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March 7, 2025 - Bannon's War Room

50:48

Episode 4321: Leaning Towards The Kinetic Part Of A 3rd World War

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steve bannon

30:04

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donald j trump

03:53

will scharf

01:13

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jake tapper

00:08

mike lindell

00:07

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Speaker	Time	Text
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
unidentified		Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
		The people have had a belly full of it.
		I know you don't like hearing that.
		I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.
		It's going to happen.
jake tapper ▲ ● ▼		And where do people like that go to share the big lie?
unidentified		Mega Media.
jake tapper ▲ ● ▼		I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
unidentified		Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
unidentified		War Room.
unidentified		Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		It's Friday 7, March in the year of our Lord, 2025.
		Thank you for being here for the second hour of the morning show.
		So, History being made once again.
		President Trump is going to open up to a press avail momentarily.
		Our own Brian Glenn is with the camera crew, and they're going to be in the, I think it's going to take place in the Oval.
		We don't know the topics yet, but I believe they're clearly mentioning something that's going on.
		All the reporting is coming out with Doge and Elon Musk.
		I'm sure they'll address that.
		Also, I'm sure the president is going to talk about the CR. We just had Chip Roy from the White House.
		So they had a morning meeting.
		I'm sure he's going to talk about that and what he's looking for.
		So we'll check that box.
		Also, I believe he's going to say something about 9,000 auto jobs created already on his watch.
		I think surely they're going to mention that.
		And then I think I'd be very surprised he didn't mention this truth socially just put up.
		About Russia's kinetic activity overnight in Ukraine.
		Look, President Trump, as I tell you, one of his best sayings when you're around him is no games.
		And particularly here, I think it falls into the Zelensky last week, no games, a week ago, and also with the Russians.
		They're trying to work, as I told you, a rapprochement.
		But the Russians are quite tough.
		And last night, I think you saw a pounding that President Trump and his true social just not prepared to tolerate.
		He's given the Muslim Brotherhood franchisee in Gaza.
		He's put them on the clock and said, yo, you don't have all the houses dead or alive turned over so we can count them up.
		All hell's going to break loose.
		And they have a new IDF chief of staff.
		A pretty tough hombre that said, his first address to the country of Israel says, 2025 is going to be the year of war.
		So get ready.
		The world's on the brink.
		We're already deep into the kinetic part of the Third World War.
		All these people said, well, you know, we're trying to avoid the Third World War.
		From 1939, the invasion of Poland, to June of 1941, the invasion of Wehrmacht and the invasion of Russia.
		Operation Barbarossa.
		If you take those couple of years, there is, I think, I don't know, ten times the killings taking place in Ukraine and in Israel that took place in Poland, the fall of France, the blitz over the Battle of Britain, the blitz over London, you know, throwing some raids in France, take North Africa, you roll it all up, it pales in comparison to the casualties you have, and quite frankly, the destruction.
		Parts of Ukraine look like Dresden in 1945. You're in a kinetic war right now that's every bit as dangerous and every bit as brutal, if not more brutal, than the opening phase of World War II. John Lechner says, Providential that we had John scheduled.
		I had a chance to read this book in galleys and give it to people that...
		This is their line of country, and everybody was kind of blown away by the book.
		It's called Death is Our Business.
		It's about the kind of mercenary, the new Russian way of war.
		So, John, walk us through, first off, your experience in doing this.
		You've kind of dedicated your life.
		You're a guy that, I don't know, gets an adrenaline rush of being in some pretty bad neighborhoods.
		So walk us through kind of your background, what led you to this topic before we get into the meat and substance.
		I want to put out your curriculum vitae on this, sir.
unidentified		Well, thank you.
		And thank you for having me on the show.
		You know, I think it came off in the book that, well, I mean, kind of like you, I had a career for a little while in investment banking.
		But my true passion was always for languages and linguistics and traveling the world.
		I had spent some time living in Russia.
		I spoke Russian, still speak Russian fluently.
		And I've been spending a lot of time traveling in Africa.
		And when I decided I wanted to become a writer, it was right around the time that this Wagner group, what was still a mysterious band of Russian mercenaries, was touching down in the Central African Republic.
		And this was in 2018. And so in 2019, I decided I have to go there for myself and see what's happening.
		And, you know, I touched down and I started making contacts and started traveling around the country.
		And, you know, relatively soon I knew that, you know, there was a book to be written about it.
		And so I followed a Wagner group from Ukraine to Syria, Central African Republic, was in Mali, Libya, you know, really wherever they were, getting interviews with them.
		With all the different armed groups and armies that are fighting against them, too.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Let's go back.
		These things kind of appear because when the Soviet Union collapsed, that you had this massive Red Army and the whole nation had kind of been on war footing for years.
		You had this massive infrastructure and they clearly couldn't pay for it.
		I mean, what we've seen...
		In Ukraine, and I keep telling people, hey, there's, Ian Bremmer told me the other day there are 800,000 dead or wounded Russian troops in this war, which is a mind-boggling number.
