And right now, I don't know if it's the best time to be throughout the world with massive development projects. | ||
| A deal for Ukraine. | ||
| And I understand what President Trump's saying. | ||
| He's tired of like in Iraq and Afghanistan where you put $9 trillion over 20 years and you walk away with nothing. | ||
| None of the mental rights in Afghanistan, the Chinese have those. | ||
| None of the oil rights or access is some sort of special deal, special development deal on the oil and gas. | ||
| You have nothing. | ||
| And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe the Europeans' money came in as kind of loans. | ||
| I think their money came in very differently. | ||
| Then ours went into Ukraine, at least according to President Trump. | ||
| I think the structure of their money, and quite frankly, in the cap table, they may actually be higher. | ||
| Because Biden and these guys, to cover up the sins that they had, Victoria Nuland and this crowd of the color revolution, were just throwing cash at it. | ||
| And also, all the dark secrets of Ukraine. | ||
| I also think Ukraine, kind of the bloodlines, it's a cursed part of the world. | ||
| We shouldn't be there. | ||
| It's bad news. | ||
| Bad vibe. | ||
| Just move on. | ||
| And if Macron's there, and that's why it's quite unusual. | ||
| Macron's there at 8 o'clock in the morning. | ||
| They're having a joint called the G7. And, you know, maybe it's for security, although the French embassy should be secure enough. | ||
| Maybe he just wanted to sit there with President Trump. | ||
| President Trump said okay because it was there. | ||
| Macron's now left. | ||
| That's the footage Jesus saw. | ||
| And he will come back shortly after noon. | ||
| Ben Harnwell, our favorite topic, Ukraine. | ||
| Particularly over the weekend, although they're trashing it that this is America being mercenary, there's nothing more than the Europeans and, quite frankly, the Ukrainian oligarchs want than the United States to be somehow economically involved in Ukraine. | ||
| And some of the wording that's come out of Bloomberg is quite disturbing. | ||
| We are looking to work with them to secure a long-term peace and prosperity. | ||
| I mean, hey. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| President Trump, in trying to work something out with the Russians, is taking the big picture here. | ||
| But man, I just think this Ukraine, the more you get involved with Zelensky and this crowd, the worse it's going to be. | ||
| Although the structure of it is that the Ukrainians can't take any money. | ||
| Everything that comes from their side, the minerals of our side to develop, on their side, all the cash they get is specifically target for redevelopment of the country. | ||
| Your thoughts, sir? | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
| Well, we're assisting today, watching history in the making. | ||
| It's definitely a pivot point. | ||
| And in terms of just watching the show earlier and seeing, welcoming this 500 billion development from Apple, it is Steve Jobs would have been his 70th anniversary today. | ||
| Not the only anniversary, however. | ||
| That's overshadowed by the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine. | ||
| That's today, 24th of February, year of our Lord, 2025. Three years of unnecessary war today. | ||
| I have to pick up on one thing. | ||
| I've got three things to say today, talking about Ukraine, the AfD, and Macron, the White House. | ||
| And these three things are all related. | ||
| But I must pick up on one thing that you mentioned just before in your monologue. | ||
| I'm not sure whether President Trump is actually right to suggest... | ||
| That Zelensky or the Ukrainian regime itself have no cards left. | ||
| I think they have one card. | ||
| I'm not saying it's likely that they would play it, but they could use it. | ||
| And instead of selling out to the United States and US oligarchs, they could sell out to China. | ||
| They could pivot, be a very dramatic pivot. | ||
| But seeing as there aren't any elections there at the moment, they could pivot to China and say, look, we'll give you the right. | ||
| Ostensibly for the reconstruction, redevelopment of Ukraine. | ||
| And we've always said for three years that the real grift is going to come in the rebuilding of Ukraine. | ||
| They could sell out to China. | ||
| I'm not suggesting it's likely, but given US sensibilities right now, it's a card that they could play. | ||
| OK, so let's look at the AFD. Big, big news yesterday in Germany, their federal elections. | ||
| And the AFD did reasonably well. | ||
| I practically doubled its vote, its percentage of the vote from about 10.3 to 19.5%. | ||
| That's a huge success, whichever way you look at it. | ||
| It's not the 25% that some people were forecasting. | ||
| But what this does mean, Steve, is that the AFD, the Alternative for Deutschland, together with the defeated Social Democratic Party, the party of Olaf Scholz, the outgoing chancellor, these now have a blocking minority and they can stop constitutional changes. | ||
| Technically, Germany doesn't have a constitution, has a basic law, but it's already in discussion having that basic law amended to allow Germany to take on more debt to finance Ukraine. | ||
| The left, I know I've got to give away for a break, Steve, but the left have already said that they will only countenance changes to the constitution in taking on more debt. | ||
| If that money goes into infrastructure spending, they're not about to spend more money on Ukraine. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| I tell you what we're going to do. | ||
| Let's go ahead and play Miles. | ||
| We're going to take a quick break here. | ||
| We're going to return in a moment. | ||
| On War Room. | ||
| Let's go and play the song. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| We'll be back in a moment. | ||
|
unidentified
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Take it down, CCP! | |
| Take it down, CCP! | ||
| Everything's just beginning For the games you want to play Bring it on and now we'll fight to the end Just watch and see It's all started, everything's begun And you are over Cause we're taking down the CCP Spread the word all through Hong Kong We will fight till they're all gone We rejoice when there's no more | ||
| Let's take down the CCP They have all lied for too long We will end what they do wrong Spread the word all through Hong Kong Let's take down the CCP Let the bullets fly a little longer And you will surrender Let the bullets fly a little longer We will have freedom to live We will win your surrender | ||
| Let the bullets fly a little longer Let the bullets fly a little longer He'll include security Helping to secure Ukraine And do you expect Zelensky to sign it? | ||