		And, you know, when I was on sea duty, you know, our mission was Soviet submarines, Russian submarines, then come back to the Pentagon.
		Everything was about the folded gap, the North German plane.
		I mean, these guys had a we actually had to forward deploy tactical nuclear weapons and Pershing missiles that caused a firestorm with President Reagan and Thatcher back in the 80s just to make sure we could defend it.
		That's not the army you see today with the Wagner group and these other mercenary groups.
		Were they because people, troops, soldiers, officers saw a way to make a living since they weren't going to be employed really by the Red Army?
		I mean, how did this whole thing of these mercenary groups led by these Russians even come about?
unidentified		Yeah, no, I mean, it's great that you center kind of that...
		That post-Soviet experience right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, because that kind of solves the supply end of creating a private military company or a PMC. There are a lot of Russians and citizens of the former Soviet Union who have military experience and are out of work, or they're underemployed, and these are the skill sets that they have.
		In Russia itself...
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		And hold it, hold it, hang on.
		I just want to make sure.
		By the way, we are, as soon as the President walks in the Oval, we are going to go live.
		John, but their skill set is killing people.
		I mean, these guys, you read this book, I mean, this is pretty savage, right?
		Their skill set, because I keep telling them, we don't teach World War II right.
		World War II, our allies are the Russian people.
		The Bolsheviks are horrible.
		Stalin's horrible.
		But if you want to read a war at a different scale than we fought in the West...
		As brutal as the war in the West and the Pacific, they're horrible.
		But you want to read something that's almost unhuman.
		It's Operation Barbarossa, right?
		And so from that lineage, these guys are not playing by the Marquis of Queensbury's rules.
		They don't believe in the Geneva Convention.
		These are essentially savages.
		Am I incorrect?
unidentified		Well, I mean, there's that great section of the book, right, where Purgosian...
		He decides he's going to take Bakhmut from the Ukrainians, kind of a middle-sized city in Ukraine.
		The Ukrainian army decides they're going to defend it.
		And so Prigozhin's method for taking Bakhmut from the Ukrainians is just old-school Soviet-style.
		He gets permission to go to Russia's entire prison system.
		He visits all of the prisons, and he shows up and he says, I have an offer for you.
		You fight for me for six months in Bakhmut, and you survive, then you go free.
		Your criminal record is expunged.
		And he says, just like you said, he says very directly to the prisoners, and he was a prisoner himself, so he speaks their language.
		He says, my losses are worse than Stalingrad.
		If you show up on the front and you decide this isn't what you signed up for, you'll be shot on site.
		If you try to desert, you'll be shot on sight.
		And he uses the exact language that Stalin used when he was creating what were effectively penal battalions of people who had fallen afoul of the Bolsheviks, which was pretty much anybody during Stalin's time.
		They formed these penal units and they would throw them into the hairiest part of whatever fight against the Germans.
		And the goal of it, as they said, was to atone for their sins with blood.
		And that was the exact language that showed up on the contracts that these prisoners were signing to go to the front.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		How did you...
		I want to get to more of the story, but I want to give it all away because I want people to read this book.
		I want people to read this book because it's a wake-up call.
		Look, they asked me on British TV the other day, where I'm talking about the Russian repression, and they said you...
		Because I was all over Zelensky, and they said, you know, I call him a punk and a crook, and they go, oh, you trust Putin?
		I go, no, I don't trust Putin.
		Putin's KGB. He's the last guy in the world.
		I trust him less than Zelensky.
		But I said, Winston Churchill partnered with Stalin and FDR, too.
		They didn't trust him.
		These are bad guys.
		But sometimes you've got to partner with bad guys.
		But how did you get the detail?
		The book kind of reads like a novel.
		So how did you get all the insights, the conversations?
		And it spread over a battlefield.
		That's pretty much, I mean, it's from Africa to Eurasia.
		You've got both strategy and you've got the brutality of what these guys do for a living.
		How did you get all that?
unidentified		Well, look, I mean, that was the toughest part.
		I mean, getting the information also was obviously difficult.
		I mean, I took, you know, as are detailed in the book, I took a number of risks.
		I just went to these war zones and I... You know, found the numbers of some of these guys, and I called them up and I met with them and interviewed them.
		And, you know, I think they, at first they were curious, why is a Russian-speaking American here in the middle of the Central African Republic?
		I'm sure they thought that I was intelligence, but, you know, curiosity can often get the best of you.
		And, you know, I just made an effort over the long term.
		To get their stories.
		And I interviewed for the book probably about 40 guys in Wagner who were either fighters or executives or affiliates of the founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
		So it took a lot of being on the ground in these war zones to collect the stories.
		And then it took even longer sitting there trying to think about, like you said, how do you craft a narrative that brings together How Russia works, how these African societies work, how complex these civil wars are that Wagner is intervening in.
		And these are some of the biggest wars that are happening today in Ukraine, Syria, the Sahel, Libya.
		And so it took a lot of research and it took a lot of time to figure out a way to take the reader through it.
		In a way that is also engaging and accessible to a general audience.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Go back to that point.
		It's a great point.
		I want to make sure this audience fully understands it.
		The scale of conflict in the world today, this is why I'm such a huge believer in Trump.
		Trump is trying to hammer swords into plowshares, both Ukraine, the Middle East, China.
		But give the audience a second.
		We've got about 90 seconds in this break.
		We'll hold you through the break.
		About the scale of conflict that's going on in the world today, sir?
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, it's at the highest scale, I think, probably, as you said, since going back to close to World War II, to some of the early days of the Cold War.
		I mean, I think we have probably, you know, the tally is about 100 million refugees right now in the world today.
		You have a full-scale state-to-state conflict between two very serious nation states in Russia and in Ukraine.
		And as you mentioned, the losses there are staggering.
		Syria continues to be an area where we don't know.
		Just earlier today, there has been a kind of a minor insurgency.
		And this is across the Middle East and North Africa that we see continued precarity and instability, and the conditions in the world today point towards more, not less, conflict in our future.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		This is the point.
		John, hang her for one second.
		John Lechner.
		Death is our business.
		It's an inside view with a great strategic overview of modern warfare.
		And it's brutal.
		You won't totally understand what President Trump, what he's trying to accomplish until you understand the raw, just viciousness of what is out there.
		I'm not so sure the people in Europe understand it.
		I really don't.
		I don't think they fully grasp what's happening in Ukraine.
		I just don't.
		Certainly in the United States, the MAGA movement, so many veterans.
		We're going to take a short break.
		John Lechner's going to be with us.
		If President Trump comes to the Oval, we'll cut right away.
		Back to the moment.
unidentified		I got American faith in America's heart.
		Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann.
		Okay.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		As on cue, ladies and gentlemen, Kobayashi is reporting right now that President Trump is going to focus on the jobs report.
		And like I said, I don't think they've done a great job in selling how good a news President Trump already is having in this jobs report.
		And there's going to be some choppy water.
		But like I said, there's 9,000 auto jobs.
		So President Trump, the primary purpose is going to start with the jobs report.
		But since we have John Lechner here, and he's given us really the details of how the Russian army really fights, particularly his mercenary army.
		And I told you that overnight, the Russians pounded Ukraine.
		And President Trump's kind of said, hey, I want a stand-down.
		This is why Zelensky asked the security guarantee.
		He said, I don't want to hear it.
		I want to see a stand-down.
		Don't be asking me for security guarantee.
		That's why he threw him out.
		I don't think he was very happy last night because he's working.
		He's got a team in Saudi Arabia.
		He's got Witkoff on it.
		Witkoff's his guy.
		He's the tip of the spear in this thing.
		Steve Witkoff.
		Good man.
		Very close to Trump.
		For decades.
		They're trying to work this thing out, and they get pounded last night.
		Like I said, Trump is a no-games guy.
		Don't play games with me.
		Reporting now from Bloomberg that Russia is willing to discuss a temporary ceasefire with Ukraine, provide this progress to our final peace settlement, per Bloomberg.
		Headline, Putin ready to agree Ukraine truce with conditions.
		So I think we're going to have some big movement on that today and over the weekend.
		We'll be on it 24-7.
		Lechner, I want to step back for a second because this is not taught in the West.
		It's one of the big, and we try to do it in this show.
		And like I said, I don't trust the KGB, Putin.
		I spent my youth as a junior naval officer on a destroyer.
		Our entire mission was hunting and protecting the carrier battle groups from fast attack submarines.
		Three, four years in the Pentagon.
		The whole time there, 100%, was on Russia.
		But I've learned that people have not been taught World War II appropriately.
		When the Russian people think of war, or when these kind of guys, like these Wagner Group guys, their thinking about war is quite different than Hollywood's in America and what we think about Saving Private Ryan and all the movies and the...
		And how we think of D-Day and other things.
		Give me your understanding of the Russians' people thinking when they think of conflict and they think of war, sir.
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, I think, well, there are two big differences, I think, that you can point out.
		One, the Russians have a much higher tolerance for casualties on their own side.
		And so they can get into a war for attrition.
		I mean, during World War II, You know, I think, if I remember correctly, the rate was that the Soviets would only pull back from a position fighting against the Germans if they had lost 60% of their force.
		And so, you know, you throw in 100 guys, they only pull back and retreat if after 60 or so have died.
		I mean, these kind of tactics that they often use, and we were talking about the human wave tactics in Bakhmut that Wagner was using.
		I mean, it's just, it's brutal, it's inefficient, but they do it for a reason.
		It's also effective over time.
		And so in Bakhmut, the Russians, for example, were taking probably four casualties or four people killed for every one Ukrainian.
		But they considered that to be to their advantage because the guys that Wagner was throwing into the fight, as we mentioned, they were convicts.
		They were prisoners.
		These were the people that society didn't need.
		And the Ukrainians, they were losing less guys, but the guys that they were losing were some of their most experienced, talented fighters.
		And so for Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner's founder, for the Kremlin, this was a ratio that made sense.