| I do expect that President Zelensky will sign. | ||
| What it does not include is a military guarantee. | ||
| But what it does include is an implicit guarantee that if the United States of America is heavily invested in the economic future, I call it an economic security guarantee. | ||
| The more assets that U.S. companies have on the ground, the bigger interest that the U.S. has in the future of Ukrainian economy doing well, the more security it creates for the Ukrainian people, and the higher the return for the U.S. taxpayer. | ||
| Again, President Trump has structured this win-win deal, and it's unfortunate that after my meeting with President Zelensky and then his meeting in Munich with Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, the idea here of my trip to Ukraine and then the meeting in Munich, we want to intertwine the U.S. and Ukrainian economies for the benefit of both. | ||
| And unfortunately, President Zelensky seems to put a bit of daylight between us. | ||
| But I am sure in the long run or in the short run, there is no daylight. | ||
| The deal will be signed and this will give President Trump a lever. | ||
| And it will be a strong signal to Russian leadership that the U.S. is in a serious partnership with the Ukrainian people. | ||
|
unidentified
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A president, Zelensky, is speaking right now, saying today that he was willing to give up his position if it meant peace in Ukraine, quipping that he could exchange his departure for Ukraine's entry into NATO. | |
| Zelensky also says he wanted to see Donald Trump as a partner to Ukraine and more than simply a mediator between Kyiv and Moscow. | ||
| I want it to be more than just mediation. | ||
| That's not enough, he told a press conference just moments ago. | ||
| Is this also suggesting that there could be a change in leadership in Ukraine? | ||
| You know, Maria, I try to stay in my economics and finance lane. | ||
| So, this is the first that I've heard about it. | ||
| But at some point... | ||
| Ukrainian people, it's a democracy. | ||
| They're going to have an election, and they will democratically elect a leader. | ||
| President Zelenskyy has been a wartime president. | ||
| And we've seen in the history of this, Winston Churchill is a fantastic wartime leader. | ||
| And then the British people decided to move on after he had done a great job during World War II. Welcome back, folks. | ||
| I'm just going to finish off with the point that I was making just before the break. | ||
| But following on from what U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson is saying there, I caution the war room posse not to be too invested in these arguments about entwining, to quote him, the U.S. economy and the Ukrainian economy, because it's not so much the entwining of economies that I think the posse is interested in. | ||
| It's the entwining of the military infrastructures. | ||
| And this show has been absolutely constant here for three years on this issue. | ||
| The US military, the United States must disengage from Ukraine rather than look for excuses and pretexts to bind itself ever further in. | ||
| And that's exactly what... | ||
| Treasury Secretary Besson is doing here. | ||
| He's providing a pretext, a visible pretext, for behind-the-scenes further investment. | ||
| Why do I say this, Denver? | ||
| If you'd be very kind and put up the second asset which you have, a headline, Zelensky says US mineral deal must include military guarantees. | ||
| There we have it. | ||
| That's from the Mining Weekly publication. | ||
| They know exactly what this is all about. | ||
| The idea... | ||
| You can use the term security guarantees or you can use the modern lingo that's just been introduced over the last seven or so days. | ||
| A backstop. | ||
| Whatever jargon you want to use, the point here is that the US military is not going to be allowed to disengage. | ||
| And in fact, talking about the US military, I'll hand over to Steve in just a moment on this, someone who did wear the US military uniform when he was a young guy. | ||
| As did his daughter, as did a number of members of his family. | ||
| My own brother was in the UK Navy as a career engineer in the Navy. | ||
| The point about, I think, for young people, putting on military uniform is a manifestation of the absolute heroism and patriotism that a citizen is capable of showing for their own... | ||
| The issue here, using as this headline points out, military guarantees about US soldiers in an area of which the US has no vital national interest, is that these soldiers are just being used here by billionaires to defend America's interests. | ||
| They're effectively, and I use the term But the US military is effectively being prostituted out to act not as a national defense force for a country, but as mercenaries. | ||
| That's exactly what we're talking about here. | ||
| We're talking about the US military being provided as a mercenary force to protect the interest of American oligarchs going into Ukraine for the apparently trillions of dollars. | ||
| It's absolutely not acceptable. | ||
| And to some extent, I would use the word betrayal. | ||
| It's a betrayal of what this movement, the MAGA movement, the America First movement, is founded on. | ||
| And I'll tell you why I use such a heavy word as betrayal. | ||
| Because this is exactly the same logic that was used to employ the First Gulf War and the Second Gulf War as justification. | ||
| We all know that was about oil. | ||
| The First Gulf War, Bush 41. And Dick Cheney, second Gulf War Bush 43, Dick Cheney again, Liz Cheney's beloved father, and Donald Rumsfeld. | ||
| The whole point about that was to create stability in the oil market because America is an exporter of oil. | ||
| And I cannot think of an American presidency, an American administration, more hated and loathed even by its own members than the Bush. | ||
| The Bush family dynasty. | ||
| And it is tragic to see some people in the orbit around Donald Trump using exactly the same arguments that the neocoms were using in the 90s and in the first decade of this millennium, using exactly the same arguments to justify exactly the same thing in a different country, Ukraine, of which I repeat America has no. | ||
| National vital interests. | ||
| If there are minerals and rare earths buried largely, mostly in the Donbass and the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine, then any country can trade with them. | ||
| That's how things are done. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's enough of the war and enough of the pretext. | |
| This movement has been absolutely clear from the start. | ||
| America needs to disengage from Ukraine. | ||
| Okay, stay... | ||
| Stay tuned, folks. |
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