		And there's a long tradition of that.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		I want to go back to Bakhmut because it was Bakhmut in 22 or 23. It was like six or eight weeks.
		Every day on the show we would give an update because it's basically a crossroads, but it essentially leads to a place, but it's not like Kiev.
		It's not a siege of a major town.
		It's kind of a crossroads.
		But every day, I think for six or eight or ten weeks.
		It was like World War I. I mean, they pounded it every day and they were relentless.
unidentified		What was the thinking when they think of a place like Bakhmut?
		I mean, we can get into this.
		I think, you know, war can create significance, right?
		And so, like you said, Bakhmut itself is a small city.
		It's not the capital, Kiev.
		What happened, basically, was that both Wagner's founder, Evgeny Prigozhin, promised to deliver this victory to Putin, and the Russians hadn't had a lot of major victories by that point.
		So Bakhmud starts to gain significance for the Russians, and President Zelenskyy also decides that the Ukrainians are going to defend Bakhmud, despite the fact that, again, it's not strategically significant, and it's actually in a position that is In terms of the terrain, it's actually at a disadvantage to the Ukrainians.
		It's kind of located at the bottom of some hills on either side.
		And so it wasn't a good position for the Ukrainians to be in.
		But the decision was made that somehow Bakhmut became sort of a bellwether for the war itself at that point.
		Like you said, everyone was covering it every day.
		And, you know, whether the Russians or the Ukrainians were pushing forward kind of became a way to measure how the war was going itself.
		And so it took on far more significance than the city or the position itself actually deserved.
		And like you said, it was just a brutal fight of the Russians using human wave tactics.
		Throwing guys out of the trenches.
		You know, eight out of ten could be killed, but two jump into the Ukrainian trenches and get one or two guys.
		And just constant.
		Just constant.
		They call it in Russian the meat grinder.
		And, I mean, I think it's a pretty apt name for it.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		No, but then you see the parents.
		I've said the most rational people in this entire tragedy.
		I mean, it's difficult because,
unidentified		you know, for the Ukrainians, it is I think there are plenty of criticisms that can be made at a tactical level,
		like Bakhmut, but I think overall there is still widespread support for the soldiers on the front line and a lot of griping in the background about these types of situations that are happening and how the generals are Are using the Ukrainian people as resources.
		But it's a difficult position, I think, for the families also to be in because you can disagree with the tactics while also kind of agreeing to the overall strategy or the need to defend.
		Because like you said, too, I mean, the Russians are brutal.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		I don't want to give too much away because I want people to read the book, and the book is a wake-up call.
		I think the people in the United States will say, hey, this is what the world's really like, right?
		And I think it's particularly important for veterans and families of people in the armed services, going to the armed services, to read this and understand what your kids are really signing up for, right?
		Because this thing is brutal.
		I want to go, what led these guys to believe they were like the Praetorian Guard?
		Guard, what led to this incident where they actually thought that they'd become, you know, that they were so good or somehow it was miscommunicated what was going on that eventually they marched on.
		They actually turned on Putin himself.
		It looked like they turned on Putin.
		And we don't, I mean, even at the time, we didn't know if it was a fake.
		It was a misdirection play.
		What's your sense of that?
		Did they just get ahead of themselves?
		Did they just think that they were like the Baturian Guard and they could determine who runs Russia, sir?
unidentified		Yeah, I mean...
		It's a great question because the other reason why I think this book is important for readers is to introduce people to some of the Russians other than Putin who are in Russia and show that there are plenty of Russians working within Putin's system who are incredibly ambitious, often act independently, rashly, and can sort of fall out of the Kremlin's control.
		Yevgeny Prigozhin, as he kind of comes out in the book, this is a guy who went from an ex-con himself to a contractor for the military to eventual founder of this mercenary army, and his ambition and his ego were essentially limitless. and his ambition and his ego were essentially limitless.
		But he was operating in a system where you can really take some gambles and you can really put your neck out on the line, kind of basically saying, I'm furthering Russia's national interests.
		But if those interests shift, or the strategy shifts, then you're going to be hung out to dry, and it's a dangerous position to be in.
		And Danny Purgosian, he made a lot of enemies over the years, especially with his ambition and his very uncouth and brash ways of doing things.
		Really, the crisis came when the Ministry of Defense decided they were going to cut off Evgeny Purgosian from this prison population, which he needed to deliver Bakhmut as a victory to Purgosian.
		And then the Ministry of Defense went further, and they said, actually, all Russians fighting in Ukraine right now have to sign a new contract with the Ministry of Defense.
		And so Prigozhin was about to lose all of these thousands of Wagner fighters, which he understood and even said made him a political force on the domestic scene.
		And I think that's ultimately what – I think his decision was it's either I die tomorrow or five years from now.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Hang on for one second.
		We'll take a short break and have you back.
		Like the Roman legions, right?
		One of the head of the legions in Persia to say, hey, I've had a pretty good run.
		Maybe I'll turn this wagon around.
		We'll head towards Rome.
		See how it turns out.
		Short commercial break.
		We are going to go to the Oval Office with President Trump as soon as the cameras come on with our own Brian Glenn.
		John Lechner getting a wake-up call, folks.
		Short break.
		break.
		Back in a moment.
unidentified		Here's your host, Stephen K. Band.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Birchgold.com slash bandit.
		End of the dollar empire.
		You get all five free installments about debt, deficit, all of it, to teach you the nomenclature and to kind of put you in a how to think about capital markets, why gold has been a store of value and a hedge for 5,000 years.
		The latest six free installment, Modern Monetary Theory.
		You have to understand it, particularly as we get into next week.
		Because it's going to be a firestorm on the CR. We understand the war and posse, the audience.
		I don't know.
		You're not quite...
		Let's say you're not quite there yet on a CR, on a clean CR. As I knew you weren't.
		You need a lot more details.
		And trust me, there's going to be a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.
		And some gnashing of teeth.
		And there'll be tears.
		This one's going to end in tears, I can tell you.
		Go check it out today.
		Into the Dollar Empire.
		Modern Monetary Theory.
		It's all free.
		Go to birchgold.com slash Bannon.
		Also, take your phone at Bannon at 989898. Get the free brochure, Investing in Gold, in the era of Trump, the ultimate guide.
		Philip Patrick and the team has put this together.
		We also give you access to Philip Patrick and his team.
		Go do it today.
		Take advantage of that.
		As soon as it's ready in the Oval Office, we're going to write to that.
		Our own Brian Glenn is there, and I believe we have our own camera guy the other day, so it's a...
		It's a red-letter day for Real America's Voice.
		And Natalie's going to join us from the White House in the 5 o'clock hour.
		John, where do people go?
		We can tell there's a lot of interest in the audience on this.
		Where do people go to get the book?
		And are you doing any book signings?
		Are you going to be anywhere that people can go hear you talk?
		Or are you doing a podcast with anybody that's set up?
		People want to know more information about this.
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		Well, I mean, the book is available in any good stores, Barnes& Noble, Books A Million, or any other great store in your town.
		You can also buy the book, obviously, on Amazon and any other online retailer as well.
		It's with Bloomsbury Publishing.
		And I have a book signing tonight at Politics and Prose.
		Here in D.C. We're planning a few more that I can keep the audience updated with on johnlechnerauthor.com.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Perfect.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		And Politics and Pro, the book signing is at what time?
unidentified		7 p.m.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		7 p.m.
		Okay, note to Warren Posse.
		It's probably, it used to be in the old days before I, it used to be in the old days before I took on this line of work with President Trump, my favorite bookstore in Washington, D.C., and probably one of my favorite in the country.
		Let's say I don't frequent it as much as I used to.
		Please, if you go see Lectronite, do not, and I repeat, do not wear your MAGA ball cap.
		Just go in and, go in undercover.
		Pretend you're a Wagner group.
unidentified		Don't even worry about it.
		Yeah, exactly.
		Okay.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Hold it.
		Lechner said he's going to give you cover.
		So where are your MAGA cats?
		Walk up to Lechner and say, hey, I'm here because I heard you on the war room.
		So 7 p.m.
		tonight, Politics and Pros and Folks.
		If you haven't been there, it's a fabulous bookstore, particularly if you like politics, history, all of it.
		It's amazing.
		And these author, they have very prominent people show up to give talks.
		So, John, that's pretty important.
		At least what the establishment's telling you is that they love the books.
		Anyway, look forward to having a success tonight.
		Politics and Prose at 7 out on Connecticut Avenue.
		And I look forward to having you back, sir.
unidentified		Thank you.
unidentified		Thanks for having me.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Let's go over to his website now.
		Explore more about Extraordinary Guy.
		The tales of these...
		And this is what the reality is.
		First off, it's one of the realities that the young men and women that go into the service to the American Army in Africa, in the Middle East.
		I mean, this is one of the reasons these experiences come back.
		And this is, hey, the whole thing with the VA, what's going to happen to it, the restructuring of the VA, it's got to be talked about.
		I mean, this announcement, you're just getting rid of 80,000 people.
		I realize the VA is now up to, what, 450 or 500 post-COVID? But it's really got to be thought through because...
		I don't know.
		are really driven by ability, and particularly guys, to think, hey, I've got troops, I've got weapons, you know, we don't actually live in a democracy, you know, maybe I can make my move now.
		So it's a very fluid situation over there, as President Trump.
		Like I said, Putin has announced he's prepared for a ceasefire.
		I think President Trump sending a message, not just publicly, but I'm sure on back channels, that He's just not going to sit there.
		He's not going to be happy with games being played.
		The whole world's got a line here.
		President Trump has gone out of his way.
		And so many times he talks about the casualties from Ukraine.
		He talks about the casualties in Russia.
		And look, the Ukraine numbers, you know, because they're trying to hide exactly how bad it's been.
		President Trump says up to a million dead and wounded.
		I do know because I talked to Ian Bremmer, and Ian's a guy that will get down to the number.
		Ian told me flat out, the Russians are 800,000 dead or wounded, which is just a stunning number in three years.
		You understand why if you read the book, Death is Our Business, because, like I said, there's a dramatic scene when the head guy goes, the Wagner guy goes to the prisons, him having been a prisoner before.
		And he says, hey, look, this is going to be like Stalingrad, but...
		You're either going to spend the rest of your life in prison or 10 or 20 years or some of you guys are going to die here or I'll give you a shot.
		If you make it through, you're free.
		Now, it's unlikely you're going to get through, but at least you die out there as a warrior instead of dying here as a slave.
		It's pretty powerful.
		He gets a lot of sign-ups.
		That's how nice Russian prison is.
		It's a different world.
		And we have to understand.
		And this is why it upsets me so much the elites in this country are prepared.
		I mean, right now on the Romanian-Ukraine border, you have a brigade of 101st Airborne.
		I mean, that could be Mo.
		Now, she went to Iraq, but, you know, this is sons and daughters of everyday Americans.
		And they signed up for it.
		They're not whining.
		They're not bitching.
		This is what they want to do.
		This is what they signed up to do.
		But read the book and just see what we're putting our kids in the middle of.
		And there's no need to do this.
		It's ridiculous.
		People are making money off this.
		The Europeans are talking.
		They're all big talk now.
		Their bluff's getting a little bit called by the bond market.
		So this is President Trump.
		What he's trying to do is get some framework around this so when you lay the guns down, the war of attrition can stop, and then you start talking about some sort of deal.
		A subset of this is going to be the situation in Persia.
		Where I think the Russians are going to work to have some sort of diplomatic American Persian sit down.
		The new head of the IDF, the chief of staff, when he said it's going to be a year of war, he's talking about in Gaza, he's also talking about Judea-Samaria, I think he's talking about some cleanup in Syria, maybe some Hezbollah, but he also says, hey, they call it Iran, I call it Persia, but Iran, and as you know, there's very little to no support.
		Very little support for engagement in any kind of conflict with Persia, either in ground or in air assets.
		There's got to be another way to solve that.
		So it's a volatile situation.
		It's a very volatile situation.
		Very volatile situation.
		Then you come back here, and the audience, and you guys are going to have to be kind of the arbiter here.
		Because we have to get serious.
		And only this audience can make people serious about spending cuts.
		Nobody wants to cut spending.
		Let's be honest.
	Up on the Hill is because it's too politically painful.
	The reason we're in this situation is because we've avoided this for decade after decade after decade.
	If you look at the deficits we had in the first couple of years of Trump before COVID hit, they're relatively small.
	You know, I think there was an argument, we could close that at the time, but the relatively small, I think the first one was $400 billion, compared to today, when you're at $2 trillion, and it's structural.
	We have to get serious about cutting that.
	The only way you're going to cut it, and I've said this before, yes, there is waste-front abuse.
	One, you have to identify it.
	Two, you have to stop paying for it.
	Three, you have to rid it from the system.
	You have to hold people accountable.
	Because there's been all this waste-front abuse.
	Remember, it's been financed for years.
	And people have run the organizations that, Did it.
	So you have to do that accountability.
	But it's not going to be a trillion dollars.
	You're not going to cut the deficit in half with waste-front abuse spending cuts.
	That's too easy.
	It's not a magic wand.
	You're going to have to get into the tough decisions.
	Defense, Medicaid, the other social programs.
	Because you're not going to touch the entitlements right now of Medicare and Social Security.
	It's just not going to happen.
	It's another fantasy.
	If people tell you, well, you can't do it until you, then they're lying to you.
	Because you can at least make an effort and close this thing up.
	You can.
	It's going to be painful.
	It's going to be, the media is going to be all over you every day of the week, right?
	Just like deporting 10 million people.
	You think it's going to be easy?
	You think that's going to be, you see the deportation rates, how tough it is even to get the criminals out when you have sanctuary cities, have these governors, guys like Pritzker, these people fighting you tooth and nail.
	So it's all difficult, right?
	Stopping the war is difficult.
	That's why Trump's just doing an extraordinary job standing in the breach.
	And I'm glad today, because I don't think, and this is why I think it was good Scott got on the road.
	I think Lutnick and Navarro and Hassett and Scott, they're terrific.
	I think it's got to be kind of more coordinated and hammered and more surrogates, outside surrogates.
	E.J. Antonio of the world, he's still giving the best description of the difficulty of this economy of anybody, of what President Trump inherited.
	President Trump is taking the bull by the horns.
	That's why I think we're having this press avail.
	And I don't believe it's around the executive order signing for actually getting rid of the education department, which I believe is supposed to be today.
	It's supposed to be yesterday.
	I think they're tightening up the executive order.
	But President Trump is going to go on offense, I think, here momentarily and talk to you about the jobs report.
	Inside the jobs report, there's some nuggets.
	I think 9,000 jobs created in one month in January in the automotive industry shows you what President Trump's doing about the automotive industry.
	This is part of the whole tariff strategy and bringing manufacturing back here.
	What Honda's already announced, I think there's been some other announcements also.
	I think these are extraordinarily important.
	And President Trump's going to talk about that.
	I'm sure he's going to bring up the fact that with his efforts, After this bombing overnight, the shelling overnight by the Russians in Ukraine, that he's got somebody's attention, and now Putin's saying he's willing to have a ceasefire.
	That's a big movement.
	Very big movement.
	President Trump and Witkoff and these are thinking about this overall rapprochement with the Russians, how it's going to look.
	And it's extraordinarily important.
	And you've got the Europeans and the Ukrainians nipping at your heels, snapping at your heels.
	Clearly, they're going to have some say-so.
	It's got to be minor, and it's got to be not—it cannot drive this deal because this is between principles.
	I just don't think they're considered a principle.
	I don't.
	Because it's an overall strategic relationship that can solve the situation in Europe, the potential for a European war, which is how World War II kind of started.
	It started as a mainland war between Japan and China up in Manchuria, and it started— With the, you know, I would actually say with the Spanish Civil War, but then in 1939, it was a European war.
	It was a European war until 1941, until Operation Barbarossa, until the Wehrmacht to the Germans attacked their strategic partner, or at least their alliance partner, the Russians, in kind of a sneak attack on Barbarossa.
	And guess what happened?
	Six months later, the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor.
	Very much close, you know, people don't tie those together.
	Very, very inextricably linked.
	This is what President Trump's dealing with, and this is why the spending has to get, and look, it's obvious now he's going to do it himself.
	We wouldn't be in this situation, and this audience wouldn't be upset, as you should be upset, if Johnson and these guys, I said for months and months and months, just, let's get on the table and tell the truth.
	Don't say we should spend all this time on reconciliation when you have to get 2025. Fiscal 2025 has got to be sorted.
unidentified		Then you deal with 26. We didn't do that.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Okay, short break.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Maybe back to the White House when we return.
unidentified		We will break till they're all gone.
		We rejoice when there's no more.
		Let's take down the CCP. Here's your host, Stephen K. Van.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we will go live to the White House as soon as we know.
		They're out in the side room right now.
		Brian Glenn is, I think, going to be there.
		He's their position.
		We also have a camera crew.
		So President Trump's going to be in the Oval.
		I don't think it's the Roosevelt Room.
		I think he's going to be in the Oval.
		And he's going to do a press avail.
		And there will be some questions.
		I think he's going to at least do jobs report.
		I think he's obviously going to talk about Russia.
		I'm sure he's going to bring up the situation on Doge.
		And the CR. This could go for a while.
		And it should be great.
		Real America's Voice is going to cover it live.
		Of course, Charlie Kirk follows us.
		If you haven't seen Charlie's podcast with Governor Newsom, you should definitely watch that.
		Newsom's running in 28. And I know the audience wants to get ahead of all this.
		I know, I know, I know.
		But you've got to know what's out there.
		And so Newsom's definitely in.
		You can see it on the Charlie podcast.
		Very volatile capital markets around today.
		Why is that?
		Times of turbulence, geopolitically, financially, deportations at the border, coming war with the cartels.
		The Chinese have a curse to live in interesting times.
		Baby, I will tell you, you live in interesting times.
		There are decades in which nothing happens, and there are weeks in which decades happen.
		And right now, we're having week after week after week.
unidentified		Why?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		President Trump fled the zone, days of thunder.
		He is on fire.
		And I'm telling you, the weight of the world is on his shoulders, but he's getting it done.
		Look at that command performance on the State of the Union or the Joint Address to Congress and compare and contrast what could have been run in this country.
		Just always remember that.
		That freak show that went out of its way, stole the election, and then tried to destroy this country and tried to destroy everybody around President Trump, sending him to prison and make sure he died in prison, send all of us to prison, debank us, deplatform us, the whole thing.
		And remember, We talk about de-platforming, all those tech bros that are all running around and all loving up on President Trump and everybody around President Trump, they were the tip of the spear in doing that.
		And they all bought in.
		They had no problem.
		It's only when, through your work, the precinct strategy and grinding it out, canvassing, only in your work supporting President Trump, when the math became...
		You know, inevitable that he was going to win.
		All of a sudden, oh my God, they're all MAGA and they got their red hats on and they're running around and they're talking crypto this.
		Don't trust any of them as far as you can throw them.
		They're not good people.
		They're not trustworthy.
		They will turn on President Trump.
		They will turn on you.
		They will turn on MAGA and they'll turn on this country in a New York second.
		Birch Gold, now more than ever, take your phone out.
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		You know, I take my Warpath coffee, drink big old gallons every morning we get up.
		We get up early here to get all the European news overnight in Asia and then get ready for the show.
		Field of Greens, though, we take this, we put it in water, stir it up, hit it every day.
		I get an energy boost.
		Plus, I get that feeling I'm doing something good.
		Don't have to eat my traditional big breakfast, right?
		So Field of Greens.
		Go to fieldofgreens.com.
		Put promo code in Bannon.
		Get another discount.
		They've got all kind of products.
		They've also got the Lean product.
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		But Field of Greens, and this is 100% organic.
		This is what they call a superfood.
		They have a very different process.
		The other one that's advertised all the time, you see it advertised nonstop on cable.
		Particularly for a slightly older audience.
		Totally different process.
		Go to their website.
		Go to Field of Green's website and check out the process.
		You'll understand why it's real, organic, superfood.
		This is superfood.
		And you'll feel great when you take it.
		They're getting ready to go into the Oval Office.
		I want to go to Mike Lindell.
		Mike, give me a minute.
		Sell me a pillow for a minute because I think we're going to President Trump here live, sir.
		You guys, all the specials have collided.
unidentified		This is a one-day only.
unidentified		You're getting them all.
mike lindell ▲ ● ▼		Free shipping on your whole order, but you get two free MyPillows if you spend $100 or more.
unidentified		Absolutely free.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Free shipping.
		If you go to the website, all the towels, everything.
		Promo code war room, everybody.
		Promo code war room.
		Thank you.
		Just go there down.
		Check it out.
		MyPillow.com.
unidentified		Promo code war room.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Go to the Oval Office.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		The President of the United States, Donald John Trump, live.
will scharf ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
		So later this afternoon, we're going to have prepared for your signature an executive order dealing with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.
		This is a program that's designed to expedite basically the conclusion of payments on student loans.
		For people who have taken out federally-backed student loans.
		The problem, though, is that a lot of these people work for NGO organizations, for non-profit organizations that engage in illegal or what we would consider to be improper activities, supporting, for example, illegal immigration or foreign terrorist organizations or otherwise law-breaking activities.
		So this executive order will direct your Department of Education and Department of the Treasury to basically bring about modifications to the public service loan forgiveness program in order to ensure that people who are engaged in these sorts of activities can't benefit from a program that's really not intended to support those sorts of things.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		And what are the consequences if they are not good?
will scharf ▲ ● ▼		The consequences would be that they wouldn't get forgiveness of their student loans.
will scharf ▲ ● ▼		As they would be eligible for if they were working for the government or a normal non-profit that's not violating the law.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		All right.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Any questions on that?
unidentified		Anybody have any questions?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		So we'll talk about the manufacturing turnaround, and it's been very early, but it's pretty significant.
		The numbers were much better, as you know, than projected by the media.
		A little surprising, actually, how strong, how fast, because we have many, many companies are moving into our country.
		As you probably know, it's a statistic that everyone talks about, but nobody seems to have done much about.
		Since the beginning of NAFTA, there's been 90,000 plants and factories closed in this country.
unidentified		Think of that.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		90,000 plants and factories.
		have been closed in this country.
		Many of them have been car manufacturing plants.
		And that's a terrible statistic and we'll be turning that around.
		You're going to see it already.
		We already have numerous that are being built or starting to be built and numerous that were being built in other countries and they stopped and they're coming here now because of the tariffs.
		And that's a big deal.
		That's what you want to hear.
		During the last year, the Biden administration saw A loss of more than 110,000 manufacturing jobs or 9,000 manufacturing jobs every single month.
		It averaged about 9,000 a month, 110,000 manufacturing jobs.
		During the first full month in office, we've not only stopped that manufacturing collapse, but we've begun to rapidly reverse it.
		And get major gains.
		We created 10,000 manufacturing jobs in February alone.
		That hasn't happened in a long time.
		And these aren't government jobs, which actually we cut.
		These are private sector manufacturing jobs.
		So we gained all of those jobs, 10,000 jobs, and we barely started yet.
		It's a very unusual number.
		People are surprised by it.
		I'm even a little surprised.
		On auto jobs...
		We created almost 9,000 new jobs in the auto production field and the reason for that is largely they think things are happening so they're already geared up.
		In some cases they had rooms in their plants or they had empty plants that they were able to put into use quickly because they see because of the tariffs they don't want to be dealing with other places and they don't want to go back and forth and around and through the borders and across.
		Mexico border and Canada border.
		They want to have the jobs in one location.
		And they've had space, and if they had space, they were able to create the jobs almost immediately.
		In some cases, they'll be building plants to take care of those jobs.
		So we created 9,000 new jobs already in the auto production, auto parts manufacturing.
		So we want the auto parts, ideally, and I think from a simplicity standpoint, too, to be built and made in the United States.
		It's in a single month.
		That all took place in a single month.
		9,000 new auto jobs.
		You haven't heard that in a long time.
		After auto workers lost more than 27,000 auto jobs in the final year of Biden, these are also high-paying jobs.
		These are very prime jobs.
		The ISM Manufacturing Survey and the S&P Manufacturing Survey have also confirmed that our Administration is presiding over a brand new domestic manufacturing boom after major collapse under Biden.
		It was a collapse.
		All he did is keep adding new government jobs, which are not the jobs you want.
		We're trying to shrink government and grow the private sector.
		That's what we've been doing.
		Under the final two years of Biden, one in every four jobs created in America was a government job.
		That's a tremendous percentage.

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